Michael: I hope you realize your argument leads to the conclusion that Israel should get rid of its nukes.

Why? Because Iran will use your reasoning and say "hey, if Israel attacks, then we can't respond. Therefore either Israel must disarm or we must arm."

QED

And if you counterargue that Iran has no reason to believe that Israel is threatening it, well, good luck pulling off that stunt.

This post is a joke - Israel's "response" isn't a response to terrorist action at all.

If Lebanon (NOT Hezbollah) had had nukes, Israel wouldn't be bombing major population centers with no connection to Hezbollah, they'd just be bombing the south. Yes this makes more sense for Israel strategically.

Michael Levi just repeats the Israeli government talking point: all Israel does is "strike back in defense."

Wake us up when you have something intelligent to say.

Wake us up when you have something intelligent to say.

What's unintelligent about it?

I'll tell you what's unintelligent.  What's unintelligent is people thinking that the only "defense" Israel is entitled to is the right to defend against a land invasion by hostile neighbors.  According to this view, any time Israel takes any pre-emptive action, or more strategically minded defensive action, like the campaign to pressure the Lebanese government to take its responsibilities in the south seriously and wipe out a genocidal fanatic militia, it is committing "aggression".

This comment is so flawed on so many levels.

First,

This allows Israel complete freedom to push the Arab states around without any way for the Arabs to fight back except via terrorism.

Second,

So this is precisely why we have terrorism in the ME

Third, I would forsee quite different results. To wit:

1) Israel's enemies do not seem to want to negotiate. They want to destroy Israel. This is made perfectly clear in such things as the charters of Hezbollah and Hamas which state their goal is the removal of Israel as a state.

2) Just how favorable to the Palestininas would be acceptable? Why is that such a good thing? See point 1 above.

3) This just makes no sense so I really can not speak to it. When has Israel's supposed nuclear arsenal been used as a "Stalking horse"?

4) The U.S. would have to go a long way further to "regain credibility in the eyes of the Arab states." Can you say "Iraq?" Disarming Israel would certainly make Arabs happy, but then, so would mass suicides in Israel. Why not recommend that?

5) Do you really think so? Perhaps one of thee things that keeps the region from totally blowing up is the Arabs understanding of Israel's capability of massive retaliation. Removing that may very well destabilize things.

6) Why? How would Israel being disarmed reduce the liklihood of terrorists to want to obtain a nuke of their own? Without the threat of retaliation it might actually increase it. See no. 5 above.

It doesn't seem to me that Michael really addresses the substance of Nathan's argument.

Suppose we imagine ourselves looking back on the India and Pakistan relationship from the year 2026 or 2036. Suppose it could somehow be compellingly demonstrated that, over that extended period of time, the presence of nuclear arsenals in both India and Pakistan had prevented the occurrence of a major war, a war which may easily have killed millions of people even if fought with conventional weaponry. Suppose the case could be made that such a war would have been exceedingly likely to occur in the case of no nuclear deterrent, or a nuclear deterrent on only one side.

Now suppose also that over that period of time, one or both sides had been responsible for occasional terrorist atrocities. In fact, just to make it clear that my argument doesn't rely on any claim of moral equivalence, suppose it is Pakistan alone that is responsible for these atrocities - let's say 10,000 Indians are killed by terrorism in that 20 or 30 year period.

Would we judge in hindsight that the MAD-style sytem of deterrence was worth its costs? I should think so. Despite the fact that the system enabled one side in the conflict to engage in terrorism, with a minimized risk of defensive retaliation, overall the sytem saved far more lives than it lost.

So it doesn't seem a convincing response to Nathan's argument to argue that a MAD-style system of nuclear deterrence involving Iran and Israel would enable Iran's proxies to launch occasional terrorist strikes against Israel with impunity. The issue is what the long term effects of the sytem would be. If a compelling case could be made that such a system would prevent a major war between Israel and Iran, a war that would be much more destructive of human life in the end than the cumulative effect of the terrorist attacks, then it would surely be an option to be taken seriously.

I also think it is precipitous to claim that the presence of a MAD system in the Middle East would automatically prevent Israel from defending itself against terrorist provocations. After all, during the Cold War, several wars were fought between one of the nuclear superpowers and one of the proxies of the other superpower. The nuclear deterrent didn't prevent the wars, but it did require each side to carefully weigh the risks of escalation in any conflict, and to fight those wars accordingly. It also required that they engage in certain levels of crisis-defusing diplomacy. And it is surely argumable that the deterrent prevented a direct conventional military engagement between the two sides, which would have been profoundly destructive. It is entirely possible that if Israel and Iran both possessed nuclear arsenals, Israel might still fight limited wars against people like Hizbollah. Iran might not intervene and threaten nuclear attack for the same reason that the Soviet Union and the US both sometimes declined to intervene directly on the side of its regional allies.

I do think two important disanalogies deserve to be mentioned: the close geographical proximity between Israel and Iran, and the geat disparity in territorial size between the two states.

For the record, I'm strongly disinclined to support the idea of a MAD system in the Middle East, and much more inclined to support general nuclear disarmament in the region. We only have one extended historical example of such a system, and so an inadequate experimental basis on which to judge the long-term costs and benefits of MAD-style deterrence. I consider it very possible that the US and Soviet Union dodged a bullet during the Cold War - they lucked out. Repeating the experiment might produce other, more disastrous results.

You might be right - I suppose my comment serves no useful purpose, since Josh isn't going to be replacing the contributors on my say-so.

I'm not certain that criticisms of the pundit pieces here do not belong in the specific articles responses, however.

While the overall discussion of the makeup of the contributors is best discussed over in the Discussion Tables, I think it's useful to be critical - even harshly critical, as long as ad hominems are not used (as I admit to having done in the past) - directly to said pundits.

If they don't understand where the criticism is coming from and why, we'll just get more of the same.

I think we can be critical but reasonably civil. and vice versa.

Unnecessarily harsh, but essentially the same reason I said there was no real content in Levi's post.

I realize the contributors to this site are busy people, but they need to try to avoid throwing off what are essentially "one liners" and try to back up their arguments rather more extensively than Levi did in this piece.

It gives me, at least, and I suspect some other readers, the impression that we're all just "hoi polloi" being tossed "pearls of wisdom" while being unable to understand the "more sophisticated" elements of geopolitical punditry.

I agree - the situation in Pakistan and India and the situation between the US and Russia demonstrates that MAD can work, if only by accident.

MAD would be much riskier in the ME given the greater number of factors involved.

In any event, it's irrelevant because as long as Israel is FAR ahead in the possession of nuclear weapoons, there will never be nuclear parity between Israel and the other ME nations.

Thus, as I've said before, the ONLY positive effect of Iran getting a nuclear weapon - however deliverable - is that the regime change policies of the US and Israel toward Iran will have to be taken off the table.

And that IS a good thing.

Otherwise, as you say, I don't think it will have any significant impact on whether terrorism can be used by the various parties. I don't think it would stop a situation such as the current one, either, where Israel attacks Lebanon or Syria. Iran is not going to use a nuclear weapon on Israel unless Iran itself is threatened by nuclear attack by Israel or the US or regime change by the US.

MAD would be much riskier in the ME given the greater number of factors involved.

Yes, TH, including the two factors I glossed over in my comment. In order for a nuclear deterrent to be credible, a sufficient portion of the force must be able to survive a first strike, along with some of the leadership and infrastructure of the state. Or the state must have sufficient response time to detect a launch by its opponents, and launch in response. Since Israel is so tiny, and is so close to Iran, it would be extremely vulnerable to a first strike from a nuclear Iran. A state in Iran's position, if it had a significant nuclear ballistic missle force, would thus have more of a temptation to launch a preventive first strike than the Soviet Union had v. the US. It could also conceivably carry out a thoroughly devastating first strike via weapons delivered by agents on the ground or by small boats, since few weapons would be needed overall to cover Israel's slim territory. In such a situation, Israel's nuclear deterrent would probably have to be backed up by US nuclear guarantees or some other sort of offshore capabilities to be credible - which increases the danger to the rest of the world.

Of course, Israel's sole possession of nuclear weapons in the contemporary Middle East gives it a first strike capability, which is very dangerous to the region and the world. The only argument that we don't have to worry about this capability is the dubious claim that Israel only acts defensively. But Israel has already proven itself to have no problems with the concept of preventive war.

It is also conceivable that Israel's government could fall into the hands of tyranical and fanatical leadership. Israel is a democracy, but it is a democracy that has been under constant stress since its creation, and exists in a posture of permanent military mobilization, with all citizens serving in the armed forces. That in a situation of deep national crisis such a state could fall into the hands of ultranationalist (more than currently) authoritarian or militry rule is not at all beyond the realm of realistic possibility.

Also, a peculiar consequence of the low esteem in which Israel is held in many parts of the world is that it is less amenable than most countries to the pressure of maintaining its reputation. Israel is used to thinking of itself as alone against the world. That leaves the worrisome possibility that in a crisis it might act on the basis of rage or desperation, without regard to world opinion, or its future diplomatic position.

Yes, the vulnerability of Israel to a nuclear first strike from Iran is precisely why Iran would want nuclear weapons.

Israel DOES have a second-strike capability via its submarines and cruise missiles and its Air Force. However, if Iran nuked Tel Aviv, that would eliminate the civil government and a significant portion of the population of Israel.

Iran therefore would NEVER first strike Israel unless it felt it was going to be attacked (and lose) anyway. Then there would be no motivation to hold back.

But the threat of Iran attacking Israel in that situation would prevent Israel from attacking or getting the US to attack Iran for regime change. Which is of course why both Israel and the US want to attack Iran now - to prevent that option from being taken off the table by an Iranian nuclear weapon.

The risk from Israel is different. I don't think there's any likelihood that Israel would ever be taken over by someone who would unilaterally nuke Arab cities. The risk of the UN and the world moving in would be too great. I suppose it's theoretically possible, but highly unlikely, even if a real "Hitler-type" did take over.

The same applies to Iran. Even the "mad mullahs" aren't going to see Iran reduced to glass from a US nuclear attack by unilaterally nuking anybody, especially Israel.

What COULD happen, as I've indicated here frequently, is that someone steals an Israeli nuclear weapon, nukes Tel Aviv, and THEN the Israeli military reacts by nuking one or more Arab states. This would then force the UN and the world to move in and take control of Israel to forego any further such strikes.