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2 SPEAKING
FREELY US force-marches Israel over
Syria By Gabriel Kolko
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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contributing.
There has been a
qualitative leap in military technology that makes
all inherited conventional wisdom, and war as an
instrument of political policy, utterly
irrelevant, not just to the
United States but also to any
other state that embarks upon it.
Nations
should have realized this a century ago but they
did not. But there have been decisive changes in
balances of power, and more accurate and
destructive weapons - and soon nuclear bombs and
the missiles to deliver them - are becoming more
and more available to poorer countries. Technology
is moving much more rapidly than diplomatic and
political resources or the will to control its
inevitable consequences.
The United States
should have learned its lesson in Vietnam, and its
public is aware of it to a far greater extent than
its politicians. The war in Iraq has reaffirmed
the decisive limits of technology when fighting
against enemies who are decentralized and
determined. It has been extraordinarily expensive
but militarily ineffective, and the US is
ineluctably losing its vast undertaking.
Rivals are much more equal, and wars more
protracted and expensive for those who persist in
fighting them. America's ambitions for hegemony
throughout the globe can now be more and more
successfully challenged. Nowhere is this truer
than the Middle East, where the United States'
long-standing alliance with Israel, which shares
its fascination with military power, has produced
colossal political failures for both nations.
The ultra-modern Israel Defense Forces
finally learned this in Lebanon last July, when
Hezbollah rockets destroyed or seriously damaged
at least 20 of its best tanks and the IDF was
fought to a draw - abandoning the field of battle
and losing their precious myth of invincibility.
Growing demoralization well before the Lebanon war
plagued Israel, and the percentage of Jews with
higher academic degrees that migrated grew
steadily after 2002.
Israel exports brain
power to a high extent by world standards. The
Lebanon war and talk - by both Israeli and by
Iranian leaders - of "existential" threats to the
state's very existence only gravely aggravated
this defeatism and the desire to leave. At the end
of January, 78% of the Israeli public were
"unhappy" with their leaders for a variety of
reasons.
Israeli politics has always been
highly unstable by any standard, but corruption
and other scandals that now plague it exceed any
in its history, paralleling its loss of confidence
in its military power. Alienation from the
political class in Israel has never been greater,
and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his colleagues
hope that spreading fear of an Iranian bomb will
help them ride out a political storm that has seen
his popularity rating plummet to a record low. But
fear works both ways, frightening the people who
can migrate most easily and keeping out tourists
and foreign investors.
Moreover, the
Israeli public's anxiety has not been lessened by
reports of the efficacy of anti-missile systems
that Israel has installed at great expense. The
Iranians have mastered all of the technical bases
of missile technology, according to Israeli
experts, and although the quality and precision of
its missiles may leave something to be desired,
they can inflict immense damage. Israeli
specialists also argue that the missile-defense
shield that Israel possesses - in common with
those of all other nations - is not sufficient to
protect it. Syria has missiles also - not so
effective as the Iranian ones, but much closer and
capable of inflicting much damage if used.
Notwithstanding the apocalyptic
proclamations on Iran's imminent nuclear power by
Olmert's major rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, or by
the prime minister himself and some of his cabinet
on occasion, this hysteria is politically
motivated and intended to garner public support.
Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, told the
Israeli Knesset last December that diplomatic
efforts were "far from being over" - and that an
Iranian nuclear bomb was at least two years off.
Many Israeli strategists, including Yuval Diskin,
head of Shin Bet, now regard US President George W
Bush's war in Iraq as a highly destabilizing
disaster for the entire region and a major boon to
Iran's power, and they regret having endorsed it.
A war with Iran would be far more
dangerous. Worse yet, efforts to demonize Iran
have failed. Only 36% of the Jewish population of
Israel polled last month thought an Iranian
nuclear attack the "biggest threat" to Israel.
Serious Israeli strategists overwhelmingly
believe, to cite Reuven Pedatzur in Ha'aretz last
November, that "mutual assured deterrence can be
forged, with a high degree of success, between
Israel and Iran". Israeli strategic thinking is
highly realistic. This month, a study released at
a conference by the Institute for National
Security Studies at Tel Aviv University predicted
that Iran
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