Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: a Threat to Peace
by John Steinbach
DC Iraq Coalition, March 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 3 March 2002
globalresearch.ca
Excerpt:
Israeli Nuclear Strategy
In popular imagination, the Israeli bomb is a "weapon of last resort," to be used only at the last minute to avoid annihilation, and many well intentioned but misled supporters of Israel still believe that to be the case. Whatever truth this formulation may have had in the minds of the early Israeli nuclear strategists, today the Israeli nuclear arsenal is inextricably linked to and integrated with overall Israeli military and political strategy. As Seymour Hersh says in classic understatement ; "The Samson Option is no longer the only nuclear option available to Israel." Israel has made countless veiled nuclear threats against the Arab nations and against the Soviet Union (and by extension Russia since the end of the Cold War). One chilling example comes from Ariel Sharon, the current Israeli Prime Minister: "Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches." (In 1983 Sharon proposed to India that it join with Israel to attack Pakistani nuclear facilities; in the late 70s he proposed sending Israeli paratroopers to Tehran to prop up the Shah; and in 1982 he called for expanding Israel's security influence to stretch from "Mauritania to Afghanistan.") In another example, Israeli nuclear expert Oded Brosh said in 1992, "...we need not be ashamed that the nuclear option is a major instrumentality of our defense as a deterrent against those who attack us." According to Israel Shahak, "The wish for peace, so often assumed as the Israeli aim, is not in my view a principle of Israeli policy, while the wish to extend Israeli domination and influence is." and "Israel is preparing for a war, nuclear if need be, for the sake of averting domestic change not to its liking, if it occurs in some or any Middle Eastern states.... Israel clearly prepares itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East..., without hesitating to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."
Israel uses its nuclear arsenal not just in the context of "deterrence" or of direct war fighting, but in other more subtle but no less important ways. For example, the possession of weapons of mass destruction can be a powerful lever to maintain the status quo, or to influence events to Israel's perceived advantage, such as to protect the so called moderate Arab states from internal insurrection, or to intervene in inter-Arab warfare. In Israeli strategic jargon this concept is called "nonconventional compellence" and is exemplified by a quote from Shimon Peres; "acquiring a superior weapons system(read nuclear) would mean the possibility of using it for compellent purposes- that is forcing the other side to accept Israeli political demands, which presumably include a demand that the traditional status quo be accepted and a peace treaty signed." From a slightly different perspective, Robert Tuckerr asked in a Commentary magazine article in defense of Israeli nukes, "What would prevent Israel... from pursuing a hawkish policy employing a nuclear deterrent to freeze the status quo?" Possessing an overwhelming nuclear superiority allows Israel to act with impunity even in the face world wide opposition. A case in point might be the invasion of Lebanon and destruction of Beirut in 1982, led by Ariel Sharon, which resulted in 20,000 deaths, most civilian. Despite the annihilation of a neighboring Arab state, not to mention the utter destruction of the Syrian Air Force, Israel was able to carry out the war for months at least partially due to its nuclear threat.
Another major use of the Israeli bomb is to compel the U.S. to act in Israel's favor, even when it runs counter to its own strategic interests. As early as 1956 Francis Perrin, head of the French A-bomb project wrote "We thought the Israeli Bomb was aimed at the Americans, not to launch it at the Americans, but to say, 'If you don't want to help us in a critical situation we will require you to help us; otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs.'" During the 1973 war, Israel used nuclear blackmail to force Kissinger and Nixon to airlift massive amounts of military hardware to Israel. The Israeli Ambassador, Simha Dinitz, is quoted as saying, at the time, "If a massive airlift to Israel does not start immediately, then I will know that the U.S. is reneging on its promises and...we will have to draw very serious conclusions..." Just one example of this strategy was spelled out in 1987 by Amos Rubin, economic adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who said "If left to its own Israel will have no choice but to fall back on a riskier defense which will endanger itself and the world at large... To enable Israel to abstain from dependence on nuclear arms calls for $2 to 3 billion per year in U.S. aid." Since then Israel's nuclear arsenal has expanded exponentially, both quantitatively and qualitatively, while the U.S. money spigots remain wide open.
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Actually, Israel could resort to Terror Diplomacy before engaging the Nuclear Deterrence Diplomacy... Hyperterrorism like 911 is the last stage before... MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction --with Nukes)
Gus |
