COMMENTARY: America Needs To Try To Avoid Wars

DETERRENCE BEST STRATEGY

Sunday, March 11, 2012

— If Americans don’t start thinking seriously about the current battle fervor in the Middle East, we may soon find ourselves dragged into another foolish and counterproductive war.

I’m a lifetime supporter of the Jewish people. I was 11 when World War II ended, and I vividly recall the shocking revelations about the Holocaust. I spent one of the hardest days of my life, a day filled with weeping, at the Dachau memorial. Jews need a national homeland.

What Israel needs now is a stable peace. I belong to a smart pro-Israel organization called “J Street” (find it online) that supports such a peace.

I’ve also thought hard about nuclear weapons, a topic of special concern to physicists. I co-edited and co-authored a study, “The Future of Land-Based Strategic Missiles” (American Institute of Physics, 1989), authored several nuclear weapons publications and resided six months at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative government is leading Israel and America toward a disastrous war.

Unfortunately, our nation is supporting him. Everybody of course wants to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Israel wants to attack Iran now to destroy Iran’s bomb capability. America wants instead to continue pressuring Iran to allowinternational inspections.

Netanyahu came to Washington last week to pressure America into more aggressive action.

Obama responded by promising to attack Iran before they get the bomb, and by declaring that a deterrence policy against Iran is not acceptable.

These statements were designed to head off an immediate Israeli attack against Iran, but they are bad policy.

As a result, our Air Force is gearing up for a unilateral first strike using 30,000-pound “bunkerbuster” bombs against Iran’s heavily-fortifi ed uranium enrichment plant at Fordo. This would bring retaliation against Israel, but Israeli leaders claim “Israelis are ready to accept a few weeks of bombing in their cities if they are convinced they got what they wanted.”

But will an attack destroy the plant? Will Iran then rebuild? How will Iran retaliate? Will we send in ground troops? How will the Mideast respond?

What’s the exit strategy?

Where and when does it end?

We need some perspective. There are far better options.

Deterrence isn’t perfect, but it’s much better thanwar. Iran needs to know explicitly we will devastate them if they launch a large-scale attack on Israel.

This will deter Iran just as it deterred our mortal enemy the Soviet Union for decades.

Israel is, of course, a longtime nuclear power.

Experts have for fi ve decades estimated Israel has stockpiled 100 to 200 nuclear weapons using plutonium from its Dimona nuclear reactor. Even a few of these bombs could devastate Iran, providing further deterrence.

Obama should not have assured Israel we’ll stop Iran’s bomb by attacking pre-emptively. The way to prevent an Israelipre-emptive strike is to tell Netanyahu we won’t back such a strike. Israel is a sovereign nation, of course, but so are we and we cannot allow Netanyahu to make this decision for us. Israel is not likely to go it alone in a pre-emptive attack.

There’s hope, if we’ll just reach for it instead of reaching for our guns. The U.N. Non-Proliferation Treaty’s 189 nations, including America, voted unanimously in 2010 to convene a conference “on the establishment of a Mideast zone free of nuclear weapons.” This idea came from the Arab nations, including Iran, and was designed to pressureIsrael to give up its nuclear weapons. But Israel refuses to discuss its nuclear program, has refused U.N.

inspections and is one of only four nations - along with Pakistan, India and North Korea - that don’t participate in the NPT.

The Israeli public is less hawkish than Netanyahu.

Only 43 percent support a strike on Iran, even though 90 percent think Iran will acquire the bomb;

64 percent favor a nuclearfree zone that would include Israel; 65 percent say it’s better for neither Israel nor Iran to have the bomb than for both to have it.

So the ground is prepared throughout theMideast for a nuclearfree zone. This, rather than another war, is the right path for America and Israel. Israel’s nuclear preeminence in the Mideast is ending. Realistically there is no way Israel can indefinitely maintain its regional superpower status. If we bomb, Iran will just rebuild with greater fervor and may be joined by other Mideast nations.

We should pursue deterrence and peace rather than unilateral pre-emptive war with dangerous and unknown consequences.

ART HOBSON IS A PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.

Opinion, Pages 15 on 03/11/2012