Home
In this issue

Oct. 13, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Happiness Quotient

Jonathan Rosenblum: Ignore the Grandchildren

Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 10, 2005 / 1 Adar I, 5765

Nuclear Poker

By Victor Davis Hanson


Printer Friendly Version

Email this article


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Despite the bleak preventative options, no one wants to permit Iran to go nuclear. Yet if strategists despair over the methods of stopping Iran's bomb, few have explicitly outlined why we should even try.

  • First, a nuclear Iran would ignite a new arms race in the Middle East. The nuclear guild started amid the ashes of World War II, when the Soviet camp and the West first squared off. Since then new members like India, China and Pakistan expanded the dangers of Armageddon, but at least created a sort of regional deterrence against one other. India was checked by Pakistan and vice versa. China angulated with the Soviets, India and America. All four at times were not necessarily friendlier to any one of the quartet than another, but they matured and showed restraint in their escalating rivalries.

    But if Iran has nuclear weapons — the first Middle Eastern and Islamic dictatorship to obtain them — then a Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Syria might rush in to obtain nuclear capability and thus restore a regional balance of power.

    Arab pride will not tolerate an exclusive Persian bomb, despite all Teheran's rhetoric about a shared anti-Israeli mother of all Islamic weapons. Thus the Middle East will inevitably witness the instability of mutual escalation not unlike the arms race during the early Cold War.

  • Second, nuclear proliferation is now spiraling out control and spreading to third-rate states that are far more numerous and often more reckless than traditional world powers. The Soviet Union and China were historic heavy weights, so were France and England. India has over a billion people. But once Pakistan and North Korea obtained nukes, a dangerous new era was ushered in: Any scary nation could claim a right to the bomb, despite its own global strategic insignificance, lack of conventional power and failed economy.

  • Third, autocracy and WMDs are a lethal mix. Many Arab nations point to Israel and allege Western hypocrisy, since it is small and alone in the Middle East with nuclear capability. Well aside from its unique creation from the ashes of the Holocaust and the proven record of its neighbors' efforts to destroy the Jewish people, Israel — unlike North Korea and Iran — is also singularly democratic in the region.

    Because consensual governments, as a rule, are hardly likely to attack like kind, their possession of terrifying weapons tends to prove less of a threat to global peace. The old Soviet Union was more dangerous than is contemporary Russia, despite a mostly intact nuclear arsenal. China's liberalization raises the hope that its nukes are less prone to be dropped today than during Mao's Great Leap Forward. A nuclear Iran of any sort is a problem. Yet, a nuclear theocratic Iran is a disaster since its zealous mullahs are unaccountable to either an electorate or censorious press. They are fueled by religious extremism and publicly have praised nuclear martyrdom. One or two such extremists in their dotage could well decide that an entire state should play the role of the lone suicide bomber so frequently canonized in that part of the world.

  • Fourth, Iran is even more likely than a volatile Pakistan to arm terrorists. A nuclear Iran might prove tantamount to an atomic Hezbollah or al-Qaida — nihilists whose current problem is not their intent, but only their capability, to annihilate.

  • Fifth, if the West allows roguish nations like North Korea or Iran to become or remain nuclear, then humane, powerful states like Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan sooner or later will demand the same latitude, if not out of pride, then at least for their own national security.

    Donate to JWR


    Japan will not be perpetually bullied by a North Korea. Nor can Germany be expected to be shaken-down by blackmailing imams because Iranian missiles can in theory incinerate Berlin in 10 minutes. Can a vast Brazil stomach Iran receiving bribes and deference as a regional power in the Middle East while it receives nothing in South America for its relatively sober restraint?

    There is something perverse about the Europeans paying bribes to oil-rich Iran in hopes that it does not cobble together a bomb from bought or stolen expertise — when Germany in six months could produce 5,000 nukes and simply warn the Iranians that such weapons would be as reliably built and delivered as a Mercedes or BMW.

  • Sixth, it is hard enough now to anticipate all the potential conflagrations arising from eight or nine nuclear powers. But each time a new wild card flips over, the odds only increase that an accident, coup or revolution will lead to manmade carnage worse than the natural nightmare of the recent tsunami.

    True, there are no good choices in dealing with Iran at this late stage in the game. Yet the very worst alternative is allowing it to go nuclear.

    Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

    Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Comment by clicking here.


    02/03/05: Barbara Boxer's metaphor moment
    01/27/05: The hard road to democracy
    01/20/05: Illegal immigration is a moral issue
    01/13/05: Islamicists hate us for who we are, not what we do
    01/06/05: Pledging blood and treasure for popular reform in a death struggle with Islamic fascism






    © 2005,