Gregory Scoblete

These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:12:00 +0000

You want some Scoblete blogging? No? Well, tough:

Go to www.realclearworld.com/blog/ for foreign policy-related posts.

If you're interested in consumer electronics and technology, check out The Reporter's Notebook at TWICE.com.

Will Obama Really Withdraw from Iraq?

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:39:00 +0000

To believe that Obama is serious about ending America�??s commitment to Iraq is to assume either that the progress Iraq has made to date is irreversible (which almost no one believes) or that he has placed the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq ahead of other regional interests. After all, it is impossible to maintain America�??s traditional sense of responsibility over events in the Middle East and simultaneously remove large numbers of troops from Iraq, come what may. The only way to convincingly argue on behalf of ending the war is to mount an argument in favor of fundamentally redefining America�??s interests in the region. Short of that, any proposal for withdrawal will be hostage to the persistent specter of regional instability.

My latest RealClearPolitics column is up.

Universalism vs. Particularism

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:19:00 +0000

Although these are theoretical maxims, the real world consequences are clear enough. Because universalism rejects the legitimacy of non-democratic systems and has global ambitions, it is inherently destabilizing. Non-democratic states have little incentive to cooperate with the U.S. if they believe we are intent on subverting their governments. Similarly, because universalism does not recognize the legitimacy of autocratic governments, it too easily dismisses their security interests as the product of political false consciousness.

Particularlism too is not without its dangers. Because it values stability, it can remain dangerously passive toward emerging threats. Since it accepts the presence of non-democratic governments, it will miss, or deliberately overlook, opportunities to promote a more liberal world order. It can be captive to the status quo.

My latest RealClearPolitics essay is up.

Live By Hitler, Die By Hitler

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:38:00 +0000

I don't like Chris Matthews per-se, but this is beautiful.

Thy Head, Please

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:28:00 +0000

This blog is all but a dead letter, but some things are so crazy I rouse myself. Here is Michael Novak in NRO using his imagination to see what the U.S. looks like under President Obama in 2012. He appears particularly concerned about Obama's foreign policy:

Given the historical record of the last 200 years (and more), what can we expect from this nursery-room fantasy? An untypical, even unprecedented era of peace? Or, on the contrary, the salivating determination of enemies to celebrate our visible moral weakness, and to slay their hated enemy while we bow our heads, standing there as weak and frightened supplicants? When a head is lowered from weakness, they strike it off.

Got it. Obama wins, I get beheaded.

VoIP Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:54:00 +0000

At the Reporter's Notebook we learn of an unfortunate incident.

Submission

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:55:00 +0000

Robert Kagan takes to the Washington Post to warn that Chinese and Russian "autocracy" may... well, he's not really clear what the danger is. About the best we can surmise from Kagan's gloss on Russia and China's political development is that their evident success in fusing market reforms with political repression may be replicated elsewhere. And yeah, that's bad.

But the way in which Kagan positions this development is interesting:

Russia is a good example of how a nation's governance affects its relations with the world. A democratizing Russia, and even Mikhail Gorbachev's democratizing Soviet Union, took a fairly benign view of NATO and tended to have good relations with neighbors that were treading the same path toward democracy. But Vladimir Putin regards NATO as a hostile entity, calls its enlargement "a serious provocation" and asks "against whom is this expansion intended?" Yet NATO is less provocative and threatening toward Moscow today than it was in Gorbachev's time.

So what is it that Putin fears about NATO? It is not the military power. It is the democracy.

This I believe is not only wrong, but it's wrong in an way that illuminates just what, to Kagan, is the real issue. Gorbachev, and later Yeltsin, weren't exactly thrilled with NATO enlargement. To suggest that "democratic" Russia expressed a fairly benign view of NATO enlargmenet essentially ignores 1. Russia's actual reaction 2. the state of Russian power relative to the U.S. at the time NATO was pushing ever eastward.

It's also amusing to read of the "good relations" 1990s Russia had with its neighbors. Like, Chechneya? I heard things were just swell in Grozny.

Kagan understands fully that during the 1990s, Russia was weak, its economy in the doldrums. It most certainly was not thrilled with NATO expansion, but it lacked any real leverage or power to do much about it.

Today, thanks to a booming Russian economy, that's changed. I'd agree that Putin's autocratic tendencies have not helped the situtation, but the essential fact is that now that Russia is once again powerful (or at least, gaining power) it's not content to watch passively as its interests are ignored, or even flouted, by the West.

This, to Kagan, is the root of the problem with powerful autocracies. It's not their politics, it's that they will not do as they're told. To a neoimperialist like Kagan, that's a big no-no.

Unless or until China and Russia start making obvious moves that would endanger American security or vital interests, this is going to be the contours of the conservative case against China and Russia - that these nations have the temerity to pursue their own interests as they define them. It is a posture that is designed to provoke a conflict. But I guess it's not surprising. These are the same people who ginned up the notion that invading Iraq would precipitate a wave of political liberalization throughout the Middle East.

Hopefully!

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:30:00 +0000

Clark Stooksbury rounds up some of the ~~White House press office~~, right wing blog reaction to President Bush's Mission Accomplished stunt.

He found this gem from Kathryn Lopez at NRO:

This is different, guys. And it�??s not just because he is a Republican and I like him. It�??s different because he is a leader of a nation that is winning a historically significant war. He is using the props of commander in chief to show the nation and the world�??the day after the State Department announced that terrorism is at its lowest point in decades in the U.S.�??to demonstrate that we are winning this long war on terrorism, even if we still have miles to go, to show that we support these guys who fought and those who died for our freedom and for the freedom of Iraqis, Afghans, and hopefully in the future, others in that part of the world. [emphasis mine]

We support the troops by hoping more of them die "in that part of the world."

Well, K-Lo, rest easy: Mission Accomplished.

Normative Empire

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:11:00 +0000

Zaki Laidi has an interesting essay in the Financial Times on Europe's position in the world. He argues that the EU should be a "normative power" by "promoting standards that are negotiated and legitimised within international institutions. Norms aim to discipline the behaviour of state and non-state actors. To be efficient, those norms should rely on soft and hard mechanisms of enforcement."

His priority list, in order: climate change, multilateral trade and human rights.

I don't necessarily agree with everything in the piece - I'd put nuclear proliferation at the top of any priority list, and I wonder what "hard" mechanisms Europe would be willing to employ for the protection of human rights. But it's interesting nonetheless.

(Hat tip: RCP)

Think About the Children!

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:18:00 +0000

At the Reporter's Notebook we ponder the effects of digital cameras on the young.

Give and Take

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:21:00 +0000

John McCain's top foreign policy advisor thinks traditional diplomacy is out-moded. In an interview about the admission of Georgia into NATO and it's impact on Russian goodwill, Randy Scheunemann remarked (via Yglesias):

Well, I think first of all the administration has said very clearly and publicly that there will be no trade-offs. Trade-offs like that are kind of a relic of a bygone era of power politics.

I think this is a pretty ridiculous stance, although what we've come to expect from the maximalists in the McCain camp. That said, Judah Grunstein has a smart take:

The Bush administration's stance on trade-offs that Scheunemann cites is based on the misguided notion that each dossier can somehow be approached "objectively," and decided on the merits, independently of other dossiers. From this perspective, trading off concessions on one dossier (e.g. Kosovo) against advantages on another (e.g. NATO expansion) is unnecessary, because each individual conflict will be resolved based on a universal (and universally accessible) standard of fairness and justice....

The proliferation of regional multilateral institutions to confer legitimacy on a coalition-based intervention, for instance, will increasingly dilute the veto-power of the permanent Security Council nations. Obviously, there will still be overlap; Russia's stance on Georgia can only be understood as a reaction to Kosovo's declaration of independence. But the opportunities for blocking diplomatic progress that make trade-offs necessary and possible will become increasingly rare as the available detours around them become more accessible.

This kind of strategic environment almost demands that trade-offs be replaced by short memories and the ability to compartmentalize both crisis interventions and conflict resolutions, in order to resist the inherently destabilizing effect such a fluidity of tactical alliances might have.

I think the diplomats involved don't have short memories though, and the ability to "forum shop" doesn't change that.

Trying to get around the reality of great power politics by a wave of the hand simply won't cut it. We have to do the hard work of setting priorities and be willing to let some issues, no matter how morally compelling, fall by the wayside if it means sacrificing the larger good. To govern is to choose. Even for super powers.

Obligated to Obliderate

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:56:00 +0000

Were Iran to precipitate a nuclear exchange with Israel, the results would be calamitous for both sides. In a study for the Center For Strategic and International Studies in 2007, Anthony Cordesman concluded that Israel could lose between 200,000 to 800,000 people while Iran could suffer as many as 16 to 28 million fatalities. The large disparity in death toll derives in part from Israel's quantitative and qualitative nuclear superiority: they would deliver significantly more weapons at much higher yields (i.e. destructive force) than Iran, and far more accurately to boot.

Though Iran is a large country, its vulnerabilities are numerous: Tehran, a city of some 15 million, sits in a "topographic basin with a mountain reflector" Cordesman wrote. "Nearly ideal nuclear killing ground." Iran also lacks the kind of medical, civil and missile defenses that the Israelis possess. These weaknesses led Cordesman to conclude that though Israel would suffer grievously, it could emerge from such an exchange. On the other hand, he wrote, "Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of the term."

If Iran is undeterrable, as some suggest, then they are undeterrable whether threatened by Israeli or American nukes. If the Mullahs don't wish to embrace national suicide, then Israel's nuclear weapons are a sufficient deterrent.

- My latest RealClearPolitics essay is up.

So Long

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:09:00 +0000

Thomas Barnett:

Between Obama's trade pandering and McCain's war pandering, you really have to wonder if America is hell-bent on destroying an international liberal economic order that is our gift to humanity, doing so right at its moment of global apogee.

Self inflicted wounds hurt the most.

The Cold War II

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:03:00 +0000

Leon Hadar recounts a recent conference hosted by the National Interest:

Indeed, since the topic that Harding and Nikolas Gvosdev were discussing was �??Avoiding Catstrophe: The Future of U.S. Relations with China and Russia,�?? it�??s important that Americans understand that the way the elites in Washington define U.S. policy explains why we could end up with a �??catsrophe�?? on our hands here. While Russia is trying to preserve its status as a regional superpower in its �??near abroad�?? and China is attempting to establish its position as a regional superpower in East Asia (in a way, the application of their own forms of the Monroe Dcotrine, in their respective spheres of influence), Washington, reflecting a bipartisan consensus or definition, is continuing to secure its position as a global superpower which supposedly has the right and the obligation to promote its interests and values around the world, including in Russia�??s �??near abroad�?? and in East Asia.

This is not an academic issue. The reason we ascribe to Russia and China �??aggressive�?? tendencies and are willing to confront them, is because we define as �??aggression�?? any move to challenge our global supremacy. That should be the starting point for any serious debate in Washington and around the country over our foreign policy.

Spot on. Clearly the U.S. has global interests: secure sea lanes, the reduction of nuclear proliferation, the removal of al Qaeda safe havens, and the deepening of global trade. Securing these interests, however, does not require the world to kowtow to our will. It does not require a confrontation with China or Russia, indeed just the opposite, most of our key interests cannot be meaningfully advanced without their active participation.

However, if we continue to define our global interests more expansively - as George W. Bush has done in locating American security with the global acceptance of American values - if we remain unwilling to trade off lesser priorities like Georgia in NATO, for the sake of the top-level priorities, then we're in for trouble. Trouble we will have invited on ourselves.

Sex!

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Why is this not surprising:

Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or delayed the age at which sex begins, health groups told Congress on Wednesday.

The Bush administration, however, voiced continuing support for such programs during a hearing before a House of Representatives panel even as many Democrats called for cutting off federal money for so-called abstinence-only instruction.

Here's a question: if abstinence-only instruction were proven to increase the numbers of teen pregnancies and STDs, would conservatives and Republicans continue to endorse it?

I think they would. I don't believe they're approaching this issue as a matter of efficacy but as a matter of theology or if you prefer, ideology. I think the ideological predisposition cuts both ways, mind you: if proponents of teaching "safe sex" were shown evidence that such courses lead to a sharp uptick in pregancies and STDs, they'd still argue that such instruction was vital.

Mommy Knows Best

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:28:00 +0000

Nikolas Gvosdev:

Next week, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled to visit India, the "world's largest democracy" and frequently touted as a leading candidate to join any League of Democracies.

We've seen, consistently, that whenever the U.S. makes PUBLIC statements about what India ought to do vis-a-vis Iran, it creates a negative public backlash in the Indian political establishment. Indians on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum resent any appearance of loss of sovereignty in how India conducts its affairs. Communists line up with the BJP to condemn any appearance of interference in their affairs.

So what do we do?

The State Department issues a public statement about what we hope the Indian prime minister would tell Ahmadinejad about what to do about Iran's nuclear activities. Sure, it was phrased in the polite language of a request ("we would hope") rather than as a requirement, but still, it was a public--and here I keep stressing that point, public--statement about what the U.S. wants India to do in its bilateral relations with another state.

So, not surprising, India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee--who it might be added didn't have a particularly stellar visit to Washington recently--had to march down to the Lok Sabha to tell the parliamentarians, "'We are suggesting to the US, do not take upon yourself the task of determining whether Iran is manufacturing nuclear weapons or not. Let the IAEA decide." Mukherjee's spokesman Navtej Sarna was more blunt: �??India does not need any guidance on its conduct of relations with Iran as both the nations are perfectly capable of managing all aspects of their ties."

I think that's Hindi for "fuck off."

Why accomplish something quietly when you can accomplish nothing loudly.

Survival of the...

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:17:00 +0000

I admit I laughed out loud at this from NRO's Lisa Schiffren (via Sanchez):

This, in fact, is the signature element of modern liberalism that makes so many of us regard it, and its adherents as unfit for governance: Winning, showing strength, wanting to survive against attack is a sign of something evil. [emphasis mine]

Schiffren is writing for a publication that takes a rather dim view of the biological sciences, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that she believes "liberals" don't even possess a basic natural instinct, but really, "unfit to govern?"

Would Schiffren care to tell us how that budget deficit's looking? How Social Security reform is going? How the U.S. Army is poised to react to future contigencies? How dead bin Laden is? How the size and scope of the federal government shrunk?

Your Pre PA Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Courtesy of John McIntrye:

Hillary Clinton needs a double-digit win.

Clinton will undoubtedly stay in the race with a 6-9 point victory, but at that point her chances for the nomination will be reduced to hoping for an Obama scandal or major gaffe that causes Obama's campaign to implode. Not totally impossible. But, then again, not very likely either.

Where the race could get very interesting is if Clinton is able to beat Obama by double-digits. Something to keep in mind is Pennsylvania will be the first time Democratic voters, as opposed to pollsters, have had a chance to factor in some of the recent controversies surrounding Obama the last six weeks, in particular Reverend Wright and his "bitter" comments in San Francisco. A big win by Clinton may cause a reassessment of how damaging these issues might be to Obama. On the back of Senator Obama's dismal showing in the Ohio River Valley among working class whites, his performance in Pennsylvania among downscale white voters will take on heightened importance.

He goes on to say that if Obama wins PA outright, the race is totally over. I think that's right, but would it force Hillary to concede? It would be hard to believe that Clinton could endure a PA loss and continue to make her case, but she seems determined to push on and on.... and on.

Thought for the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:46:00 +0000

Daniel Larison:

Structurally, Russia and China are in the position the U.S. and western Europe were in during the late 1940s with the beginning of containment, while the U.S. and Europe have adopted the revolutionary posture of the USSR and China. Then, theirs was the supposedly �??popular�?? and definitely militant ideology that transcended borders and sovereignty in the name of �??universal values,�?? while we relied at least partly on the strictures of international law to resist their subversive and expansionist goals. Back then, our posture was basically defensive and interested in thwarting interference in our affairs. Even so, containment was used to justify projections of power and interventions all across the globe. We should not be surprised if we see something similar in coming decades, especially if Washington insists on restarting the Cold War with the Russians with continued NATO expansion. Of course, when new proxy wars backed by these other states or revolutions against our allies finally do occur, there will be mystification and confusion in Washington as to how this could have happened, since there were supposedly never any provocations to trigger such a response.

I think it's difficult to equate what happened in Kosovo during the 1990s and 2008 with what happened in Eastern Europe in the 1940s/1950s. I think Larison's right, however on the general contours of a looming foreign policy crisis - pitting the democratic univeralists on one hand (U.S., Europe) with the authoritarian defenders of the status quo (China, Russia) on the other.

I happen to think that the U.S. is not so ideologically devoted to democratic univeralism that it would provoke the sort of globe-spanning conflict that the Soviets openly courted in the 1940s. Yes, we elected George W. Bush, but we also elected George H.W. Bush (and Nixon). I'd like to think we're capable of coming to our collective senses.

I could be wrong.

Guilt By Association

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:28:00 +0000

What on earth is the point of this article? That Darwin inspires genocide? Really?

Dept. of Planning Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:28:00 +0000

CATO's Ben Friedman picks up the GAO report noted below to argue that no matter how good our plans are they'll fail if the goals are unrealistic. Unrealistic like, say, pacifying the Northwest Frontier in Pakistan and eliminating al Qaeda's sanctuary there.

I think that's more or less sound. The problem with American foreign policy today - a problem that transcends the scourge of neoconservatism - is a fixation with "solving" problems. What this fixation often fails to recognize is that many of the foreign policy problems that confront us are not solveable in any meaningful sense of that word. If your historical lodestar is WWII, then everything is fine provided we're willing to kill off millions of people to get our way. But if you believe that history began before the 1930s, and continued after the allied victory, there's a lot more ambiquity to world affairs. We just have to learn to live with it.

Fronts, Centralized

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:29:00 +0000

Remember the war on terror? Neither does the Bush Administration:

The Bush administration doesn't have a comprehensive strategy for eliminating Osama bin Laden's sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal region and preventing the region from being used for launching terrorist attacks on the United States, the investigative arm of Congress said Thursday.

President Bush and his senior lieutenants frequently claim that eradicating the threat that bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network poses to United States and its allies is their top national-security priority.

But in a scathing report, the Government Accountability Office said there was no plan that "includes all elements of national power �?? diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic and law enforcement support �?? called for by the various national-security strategies and Congress."

Al Qaida established its sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal region when bin Laden and his followers fled Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S.-led intervention.

"No comprehensive strategy for meeting U.S. national-security goals" in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas has been developed even though the administration's counter-terrorism policy, congressional legislation and the mission of the National Counter-Terrorism Center mandate such an approach, the report says.

I think Pakistan is one of those issues that would bedevil any administration, frankly.

Lies

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:34:00 +0000

Remember when Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob? Neither do I:

RADDATZ: All during that period -- April, May, June, July -- when things were really going downhill [in Iraq], people were talking about there being civil war.

BUSH: Yes.

RADDATZ: .You were saying, 'We're winning. We have a plan for victory. We are winning,' up through October.

BUSH: Well, there was -- I also recognized -- I think if you'd go through the -- kind of fully analyze my statements, I was also saying, "The fighting is very tough, it's -- you know, the extremism is unacceptable. The murder is unacceptable."

And you know, it's very important to be realistic.

RADDATZ: But the overall thing -- when you say, "We're winning," you know what the American people hear. You know how that will play.

BUSH: Well, yes. I think we -- and I wanted -- that's as much trying to bolster the spirits of the people in the field as well as -- look, you can't have the commander in chief say to a bunch of kids who are sacrificing either, "It's not worth it," or, "You're losing." I mean, what does that do for morale? [emphasis mine]

I have not served in the military so I can't say for sure that our soldiers don't like being bullshitted to by their commander in chief. Nor do I really believe Bush is unique in this respect.

Nevertheless, I'd argue that at a minimum the people risking their lives for their country deserve honesty from their political leaders.

Chicken Hawks

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:13:00 +0000

Matthew Yglesias says that if neoconservatives actually believed their own rhetoric, they'd be signing up for military service or encouraging their children to:

Michael O'Hanlon is slightly too old for the army, but I bet he's got some fighting-age research associates and interns over there at Brookings. Barbara and Jenna Bush could sign up, and so could the seemingly unemployed Meghan McCain. Fred Kagan's eligible to serve at 38 as are various other AEI fellows. But beyond individual people, the institutions of the conservative movement writ large could be encouraging young conservatives to go sign up. They could be selflessly offering to wage the battle of ideas purely with the too old, the disabled, and the openly gay as their comrades in arms, while urging young and healthy rightwingers to go sign up. Not only would that have some direct impact on the manpower situation, but the demonstration effect on the remaining pro-war 30-35 percent of the country could be large. Meanwhile, if it worked it would be a significant rejoinder to criticisms from Democrats and others that the force is being unduly strained.

But it's not happening and it's not going to happen. And the significance of that observation isn't to call the people who aren't making it happen "chicken." The point is just that if, chicken or not, you really thought Iraq was the central front in a world-historical struggle against Islamofascism you'd be leading recruiting drives. You'd be signing up yourself if eligible to serve, and you'd be encouraging young people over whom you have some sway or influence to do the same. But though a lot of people say all kinds of things about the enormously high stakes in Iraq, few people's revealed preferences indicate that they believe it. I don't think it makes sense to say that everyone who favors some given military operation has an obligation to join the service (among other things, I'm familiar with more than one person who decided to enlist after 9/11 in order to fight al-Qaeda and wound up in Iraq) but in light of the fact that there are very real recruiting problems it seems like something that ought to be taken more seriously. But at a minimum, it seems to me that people ought to bring their war-related rhetoric more in line with their actual war-related behavior.

Ultimately you can't get around the problems sketched by Yglesias at the end: if you do advocate for some worthwhile (by Yglesias standards) military engagement, are you thereby obligated to join the military? That's going to put a fair number of liberals - Nick Kristoff and the various Save Darfur folks - in uniform. Of course, that's not the way a democratic society, with freedom of speech and a volunteer military, works.

It's true that neoconservatives talk a good game about sacrifice and BIG STAKES in Iraq from the sidelines, but liberals do the same thing all the time when they pound the table for other people's money so they can redirect it to social programs. Everyone's a player with everyone else's money or lives (or both). That's just the way politics and political advocacy works.

Entangling Alliances

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Scoblete) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:54:00 +0000

Charles Krauthammer has a provocative op-ed up today arguing that the U.S. should explicitly tie Israel into our nuclear deterrent - saying point blank to Iran that we would treat a nuclear attack on Israel as an attack on the U.S. and respond in kind.

This strikes me as unwise on several fronts. First, Krauthammer worries that Israel would lack a second strike option against Iran. That's not plausible, though, given the advanced state of Israel's nuclear capacity vs. Iran's crude arsenal (which at this date doesn't even exist). It doesn't strike me as feasible that Iran could even develop a nuclear strike capability that would overwhelm Israel's ability to launch a much large retaliatory strike.

Given that Israel has a credible deterrent, I don't really see why America should wade in.

Second, there is no strategic benefit to extending our nuclear deterrent to Israel. During the Cold War, Europe and Asia earned the luxury of our nuclear protection because they had an extensive industrial base that, if it fell into Soviet hands, would dramatically alter the balance of power in the world to our detriment. This was the explicit rationale offered by the architects of containment, like George Kennan. There's no such dynamic at work in the Middle East. Israel is an ally, for reasons of democratic and cultural affinity, but they're not a strategic asset. They are not facing annihiliation and they are not poised to turn hostile to the U.S.

But Krauthammer, typically, goes a step further and declares that we should call this our Holocaust declaration - and that future President's bind themselves to the nuclear defense of Israel or be guilty of abetting a second Holocaust. That's just ugly moral bullying. But it could be effective.