by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy already being trotted out by some observers.
During 1939-1941, Yugoslavian Regent Prince Paul did whatever he could to avoid a Yugoslavian confrontation with its increasingly dominant Axis neighbors. But when he thought he had cut a deal buying lots of valuable time for Yugoslavia, he was overthrown by the Yugoslav Army supported by Serbian nationalist and other anti-Axis elements. The result was the swift Axis invasion of Yugoslavia — just the beginning of a ghastly wartime ordeal for that nation.
Ironically, Prince Paul’s sympathies were with the Allies, having close ties to England, but he was realistic. By 1940 Germany, Italy and Axis Hungary adjoined nearly every Yugoslav border. Yugoslavia also harbored German, Italian and Hungarian minorities left over from the carving up of Europe after World War I. Paul feared that with its domestic Serbo-Croatian rivalry (that would later tear the country apart under Axis occupation and again in the 1990s), Yugoslavia might not be able to fight a war against the Axis as a united country. Worse still, there was no possibility of meaningful near-term help from a beleaguered Great Britain or any other outside powers (despite repeated appeals by Paul to England, France — before its defeat — and the United States).
So, under intense pressure from the Axis for greater accommodation and in order to insure Yugoslavia’s survival, Prince Paul signed the Axis Pact on March 27, 1941. He did, however, insist on important reservations. Yugoslavia’s sovereignty was to be observed fully, the Yugoslav military would take no part in the war, and no Axis troops could transit or be based in Yugoslavia. As a result, on the eve of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Paul thought he had spared his country from catastrophe until the time came when Yugoslavia might be in a position to take a stand.
A furious Winston Churchill, however, encouraged a coup against Paul by anti-Axis elements in the army and among the country’s politicians, replacing him with the youthful King Peter II. Upon hearing of the successful overthrow of Paul, Churchill announced: “Yugoslavia had finally found its soul.”
Catastrophic consequences were not long in coming. An angry Adolf Hitler, perceiving Yugoslavia now as potentially hostile and possibly aligned with England, ordered that it be occupied. A German blitzkrieg was unleashed on April 6, with military assistance from both Italy and Hungary. The hopelessly outclassed Yugoslavian Army surrendered unconditionally less than two weeks later, on April 17.
Yugoslavia was subsequently carved up among the Axis victors, along the creation of a new pro-Axis Croatian state. Between the excesses of Croatia, a civil war between Communist and anti-Communist partisans (won by Josip Broz Tito), Tito’s campaign against Axis occupying forces, and the extension of the Holocaust into Yugoslavia, the country suffered terribly. For example, of its roughly 80,000 Jews (several thousand of whom came to Yugoslavia from countries occupied earlier) nearly 80% perished.
For quite some time history treated Prince Paul, who fled abroad, as a traitorous scoundrel who sold out his country. The British kept him under house arrest in Kenya until 1945. Tito’s Post-war Yugoslavia declared him an enemy of the state. Only much later did Churchill acknowledge that his treatment of Paul had been unfair and overly harsh. It also took decades after Paul’s death in 1976 before was he rehabilitated by Serbia.
This historical backgrounder is not intended to brand, by extension, the deeply flawed Victor Yanukovych as a Prince Paul or Russia’s Vladimir Putin as an Adolf Hitler. Nor is it meant to cast Western leaders today in the mold of the Winston Churchill whose dangerous 1941 gambles in Yugoslavia (and Greece) turned both into Axis-occupied countries in short order.
But all this does show that under certain circumstances, as with the Ukrainian opposition of today, substituting hope and defiance for reality based caution can prove very dangerous. Putin’s aggressive reaction to Yanukovych’s overthrow was unjustified. Nonetheless, there was reason to fear, drawing upon historic scenarios like that of 1941 Yugoslavia, that the anti-Russian tone of the Ukrainian opposition (and the Westward-leaning first statements by the new leadership in Kiev), would likely bring some sort of grief to the Ukraine. And amidst the ongoing crisis, considerable caution is warranted regarding Moscow on the part of the new leadership in Kiev — as well as the West — if Ukraine is to extract itself from its face-off with Russia with a minimum of adverse consequences.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people lost their lives. Tens of thousands subsequently died from radiation poisoning within the next two weeks. The effects linger to this day.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has implied that this would the be fate of Israel if Iran was allowed to obtain nuclear weapon-making capabilities, including the ability to enrich high-grade uranium. To prevent this from happening, the economy of Iran must be crippled by sanctions and the fourth largest oil reserves in the world must be barred from global markets, as the oil fields in which they are situated deteriorate. Israel — the only state in the region that actually possesses nuclear weapons and has blocked all efforts to create a Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone – should thus be armed with cutting-edge American weaponry. Finally, the US must not only stand behind its sole reliable Middle East ally, which could strike Iran at will, it should ideally also lead — not merely condone — a military assault against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Netanyahu invariably frames the threat posed by Iranian nuclear capability (a term that blurs distinctions between civilian and potential military applications of nuclear technology) as “Auschwitz” rather than “Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, even though the latter might be a more apt analogy. The potential for another Auschwitz is predicated on the image of an Israel that is unable — or unwilling to — defend itself, resulting in six million Jews going “like sheep to the slaughter.” But if Israel and/or the US were to attack Iran instead of the other way around, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” would be the analogy to apply to Iran.
A country dropping bombs on any country that has not attacked first is an act of war, as the US was quick to point out when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor — and this includes so-called “surgical strikes”. In a July 19 letter about US options in Syria, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminded the Senate Armed Services Committee that “…the decision to use force is not one that any of us takes lightly. It is no less than an act of war” [emphasis added].
If the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during wartime remains morally and militarily questionable, one might think that there would be even less justification for a military strike on Iran, with whom neither Israel nor the US is at war. Of course, there are those who disagree: the US is engaged in a war on terror, Iran has been designated by the US as the chief state sponsor of terrorism since 1984 and so on. Therefore, the US is, or should be, at war with Iran.
“All options are on the table” is the operative mantra with regard to the US halting Iran’s acquirement of a nuclear weapon. But if bombs start dropping on Iran, what kind will they be? In fact, the 30,000 lb. Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) that could be employed against Iranian nuclear facilities are nuclear weapons, since they derive their capability of penetrating 200 feet of concrete in the earth from depleted uranium. Furthermore, some Israelis have darkly hinted that, were Israel to confront Iran alone, it would be more likely to reach into its unacknowledged nuclear armoury if that meant the difference between victory and defeat.
Given all this, comparing the damage that would be done by bombing Iran with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not farfetched. It also reveals some troubling parallels. In the years prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in response to what the US regarded as Japanese expansionism, imposed economic sanctions on Japan in 1937. Just before the US entered the war, an embargo was placed on US exports of oil to Japan, upon which Japan was utterly dependent.
In 1945, it was already clear that Japan was preparing to surrender and that the outstanding issue at hand was the status of its emperor. There was neither a military nor political need to use atomic weapons to bring an end to the war. Numerous justifications for dropping atomic bombs on Japan were invoked, but nearly all of them were challenged or discredited within a few years after the war ended. Three are particularly noteworthy today, as we continue to face the prospect of war with Iran.
Saving lives: US Secretary of War Henry Stimson justified the decision to use atomic weapons as “the least abhorrent choice” since it would not only would save the lives of up to a million American soldiers who might perish in a ground assault on Japan, it would also spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who were being killed in fire bombings. President Harry Truman also claimed that “thousands of lives would be saved” and “a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities.” But as Andrew Dilks points out, “None of these statements were based on any evidence.”
Speaking in Warsaw, Poland on June 12 — two days before the Iranian election that he declared would “change nothing” with regard to Iran’s alleged quest to develop nuclear weaponry — Netanyahu used the opening of an Auschwitz memorial to make his case. “This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel’s six million Jews,” he said. “We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust.” About the Iranians who would perish after an Israeli attack, Netanyahu said nothing.
Justifying expenditures: The total estimated cost of the Manhattan Project, which developed the bombs dropped on Japan, was nearly $2 billion in 1945, the equivalent of slightly more than $30 billion today. Secretary of State James Byrnes pointed out to President Harry Truman, who was up for re-election in 1948, that he could expect to be berated by Republicans for spending such a large amount on weapons that were never used, according to MIT’s John Dower.
A recent report by the Congressional Research Service shows that Israel is the single largest recipient of US aid, receiving a cumulative $118 billion, most of it military aid. The Bush administration and the Israeli government had agreed to a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package in 2007, which assured Israel of funding through 2018. During his March 2013 visit to Israel, President Barack Obama, who had been criticized by the US pro-Israel lobby for being less concerned than previous American presidents about Israel’s well being and survival, pledged that the United States would continue to provide Israel with multi-year commitments of military aid subject to the approval of Congress. Not to be outdone, the otherwise tightfisted Congress not only approved the added assistance Obama had promised, it also increased it. An Iran that is not depicted as dangerous would jeopardize the generous military assistance Israel receives. What better way to demonstrate how badly needed those US taxpayer dollars are than to show them in action?
Technological research and development: One of the most puzzling questions about the decision to use nuclear weaponry against Japan is why, three days after the utter devastation wreaked on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It was unnecessary from a militarily perspective. Perhaps the answer exists in the fact that the Manhattan Project had produced different types of atomic bombs: the destructive power of the “Little Boy”, which fell on Hiroshima, came from uranium; the power of “Fat Man”, which exploded over Nagasaki, came from plutonium. What better way to “scientifically” compare their effectiveness at annihilation than by using both?
The award winning Israeli documentary, The Lab, which opens in the US this month, reveals that Israel has used Lebanon and Gaza as a testing ground for advances in weaponry. Jonathan Cook writes, “Attacks such as Operation Cast Lead of winter 2008-09 or last year’s Operation Pillar of Defence, the film argues, serve as little more than laboratory-style experiments to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of new military approaches, both strategies and weaponry.” Israeli military leaders have strongly hinted that in conducting air strikes against Syria, the Israeli Air Force is rehearsing for an attack on Iran, including the use of bunker-buster bombs.
The Pentagon, which reportedly has invested $500 million in developing and revamping MOP “bunker busters”, recently spent millions building a replica of Iran’s Fordow nuclear research facility in order to demonstrate to the Israelis that Iranian nuclear facilities can be destroyed when the time is right.
Gen. Dempsey arrived in Israel on Monday to meet with Israel’s Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Israel’s political leaders. Members of Congress from both political parties are also visiting — Democrats last week, Republicans this week — on an AIPAC-sponsored “fact-finding” mission. No doubt they will hear yet again from Israeli leaders that the world cannot allow another Auschwitz.
The world cannot allow another Hiroshima and Nagasaki either.
by Marsha B. Cohen
US President Barack Obama has arrived in Israel.
Greeted by Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (who wore a blue tie that almost exactly matched Obama’s), the US president was quickly ushered to view an Iron Dome battery set up at the airport. [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
US President Barack Obama has arrived in Israel.
Greeted by Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (who wore a blue tie that almost exactly matched Obama’s), the US president was quickly ushered to view an Iron Dome battery set up at the airport. When asked by a security coordinator to follow a red line leading from the tarmac to view an on-site video about how the anti-rocket system works, Obama reportedly quipped, “Bibi always tells me about red lines.” During a photo with the Iron Dome crew — its development generously funded by the US – Obama said, “All of you are doing an outstanding job. We’re very proud of you.”
For those wanting to follow Obama’s trip, tweets by veteran Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev are faster, much more informative — and a lot more fun — than the official media coverage. The international press corps of 500 is meanwhile awaiting even the hint of script-deviation like starving feral felines. As one Shalev tweet put it, “On both Israeli and US networks, Obama critics out in force to make sure he doesn’t leave too good an impression.”
One way to do this is by framing Obama’s trip to Israel as a sincere, half-hearted or futile attempt to make amends for appearing to have slighted or offended Israelis for not visiting sooner. Few could guess that Obama is only the fifth of the twelve sitting US presidents since 1948 — the year Israel was recognized by the United Nations as a state — to visit Israel while in office, as the Jerusalem Post points out. Richard Nixon dropped by in June 1974, a mere 55 days before his resignation from the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Jimmy Carter came to promote the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979. For his trouble, Carter became the least popular and most reviled American president among Israelis, while Nixon — for reasons that would seem bizarre to most Americans — is recalled fondly. Bill Clinton made three trips to Israel during his first term and one during his second. George W. Bush, on the other hand, waited until he was practically out of office to make two visits in 2008.
Beyond providing fodder for Fox News (which is polling its viewers as to whether or not Obama’s lighthearted comment “It’s good to get away from Congress!” was, in Steve Doocy’s words, a gaffe or a laugh), today’s itinerary has mainly involved photo ops and platitudes. Obama’s arrival speech affirmed that the Israel-US relationship is not only strong, it’s unshakeable, and that’s because it’s based upon “shared democratic values” and the mutual desire for peace and justice in the world. This sentiment will doubtlessly be the dominant theme in the president’s speech at the International Convention Center.
The itinerary for the second and third days of Obama’s Israel trip has been carefully crafted by his Israeli hosts in consultation with “American Jewish leaders”, designed to affirm the national narrative of the Jewish state at the most sacred shrines of Israel’s civil religion, defined by Myron J. Aronoff as “a special type of dominant ideological superstructure which is rooted in religion and which incorporates significant elements of religious symbol, myth and ritual that are used selectively.” The Iron Dome system is not merely a high-tech device resembling a tilted crate that can intercept incoming rockets. Its component for intercepting larger missiles, referred to as the “Magic Wand,” is known in Israel as “David’s sling.” According to its civil religion, Israel — the fifth or sixth largest arms dealer in the world and the recipient of 60% of all US foreign military assistance — views itself as the young shepherd boy David, deftly wielding his slingshot against the Philistine giant Goliath. Iron Dome (kipat barzel in Hebrew–literally “iron skullcap”) fuses myths of the biblical past with the high-tech present.
On the second day of his visit, Obama will tour the Israel Museum, guardian of the evidence upon which Israel’s eternal and inalienable right to the strategic sliver of territory between the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas is predicated. Never mind that it has changed hands dozens of times during the past 5,000 years, belonging for centuries at a time to various empires: Egyptian; Assyrian; Babylonian; Persian; Greco-Macedonian; Roman; Byzantine; Arab and Turkish. Three to four thousand years ago, the aboriginal Canaanite population was colonized by Arameans and Hyksos, Phoenicians and Philistines. But according to the Israel Museum, in the past, present and future there is only one people that matters — those whose mythic claim to the land is unequivocally affirmed by the texts that are protected within the innermost sanctum of the Shrine of the Book.
At that same museum Obama will be shown a 50:1 scale model reconstruction of the “Second Temple Jerusalem,” a first century Roman city whose construction began during the reign of Herod. The construction of the Temple itself was completed in 53 CE, five decades after Herod’s death and only seven years before its destruction by Roman legions in the wake of a violent civil war among Jewish factions who were fighting one another within the supposedly sacred precinct. Finally, it’s anticipated that Obama will view an exhibit of Israel’s successes as an ultramodern powerhouse at the forefront of scientific achievement.
Obama will also meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Allowing Abbas to meet with Obama anywhere within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem — which have tripled since the initial “reunification” of the city in 1967 — might constitute an admission that Palestinians have a claim to Jerusalem, and that cannot be allowed. The distance between Ramallah and the northernmost “neighborhoods” within the boundaries of “united Jerusalem” is just a few miles.
On his last day in Jerusalem, Obama will lay wreaths in memory of Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem and at the the grave of the “father of political Zionism,” Theodor Herzl. Obama will also lay a wreath at the gravestone of former Labor party Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was murdered in 1995 by Yigal Amir, a religious Jewish nationalist. Sentenced to life in prison plus six years, Amir was allowed to marry, and after a failed attempt to smuggle out his sperm in order to impregnate his bride, was granted conjugal visits. A circumcision ceremony for his son was held at the prison on the anniversary (according to the secular calendar) of Rabin’s assassination. No longer in solitary confinement, Amir is a popular figure among members of the Israeli right, which have been urging for several years that Amir be released from prison.
To the sounds of these clanging and clashing symbols, Barack Obama becomes the fifth sitting US president to visit Israel.
Photo: President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel talk before their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, March 5, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
]]>This is USA Today’s editorial board suggesting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran-attack media campaign is likely just more of the same Israeli tactic to pressure the United States into implementing harsher measures against Iran’s nuclear program:
Say this for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: He’s a master at [...]]]>
This is USA Today’s editorial board suggesting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran-attack media campaign is likely just more of the same Israeli tactic to pressure the United States into implementing harsher measures against Iran’s nuclear program:
Say this for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: He’s a master at whipping up worry that he’s about to launch an attack on Iran. He’s been doing it for years, extracting American support in the process.
So perhaps what’s happening in Israel today is just more Netanyahu stagecraft, timed to the U.S. presidential campaign. If so, it’s an Oscar-worthy performance. By all appearances, Netanyahu is preparing his nation for war.
More directly:
The leading theory for Netanyahu’s timing — speculative but logical — is that he sees the American political campaign as a moment of maximum leverage. President Obama, fearing the loss of Jewish votes in a close election, will feel compelled either to back an Israeli attack or to deter the Israelis by making new, more specific commitments to a U.S. attack later.
The pity is that the analysis is probably right, because the United States so far seems incapable of conducting the kind of debate Israel is having.
After noting the heated debate within Israel about the pros and cons of attacking Iran, the board concludes that a vigorous debate also needs to take place in the US before it “risks launching itself into another military morass”:
The decisions could not be more fateful. No American would be immune from the impact of an attack on Iran. That’s why the time for a vigorous debate — not just in Israel but in the USA, too — is before the bombs fly.
And this is Clifford D. May, President of the hawkish Washington think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, disagreeing with the board, firstly by declaring that US intelligence and International Atomic Energy Association assessments about Iran’s nuclear program are wrong with a single statement: “Iran’s rulers have been developing nuclear weapons” and that “should no longer be a matter of debate.” Secondly, by referencing belligerent Iranian rhetoric against Israel as “reasons” why the Israelis are “very much justified in using military force”, and thirdly, by invoking the horrors of the Holocaust and WWII:
]]>But if the Israelis know where the centrifuge factories are, and if they are confident they can destroy or seriously degrade them, that course of action deserves serious consideration. Diplomacy has run its course. Sanctions have damaged Iran’s economy but do not appear to have weakened the will of the theocratic regime.
Winston Churchill called World War II an unnecessary war because it could have been prevented: The Nazis should never have been allowed to obtain the weapons they would use to overrun Europe. Hitler marveled to one of his generals that no one challenged him while he was weak. They waited until he was at his strongest, thus guaranteeing a much bloodier conflict.
That mistake should not be made again — never again, as we used to say.