he United
States had a monopoly of nuclear weaponry for only a few years before
other nations challenged it but from 1949 until roughly the 1990s
deterrence theory worked – nations knew that if they used the awesome bomb
they were likely to be devastated in the riposte. Nuclear war was not
worth its risks. Today, by contrast, weapons of mass destruction or
precision and power are within the capacity of dozens of nations either to
produce or purchase. Every kind of weapon is now available; deterrence
theory is less and less relevant and the equations of military power
relevant to the period after World War II no longer hold.
This process began in Korea after 1950 and the Americans
discovered that great space combined with guerrilla warfare was more than
a match for them in Vietnam. But there has now been a qualitative leap in
technology that makes inherited conventional wisdom utterly obsolete.
Technology is now moving far faster than the diplomatic
and political resources or will to control its inevitable consequences –
not to mention traditional strategic theories. Hizbollah has far better
and more lethal rockets than it had a few years ago and the US army has
just released a report that light water
reactors – which 25 nations, from Armenia to Slovenia as well as Spain,
already have and are not covered at all by existing arms control treaties
– can be used to obtain weapons-grade plutonium easily and cheaply.
Within a few years many more countries than the present 10
or so will have nuclear bombs and far more destructive and accurate
rockets and missiles, not to mention the means to deliver them accurately.
Weapons-poor fighters will have far more sophisticated tactics as well as
far more lethal equipment, which makes the heavily equipped and armed
nations lose the advantages (as in Vietnam and Iraq) of their overwhelming
firepower. The battle between a few thousand Hizbollah fighters and a
massive ultra-modern Israeli army proves this. Among many things, the war
in Lebanon is a window of the future and either the Israelis cease their
policy of bluster and intimidation and finally accept the political
prerequisites of peace with the Arab world or they too will eventually be
wrecked by cheaper nuclear weapons.
We live with 21st century technology and also with
primitive political attitudes, nationalisms of assorted sorts, cults of
heroism and irrationality, and the world will destroy itself unless it
realistically confronts the new technological equations. Israel must now
confront this reality and if it does not develop the political skills –
and serious compromises – this new equation warrants then it will be
destroyed even as it devastates its enemies.
This is the message of the conflicts in Gaza, the West
Bank and Lebanon – to use only the examples in today’s papers. Walls are
no longer protection for the Israelis – one shoots over them. Their much
vaunted tanks have proven highly vulnerable to new weapons and these will
become more and more common. The US war in Iraq is a military disaster
against the guerrillas – a half trillion dollars spent there and in
Afghanistan have left America on the verge of defeat in both places, its
"shock and awe" strategy has utterly failed save to produce contracts for
weapons makers and de facto economic bankruptcy.
Adroitly, the Bush administration has managed to deeply
alienate more of America’s nominal allies than any government in modern
times. Its sublime confidence and reliance on the power of its awesome
weaponry is a crucial cause of its failure although we cannot minimise its
peremptory hubris and extreme myopia.
But if the challenges of producing a realistic concept of
the world that confronts the mounting dangers and limits of military
technology seriously are not resolved soon there is nothing more than wars
to look forward to.
(Gabriel Kolko is a leading historian of modern warfare
and the author of several books on the subject of war. He can be reached
at: [email protected].)
http://www.counterpunch.org/kolko08102006.html
