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Beinart’s Militarism for Peace

Peter Beinart is attracted to the benefits of militarism in the name of peace: Why is their system working when ours did not? In Israel, as in the United States, military and intelligence officials are generally more cautious than civilian leaders when it comes to war, largely because they know firsthand how crude and unpredictable […]

Peter Beinart is attracted to the benefits of militarism in the name of peace:

Why is their system working when ours did not? In Israel, as in the United States, military and intelligence officials are generally more cautious than civilian leaders when it comes to war, largely because they know firsthand how crude and unpredictable an instrument war is. But the Israeli system is less hierarchical. The military and intelligence agencies in the United States certainly leak to the press, and use bureaucratic tactics to box in their civilian overlords. At the end of the day, however, soldiers and intelligence analysts are trained to give their professional advice and then get out of the way. In Israel, the lines are more blurred, and bureaucrats are more freewheeling in speaking to the press. This has its disadvantages, but in a case like this, it gives the antiwar generals and spies greater leverage to fight back.

As Andrew Exum observes, this is a horrible idea. Imitating the arrangement Beinart describes here isn’t going to produce better foreign policy. On the contrary, he says it is “a prescription for turning yourself into Pakistan.” Exactly right. Beinart is treating political and policy dysfunction in Israel as proof that their system “sometimes functions better than ours” because the dysfunction is creating an outcome (i.e., opposition to war with Iran) of which Beinart approves. What Beinart conveniently overlooks is that this is the same system that waged the disastrous 2006 war in Lebanon, which should tell all of us that there is nothing inherent in the organization of the Israeli system that makes it more averse to waging self-defeating, stupid wars than ours.

We should also note that the “restraint” that Beinart is praising is not all that impressive. An Israeli attack on Iran would be quite difficult to pull off, it would probably not be all that effective, and it would likely invite major retaliation from Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. It is natural that Israeli military and intelligence officers would be cautious about starting a war with Iran under the circumstances. An Israeli war with Iran would not achieve its objectives, it would probably be very costly, and it would alienate most of the few countries still friendly to Israel. Despite all of this, there is still a remote possibility that the Israeli government might make the attempt, which brings us back to the basic irrationality at the heart of U.S. and Israeli policies towards Iran. In the end, it is the absurd exaggeration of the threat from Iran that is the major failure of both systems, and that is the root of bad Iran policy. Given all of this, it is small consolation that there is a “new crop” of officials “pushing back hard against war.” I’m glad that there is resistance to starting yet another unnecessary war, but a better question should be why there is anyone pushing for war.

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