An effective drug

The lamest reason for embarking on a war is "strengthening the power of deterrence." It's very nice that there are academic experts who draw their knowledge from army generals, and vice versa, and that everyone talks with the utmost seriousness about "the power of deterrence" as though it were some kind of science - but the time has come for us to remind ourselves that at least the two horrifying wars of the Olmert government, within less than three years, were based on this dubious reasoning.

If "bringing the boys home" or "the suffering of the residents in the periphery" are propagandistic arguments, now there is a great fear that the "power of deterrence" excuse will continue to serve as a kind of magic potion for the heads of the army and the political establishment in the future.

On the one hand, this excuse is groundless, but on the other, it is an effective drug. The time has come to vote no-confidence against this term, along with no-confidence in the wisdom of the military leaders - for the sake of the near future, at least.

Deterrent power is merely a decision that "we are deterring them." And what is the proof of its existence? That they don't react to what we do to them? For example, we fly in the skies of Lebanon and they don't disturb us. Were the Lebanese to prevent us from flying in their skies (not to mention their flights in our skies), we would decide that our "power of deterrence" had been undermined.

Worse than that, who decides that the power of deterrence has been undermined? Those who in any case hold this power and its measurement in their hands. When don't we have deterrent power? When those who hold this power decide that they have a right to go to war, in order to restore to themselves the "power of deterrence" that they defined in the first place. If there is no interest in going to war, a border incident will not be considered a blow to the power of deterrence. If there is an interest in going to war, a border incident becomes a real warning signal: We have lost our power of deterrence.

In other words, deterrent power is a license to do what we want, anywhere, undisturbed. It is designed to preserve the total supremacy of Israeli power in the face of any perceived threat: a violent protest in the occupied territories, an expected response to Israeli assassinations, a demand that Israel release Arab security prisoners, Israeli reconnaissance flights that could be at risk in the skies of a neighboring country.

If Hezbollah gets anti-aircraft missiles, our power of deterrence will be violated. And what then? Doesn't this very logic of "power of deterrence" lead to the attempt to undermine it?

Moreover, no war has been avoided to date with the help of this "power," although we can always say that we have no idea how many wars did not break out thanks to it. And still, we would do well to remember that the historical disaster of the Six-Day War - described by the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as a war that had to be fought in order to restore our lost power of deterrence - exemplifies the degree to which the State of Israel and its people were hostage to military leaders due to the scale of deterrence.

Now the nuclearization of Iran is on the agenda. There is nothing like it to exemplify the danger embodied in this miracle drug, the power of deterrence. They tell us that Israel's nuclear capability is the ultimate deterrent. But which war, according to this logic, has it prevented since 1967, or since the reactor in Dimona went into operation? And if there is a war with Iran, what does Israel's power of deterrence have to offer? A threat of nuclear weapons? And isn't this nuclear arms race that's about to erupt a product of the "deterrent power," which refers only to our supremacy? And for how long can such power be expected to last?