That got your attention, didn't it?
I'm not in favor of anybody holocausting anybody. And I disagree with a lot more in Rosenbaum's article that the single point I want to make here. For example, I think his "case" that Israel is in danger of any "second Holocaust" is absurd. But I want to ask: even if it wasn't absurd, why should it drive American policy?
Let's begin with the simple, undeniable fact that "holocausts" of all sizes and varieties have been happening throughout my life, which I imagine is about the same period as Rosenbaum's. On a few occasions, the United States government has invoked a humanitarian rationale for intervening, but generally only when it has other reasons for interveningl, and generally when the costs of intervention look commensurate with the benefits. That we are not in the global rescue business is adequately demonstrated by the long roster of butchery that we have chosen to turn a blind eye to, even though in principle we might have stopped it. I know of no one who seriously argues that by such selectiveness we have been committing crimes against humanity.
The conclusion I draw is that humanitarian grounds are themselves never compelling reasons to commit American forces to a foreign conflict. They may, in some circumstances, provide an ancillary reason to do something that we have additional, more compelling, reasons to do anyway. So, unless Jewish lives are intrinsically worth more than, say, Congolese, lives, Rosenbaum can make no convincing case for the United States to protect Israel from a second Holocaust" on purely humanitarian grounds.
If it could be shown that Israel offers some important value to American foreign policy, such that it is manifestly in our own hard-headed interest to protect it, then Rosenbaum would have a better case. But the only argument that can be made along those lines is that it is somehow useful to us to have Israel as an ally. As Mearsheimer and Walt acknowledge, that arument had some validity during the Cold War, when Israel could be a useful proxy holding Soviet proxies in check. But since the end of the Cold War, how does Israel serve our interests? We clearly don't need Israel to move an army to the Middle East and fight a prolonged war--we've done that twice without them. We don't need Israel to join us in the fighting--on the contrary, we beg them to stay out because they are a massive political liability where our Middle Eastern interests are concerned. We can scarcely claim to be using Israel to "promote democracy" in the Middle East--it is the one country we can never mention publicly when trying to persuade Middle Eastern governments to do something differently. And Israel certainly doesn't help bear the financial costs of all our efforts to defend its interests--we pay them. Where's the benefit, in all this, to us? There isn't any. The relationship is entirely one-sided.We give, Israel takes. This is all supposed to happen, and to keep on happening apparently forever, for purely "moral" reasons.
I say balls to that. I thought the Jews wanted their own ethnic state precisely because they didn't want to trust other nations with their defense. Well, they have it--and we've helped a lot. A lot. When did it become an endless obligation, no matter the cost to us? Those Jews who don't want to run the risks of Rosebaum's hypothetical "second Holocaust" can do what, e.g., millions of Iraqis are doing right now: they can find someplace else to live. Hard? Sure. But not as hard as it is for the Iraqis.
Anyway, Israeli policy is dead set against emigration. Except for those needed to man AIPAC in the United States, Israel would like all Jews to come there, to help with the looming demographic threat Israeli Jews face. But once they are there, Israel wants us to spend our blood, treasure and credibility to defend them. Nope, sorry, that's not the way nationalism works. You wanted a specifically Jewish nation, defend yourselves. You want American protection, become American.
There's also the question of feasibility. Even if a "second Holocaust" were a real threat, it is by no means clear that the United States could prevent it. I'm not going to argue what I think is quite obviously the case: that eventually Iran and many other "smaller" nations will possess at least some nuclear weapons. American policy might affect the timing, but cannot ultimately prevent it from happening--even if we were much more respected and trusted in the world than we now are.
So, assume Iran eventually has a bomb. What, exactly, is the United States supposed to do to prevent Iran from using it on Israel? Bomb them? Israel has its own conventional and nuclear deterrents. Why shouldn't they suffice? Because if they wouldn't suffice, then Rosenbaum's argument turns aganst him: if the supposedly hate-crazed Iranians are willing to take the losses of a nuclear war, then how could the United States stop them? If they're willing to trade Tehran for Tel Avv and Haifa, then the steering wheel has come off already and we aren't going to be able to do much about it--except look out for our own interests. In such a dangerous world, why should we distract ourselves and spend our resources trying to protect little Israel? We have ourselves to think of.
The truth is, of course that it is precisely Israel and American bullying that gives a nuclear deterrent such extraordinarily high value in nations like Iran. We--Israel and the United States--attack aybody we want at will. Rather understandably, other nations do not like beng so vulnerable. The rational approach, one would think, is to ask what kind of international order might reduce that feeling of vulnerability, as a way of reducing the incentive for these nations to go nuclear. In any event, we will eventually need an international security system that is adapted to the reality of proliferation. For it is coming.
For forty years the United States relied on a theory of "mutual assured destruction" to avoid direct war with the Soviet Union. It worked. Yet now, Rosenbaum tells us, the same theory must fail in the Middle East. Why? Because some mullah said that more Iranians than Israelis would survive a nuclear war. Well, Ron, maybe it will calm you down to hear that Mao Tse Tung used to say exactly the same thing about China. (Remember Mao? Red Guards, Cultural Revolution, Death to America, all that?) Yet when China got nuclear weapons, very much while Mao was in power, we didn't go apeshit. Nor did the Russians, or the Indians, or the Japanese. The new development got folded into the statecraft of the region, and Mao eventually died, and China evolved. There is no apriori reason for thinking that the Middle East is so drastically different. Yeah, Israel wants us to think it is. But that "po' l'l Israel" song has gotten kind of worn out, as Israel has consistently proved able and willing to kill at least ten Arabs for every Jew.
I know you like your phrase "second Holocaust," Ron. It's catchy, I agree. But you got it from a novelist, and it has no more substance than a piece of fiction. Even if it did, it does not follow that my country ought to go on sacrificing forever to satisfy the purity of your "moral vision." (Israel doesn't worry so much about moral purity, you know. They say, fuck that, let's kill somebody.) My country owes its first duty to its own citizens, its own interests. Israel made its bed, now let it lie there.
