Some
lessons for Israel as it contemplates an attack on Iran's nuclear program.
When—and it is most probably now a question of when, rather than
if—Israel is forced to bomb Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, the Israeli
government will immediately face a cacophony of denunciation from the press in
America and abroad; the international left; the United Nations General
Assembly; 20 secretly delighted but fantastically hypocritical Arab states;
some Democratic legislators in Washington, D.C.; and a large assortment of
European politicians. Critics will doubtless harp on about international law
and claim that no right exists for pre-emptive military action. So it would be
wise for friends of Israel to mug up on their ancient and modern history to
refute this claim.
The right, indeed the
duty, of nations to proactively defend themselves from foes who seek their
destruction with new and terrifying weaponry far pre-dates President George W.
Bush and Iraq. It goes back earlier than Israel's successful pre-emptive
attacks on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 (not to mention other
pre-emptive Israeli attacks like the one on the Syrian nuclear program in
2007). It even predates Israel's 1967 pre-emption of massed Arab armies, a move
that saved the Jewish state. History is replete with examples when pre-emption
was successful, as well as occasions when, because pre-emption wasn't employed,
catastrophe struck.
When it became clear that the Emperor Napoleon was about to
commandeer the large and formidable Danish navy stationed at Copenhagen in
1807, the British Royal Navy attacked without a declaration of war and either
sank, disabled or captured almost the entire fleet. No one screamed about
"international law" in those days, of course, any more than statesmen
would have cared if they had. Neither did Winston Churchill give any warning to
the Ottoman Empire, a German ally, when he ordered the bombardment of the
Dardanelles Outer Forts in November 1914, also without a war declaration.
Similarly—though there were plenty of warnings given—Britain was
formally at peace with her former ally France in July 1940 when Churchill
ordered the sinking of the French fleet harbored near Oran in French Algeria,
for which he was rightly cheered to the echo in the House of Commons. The sheer
danger of a large naval force falling into Hitler's hands when Britain was
fighting for its survival during the Battle of Britain justified the action,
and the exigencies of international law could rightly go hang.
Looking further back, and thinking counterfactually, as historians
are occasionally permitted to do, there have been several wars in which
devastating new weaponry spelled disaster for the victims of the power
developing them, and the victims would have been much better off using
pre-emption.
In the Middle Eastern context, Goliath ought to have charged down
David long before he was able to employ his slingshot and river pebbles to such
devastating effect. The Egyptians should have attacked the Hittites as soon as
the Egyptians suspected they were developing the chariot as a weapon of war.
Had the Mayans and Incas assaulted the conquistadores as soon as they stepped
ashore—and thus before the Spaniards could deploy their muskets, horses, metal
armor, hand-held firearms and smallpox to crush them—they might not have seen
their civilizations wiped out.
The Mamelukes and
Janisseries shouldn't have waited to be slaughtered by Napoleon's cannon at the
battle of the Pyramids; the Khalifa needed to hit Kitchener on his way to
Omdurman in the River War of the late 19th century, not once he'd set up his
machine guns on the banks of the Nile; and so on.
Often in history, massive pre-emption has been the only sensible
strategy when facing a new weapon in the hands of one's sworn enemy, regardless
of international law—the sole effect of which has been to hamper the West,
since those countries that break it can only be indicted if they lose, whereas
civilized powers generally have to abide by its restrictions.
Consider a counterfactual analogy that will weigh heavily on
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he struggles with his historic
decision. If the French Defense Minister André Maginot, instead of investing so
heavily in his defensive line in the mid-1930s, had thought offensively about
how to smash the German army the moment it crossed the Versailles Treaty's
"red lines" in the Saar and the Rhineland, some six million Jews
might have survived.
The slingshot, chariot, musket, cannon, machine-guns: All were
used to devastating effect against opponents that seemed to be stronger with
conventional weaponry but were overcome by the weaker power with new weapons
that weren't pre-emptively destroyed. Since President Obama's second inaugural
address has made it painfully obvious that the U.S. will not act to prevent
Iran from enriching more than 250 kilos of 20% enriched uranium, enough for a
nuclear bomb, Israel will have to.
Mr. Netanyahu might not have international bien pensant opinion
on his side as he makes his choice, but he has something far more powerful: the
witness of history.
Mr. Roberts, a historian, is the author, most
recently, of "The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World
War" (Harper, 2011).
A
version of this article appeared May 1, 2013, on page A17 in the U.S. edition
of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Case for Pre-Emptive War,
From Goliath to the Dardanelles.
