Living Under the Iron Dome
I’m killing time this morning on Central Park South, waiting to head out to Brooklyn and then LaGuardia for a flight to Nashville. That’s an unusual place to be for me so I am watching too much news of the world. That’s what gets me thinking about the Iron Dome. That, of course, is the name given to the missile and drone defense system installed by Israel (with lots of help from the U.S. military aid) that has pretty effectively staved off missile and drone assaults from Hamas and Hezbollah for six months and now from Iran itself in the past few days. What the foreign policy and military pundits are all saying is that the tit-for-tat between Israel and Iran, a schoolyard slapping fight rather than a real bare-knuckle fight seems to portend about a 90% probability that things will calm down on the schoolyard rather than escalate to its possible limits. The launching of 300+ missiles and drones from Iran required Iron Dome Plus treatment with intervention by U.S. and other Allies both in the air and from the ground to bat away these drones and missiles. Given that it is said that Iran has armed Hezbollah with over 100,000 missiles and drones that sit just across the Golan Heights from Northern Israel, what all those same pundits warn is that deescalation is critical because Iran, despite the denials by Israel, is capable of inflicting serious civilian damage on Israelis in places like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by unleashing its full fury if it is provoked enough. Clearly, Iran knows that the U.S. and Allies would bring down the hammer on them and their civilians in a heartbeat if they allowed that to happen, but that is only a full deterrent if Israel keeps its attacks on Iran away from Iranian civilians. What that tells me is that based on recent Israeli actions against Palestinians and despite the existence and comfort of the Iron Dome to Israelis, it will not be near enough if restraint by either side of the conflict is somehow suspended. Living under the Iron Dome is only so comfortable.
I don’t know what the strategic military powers that be in the U.S. would say these days about our Iron Dome. In the Dr, Strangelove days of the Cold War, we all knew about NORAD and SAC bombers in the air at all times of the day and night. I know we had significant “finger on the button” retaliatory capability, but I don’t know whether we could protect our airspace defensively against incoming missiles and drones the way that Israel seems to have….and needs to have. After all the footprint of Israel is a damn-sight more manageable than the continental United States. We have lived for the past 50+ years under a relatively warm blanket of comfort when it comes to fear of domestic attack. In fact, since the Oklahoma City bombing and despite the 9/11 attack, we are mostly afraid of domestic violence rather than foreign military attack. Perhaps the closest thing we have in this country to an Iron Dome is some combination of our strategic alliances like NATO around the world, as well as our specific aid to places like Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, all of whom we should he approving increases to our foreign aid packages over this coming weekend.
All of this discussion of the Iron Dome makes me wonder something. Would Israeli foreign policy be materially different if it didn’t have an Iron Dome? Would they be quite so ruthless against Gaza if they thought Hamas could effectively lob missiles and drones at their civilians on a day-in-day-out basis? Some might say that it would make them more militant, but that is decidedly unclear. I think it is fair to say that here in the United States, our relative sense of comfort that we are not directly under threat of foreign attack and haven’t been for some time, has probably made us more prone to domestic discord. That is to say, it may or may not cause the discord, but it emboldens us to not worry about fighting outside influences and allows us the luxury to fight against one another. What’s strange and ironic about that is that we are now seeing that very fact cause the right wing to push to have us pull back from the very protection we get the most from countries like Ukraine and Israel who live on the front lines with our enemies and who fight the fight that we would otherwise be required to fight. It seems to be that peace is the very sedative that lulls us to sleep and opens us to threats that inevitably come our way as the King of the Hill in geopolitical circles. One might even suggest that the relative peace that Israel has enjoyed over the past fifty years has lulled it similarly into a state of domestic discord with the right wing conservatives (notably the Orthodox) set firmly against the more enlightened of Israelis and Israel supports (especially from the U.S.) that feel a two-state solution is the only path to long term peace.
That all makes the Iron Dome a questionable prophylactic for any of us including the Israelis. Feels good and safe in the moment, but may hurt us long term if we get so comfortable as to have the ideal time to do more battle amongst ourselves. The Republicans seem to have perfect red the art of fighting among themselves more than most with the recent shenanigans in the House of Representatives being the prime example. They have fractured to the point of dysfunctionality with the MAGA right now being the ultra-minority that wags the tail of the rest of the minority right until the less reactionary Republicans decide they can’t stand it any more and either choose to simply quit Congress (something that is happening every day it seems) or just cross over and forge alliances with the Democrats in order to get something…anything done. This is happening as I write with the Foreign Aid appropriations bill which has passed the Rules vote today with the Republican/Democrat coalition I just mentioned and is destined to pass overall in a vote tomorrow morning so that the bill can go to the Senate and then the White House and start the much needed aid flowing once again to Ukraine, Israel, Gaza (for humanitarian assistance) and Taiwan. If one were to track the path of this legislation over the past six months it would make a very unbelievable Netflix Series. But it will give us and much of the rest of the free world a version of an Iron Dome, certainly against Putin, probably against the Ayatollah, and maybe even against Xi. Perhaps most importantly, it might give us all some measure of humanity back if we can help Gaza dig itself our of the rubble that Israel and Hamas have put int into.
None of us like the prospect of war and we all want our best versions of an Iron Dome to keep us safe and as I think about it, if it takes fifty years or so to numb us and make us start fighting against one another, perhaps that is the closest we can ever come to peace, given the inevitable tendencies of mankind. I guess that is my way of saying that in the final analysis we probably all prefer living under the Iron Dome.