Juan Cole highlights a detail from Alastair Campbell’s diaries that has so far received little media attention: that in 2002 Ariel Sharon apparently threatened a nuclear strike on Baghdad. Cole interprets this as an example of Israel engaging in nuclear blackmail and wonders whether Netanyahu is now using the same tactic.
Read what Campbell (Tony Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy) actually wrote — it’s not clear to me that Cole’s interpretation actually makes much sense.
This is what The Guardian reported:
In an account of a conversation [Tony Blair had] with Bush at a Nato summit in Prague in November 2002, as diplomatic pressure intensified on Saddam Hussein, Campbell writes: “[George Bush] felt that if we got rid of Saddam, we could make progress on the Middle East. He reported on some of his discussions with [Ariel] Sharon, and said he had been pretty tough with him. Sharon had said that if Iraq hit Israel, their response would ‘escalate’ which he took to mean go nuclear. Bush said he said to him ‘You will not, you will not do that, it would be crazy.’ He said he would keep them under control, adding ‘A nuke on Baghdad, that could be pretty tricky.'”
The first question is: who is applying nuclear blackmail? Sharon on Bush, or Bush on Blair? Was Bush so intimidated by Sharon that he dared not ask him what kind of escalation he had in mind or did the ambiguity actually provide Bush with some useful leverage? In other words, could Bush use some fear of Mad Dog Israel in order to help build his international alliance against Saddam? It’s noteworthy that Bush’s assurance to Blair was that he would keep Sharon under control.
Whatever form of escalation Sharon was threatening, the one thing the diary does make clear is that this would be a possible response to an Iraqi strike on Israel. Just as much as this might sound like a demand for Bush to strike Iraq so hard that it couldn’t fire any Scuds at Israel, it probably said more about Sharon’s preoccupation with the Second Intifada. Unlike 1991 when Israel had acquiesced to American demands that it stay out of the conflict, even whilst under attack, this time around Sharon would as he said be compelled to make a show of Israel’s strength. Politically, Sharon could not afford to have his inability to prevent suicide attacks coupled with an unwillingness to respond to Scud attacks.
“Cole interprets this as an example of Israel engaging in nuclear blackmail and wonders whether Netanyahu is now using the same tactic.”
Why wonder? Blackmail is a major weapon in Israel’s arsenal — which continues to work beautifully on Washington:
“… the principal ally of the United States in the twenty-first century — its main source of strategic advice, the nation whose leaders have an unequaled access to American political leadership — is not a rational actor. The United States is in the position of a wife whose spouse is acting erratically. A “panicked and unrestrained Israel,” armed with an estimated 200 nuclear weapons, could do an extraordinary amount of damage. The only conclusion one can draw is that the special relationship would now be very difficult to exit, even if Israel had no clout whatsoever within the American political system, even if the United States desired emphatically to pursue a more independent course.”
Scott McConnell, “The special relationship with Israel: Is it worth the costs?” http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/special-relationship-israel
I’d be the last person to dispute that Israel is capable of engaging in nuclear blackmail. The question is: is this what was actually going on in this instance when Sharon spoke to Bush? If one loses interest in discriminating between what is the case from what could be the case, then there doesn’t seem to be much point following the news.
RE: “Juan Cole highlights a detail from Alastair Campbell’s diaries that has so far received little media attention: that in [November?] 2002 Ariel Sharon apparently threatened a nuclear strike on Baghdad.” ~ Woodward
MY COMMENT: I wonder if this subject was broached in the conversations that Bush and Blair had with the Israelis during Blair’s April of 2002 visit to Bush’s “ranch” in Crawford (during which Blair allegedly committed to backing/joining a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq).
FROM STEPHEN WALT (02/08/10):
SOURCE – http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/08/i_dont_mean_to_say_i_told_you_so_but
Note that the Campbell quote begins: “[George Bush] felt that if we got rid of Saddam, we could make progress on the Middle East.” Rather than read the phrase “make progress on the Middle East” as some kind of neocon code meaning solidify Israeli hegemony across the region, I think this should be taken to be the more obvious and widely used shorthand for make progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The idea that going to war in Iraq could help advance the “peace process” is of course farcical but Tony Blair is not a man who allows himself to be encumbered by clear reasoning. He would have been well aware that the skeptics in his own cabinet would challenge his support for Bush’s war by arguing that it was going to inflame Mideast tensions at the worst possible time. He couldn’t very easily rationally dispute these arguments but what he could do was make his case on the basis of vague assurances from Bush and of the absolute importance of the strength of the US-British alliance. In the face of such faith-based reasoning, all his opponents would be left doing would be rolling their eyes. (And no doubt Blair would have also tossed into the equation some kind of bullshit about Saddam’s support for the families of suicide bombers.) But the basic message would have been that everyone should trust him and his buddy in the White House. After all, this was a relationship that had been cemented through the power of prayer.