Prepare for the worse – to avoid the worse

Dr.Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
05 May '11

http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=52228

Defense Minister Ehud Barak suggested in an interview published in Haaretz today that while he concedes that we are clueless as to what Iran’s leaders might actually do if they had nuclear weapons that he did not expect them to try to nuke Israel.

And what overarching logic did he provide to support this prediction?

That if, indeed a nuclear Iran would try to incinerate the Jewish State then the logical thing would be to emigrate should Iran get the bomb. And since this this outcome is unacceptable, it follows that a nuclear Iran should not be expected to nuke Israel.

It sounds a bit silly but, then again, consider that Yossi Beilin’s ultimate argument that it is possible to cut a peace deal with the Palestinians was that “I simply am not prepared to live in a world in which things cannot be resolved.” ("Yossi removes his glasses" Haaretz Magazine, March 7, 1997)

Gulp.

It would appear that these two are far from alone in the approach of ruling out unpalatable scenarios.

But policy making that rules out bad outcomes doesn’t prevent them from happening. If anything it increases the possibility that they will indeed occur.

Our neighborhood today has the potential to becoming dramatically more dangerous for Israel.

In the coming years we will be surrounded by countries with leaders who could very well find themselves unable to come anywhere close to meeting the expectations of their citizens. Faced with the choice between being hung from a lamp pole and diverting the wrath of the mob against Israel – regardless of if there is or isn’t a sovereign Palestinian state around at that time.

We have a window to prepare for the worse so that we can ultimately avoid the worse.

That means making the huge investment in resources, for example, to insure a swift victory in a multi-front war that involves even Egypt.

That also means having to consider the critical role that many thousands of well trained and armed Palestinian “security forces” in a sovereign state could play in these unfavorable scenarios as the “advance team” for the invaders.

Yes. It would be fantastic if everything worked out perfectly.

But it would be horribly irresponsible to set policy based on a vision filtered through rose colored glasses.

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