(Ha'aretz) Emily B. Landau - The goal of threatening to use military force is not to use it, but to effect change on the party being threatened. If this can happen without force being used, this is the best possible outcome. So it is quite unwarranted to say that President Obama projected weakness and indecision by "backing down" from his punishment threat. In fact, the U.S. got results - far better than anything that could have been achieved with a targeted and limited use of military force. But without a firm threat, the deal would not have materialized. What does all of this mean for international efforts to stop Iran? Complex cases of WMD non-compliance will most likely not be resolved by the UN, or even the Security Council. Rather, they will be decided by the U.S. and Russia. Determined WMD proliferators like Syria and Iran are not likely to back down and reverse course without facing a credible threat of military force. This lesson has been driven home by the Syrian case. There will almost certainly be additional obstacles along the road of disarming Syria of its chemical weapons. Still, this experience has shown that taking a firm stand in international affairs can work. The writer is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
2013-09-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive