From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2007 - 13:12:19 EST
>The only intelligible aim would be to counter any threat from Israel >to use nuclear weapons against its neighbours. This would clearly >weaken the capacity of Israel to dictate terms in settlements with >Syria and in returning the West bank and East Jerusalem to >Palestinians. > >The idea peddled in our media that the aim would be to strike >against Israel first is absurd. No Iranian President, however >deranged he may be, is likely to attack Israel first, since that >would bring massive retaliation from the US, which would in turn be >tolerated by other nuclear powers. We Americans don't recognize the point Ian (Hunt) is making here. The race to acquire nuclear capabilities by Iran and North Korea (and Saddam's late hour posturing that he had weapons of mass destruction) is driven not by delusions about successful first strikes but by the need to as Prem Shankar Jha puts it in Twilight of the Nation State to deter the kind of aerial attacks Iraq has been subjected to since 1981. Since 9/11 the US has asserted (as Jha also writes) its unwillingness to accept the right of other nations to deter attacks upon themselves by arming themselves, if necessary, with weapons of mass destruction. This unwillingness is shared by both political parties in the US. The Westphalian order has come undone. What does this mean for the prospects for world peace? Certainly most Americans believe that this new policy is the best guarantee for world peace. Is it? Most interestingly Jha accounts for the unraveling of the Westphalian order in the terms of a theory of overaccumulation, which explicitly draws from Giovanni Arrighi but echoes a one William Playfair (on whom Henryk Grossman wrote his last essay). More on this later, I hope. Rakesh
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