IMPACT: NMD CAN WIDEN THE POSSIBILITIES FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE

MISSILE DEFENSE CAN WIDEN THE "WINDOW" OF OPPORTUNITY FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Editorial The Jerusalem Post January 30, 2001, SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8 HEADLINE: Ending the era of vulnerability //VT2002acsln

For Israel, the urgent need is to proliferate missile defenses in the West at least as fast as missile and WMD technologies are proliferating among rogue states. This is necessary not just to enhance Israel's security directly, but to address the supposed "window" theory that has been used to drive the peace process.

The "window," first according to Yitzhak Rabin and lately as adopted by Ehud Barak, is the short time Israel has to make peace before states like Iraq have nuclear weapons. The logic of the "window" is somewhat backwards, because it implies that Israel can risk greater territorial withdrawals now than it can in the future. But if Israel faces greater threats in the future, withdrawing from territory in advance of those threats does not make the withdrawals less risky.

MISSILE DEFENSE CAN PROP OPEN THE "WINDOW" OF TIME FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE

Editorial The Jerusalem Post January 30, 2001, SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8 HEADLINE: Ending the era of vulnerability //VT2002acsln

Rather than threaten ourselves with a closing "window" of peace, Israel and the United States should be thinking together about how to prop the window open over the long term. Like nuclear deterrence, missile defenses are not a panacea, and cannot completely close the Pandora's box of weapons of mass destruction. What missile defenses can do is save the West from a future of nuclear blackmail from increasingly emboldened rogue states.

ISRAEL APPROVES OF USA NMD DECISION

Editorial The Jerusalem Post January 30, 2001, SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8 HEADLINE: Ending the era of vulnerability //VT2002acsln

Israel should warmly embrace America's decision to end its own vulnerability and help the Europeans understand the costs to remaining locked into 30-year-old theories of deterrence that are wildly out of touch with today's realities. The alternative is to sit back and watch as Saddam Hussein and his allies drive the prospects for peace further and further away, and our world become less secure.