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At risk of getting into a political discussion on HN, they are. If Israel is able to shoot down missiles, those that want to hit it with missiles will try to ma

by BCM43 14y ago

At risk of getting into a political discussion on HN, they are. If Israel is able to shoot down missiles, those that want to hit it with missiles will try to make better missiles, at which point Israel will need to build a better missile defense system. It strikes me as quite a bit like our anti-air defenses in the cold war, where we kept building weapons to shoot down Russian bombers, so they kept building better bombers. You can see the same thing with insurgent IEDs and US armor in Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, I'm not sure that it will further destabilize the region. I'm not sure how it could make it worse.

tptacek 14y ago
In the best-known case of a fraught missile defense scheme (that of the US), the concern was that the US and Russian/USSR had effective parity in offensive capability and were thus stalemated (to the betterment of all). An effective missile defense capability could have broken the nuclear stalemate and made nuclear strategy once again fluid and unpredictable. This is simply not the case with Israel. Israel and Hamas do not have military parity. What prevents Israel from wiping Hamas off the planet is humanitarian concern (either heartfelt or driven by realpolitik, depending on which Israeli leader you're thinking of and what you think of Israel in general). I would be surprised (and delighted) if you found a credible analyst that said otherwise. Meanwhile, the notion that missile defense drives Hamas to seek ever more sophisticated missiles seems hollow as well, for a couple reasons: first, it implies that Hamas wouldn't source the most effective missiles available to it; next, it implies that there's no strategic benefit to forcing Hamas to source more expensive missiles (there is: first, it raises Hamas' costs, and second, it makes it harder for the entities that support Hamas to conceal their support); next, it implies that the costs to Israel of those more-sophisticated missiles are higher when what we're really talking about is Israel simply accepting the cost of less-sophisticated missiles killing their citizens.

by BCM43 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

In the best-known case of a fraught missile defense scheme (that of the US), the concern was that the US and Russian/USSR had effective parity in offensive capability and were thus stalemated (to the betterment of all). An effective missile defense capability could have broken the nuclear stalemate and made nuclear strategy once again fluid and unpredictable. This is simply not the case with Israel. Israel and Hamas do not have military parity. What prevents Israel from wiping Hamas off the planet is humanitarian concern (either heartfelt or driven by realpolitik, depending on which Israeli leader you're thinking of and what you think of Israel in general). I would be surprised (and delighted) if you found a credible analyst that said otherwise. Meanwhile, the notion that missile defense drives Hamas to seek ever more sophisticated missiles seems hollow as well, for a couple reasons: first, it implies that Hamas wouldn't source the most effective missiles available to it; next, it implies that there's no strategic benefit to forcing Hamas to source more expensive missiles (there is: first, it raises Hamas' costs, and second, it makes it harder for the entities that support Hamas to conceal their support); next, it implies that the costs to Israel of those more-sophisticated missiles are higher when what we're really talking about is Israel simply accepting the cost of less-sophisticated missiles killing their citizens.