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Huh. I've never met someone for whom the Israeli policy of nuclear non-acknowledgement actually worked so well.
The Crusader Kingdoms, after all, fell to conventional invasion by neighboring Kingdoms/Empires more interested in fighting them than eachother. Israel, by contrast, is generally believed to have nuclear weapons, and as such its neighboring Kingdoms who could conduct conventional invasions are not particularly interested in fighting them directly anymore.
I'm entirely aware that their nuclear weapons exist, I just fail to see how they'd be useful in saving the country. Yes, they're capable of preventing a massive ground invasion from the arab states around them right now, but there's no guarantee that will last forever, nor is there any guarantee that military annihilation is the only way Israel could come to an end. While it was the foreign invasions that dealt the deathblow in the case of Outremer, they could only have happened as a result of longer term problems that simply weren't solved, and several other calamities could have taken their place - such as a plague or famine. Heavy reliance on foreign western powers, complicated and expensive social arrangements (the orthodox population of 'useless eaters'/christian scholars), a strategy revolving around keeping the various islamic nations at odds with one another and unable to unite in any real way... these are all serious issues, and having nuclear weapons only helps with that last one, and even there that effectiveness just might dwindle over time. If the Muslim brotherhood knew that attacking Israel from Egypt would get the current government nuked, they'd take that deal in a heartbeat. A hypothetical united Arab world would be an exceedingly difficult problem for Israel to deal with, and far too complicated a problem to simply nuke into submission.
Well, that's certainly a novel theory, and given the longevity of the Crusader Kingdoms and rarity of total state collapse without external intervention, a generally non-falsifiable one that would outlast either of our time on the mortal coil.
I generally am not moved by conditionals that already failed to occur (Egypt was already ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood- it did not take the deal in a heartbeat), presumption of uninterupted trend lines that justify inevitable disaster without shaping (the othrodox population claim), or hypotheticals that run contrary to historical experience or macro trends (lol, said pan-Arabism, RIP), so as such I'll just leave that I find your failure to see how nukes would be useful in saving a country unconvincing as evidence that they don't have more relevance that historical metaphors with fundamentally different assumptions.
No, the theory I'm proposing is actually extremely testable. Maybe you're in your late 60s, but I don't see American support for Israel lasting for the rest of our lifetimes, and that's the most significant of the factors that I listed. We can't really test that right now, but when you look at the demographics of the US and the views of the populations that are going to be a majority in the future I don't think there's any guarantee that financial support to Israel continues.
Yes, because Egypt was being ruled by the Muslim brotherhood - why would they want THEIR government to get attacked by Israel given that they know they'd lose? I'm talking about a situation where the Muslim brotherhood aren't in power, yet have the ability to elicit a military response from Israel targeted at the government that's throwing them in jail and declared them a terrorist organisation.
There's no presumption of trend lines here - the orthodox population is simply a weight hanging around Israel's neck. They have complicated social reasons for maintaining a large population who cannot help militarily or economically in any real way, which is a problem given that Israel itself doesn't have enough of an economy to support itself and the outsized defence expenditures it needs to stay safe. Even assuming that the orthodox all stopped having children, that's still a dependent population of some size that Israel will have to support for no gain. They can do that now, but that's going to become a bigger issue as support gets cut off.
I don't think it is terribly contrary to historical experience for extremely warlike and quarrelsome populations to be united by charismatic leaders. This has happened multiple times throughout history, and while it doesn't have to be pan-Arabism I don't think the idea of some movement or charismatic leader uniting a few countries into a larger coalition is terribly ahistorical.
Nuclear weapons are a solution for a fairly narrow set of problems. Domestic political unrest spurred by economic issues after the collapse of material western support despite a continued need for outsized defence expenditure doesn't fall into that category. And if you really don't see any evidence or historical analogues for nuclear weapons being unable to save a country from internal problems, please point out where the USSR is today and explain how their nuclear arsenal saved them from collapse.
That is an impressive number of mis-chosen historical allusions that don't quite demonstrate what you think they do and even less about nuclear deterrence, but as already noted we'll be dead before it would be disproven by not manifesting as relied upon so again, general shrug at unconvincing perception in lieu of evidence.
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The USSR collapsed out of apathy. The Russian Soviet Republic was replaced by the Russian Federation, they were and are a majority. The Palestinians winning would wipe the Israelis off the map in a way the crumbling of the USSR didn’t kill all Russians. the rationale for use of nuclear weapons is completely different.
As for American support, most current US migrants are Central American Christians (largely Catholic, but many Latin Catholics convert to Evangelical Christianity after moving to the US) fleeing leftist regimes (chiefly Venezuela), not generally a particularly anti-Israel demographic.
I was under the impression that they collapsed due to a deeply flawed economic system in combination with a dramatic over-expenditure on military spending in order to keep fighting the cold war. But the main point is that they did in fact collapse and nuclear weapons weren't able to stop that from happening. I still just don't see how nuclear weapons would be able to save Israel from an economic collapse or social unrest.
Attitudes towards Israel are far less positive among younger populations in the US to my knowledge - if you've got some evidence regarding youth attitudes towards Israel that suggests otherwise I'd be interested in seeing it. That said, I don't think it matters that they aren't particularly anti-Israel, because what matters is that they're not as fanatically pro-Israel as the current population. You need much less negative animus to cut off existing support than initiate a hostile action, and I think that's very possible given shifting attitudes towards Israel in younger populations.
Common misconception and oversimplification. Incorrect, but common.
The actually relevant point, however, is that the Soviet Union didn't collapse from external invasion, or from people who already identified with the core identity unit wanting to leave. This is relevant, because the thing that will actually end Israel as a nation-state- and what ended the crusader states- is external invasion, not civil unrest in the national core. Civil Unrest can weaken a state's capacity for militarily resisting invasion, but if invasion is already negated by other ways- such as nukes- the you have a weak state, not a dead state.
The Soviet Union collapse is a poor historical metaphor because the parts of the Soviet Union who left the Soviets were the Russian imperial sphere that never wanted to be part of the Russian empire. The Russian national core was never challenged or militarily endangered. In the Israel metaphor, this is Gaza and West Bank not being occupied, and the Israeli core existing uninterrupted and without a military threat.
The crusader state metaphor from earlier is likewise bad because that was a case of military invasion destroying the state- which is precisely what did NOT occur with the Soviet Union, for a reason of (among other things) sustained nuclear deterence despite major economic and democraphic and social regression.
Because economic collapse or social unrest don't actually destroy nations, and this is so well established it's easier to identify the exceptions- which are almost universally states without an underlying national identity to bind the state.
This is basic not-understanding-why-states-fail, both historical and mechanically.
Obviously states collapse for a variety of reasons and I only provided the two that seemed the most prominent. This is, as far as I can see (especially since you called it common), the conventionally accepted wisdom as well - economic hardship lead to reform attempts which then lead to dissolution and breakup. If you've got a more compelling theory or hypothesis I'd unironically love to hear it.
Yes, it didn't collapse from the kind of problem that nuclear weapons prevent, given that it had nuclear weapons (though if the Russians all decided to leave I don't think nukes would help there either).
But Israel is in fact surrounded by dangerous threats in just about every direction but the sea, and this means that they are going to need to spend a huge portion of their GDP on the military budget - far more than they do currently, and to the point that it is going to have a big impact on society. That's an extremely dangerous position for a nation to be in, nukes or no nukes.
Then please enlighten me! I just don't understand how an Israel that sustains severe economic damage due to the removal of western support manages to maintain itself in such a dangerous security environment.
And to answer your other post..
I see this happening well within my lifetime. Probably not before the next culture war thread, but I don't see US aid to Israel lasting for another 20 years.
And are also counter-productive to your claims, as one of the claims (Crusader States) were conventional invasions that nukes would have defeated had the Crusader states had access to them, and the other (Soviet) did not see the collapse of the core state (the Russian Federation) that would be analogous to Israel and thus is generally unapplicable as a metaphor of how Israel would be destroyed and instead an example of why Israel would not be destroyed (because even at a point of massive economic/military/social/political power disrepencies, Russia survived as an nation-state centered on the Russian nation).
Sure- don't skip the causal intermediary between 'reform attempts' and 'dissolution and breakup.' The Soviet system lost the willingness to enforce its imperial control by mass violence, not its ability to.
Maintaining social control by violence is actually quite cheap, and we saw a number of case-examples during the Soviet collapse itself- including in Russia itself. North Korea and Cuba practically the capstone example, and much better Israeli metaphors than the Soviet empire-block given their coherency and external aid dependency, but nearly all the post-Soviet states that chose not to democratize and maintain autocratic models were able to. Russia itself is an example here, as even as it faced real struggles economically, socially, and what have you, it was still able to put down rebellion when it chose to (Chechnya). While it would have been immensly expensive to, there is a very strong argument that the Soviets would have been able to hold much of the empire by force if they chose to, if they thought it was worth that cost. Especially with nuclear weapons to keep invaders out. Nuclear-counter-rebellion strategy is a high-cost strategy, but not an impossible one.
The reason the economic travails and reforms led to dissolution is because they didn't think it was worth the cost to hold the empire together.
The reason that reform attempts lead to losing will to maintain imperial control was that the reform attempts involved enabling information flow- necessary for economic improvement- that deligitimized the ideological premise of the project from a revolutionary premise worth costs along the way to an objective failure unable to deliver. The Soviet Union wasn't simply an economic unit, it was an ideology-project, and a materialist one at that. While there were always overlaps between the Russian imperialist habits and the Soviet strategy, the metaphorical glue that held the system together- not only from the bottom-up (why do we accept this) but the top-down (why do we do this to ourselves) was the ideological underpinnings of 'because Socialism will build a better society and make people's lives better.' Except it didn't. The system did not work, the ideology did not deliver its central premise of improving living standards vis-a-vis the alternative, the more moral society wasn't more moral than the alternative, and the systems very clearly wasn't working, and people already knew that. What the laxing of information controls meant is that everyone else knew that too. When it came to choosing between holding together the lesser option by force and even greater cost and misery, the Soviets- which is to say the Russians- ultimately didn't.
But this isn't the circumstance Israel is in, even in the abstract. Israel's information space is already open enough that one of the key snowball dynamics- the mass sharing of dissolutionment- is impossible since people already have access to the information and eachother. Israel's core ideological premise- an ethno-state that will work to protect jews from both hostile states and statues unable/unwilling to do so internally- is not under ideological threat for the core auidence, i.e. the jews who feel unsafe or insecure elsewhere in states that visibly do not even try. The parts of the Israeli context that could be metaphorically analogous to the Soviet Block are the Palestinian territories, not Israeli proper- and thus vestigial territories, and not core dependencies.
Which goes to the point of 'who is choosing to leave and let-leave.' In the Soviet System, the imperial block- particularly eastern Europe- wanted to leave. The Germans wanted reunification, the Poles wanted independence, even the 'totally Russian all along' Ukrainians wanted to leave. The Russians let them, because the Russians didn't feel the project was worth the costs of violent suppression. We can see today, in Ukraine, what an alternative decision process might have been, as the Russians are now led by the sort of leadership for whom trying to militarily impose Russian dominance absolutely is worth the cost... and while they are paying a cost, they are also nowhere near a state collapse in doing so.
The Russian Federation didn't collapse as a state at all, precisely because the problems that nuclear weapons prevent did not form (because everyone knew Russia was a nuclear state and that trying to invade it would be suicide).
The Russian Empire collapsed. The Russian State did not. And the reason it did not is because there was no one who was going to come in and kick it down and drive them out of the territory they held until they held nothing else, which is what happened to the crusader states and what the parties interested in Israel's destruction want to do to it.
In terms of state survival? Not really. This is where 'dangerous threats' becomes a motte and bailey between 'it's bad' and 'it's a cause for state collapse.'
Terrorism is dangerous. But it's not existentially dangerous. Neither is spending a large amount on GDP on military budget- which itself is assuming a conclusion at odds with various dynamics of what goes on with the Israeli defense budget in a contraction (between would-be-negated needs, like West Bank occupation, or the preference for exepnsive high-precision munitions that support patron political preferences to minimize civilian casualties).
The type of power required to destroy Israel in the form required for the crusader states metaphor to be valid requires the power of a state. States are precisely what are targettable by nuclear weapons in case of existential risk to the nuclear power. You have already had to awkwardly dance around this fact by claiming that other actors (Muslim Brotherhood) would totally make the trade as long as they weren't in power, without actually establishing how they would make such a trade without having power over the state, lest the state refuse the trade. Even proxy warfare has it's limits- while the Iranians certainly are edging nuclear breakout, MAD is mutual, not unilateral.
Because it has nukes enough that the dangerous states in its environment capable of existentially threatening it aren't going to existentially threaten it lest they destroy their own states in the process.
Economic collapse has historically been a cause of state collapse when it allowed an external party to conventionally invade. The Crusader States fell because the loss of foreign economic support and economic issues allowed external parties to conventionally invade. Big-vs-small wars are usually one-sided because the small-side's economic disadvantages allow the external party to conventionally invade.
But nukes do mitigate the threat of conventional invasion to physically displace territorial control. Nukes can be used against the organized armies of the invaders, or the cities and ports they use as key logistical corridors to project power, or against the very capitals of those controlling them. Superior numbers and economics and conventional capabilities do not make invading a nuclear-armed power more preferable than not.
This is why you had to appeal to the Soviet Collapse as an example of state collapse without conventional force. But the Soviet collapse was a case of *choosing not to fight,' and for which the consequence was the loss of functional colonial holdings, not core state or it's dominant demographic. And in the Israeli context, choosing not to fight the displacement of a state of jews for a state of arabs is precisely that, with openly acknowledged genocidal implications.
This is certainly a construction of security politics worthy of NonCredibleDefense, but not a particularly compelling one.
Since by definition you will have to die before it doesn't occur in your lifetime for it to be proven to not happen in the way you foresee it happening in your lifetime, this is why I find this a boring non-falsifiable.
It doesn't need to.
First, US aid to Israel is not a critical dependency to Israel such that the loss leads to a state collapse. This is a not-uncommon premise shared by the sort of American hyper-agency types who believe the US factor is the dominant factor in anything it's involved in, but it's really not.
From a fiscal perspective, Israel does not need to be spending the amount of money in the way it does in order to survive- there are both discretionary areas that could/would be cut in an imperial collapse context (West Bank occupation costs), and costs-for-preference that would change as the patrons do (Israel uses expensive precision munitions capabilities to 'roof knock' because it's patrons want it to), and so on. If military financial resources were cut, Israel would adapt, as has every other state. It doesn't simply cease to exist because defense spending fllas (or increases).
And even this is setting aside why US aid to Israel exists in the form it does, which is as a basic form of geopolitical bribery for purposes of maintain access near the Suez Canal in case someone tries to close it, as a domestic industry subsidy program, and as a means of influence Israel into more preferable/less-undesirable courses of action when provoked.
Note that all three of these motivations exist not only regardless of any US sympathy for Israel, but also for any other would-be patron state. If other regional actors don't like Palestinian refugees- and that's not liable to change in the next few generations- then there will always be willing donors for Iron Dome sustainment, despite the 'uneconomical' nature of the interceptor system, less the Israelis decide to not simply take it.
And this is without considering the plausible political contexts where US aid is suspended, especially in the next 20 years. While it would be quite a just-so narrative for the US to cut aid to Israel, but everyone else is the same, this isn't particularly plausible compared to the US cutting aid to everyone in the region, including most of the regional states that could plausibly threaten Israel. And reasons for that would vary from 'they have all collapsed due to a catastrophic regional war'- which would indicate a lack of proximal existential threats to Israel as Arabs spend more time trying to rebuild than get themselves nuked further back by deciding to YoLo what's left- to 'the US has suddenly chosen to create a power vacume in the Middle East'- which would be a patron state influx of patrons interested in the still-substantial oil flows of the region for Israel to solicit and play off of to regain external support- to 'Israel has already nuked the relevant threats'- which would certainly make them a pariah but not necessarily endangered.
The US was not the first patron-state of Israel, nor is there any particular reason for it to be the last, nor is there any particular reason to believe that Israel will collapse in the interim.
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I have always cynically assumed that the real purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons is to blackmail western governments into continuing enthusiastic support, via the 'Samson option'.
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