Free Republic

Amid mounting concern that Israel may unleash pre-emptive strikes against Iran to attack its nuclear facilities, some Israeli commentators are preaching restraint. They warn that Israel does not have the firepower to deliver a knockout blow to Iran's perceived drive for nuclear weapons and faces a potentially withering Iranian retaliation the likes of which they have never endured before. "It must be stated plainly: Israel does not have independent strike capability against Iran -- not in the broad sense of the term," Amos Harel wrote in the liberal daily Haaretz Wednesday. "The air force is capable of delivering a certain...

Perhaps more than any other open-source outfit, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has put serious intellectual muscle into examining the implications of waging war in an environment where potential enemies don’t just threaten to use nuclear weapons, they actually detonate a nuclear device. While nuclear disarmament remains a noble aspiration, the world is going in the other direction, that is, more states with more nukes, says CSBA President Andrew Krepinevich in a new report, US Nuclear Forces: Meeting the Challenge of a Proliferated World. From four nuclear states in the 1960s, there are now double that number (adding...

President Dmitry Medvedev said Israel had given Russia assurances it plans no strike on Iran and reserved Moscow's right to sell Tehran arms, in an interview released by the Kremlin on Sunday. Medvedev described an Israeli attack as "the worst thing that could be imagined" but said President Shimon Peres had ruled out such fears when the two leaders met in the Russian resort of Sochi in August. "When Israeli President Peres was visiting me in Sochi recently, he said something very important for all of us: 'Israel does not plan any strikes on Iran, we are a peaceful country...

the People’s Republic of China won’t help the U.S. rein in the rogue regime of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il -- which this week conducted a failed test of a missile designed to reach American cities -- then the U.S. should stop helping China with its own economic and technological development. China must support the U.S. position on North Korea in the U.N. Security Council or pay a price for not doing so. In response to North Korea’s missile tests, Japan has sponsored a resolution in the Security Council that would bar nations from giving North Korea money, material...

The same North Korean ICBM efforts that throw a rock at Alaska can throw a large nuclear warhead at every ally the United States has in Northeast Asia. Japan and South Korea are not only close allies, they are critical trading partners. The risk of a war in this part of the world would inevitably threaten Chinese involvement in some form, and possible bloc trade with much of China for an extended period even if China did not become involved. Our troops and our bases in most of Asia would be at hazard as well. Americans need to stop thinking...