Foreign Entanglements: Horse, Bayonets, and Iron Domes
By Happy post-Thanksgiving, all. With luck, we won’t have to deal with another holiday situation until Memorial Day or thereabouts. On Monday, I spoke with Bryan McGrath (my co-blogger at Information Dissemination) about the election, asymmetric beliefs, maritime issues, and Iron Dome:
On the Iron Dome point, my contribution at the Diplomat this week concerned the exportability of the model to East Asia:
The apparent success of the Iron Dome anti-rocket system in the latest iteration of the Israel-Hamas conflict has spurred interest in how East Asian states could apply similar defensive technologies. Indeed, an Israeli media outlet reported that South Korea is considering procurement of the Iron Dome system, potentially as part of a reciprocal agreement that would supply Israel with maritime patrol ships. On Sunday, Max Boot argued that the success of Iron Dome effectively justifies Ronald Reagan’s 1980s-era concentration on the Strategic Defense Initiative, a missile defense system expected to defeat a Soviet nuclear attack. Demonstration effects matter; does the success of Iron Dome have implications for rocket or missile defense in East Asia?