Foreign policy experts too often address a real potential threat to international security by simply listing all the things that could go wrong. Carefully parsing the causal relationships between (1) the threat and (2) its potential consequences is less important than simply outlining all of the horrible things that could eventuate. As a result, identifying such threats is much like playing dominos: If X happens, then Y and Z will surely happen (where Y and Z’s occurrence sounds the death knell for international stability). In foreign policy punditry, it seems that far too many of the big players adhere to the Domino Theory.

Let’s begin with the first domino, the “X” here, otherwise known the feared event that could set a number of horribles in motion. In a recent piece entitled “As things look, Israel may well attack Iran soon,” foreign policy guru and former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer falls right into this very trap. The dramatis personae in Fischer’s international yarn almost need no introduction. The United States appears early as the short-sighted buffoon, stumbling across the stage after too many drinks, a well-connected and well-heeled megacountry that just can’t understand the long term effects of its choices. Israel, of course, is depicted – as it sadly so often is – as a mostly-sober but utterly selfish charlatan, a nation beset by internal security problems it cannot quite handle and a history (the Holocaust) that it hasn’t really come to terms with. And then there’s Iran, that thoroughly inebriated beast of a nation, hell bent on destroying Israel no matter the cost. (So that there is no room for confusion, each of these descriptions distort the good and bad tendencies of each of these actors on the international stage.)

With a cast of characters at once myopic and one-dimensional, it’s not hard to guess the drift of Fischer’s argument. Iran, unwilling to curb its nuclear program to appease the United States and the rest of the international community, may have already gone too far. For Israel, always overly suspicious of its Muslim neighbor, may soon decide that diplomacy is now useless, and commence military action to protect its own interests before Iran deploys nuclear weapons in a surprise attack. (Defense Minister Ehud Barak was recently quoted as saying that a military campaign is a “distinct possibility.”) As Fischer himself summarizes the alleged fait accompli, “Iran must understand that without a diplomatic solution in the coming months, a military conflict is likely to erupt.”

No one would dispute the claim that diplomacy is necessary. Nor would a sane policy analyst tell Israel that Iran would never seriously contemplate aggressive, unprovoked action. But what does seem quite dubious is Fisher’s notion that unless a diplomatic solution is reached very quickly, Israel will simply put Iran in its crosshairs and fire away. Really? Would doing this genuinely be in Israel’s long term political or national security interests? Probably not. Iran may be an unpredictable power, manned by a certifiable lunatic, but in the absence of an attack, a pre-emptive campaign – despite what Ehud Barak or anyone else has (merely) said – would be a very bad idea. Unprovoked military action would not only make Israel look a tad bit trigger happy, it would also undermine the global community’s case that Iran has little reason to fear its neighbors. After all, if a major world power like Israel were to bomb Iran’s major commercial and military centers on a preemptive basis, wouldn’t this to some degree buttress Iran’s case that it is too often pushed around by the West and this is precisely why it should enjoy the right to develop nuclear weapons?

One could object that Israel would not be the first nation to act against its actual self-interest by preemptively attacking another country. And since in this instance the Israeli government would be trying to determine the likelihood and expected harm of a nuclear attack by Iran, the scales actually tilt in favor of taking preemptive action. While having an air of plausibility, this objection overlooks the fact that Israel has had to fight for its existence since its inception. Despite a few serious foreign policy snafus and some imperfectly executed defensive military campaigns (both of which any well run democracy is entitled to), Israel has been conservative in its responses to various military threats. It is unlikely that Israel – a country that has been leery of mounting military campaigns even against countries that clearly have ties to terrorist groups – would directly confront Iran by commencing a preemptive strike of the type and scale Fischer has in mind.

So far we’ve only undermined the first domino (i.e., the notion that an Israeli attack against Iran is imminent). But what about the nasty consequences that would follow if Israel preemptively attacked Iran? If Israel attacks, Nouriel Roubini says the following events will unfold, immediately and inevitably. First, oil prices will skyrocket, as Iran will block the flow of oil out of the Gulf. Oil would rise to over $200 per barrel, sending the global economy into a tailspin akin to those that followed Yom Kippur war in 1973 and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Second, Iran will unleash all of its supporters against Israel, causing havoc and carnage within Israel and throughout the Middle East more generally. Third, Barak Obama would certainly be defeated by John McCain in the upcoming presidential election.

Each of Roubini’s three conjectures is problematic in its own way. But let’s just consider one of these dominos, the last one. Why is Roubini so sure that John McCain would be elected over Barack Obama if Israel were to preemptively attack Iran? Two simple observations show how thin Roubini’s argument is here. First, recent polls in the United States have consistently shown that Republicans no longer have an edge over Democrats on national security issues. Second, Obama just secured a clear and unambiguous victory over the Clinton machine – which is arguably the United States’ most powerful, resilient political machine in existence – to become the first African American presidential candidate in American history. The political acumen of Obama’s camp and the charisma of the man himself are not to be underestimated. That is not to say that beating John McCain will be easy. But McCain, a man who has shockingly base manners, a questionable foreign policy platform (which, officially, is a slightly reworked version of realism courtesy of Robert Kagan, even less inspired than Kissinger’s well-known moderate realism; but McCain sounds very much like a rabid idealist when he talks about America’s need to stay in Iraq in perpetuity), and an inability to control his temper in public, hardly seems like a shoe in for the American presidency – no matter what is going on in the world. And this, dear friends, is precisely what is wrong with the Domino Theory: It presents speculative hunches about the future as inevitable truths, clouding our perceptions of the present and the future in one fell swoop.

A graduate of Stanford and Duke universities, John Eden is an intellectual property lawyer currently working for a large Australian law firm. In addition to having a long standing interest in the intersection between international justice and national security, John has authored a number of law review articles and book reviews about a wide range of positive law and legal theory topics.

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