WOULD YOU LIKE SOME ALARMISM WITH THAT?

WOULD YOU LIKE SOME ALARMISM WITH THAT? So, I wake up this morning, sip my morning coffee, then find out from the LA Times that Syria is about to attack Israel:

The United States and its allies would do better to turn quickly to the urgent matter of preventing war between Syria and Israel.War fears have been fanned by a notable Syrian arms buildup. Damascus has purchased surface-to-surface missiles, antitank weapons and sophisticated air-defense systems. It is also believed to have received Iranian funds to pay Russia for missiles and a reported $1-billion purchase of five advanced MIG-31E fighter jets.Even more ominously, Syria has hinted that if Israel continues to spurn its offers to restart peace talks on the return of the Golan Heights, perhaps a war to retake the Golan might be its only option.

Right.I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'd guess that the number of MiG-31s that Syria would need to match, much less achieve superiority, over Israel is several orders of magnitude above five. Given overwhelming Israelis ground superiority, Israeli friendship with Turkey and the United States, the pre-eminent military powers in the region, and the fact that Israel crushed a Syrian offensive into Golan in 1973 under far less favorable circumstances, and I'd have to rate the chance of a Syrian attack on Israel this summer pretty low. The editorial mentions that Syria has friends in Hezbollah and Iran, without mentioning that neither of those can do much in support of a conventional military assault on Israeli held territory, while the Americans, Turks, and Israelis can crush Damascus like a bug.I have to wonder, then, why the LA Times thinks that it's important today, July 5, 2007, to warn about war between Syria and Israel. I really don't know. But, then, I also have to wonder why John Howard picked yesterday to warn about how China's rapid military escalation threatens stability in the Asia-Pacific region. I especially have to wonder about that in the context of this:

Howard, who has committed Australia's military to a A$51 billion ($43 billion) build-up including two new amphibious assault carriers, missile destroyers, tanks and strike aircraft, said Canberra had buried the "self-defeating" idea that Australia's military should be based on home defense.

Huh. If a Chinese military buildup is destabilizing, then an Australian one must be...uh, great? Super-nifty? Re-stabilizing? Were I teaching a course this summer, I'd have to say that both of these are impressive examples of the security dilemma dynamic; we understand the military build-up of a potential foe to be aggressive and potentially destabilizing, while believing our own measures to be purely defensive and security oriented, even as those measures reduce the security of the potential foe. --Robert Farley