Looking at the October 7 attacks not as a military strategist but as an economist, Russ Roberts argues that maintaining eternal vigilance is simply impossible—even though it is often required of political leaders. In a follow-up essay, he applies these lessons to the Iron Dome:

The more effective is the warning system or the safeguards, the more dangerous the situation becomes as the human side of the equation starts to underestimate the risk. Every day that Hamas did nothing more than launch a few rockets into Israel convinced the Israeli security apparatus that this was all it was capable of.

The effectiveness of Iron Dome helped us [in Israel] ignore the risk we faced from Hamas. Before October 7 it seemed reasonable to believe that Hamas’s ability to hurt us was very limited. We were wrong. Israel came to believe that the status quo might be a bit unpleasant but manageable. We were wrong.

When you reduce the risk of bad events, people often respond by taking more risks. In economics this is known as the Peltzman effect. A simple example is that a football helmet protects your head from the hit of your opponent but it also emboldens that opponent to lead with his head. A helmet can become a weapon. Because helmets are imperfect protection, they can lead to a higher risk of damage to the brain—any one hit is likely not to hurt, but the wearing of the helmet increases the numbers of hits delivered and received.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.