Gerard Leval
In concert with the State of Israel, President Donald Trump chose to attack Iran and degrade its military capabilities. Yet, in spite of the fact that the elimination of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program has been deemed necessary by at least five of his predecessors, many Democrats are now accusing the president of having acted impulsively. The accusation is predicated on the notion that the Iranian threat was not “imminent.”
To opponents of the president, he erred in launching an attack on Iran at a time when Iran did not pose an imminent threat. Under this analysis, President Trump should not have acted unless the Iranian regime had actually initiated an overt military attack against the United States.
It must be conceded that, notwithstanding the violence perpetrated and the threats enunciated by the mullahs of Iran against our nation over the course of decades, that violence and those threats may actually not have risen to the level of imminence. It is entirely possible that the president’s opponents are right, that an actual Iranian attack on the United States homeland was not “imminent.”
But, perhaps, reliance on the notion of an imminent threat is not the appropriate standard when it comes to defending the interests of the United States. The presence of an imminent threat may be a moment in time too late for an effective defense against an enemy that has made its nefarious intentions clear.
In lieu of the existence of an “imminent” threat being deemed necessary to permit a preemptive attack against an enemy, it may be far more reasonable to accept that an “impending” threat is sufficient.
Dictionary definitions of the words “imminent” and “impending” provide some important insights into the distinction between the two concepts. “Imminent” is a word that suggests something is happening immediately or is about to occur within seconds or days, while the word “impending” implies that something is hovering, threatening, or fast approaching, but is not necessarily about to occur immediately.
Although the two words are often used interchangeably, they represent quite different perspectives. Those differences may seem incidental, but in application there is an important temporal distinction that emerges with potentially dramatic ensuing consequences. This may best be highlighted by a brief historical detour.
Within a short time after he ascended to power, Adolf Hitler began to convert Germany’s industrial base into a powerful military industrial complex. As he did so, he steadily increased the nature of his aggressive posture against his neighbors. He never concealed his intent to free Germany from the constraints of the Versailles Treaty and to recapture lost German territory and then more.
By 1936, his bluster and conquering rhetoric began to convert into action. In March of that year, he made one of his first military moves. It was a modest move. He sent a small contingent of troops into the Rhineland, the area next to France that had been demilitarized in the wake of Germany’s defeat in World War I. The modest Nazi contingent did not pose any kind of menace to the very powerful French army — then the most powerful military in the world.
The French government did not react. After all, neither France nor any French territory had been directly attacked. The threat of a Nazi attack on the French homeland was clearly not imminent, but, as history would soon enough demonstrate, an attack was assuredly impending.
It is now known that had France forcefully confronted the Nazi actions in the Rhineland in that winter of 1936, the generals in Berlin were prepared to overthrow Hitler. By acting, France would have defused a most dangerous threat to world peace. With a regime change in Germany, it is possible that Europe and the world would have been spared the bloodiest conflict ever encountered by mankind and the Jewish community might have avoided the worst catastrophe in our history.
In 1936, Germany did not pose an imminent threat to France or to anyone else. Its military machine had not yet reached a level of superiority over the militaries of its neighbors and was in no position to cause serious harm to them. But within four years, the Nazi war machine would inflict the most grievous harm on much of Europe. In the spring of 1940, the imminent threat posed by Nazi Germany would result in France’s stunning defeat by the Wehrmacht, and France would be occupied by German troops for over four years. Under the influence of German occupation, France would enter one of the most shameful episodes of its history, including the deportation of 76,000 of its Jews.
From its earliest existence, the Nazi regime had made no secret of its intention to dominate Europe. However, it exercised that intention in measured steps. This slow and subtle ratcheting up of its threats created the kind of ambiguity that prevented the danger from being imminent. However, even if the imminence of the Nazi threat was not evident, the impending nature of that threat was unmistakable.
France chose to disregard an impending threat and to await an imminent threat before acting. It was a monumental error. Hopefully, President Trump’s decision to act, even if only on an impending threat, will prove to be the right decision and will spare the United States, Israel and the entire world from facing the kind of horror that France encountered when it waited for an imminent threat rather than confronting an evidently impending one.
Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of a national law firm.
