Abstract: As Israel approaches a full-scale war with Iran, its nuclear weapons and strategy are generally presumed irrelevant to deterring that state’s non-nuclear threats. Nonetheless, critical security calculations here could be unprecedented, and Israeli decision-makers already understand that keeping Iran non-nuclear should remain an overriding goal. In the following article, long-time nuclear strategist Louis René Beres examines specific ways in which Israeli nuclear deterrence of non-nuclear attacks could protect against both an unwinnable conventional war and an eventual nuclear war. Urging greater “seamlessness”[1] in Israel’s nuclear posture, special attention is directed by Professor Beres toward implementing a manifestly fundamental policy shift – from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.”[2] Among other things, such a necessary shift, whether sudden or incremental, would depend on informed Israeli considerations of Iranian rationality.[3] A related problem for Israel would concern risks of an unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. Finally, because all pertinent risks are potentially existential, the only reasonable time for Israel to upgrade policies concerning nuclear deterrence of non-nuclear threats would be the present.
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The Dialectical Nature of Peril from Iran
Though counter-intuitive and unverifiable, Israel’s nuclear doctrine and strategy remain potentially relevant to Iranian non-nuclear threats.[4] Determining precise levels of relevance, however, would be difficult, and depend on such “fuzzy” factors as enemy rationality[5] and the plausibility/destructiveness of non-nuclear harms. More specifically, such anticipated dependence would apply to Iranian first-strike attacks and to retaliatory or counter-retaliatory enemy strikes.
There will be multiple details. To begin, it would be unreasonable to argue that Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture should always parallel prospective enemy destructiveness and/or that non-nuclear enemy threats – whether issued from individual states, alliances of states, terror-group adversaries or state-terror group “hybrids” – must be symmetrically countered.
At first look, a “symmetry hypothesis” would appear to make perfect sense. Nonetheless, strategic truth can be bewilderingly complex and could prove historically dependent or stubbornly recalcitrant. Also, because virtually all Israel-related nuclear scenarios are without any determinable precedent, nothing of authentic scientific value could be extrapolated. Concerning Israeli nuclear decision-makers’ usable “probabilities,” all they would really be working with would be variously convincing iterations of “glorified belief.”[6]
By definition, these are very “dense” analytic matters. Further, in addition to applicable history and law, Israel’s core strategies will need to be informed by appropriate philosophies of science. In this connection, meaningful assessments of specific hypotheses concerning “asymmetrical deterrence” and Israeli national security must be founded upon formal deductive examinations. Among other things, this fixed imperative indicates that strategic assessments devoid of any tangible empirical content could still be predictive. At the same time, through lacking in any historical foundations, these assessments must be supportable by stringent logical standards of internal consistency, thematic interconnectedness and dialectical reasoning.[7]
Iranian Threats of Biological War, Biological Terrorism and/or Large Conventional Attack
How best for Israel to proceed? A good place for working strategists to operationalize their strategic dialectic would be with Iranian threats that are non-nuclear but still unconventional. Most obvious here would be ascertainably credible threats of biological warfare and/or biological terrorism. While non-nuclear by definition, biological warfare attacks could still produce grievously injurious or near-existential event outcomes for Israel.[8]
In principle, at least, Israeli policies of calibrated nuclear reprisal for biological warfare (BW) attacks could exhibit compelling deterrent effectiveness against limited types of adversary. Such policies would be inapplicable ipso facto to threats issuing from terror groups that function without any tangible state-sponsor alignments. In such more-or-less residual cases, Israel – lacking operational targets suitable for nuclear targeting – would need to “fall back” on more usual arsenals of counter-terrorist methods. Such tactical retrogressions would be required even if the particular terror group involved revealed autonomous nuclear threat capabilities. As to threats issuing from terror groups with tangible state support (e.g., Sunni ISIS-K; Sunni Hamas; Shiite Hezbollah; Shiite Houthi), Israel could direct its nuclear deterrent threats directly to Iran,
There is more. Because jihadist terrorists could identify personal death in “holy war” as an expression of religious martyrdom, Israeli planners would have to draw upon continuously challenging psychological investigations.[9] For Israel, prima facie, an absolutely worst-case scenario would link martyrdom thinking with the foreign policies of an enemy state like Iran.
What about Iranian conventional threats that would involve neither nuclear nor biological hazards, but were still prospectively massive enough to produce existential or near-existential harms to Israel? On its face, in such all-too-credible cases, the prospective conventional aggressor in Tehran could still reasonably calculate that Jerusalem would make good on at least some of its decipherable nuclear threats. Here, however, Israel’s nuclear deterrent threat credibility would prove dependent upon certain antecedent doctrinal shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (the so-called “bomb in the basement”) to “nuclear disclosure.”[10]
Why? Any correct answer must hinge on Israel’s operational flexibility. To wit, in the absence of any prior shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity,” Iran might not understand or accept that the State of Israel maintained a sufficiently broad array of graduated nuclear retaliatory responses. In the absence of such an array, Israeli nuclear deterrence could be more-or-less severely diminished.
Additional nuances will arise. As a direct consequence of any presumptively diminished nuclear ambiguity, Jerusalem could signal its Iranian adversary that Israel would wittingly cross the nuclear retaliatory threshold to punish allacts of existential or near-existential aggressions. Using more expressly military parlance, Israel’s recommended shift to certain apt forms of nuclear disclosure would intend to ensure the small country’s[11] success in “escalation dominance.”[12]
Inter alia, the nuclear deterrence advantages for Israel of moving from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would lie in the signal it could “telegraph” to such non-nuclear foes as Iran. This signal would warn Iran that Jerusalem was not limited to launching retaliations that employ massive and/or disproportionate levels of nuclear force. A still-timely Israeli move from nuclear ambiguity to nuclear disclosure – as long as such a doctrinal move were suitably nuanced and purposefully incremental – could improve Israel’s prospects for deterring large-scale conventional attacks with “tailored” nuclear retaliatory threats.[13]
There is more. Israeli nuclear deterrence benefits against non-nuclear threats from Iran could extend to threats of nuclear counter-retaliation. If, for example, Israel should sometime consider initiating a non-nuclear defensive first-strike against a pre-nuclear Iran, a preemptive act that could represent “anticipatory self-defense”[14] under Westphalian international law,[15] the likelihood of suffering any massive Iranian conventional retaliation might be correspondingly diminished. In essence, by following a properly charted path from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure, Jerusalem could expect to upgrade its overall deterrence posture vis-à-vis nuclear and non-nuclear threats.
Escalation Dominance and Inadvertent Nuclear War
In protecting itself from deliberate nuclear attack, Israeli strategists should accept certain vital assumptions concerning Iranian rationality. But even if such assumptions were well-founded, there would still remain variously attendant dangers of unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. These markedly existential dangers could be produced by enemy hacking operations, computer malfunction (an accidental nuclear war) or by decision-making miscalculation (whether by the Iranian enemy, by Israel itself, or by both/all parties.) In the especially portentous third scenario, damaging synergies could arise that would prove difficult or impossible to halt and reverse.
To a largely unforeseeable extent, the geo-strategic search for “escalation dominance” by all sides to a potentially nuclear conflict would enlarge the decipherable risks of inadvertent nuclear war. These risks would include prospects of nuclear war by accident and/or decisional miscalculation. The “solution” here could not be to simply wish-away the common search for “escalation dominance” (ipso facto, any such wish would be contrary to the “logic” of balance-of-power world politics),[16] but to manage all prospectively nuclear crises at their lowest possible levels of destructiveness. Wherever feasible, it would be best to avoid such crises altogether, and to maintain in place reliable “circuit breakers” against strategic hacking and technical malfunction.
There does exist a co-equal need for relevant facts and usable empirical content. This should bring to mind, inter alia, changing ties between Israel and certain Sunni Arab states. How, therefore, Israeli nuclear strategists should continue to inquire, will the Trump-era “Abraham Accords”[17] affect such threats? Have former President Trump’s contrived Accords (they were designed for domestic political interests only) effectively hardened the Middle East Sunni-Shia dualism and actually made Iran a greater threat to Israel?
At present, of course, Israel has no regional nuclear adversaries, but the steady specter of a nuclear Iran could encourage rapid nuclearization among Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Also, following the turnover of Afghanistan to Taliban and other Islamist forces, non-Arab Pakistan could become a more direct adversary of both the United States and Israel.[18] Pakistan is an already nuclear Islamic state with substantial ties to China. And Pakistan, like Israel, is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or NPT.[19]
“Everything is very simple in war,” says Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is very difficult.”
On September 1, 2021, Israel officially moved into the U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) area of responsibility. Taking over from European Command (EUCOM), Jerusalem likely sees its current role as defending U.S. and Israeli interests simultaneously, in part by countering Iran within CENTCOM’s designated sphere of authority. This countervailing power would be simultaneously directed at Iran-backed anti-Israel insurgents (especially Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi) and at steadily expanding Iranian nuclearization.
In regard to the second objective, Israel should consider where there could be an auspicious place for issuing defensive nuclear threats against a still non-nuclear Shiite adversary in Tehran. The “answers” here would depend upon Jerusalem’s prior transformations of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (the “bomb in the basement”) into variously recognizable postures of “selective nuclear disclosure.” Though all such considerations would concern matters that are sui generis or without historical precedent, Israel has no logical alternative to launching appropriately deductive intellectual investigations.
“Palestine,” Preemption and Nuclear Threats to Israel
Salient issues of Israeli nuclear deterrence against non-nuclear threats could be impacted by Palestinian statehood.[20] To wit, though rarely mentioned “in the same breath,” the creation of Palestine could meaningfully affect Israel’s overall inclination to preempt against Iran. Because of Israel’s manifestly small size, such inclination to strike defensively at enemy hard targets could become palpably high. Deprived of its already minimal “strategic depth,” Israel might not be able to hold out as long as was possible when Palestine was merely a pre-state “authority.”
There are complex interconnections. It is plausible that once Palestine came into formal or de jure existence as a state,[21] any shift in Israel’s nuclear strategy from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would reduce Israel’s incentive to preempt against Iran. But this expectation could make strategic sense only if Israel were first made to believe that its nuclear deterrent threat, in a determinable consequence of this doctrinal shift, was now being taken with abundant seriousness by Iran. On its face, any such unique determination would be problematic at best.
Several corollary problems would need to be considered. First, how would Israel’s leadership ever know that taking the bomb out of the “basement” had actually improved its nuclear deterrence posture? To an unpredictable extent, the credibility of Jerusalem’s nuclear threats would be contingent on the variable severity of different Iranian provocations. It might prove believable if Israel were to threaten nuclear reprisals for provocations that could endanger the survival of the state, but it would almost certainly be unbelievable to threaten such reprisals for relatively minor territorial infringements or for any level of terrorist incursions. Whatever analysts might conclude on such questions, because there would exist no discoverable frequency of pertinent past events, any judgments of probability by IDF/MOD planners would represent only subjective belief.
There would be other problems. To function successfully, Israel’s nuclear deterrent, even after conspicuous removal from the country’s “basement,” would have to appear secure from any enemy preemptions. More specifically, Israel would need to be especially wary of “decapitation,” that is, of losing the “head” of its military command and control system by enemy first strikes. Should Israel’s existential enemies (presently still non-nuclear) remain unpersuaded by Jerusalem’s move away from deliberate nuclear ambiguity, they could sometime initiate such strikes as would effectively immobilize Israel’s order of battle.
By definition, any such scenario would be unacceptable to Israel.
Still, there are various contrary arguments. One such argument about the effects of “Palestine” on Israel’s inclinations to preempt suggests that because of Israel’s expanded vulnerabilities, its nuclear deterrent would become more credible. As a result, according to this contrary argument, Jerusalem could better afford not to strike first than when it still controlled and administered certain disputed Palestinian territories. In this particular situation, the principal benefit to Israel of shifting from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would lie in an explicitly-identified “escalation ladder,” a systematic process that identifies a broad array of potential Israeli reprisals. Optimally, all such reprisals would range from manifestly limited conventional responses to carefully measured nuclear strikes.
Presumptions of War Inevitability and Iranian Vulnerabilities
In weighing different arguments concerning the effects of Palestine upon Israeli nuclear deterrence, specific attention should be directed toward Israel’s own presumptions about the inevitability of war and about its long-term expectations regarding Arab and Iranian strategic vulnerabilities. If Israel’s leaders should conclude that the creation of Palestine would make another major war more-or-less inevitable, and that, over time, adversarial vulnerability to Israeli strikes would tangibly diminish, Jerusalem’s inclination to strike first against Iran could be increased. To a largely unpredictable extent, Israel’s operational judgments regarding preemption would be affected by antecedent decisions on national nuclear strategy. Some of these critical decisions would concern “counter value” vs. “counterforce” comparisons.
Should Israel opt for nuclear deterrence based on an “assured destruction” (“counter value”) strategy, Jerusalem would likely choose a relatively small number of weapons that could prove inaccurate. A “counterforce” strategy, on the other hand, would require a larger number of more expressly accurate weapons, ordnance that could destroy even the most hardened enemy targets. To a certain extent, “going for counterforce” could make all Israeli nuclear threats more credible. This conclusion is based largely on the assumption that because the effects of war-fighting nuclear weapons would be more precise and controlled, they would also be more amenable to actual fighting.
There is more. War-fighting postures of Israeli nuclear deterrence could be more apt to encourage an Israeli preemption. And if counterforce targeted nuclear weapons were ever fired, especially in a proliferated regional setting, the resultant escalations could produce extensive counter-value nuclear exchanges. Even if such escalations were averted, the “collateral” effects of counterforce detonations could prove devastating.
In making its nuclear doctrine choices, Israel will have to confront a paradox. Credible nuclear deterrence, essential to Israeli security and survival in a world made more dangerous by the creation of Palestine,[22] would require “usable” nuclear weapons. If, after all, these weapons were patently inappropriate for any reasonable objective, they would not deter. At the same time, the more usable such nuclear weapons became to enhance nuclear deterrence, the more likely it is, at one time or another, they would actually be fired. While this paradox seems to suggest the rationality of Israel deploying only the least-harmful forms of its usable nuclear weapons, the fact that there could be no verifiable agreements with Iran regarding deployable nuclear weapons points to a less predictable conclusion.
Unless Israel were to calculate that more harmful weapons would produce greater hazards for its own population as well as for the target populations, there could exist no tactical benefit to opting for the least injurious nuclear weapons. For the moment, at least, it appears that Israel has rejected any nuclear warfighting strategies of deterrence in favor of a still-implicit counter-value posture. This could change, however, in response to the pace and direction of ongoing Iranian nuclearization. Significant, too, non-Arab but Islamic Pakistan has openly adopted a nuclear warfighting strategy of deterrence vis-à-vis India, and underscored this adoption by deployment of low-yield nuclear missile forces.
The Bottom Line
All things considered, Israel, if confronted by a new state of Palestine, would be especially well-advised to do everything possible to prevent the appearance of any Arab and/or Iranian nuclear powers, including calculably pertinent (i.e., cost-effective) non-nuclear preemptions. Under all imaginable conditions, Israel would require a believable and hence usable nuclear deterrent, one that could be employed against certain non-nuclear threats without igniting “Armageddon” costs for the belligerents. In the worst case scenario, these Israeli nuclear weapons could also serve damage-limiting military purposes against Iranian weapons (both nuclear and non-nuclear) should nuclear deterrence fail.[23]
The creation of a fully sovereign Palestine would have dramatic effects on Israel’s decisions concerning anticipatory self-defense. Israel’s own presumptive nuclear weapons status and strategy would strongly influence this decision. If Jerusalem should determine that Israel’s nuclear weapons could support preemption by deterring Iran from launching any retaliation, this judgment could encourage selective and defensive Israeli first strikes. If, on the other hand, Jerusalem were to calculate that Tehran would be unimpressed by any threats of an Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation, this status would likely not encourage such Israeli attacks.
A key question now surfaces: Could the precise form of Israel’s nuclear strategy make a difference in these unique circumstances? Relying upon its nuclear weapons not to deter enemy first strikes, but to support its own preemptive attacks contra Iran, Israel would have to choose between continued nuclear ambiguity (implicit threats) and nuclear disclosure (explicit threats). That choice should now be perfectly clear.[24] Israel’s only rational survival posture is to remove “The Bomb” from its “basement.”
The Coinciding Questions of Israel’s National “Will”
In view of what is generally believed throughout the Middle East, and, plausibly, all over the world, there is good reason to assume that Israel’s nuclear arsenal does exist and that Israel’s assorted enemies already share this very basic assumption. The most critical questions about Israel’s nuclear deterrent, however, are not about capability, but about will.[25] How likely is it that Israel, after launching non-nuclear preemptive strikes against Iranian hard targets, would respond to enemy reprisals with nuclear counter-retaliation?
To answer this increasingly urgent question, Israel’s decision-makers will have to put themselves in the shoes of various Iranian leaders: Will these enemy leaders calculate they can afford to retaliate against Israel, i.e., that such retaliation would not produce a nuclear counter-retaliation? In asking this question, they will assume a non-nuclear retaliation against Israel. A nuclear retaliation, should it become technically possible for Iran, would assuredly invite a nuclear counter-retaliatory blow.
Depending upon the way in which Iranian decision-makers interpret Israel’s authoritative perceptions, they will either accept or reject the cost-effectiveness of non-nuclear retaliation against Israel. This means it is likely in Israel’s best interests to communicate the following strategic assumption to its existential enemies: Israel could be acting rationally by responding to enemy non-nuclear reprisals to Israeli preemptive attacks with a nuclear counter-retaliation. Prima facie, the plausibility of this key assumption would be enhanced if Iranian reprisals were to involve chemical and/or biological weapons.
All such calculations must assume enemy rationality. In the absence of calculations that compare the costs and benefits of all strategic alternatives, what happens in the Middle East could remain a matter of endless conjecture. The prospect of non-rational leader judgments in this volatile region is always plausible, especially as the influence of Islamist/Jihadist ideology remains determinative among Iranian decisional elites. Still, various dangers of a nuclear war would obtain even among fully rational adversaries, both a deliberate nuclear war and an inadvertent nuclear war.
To the extent that Israel might one day believe itself confronted with non-rational enemies, particularly ones with highly destructive weapons in their arsenals, its incentive to preempt could suddenly become overwhelming. Were such enemies believed to hold nuclear weapons,[26] Israel might then decide, quite rationally, to launch a nuclearpreemption against these enemy weapons. This would appear to be the only calculable circumstance in which a rational Israeli preemptive strike could ever be nuclear. And though it remains impossible to offer any science-based probability predictions about unique events, ordinary dialectical reasoning could still support such conclusions.
Israel’s nuclear deterrent should always remain oriented toward dominating escalation at multiple levels of conventional and unconventional enemy threats. For this planned supremacy to work, Israeli strategic planners should continuously bear in mind that all future operational success will depend upon prior formulations of suitable national doctrine or strategic theory.[27] In the end, the truest forms of Israeli power, whether expressed as anticipatory self-defense or as some other form of deterrence-maximizing effort, will have to reflect “a triumph of mind over mind” rather than mere triumph of “mind over matter.”
Summing Up
The most persuasive forms of military power on planet earth are not guns, battleships or missiles. They are believable promises of “life everlasting” or personal immortality.[28] When one can finally uncover what is most important to the vast majority of human beings, this factor would best be characterized as power over death.[29] Accordingly, though regrettably, literally millions across the world viscerally identify the corrosive dynamics of belligerent nationalism as their preferred path to personal immortality.[30]
Why, in essentially all global conflict (international and intra-national) does each side desperately seek to align “with God”? Always, the loudest nationalistic claim is deceptively reassuring: “Fear not,” citizens and subjects are counseled, “God is on our side.” Considered in the present analytic context, what promise could possibly prove more heartening to Iran or more worrisome to Israel?
Ultimately, Israel’s most compelling forms of strategic influence will derive not from high technology weaponry, but from the incomparable advantages of intellectual power. These always-overriding advantages should be explored and compared according to two very specific but overlapping criteria of assessment: law and strategy. In foreseeable circumstances, these complex expectations would not be congruent or “in synch” with each other, but contradictory or even diametrically opposed. Here, underlying “mind over mind” challenges to Israel would become excruciatingly difficult; nonetheless, successful decision-making outcomes could still be kept in plain sight and be sufficiently credible.
What would be required will be a suitably theoretical appreciation of decisional complexity[31] and a corresponding willingness to approach all overlapping issues from the convergent standpoints of science,[32] intellect and dialectic-based strategic analyses.[33] In principle, at least, cumulative policy failures could produce broadly existential outcomes. Acknowledging this risk, Israel’s strategic policy planners and decision–makers should strive to ensure that their beleaguered country’s nuclear deterrent could convincingly protect against large-scale non-nuclear attacks.[34]
Meeting this obligation would serve Israel’s overriding need to avoid having to protect against Iranian nuclear attacks. In a best-case scenario, during any Israel-Iran war fought before the latter had become nuclear, Israel would launch, during the adversarial search for “escalation dominance,” a conventional strike against Iran. This military strike, directed in part against key nuclear infrastructures, would be “preemptive” in nature and be justifiable under binding international law.[35] In essence, with its core intent to safeguard Israel from having to engage in a nuclear war with Iran, such preemptive action would represent a life-saving action of “anticipatory self-defense.”[36]
There is one final observation: Even during the time that Iran is not yet nuclear, it could arrange determinative military assistance from a nuclear state ally. Ironically, the most likely surrogate could be Kim Jung Un’s vastly unpredictable North Korea, a “rogue state” that has already given advanced ballistic missiles to Russia in support of Vladimir Putin’s genocidal war against Ukraine. Such missiles were recently discovered by Ukrainian defenders. In the future, they could be delivered by Pyongyang to Iran for belligerent use against Israel.
If these missiles were delivered with nuclear warheads, Israel could find itself locked in an unexpected war with North Korea acting as Iran’s nuclear proxy. In such an ignored but still plausible scenario, North Korea would “fill the nuclear gap” on behalf of a non-nuclear Iran. In such an overlooked narrative, Israel would have to re-orient selected parts of its nuclear deterrent to deal with a previously unimagined nuclear adversary. Israel would also need to undertake certain coinciding diplomatic efforts to bring Jerusalem into Great Power Diplomacy with Russia, China, North Korea and the United States.
[1] See by Professor Beres and Ambassador Zalman Shoval, Modern War Institute (West Point): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/
[2] The author’s first comprehensive examination of this issue was: Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (1986). See also his more recent book: Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (2016; 2nd ed., 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy
[3] Expressions of enemy irrationality could take different or overlapping forms. These include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and the internal dissonance generated by any structure of collective decision-making (i.e., assemblies of pertinent individuals who lack identical value systems and/or whose organizational arrangements impact their willing capacity to act as a single or unitary national decision maker).
[4] Military doctrine” is not the same as “military strategy.” Doctrine “sets the stage” for strategy. It identifies various central beliefs that must subsequently animate any actual “order of battle.” Among other things, military doctrine describes underlying general principles on how a particular war ought to be waged. The reciprocal task for military strategy is to adapt as required in order to best support previously-fashioned military doctrine.
[5] In world politics and international law, a state or insurgent-group is determinedly rational to the extent that its leadership always values collective survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences. Prima facie, an insurgent/terrorist force will not always display such a clarifying preference ordering. Pertinent current examples regarding Israel are Sunni Hamas and Shiite Hezbollah.
[6] For this usefully clarifying term, see: Anatol Rapaport, Strategy and Conscience (1964).
[7]. The term “dialectic” originates from the Greek expression for the art of conversation. A common contemporary meaning is method of seeking truth by correct reasoning. From the standpoint of shaping Israel’s strategy vis-à-vis Iran, the following operations could be regarded as essential but nonexclusive components: (1) a method of refutation conducted by examining logical consequences; (2) a method of division or repeated logical analysis of genera into species; (3) logical reasoning using premises that are probable or generally accepted; (4) formal logic; and (5) the logical development of thought through thesis and antithesis to fruitful synthesis of these opposites.
[8] We well know that a naturally occurring biological threat recently confronted all states and peoples (Covid19). Though unrelated to threats of bio terror and bio war per se, there are various ways in which this “pandemic variable” could have become pertinent to the strategic questions here at hand. Strategists would first need to think in terms of a dynamic and continuous feedback loop; to wit, one wherein the investigator systematically considers different ways in which the anarchic structures of world politics impact medical control of the pandemic and, reciprocally, how the pandemic could then impact “Westphalian” or “everyone for himself” (“state of nature”) global structures. In principle, there could be no final or conclusive end to this dynamic cycle. Rather, by definition, each successive impact would be more-or-less transient, thereby setting the stage for the next round of reciprocal changes, and so on.
[9] See, for example, by this author: Louis René Beres, “Martyrdom and International Law,” Jurist, September 10, 2018; and Louis René Beres, “Religious Extremism and International Legal Norms: Perfidy, Preemption and Irrationality,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 39, No.3., 2007-2008, pp. 709-730.
[10] See by this author, Louis René Beres, at INSS (Tel Aviv): file:///C:/Users/lberes/AppData/Local/Temp/adkan17_3ENG%20(3)_Beres.pdf
[11] Israel is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan.
[12] Embedded in attempts to achieve this success would be variously credible threats of “assured destruction.” This term references ability to inflict “unacceptable damage” after absorbing an attacker’s first strike. In the traditional nuclear lexicon, mutual assured destruction (MAD) describes a stand-off condition in which an assured destruction capacity is possessed by both (or all) opposing sides. Counterforce strategies would be those which target only an adversary’s strategic military facilities and supporting infrastructure. Such strategies could be dangerous not only because of the “collateral damage” they might produce, but also because they could heighten the likelihood of first-strike attacks. Collateral damage would refer to harms done to human and non-human resources as a consequence of strategic strikes directed at enemy forces or military facilities. Even such “unintended” damage could quickly involve large numbers of casualties/fatalities.
[13] In effect, Israel’s posture of deliberate nuclear ambiguity was already breached by two of the country’s prime ministers, first, by Shimon Peres, on December 22, 1995, and second, by Ehud Olmert, on December 11, 2006. Then, Peres, speaking to a group of Israeli newspaper and magazine editors, stated publicly: “…give me peace, and we’ll give up the atom. That’s the whole story.” When, later, Olmert offered similarly general but still revelatory remarks, they were described widely as “slips of the tongue.”
[14] This lawful option can be found in customary international law. The most precise origins of anticipatory self-defense in such authoritative law lie in the Caroline, a case that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally justified certain militarily defensive actions. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that did not require an antecedent attack. Here, the jurisprudential framework permitted a military response to a threat so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” See: Beth M. Polebaum, “National Self-defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 187, 190-91 (1984) (noting that the Caroline case had transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a legal doctrine). Still earlier, see: Hugo Grotius, Of the Causes of War, and First of Self-Defense, and Defense of Our Property, reprinted in 2 Classics of International Law, 168-75 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1925) (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations, reprinted in 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1916) (1758). Also, Samuel Pufendorf, The Two Books on the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, 32 (Frank Gardner Moore., tr., 1927 (1682).
[15]The Peace of Westphalia (1648) concluded the Thirty Years War and created the still-existing state system. See: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119. Together, these two treaties comprise the “Peace of Westphalia.” Incontestably, since this Peace put an end to the last of the major religious wars sparked by the Reformation, the “state system” has been ridden with evident strife and recurrent calamity. As a global “state of nature” characterized by interminable “war of all against all” (a bellum omnium contra omnes), the conspicuous legacy of Westphalia has proven disappointing and frightful.
.[16] The idea of a balance of power – an idea of which the nuclear-age balance of terror is merely a modern variant – has never been more than facile metaphor. Oddly, it has never had anything to do with ascertaining equilibrium. As such, balance is always more-or-less a matter of individual subjective perception. Adversarial states can never be sufficiently confident that identifiable strategic circumstances are actually “balanced” in their favor. In consequence, each side must perpetually fear that it will be left behind, an apprehension creating ever-wider patterns of world system insecurity and disequilibrium.
[17]See https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/ Also to be considered as complementary in this connection is the Israel-Sudan Normalization Agreement (October 23, 2020) and Israel-Morocco Normalization Agreement (December 10, 2020).
[18]Seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, instructs that although international relations (the state of nations) is in the state of nature, it is nonetheless more tolerable than the condition of individual men in nature. This is because, with individual human beings, “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” Now, with the advent of nuclear weapons, there is no reason to believe that the state of nations remains more tolerable. Rather, nuclear weapons are bringing the state of nations closer to the true Hobbesian state of nature. See, also, David P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 207. As with Hobbes, Pufendorf argues that the state of nations is not quite as intolerable as the state of nature between individuals. The state of nations, reasons Pufendorf, “lacks those inconveniences which are attendant upon a pure state of nature….” And similarly, Spinoza suggests “that a commonwealth can guard itself against being subjugated by another, as a man in the state of nature cannot do.” See, A.G. Wernham, ed., The Political Works, Tractatus Politicus, iii, II (Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 295.
[19]See: https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/
[20]For much earlier original writings by this author on the prospective impact of a Palestinian state on Israeli nuclear deterrence, see: Louis René Beres, “Security Threats and Effective Remedies: Israel’s Strategic, Tactical and Legal Options,” Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), ACPR Policy Paper No. 102, April 2000, 110 pp; Louis René Beres, “After the `Peace Process:’ Israel, Palestine, and Regional Nuclear War,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 15, No. 2., Winter 1997, pp. 301-335; Louis René Beres, “Limits of Nuclear Deterrence: The Strategic Risks and Dangers to Israel of False Hope,” ARMED FORCES AND SOCIETY, Vol. 23., No. 4., Summer 1997, pp. 539-568; Louis René Beres, “Getting Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: Israel, Intelligence and False Hope,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, Vol. 10., No. 1., Spring 1997, pp. 75-90; Louis René Beres, “On Living in a Bad Neighborhood: The Informed Argument for Israeli Nuclear Weapons,” POLITICAL CROSSROADS, Vol. 5., Nos. 1/2, 1997, pp. 143-157; Louis René Beres, “Facing the Apocalypse: Israel and the `Peace Process,’” BTZEDEK: THE JOURNAL OF RESPONSIBLE JEWISH COMMENTARY (Israel), Vol. 1., No. 3., Fall/Winter 1997, pp. 32-35; Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why Golan Demilitarization Would Not Work,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XXIV, No. 1., Winter 1996, pp. 75-76; Louis René Beres, “Implications of a Palestinian State for Israeli Security and Nuclear War: A Jurisprudential Assessment,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 17., No. 2., 1999, pp. 229-286; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” CROSSROADS: AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIO-POLITICAL JOURNAL, No. 31, 1991, pp. 97-104; Louis René Beres, “The Question of Palestine and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Vol. 62, No. 4., October-December 1991, pp. 451-460; Louis René Beres, “Israel, Palestine and Regional Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF PEACE PROPOSALS, Vol. 22., No. 2., June 1991, pp. 227-234; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State: Implications for Israel’s Security and the Possibility of Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF THE JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR WESTERN DEFENCE (Israel), Vol. 4., Bulletin No, 3., October 1991, pp. 3-10; Louis René Beres, ISRAELI SECURITY AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PSIS Occasional Papers, No. 1/1990, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, 40 pp; and Louis René Beres, “After the Gulf War: Israel, Palestine and the Risk of Nuclear War in the Middle East,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XIX, No. 4., Fall 1991, pp. 48-55.
[21]Contending Palestinian authorities still remain unable to meet variously codified expectations of statehood identified at the 1934 Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. This “Montevideo Convention” is the treaty governing statehood in all applicable international law. Jurisprudentially, Palestine presently remains a “Non-Member Observer State.”
[22] It is important to understand that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that any Palestinian state remain “demilitarized” was not merely unrealistic’ it was also inconsistent with pertinent international law. On this point, see: Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why a Demilitarized Palestinian State Would Not Remain Demilitarized: A View Under International Law,” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, Winter, 1998, pp. 347-363.
[23] These complex and nuanced expectations bring to mind Sun-Tzu’s suggestion (in military matters) to embrace the “unorthodox.” For a recent and specific application to Israel of Sun-Tzu’s ancient wisdom, by this author, see: Louis René Beres, “Lessons for Israel from Ancient Chinese Military Thought: Facing Iranian Nuclearization with Sun-Tzu,” Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School, posted October 24, 2013.
[24] Strategists should be reminded here of a warning speech of Pericles (432 BCE). As recorded by Thucydides: “What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies, is our own mistakes.” See: Thucydides: The Speeches of Pericles, H.G. Edinger, tr., New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Company, 1979, p. 17.
.[25]The modern philosophic origins of “will” are discoverable in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Friedrich Nietzsche drew just as importantly upon Arthur Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic twentieth-century work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas;1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for Die Neue Rundschau of Berlin on the centenary of Goethe’s death. It is reprinted in Ortega’s anthology, The Dehumanization of Art (1948) and is available from Princeton University Press (1968).
[26] From a jurisprudential point of view, any use of nuclear weapons by an insurgent group would represent a serious violation of the laws of war. These laws have been brought to bear upon non-state participants in world politics by Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and by the two protocols to the conventions. Protocol I makes the law concerning international conflicts applicable to conflicts fought for self-determination against alien occupation and against colonialist and racist regimes. A product of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts that ended on June 10, 1977, the protocol (which was justified by the decolonization provisions of the U.N. Charter and by resolutions of the General Assembly) brings irregular forces within the full scope of the law of armed conflict. Protocol II, also addition to the Geneva Conventions, concerns protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts. Hence, this protocol applies to all armed conflicts that are not covered by Protocol I and that take place within the territory of a state between its armed forces and dissident armed forces.
[27] As indicated earlier, “military doctrine” is not the same as “military strategy.” Rather, doctrine “sets the stage” for strategy. It identifies various central beliefs that can subsequently animate any delineated “order of battle.” Among other things, military doctrine describes underlying general principles on how a particular war ought to be waged. The reciprocal task for military strategy is to adapt as required in order to best support a previously-fashioned military doctrine.
[28] In world politics, says philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, any deeply-felt promise of immortality must be of “transcendent importance.” Seehis Religion in the Making, 1927.
[29] “I believe,” says Oswald Spengler in his magisterial The Decline of the West (1918), “is the one great word against metaphysical fear.”
[30] In the nineteenth century, in his posthumously published lecture on Politics (1896), German historian Heinrich von Treitschke observed: “Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.” Earlier, German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel opined, in his Philosophy of Right (1820), that the state represents “the march of God in the world.” The “deification” of Realpolitik, a transformation from mere principle of action to a sacred end in itself, drew its originating strength from the doctrine of sovereignty advanced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Initially conceived as a principle of internal order, this doctrine underwent a specific metamorphosis, whence it became the formal or justifying rationale for international anarchy – that is, for the global “state of nature.” First established by Jean Bodin as a juristic concept in De Republica (1576), sovereignty came to be regarded as a power absolute and above the law. Understood in terms of modern international relations, this doctrine encouraged the notion that states lie above and beyond any form of legal regulation in their interactions with each other.
[31]At the same time, strategists cannot be allowed to forget, that theoretical fruitfulness must be achieved at some more-or-less tangible costs of “dehumanization.” Accordingly, Goethe reminds in Urfaust, the original Faust fragment: “All theory, dear friend, is grey, And the golden tree of life is green.” Translated by Professor Beres from the German: “Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum.”
[32]In the words of Jose Ortega y’Gasset: “Science, by which I mean the entire body of knowledge about things, whether corporeal or spiritual, is as much a work of imagination as it is of observation…. The latter is not possible without the former.” (Man and Crisis, 1958).
[33] This does not mean trying to account for absolutely every pertinent explanatory variable. Clarifications can be found at “Occam’s Razor” or the “principle of parsimony.” This stipulates preference for the simplest explanation still consistent with scientific method. Regarding current concerns for Israel’s nuclear strategy, it suggests, inter alia, that the country’s military planners not seek to identify and examine every seemingly important variable, but rather to “say the most, with the least.” This presents an important and often neglected cautionary, because all too often, policy-makers and planners mistakenly attempt to be too inclusive. This attempt unwittingly distracts them from forging more efficient and “parsimonious” strategic theories.
[34]See: RESOLUTION ON THE DEFINITION OF AGGRESSION, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, reprinted in 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Art. 51. Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans 1153, 1976, Y.B.U.N. 1043
[35]From the standpoint of international law, it is necessary to distinguish preemptive attacks from “preventive” ones. Strictly speaking, preemption represents a military strategy of striking first in expectation that a plausibly foreseeable alternative would be to be struck first itself. A preemptive attack is launched by a state that believes enemy forces are about to attack. A preventive attack, on the other hand, is launched not out of any concern for “imminent” hostilities, but for fear of longer-term deterioration in the prevailing military balance. In a preemptive attack, the length of time by which the enemy’s action is anticipated is “short;” in a preventive strike, the anticipated interval is presumptively “longer.” A current problem for Israel is not only the practical difficulty of distinguishing short from long, but also the potentially irremediable risks of any operational postponements. In essence, by delaying a defensive strike until an Iranian nuclear threat would be more readily verifiable, Israel could be inviting unendurable or existential harms. Also, a beleaguered Israel’s resort to “anticipatory self-defense” could be nuclear or non-nuclear, and be directed at either a nuclear or non-nuclear Iranian adversary.
[36] Here we may recall Samuel Pufendorf’s argument in ON THE DUTY OF MAN AND CITIZEN ACCORDING TO NATURAL LAW: “…where it is quite clear that the other is already planning an attack upon me, even though he has not yet fully revealed his intentions, it will be permitted at once to begin forcible self-defense, when admonished in a friendly spirit, he may put off his hostile temper; or if such admonition be likely to injure our cause. Hence, he is to be regarded as the aggressor, who first conceived the wish to injure, and prepared himself to carry it out. But the excuse of self-defense will be his, who by quickness shall overpower his slower assailant. And for defense, it is not required that one receive the first blow, or merely avoid and parry those aimed at him.” See Samuel Pufendorf, ON THE DUTY OF MAN AND CITIZEN ACCORDING TO NATURAL LAW, Vol. II, tr. by Frank Gardner Moore, New York: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1964, p. 32.
