“The masses have followed the magicians again and again…Socrates and Plato were the first to take up the struggle against them in clear awareness of what was at stake.”-Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952)
Origins of an Unprecedented Threat
When Donald J. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, prospects for a nuclear war increased. Though nothing scientific can be said about the calculable probabilities of such unique prospects, it would be baseless to argue that American strategists ought therefore to minimize or disregard nuclear war scenarios. This warning is compelling in view of (1) Vladimir Putin’s incremental “enhancements” of Russian nuclear doctrine; and (2) Donald Trump’s lawless alliance with Vladimir Putin against non-nuclear Ukraine. Now it will be necessary for (3) capable and courageous US military planners to think through a variety of worst case narratives, and (4) do this using advanced forms of dialectical reasoning.[1]
How should American planners proceed? Operating within a force-multiplying “Trump II” imbroglio, rudimentary questions should be brought immediately to mind. Inter alia, strategic thinkers and scholars will need to inquire:
What particular foreign policy interactions or synergies could plausibly arise under President Trump?
How might these interactions involve US foreign relations, international law and national survival?
For the next four years, an always-underlying danger will be an unqualified American president who conspicuously values personal advantage over national security.[2] At some point, this perilous hierarchy of preferences could be rendered existential by a nuclear crisis contrived by Mr. Trump or by a “naturally occurring” nuclear crisis manipulated by the “magician.” Any US president maintains extraordinary powers to order nuclear weapons use, a power that could sometime spawn extraordinary harms.[3] In a once-unimaginable narrative, this dissembling American president could side actively with the Russian dictator-aggressor against the NATO-supported Ukrainian victim.
It’s a scenario that could never have been taken seriously before President Donald Trump’s return to power. Credo quia absurdum, asserted ancient philosopher Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd.”
There is pertinent conceptual background to consider. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and United States embraced certain asymmetrical nuclear doctrines. For Moscow, the critical escalatory threshold was not one distinguishing conventional weapons from nuclear weapons, but one separating tactical nuclear weapons from strategic nuclear weapons. For Washington, the relevant firebreak was one separating conventional from nuclear. From the standpoint of Washington, any crossing of the nuclear threshold by Moscow would represent the beginnings of a no-holds-barred or unstoppable nuclear conflict.
Today, with a growing prospect of Russia facing off against NATO rather than the United States, neither side could have any clear sense of verifiable firebreaks and resultant ambiguities could quickly undermine “ordinary” nuclear deterrence.
We are dealing here with military matters that are unprecedented or sui generis. With Donald Trump back at the helm, the United States faces multiple nuclear threats in bewildering iterations and venues. In response, America’s law-based concerns should focus on Russia-Ukraine relations and on North Korea, India, Pakistan and China. Though not yet nuclear, Iran poses an ever-growing hazard to Israel; in extremis, it could prod Jerusalem’s escalation to limited nuclear strikes.[4] Any such dense scenario would signify an “asymmetrical nuclear war,” and could involve the United States in substantially unpredictable ways.
First and foremost, these are intellectual problems. Among other things, a first “order of business” should be to determine an expected adversary’s ordering of preferences. By definition, only those adversaries who would value national survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences would be acting rationally. It will be vitally important for a US president to understand (in advance of any specific crisis) where each potential enemy stands on the core question of decisional rationality.
Variations of Rationality
There will be significant nuances. For senior scholars and policy-makers, subsidiary questions would need to be considered. To wit, what are the operational meanings of relevant terminologies and vocabularies?
In the formal study of international relations, international law and military strategy, decisional irrationality never means the same thing as madness. Still, residual warnings about madness could warrant serious US policy consideration. Both “ordinary” irrationality and full-scale madness could exert more-or-less comparable effects on an examined country’s national security decision-making processes.
How shall these effects be predicted and deciphered?
Sometime, for the United States, understanding and anticipating such effects could approach existential importance. In such high-urgency considerations, words would matter. In normal strategic parlance, we ought to recall, “irrationality” identifies a decisional foundation wherein national self-preservation is not summa, i.e., where it isnot the highest or ultimate preference.
There is more. A prospectively irrational decision-maker in Moscow, Pyongyang or elsewhere need not be determinably “mad” to become a troubling variable for US policy analysis. Such an adversary would need “only” to be more concerned about certain discernible preferences or values than about its own self-preservation. One example would be preferences that are expressed for outcomes other than national survival. Normally, any such preferences would be unexpected and counter-intuitive, but still not unprecedented or inconceivable. Moreover, identifying the specific criteria or correlates of such survival imperatives could prove irremediably subjective or simply incalculable.
What happens then?
Whether an examined American adversary were deemed irrational or “mad,” US military planners would have to input a generally similar decisional calculus. A credible analytic premise could be that the particular adversary “in play” might not be deterred from launching a military attack by Trump threats of retaliatory destruction even where such threats would be believable. Any such failure of US military deterrence could include both conventional and nuclear retaliatory threats, and/or concern Trump threats of “pretended irrationality.” During his first presidential campaign in 2016, the current American president mused openly about using such deceptions.
There is more, In fashioning America’s nuclear strategy vis-à-vis nuclear and not-yet-nuclear adversaries,[5] US military planners should include a mechanism to determine whether the designated adversary will more likely be rationalor irrational. Operationally, this means ascertaining whether this identifiable foe will value its collective survival (whether as a sovereign state or organized terror group) more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences. This early judgment would need to be based upon defensibly sound analytic principles.
In principle, at least, such a judgment ought never be affected in any way by what particular analysts might “want to believe.”[6] Any failure to recognize and understand this very basic precept of logic and scientific method would represent ipso facto a lethal retreat from Reason.[7]
A corollary US obligation, depending in large part on this prior judgment of enemy rationality, will expect strategic planners to assess whether a properly nuanced posture of “pretended irrationality” could enhance America’s nuclear deterrence posture. On multiple occasions, it should be recalled here, Donald Trump has continued to praise the underlying premises of such an eccentric strategic posture. Is this presidential praise intellectually warranted and/or justified? To what extent could it quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
The answer? It depends. US enemies include both state and sub-state foes, whether considered singly or in assorted forms of collaboration. Additionally, such forms could be “hybridized” in different ways between state and sub-state adversaries.[8] In dealing with Washington, each recognizable class of enemies could sometime choose to feign irrationality.
Is the current American president prepared to understand all this?
In principle, “pretended irrationality” could represent a clever strategy for Donald Trump to “get a jump” on a designated adversary in any expected or ongoing competition for “escalation dominance.”[9] Any such calculated pretense could also fail calamitously. It follows that cautionary US strategic behavior based on serious conceptualthinking should always be the presidential “order of the day.”[10]
There is something else. Reciprocally, on occasion, designated American enemies could “decide,” consciously or unwittingly, to be irrational.[11] In such circumstances, it would become incumbent on American strategic planners to capably assess which basic form of irrationality – pretended or authentic – is actually in evidence. These planners would then need to respond with a dialectically orchestrated and optimally counterpoised set of all possible reactions. In purely intellectual terms, this need would represent an uncommonly “tall order.”
For strategic thinkers, the term “dialectically” (drawn originally from ancient Greek thought, especially Plato’s dialogues) should be used with precisely assigned meanings. This is specified in order to signify a continuous or ongoing question-and-answer format of strategic reasoning. Also well-known is the special role of dialectic in legalreasoning. Accordingly, US President Trump’s decision to stand by the Russian aggressor against the Ukrainian victim is an unpardonable violation of international law.[12]
By definition, any instance of enemy irrationality would value certain specific preferences (e.g., presumed religious obligations or personal and/or regime safety) more highly than collective survival. For America, the grievously threatening prospect of facing a genuinely irrational nuclear adversary is prospectively most worrisome with regard to North Korea and potentially Iran.[13] Apropos of all such more-or-less credible apprehensions, it is unlikely they could ever be reduced by means of formal treaties or other law-based agreements.[14] Prima facie, they could never be reduced by any Trump-inspired “magic.”
International Law, Nuclear Crisis-Management and “Chaos”
In part, it’s an old story. It would be worth remembering seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ classic warning in Leviathan: “Covenants, without the sword, are but words….”[15] And if this traditional problem of global anarchy were not daunting enough for Trump II-era American strategists, it is further complicated by the prospect of incremental transformations into chaos..
Chaos is not the same as anarchy. Chaos is “more than” anarchy. We have all lived with anarchy or absence of a central government authority in world law since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,[16] but we have yet to descend into any worldwide chaos.[17]
We are concerned here with linkages between the extant Trump presidency (Trump II) and an international nuclear crisis. How should the United States proceed to strategize and bargain in such unique circumstances, ones that include a more expressly belligerent Russian nuclear doctrine and growing European insecurity regarding Trump’s reliability as a key ally. At some point, ex hypothesi, the best security option could appear to be some sort of preemption, but certain not against Russia. More precisely, this could signify a defensive non-nuclear first-strike against situationally appropriate North Korean or Iranian hard targets.[18] There are no circumstances in which an American preemption against Russian nuclear targets (ordnance and/or command/control centers) could ever be rational, unless a Russian nuclear first strike was determinedly imminent or ascertainably underway).
It is already too late for launching an operationally cost-effective preemption against North Korea. Even if such a strike could be authoritatively defended in law as “anticipatory self-defense,”[19] any such action would come at a much too-substantial human cost. At the same time, seeking North Korea denuclearization by normal diplomatic means would prove futile under absolutely all conceivable circumstances.
In regard to any current and potentially-protracted US-Iran enmity, the American side should consider how its nuclear weapons could be leveraged gainfully against that adversary in any imaginable nuclear war scenario. A rational answer here could never include the operational use of such weapons. The only pertinent questions for US planners, therefore, should concern the calculable extent to which an asymmetrical US threat of nuclear escalation could sometime be made credible.[20]
By applying all available standards of ordinary reason and logic (there are, after all, no historical points of reference in such unprecedented situations), Washington could most suitably determine that nuclear threats against Iran would serve American security interests only when Iranian military capacities (though non-nuclear) were still overwhelming. Any such daunting scenario, though difficult to imagine ex nihilo, might nonetheless be entirely conceivable. This “strategic dialectic” would hold most convincingly if Tehran were willing to escalate (1) to massive direct conventional attacks upon American territories or populations; and/or (2) to the significant use of biological warfare capabilities.
All this should now imply a primary obligation for the United States (3) to focus continuously on incremental enhancements to its implicit nuclear deterrence posture; and (4) to develop a wide and nuanced range of nuclear retaliatory options. The specific rationale of (4) (above), is the counter-intuitive understanding that credibility of nuclear threats could vary inversely with perceived levels of destructiveness. In certain circumstances, this means that successful nuclear deterrence of Iran could depend upon nuclear weapons deemed sufficiently low-yield or short-range.
Irony can never diminish truth value or legal meaning. Sometimes, in fashioning a national nuclear deterrence posture, counter-intuitive strategic insight is correctly “on the mark,” and therefore indispensable. This is likely one of these analytically and jurisprudentially “multi-layered” times.[21]
Nuclear War as Terminal Disease
During a nuclear crisis, whatever its origins, Washington must continuously bear in mind that any US nuclear posture should remain focused on prevention, not punishment. In any and all identifiable circumstances, using a portion of its available nuclear forces for vengeance rather than deterrence would miss the incontestable point; that is, to fully-optimize US national security, irrespective of any contrary domestic political pressures. Any American nuclear weapons use that was based on narrowly corrosive notions of revenge, even if only as a markedly residual or default option, would be irrational. It would also be illegal under international law.
These are complex intellectual and legal issues, not simply political ones. America’s many-sided nuclear deterrent must be backed up by recognizably robust systems of active defense (BMD), especially if there should ever arise any determinable reasons to fear an irrationalnuclear adversary. Although it is already well-known that no system of active defense can be entirely “leak-proof,” there is good reason to suppose that certain BMD deployments could help safeguard both US civilian populations (soft targets) and American nuclear retaliatory forces (hard targets).[22] This means that technologically advanced anti-missile systems should remain indefinitely as a modernizing component of this country’s nuclear deterrence posture. Among other elements of permissible self-defense, this suggests continuously-expanding US emphases on laser-based weapon systems.
While it may at first sound annoyingly obvious, it should still be borne in mind that in the increasingly complicated nuclear age, seemingly defensive strategies could be viewed by warily uneasy adversaries as offensive. This is because the secure foundation of any system of nuclear deterrence should be some reasonable presumption of mutual vulnerability.“Everything is very simple in war,” says Clausewitz, in On War, “but the simplest thing is still difficult.”
Soon, to progress in its most vital national security obligations, American military planners should more expressly identify the prioritized goals of this country’s nuclear deterrence posture. Before any rationaladversary could be suitably deterred by an American nuclear deterrent, that enemy would first need to believe that Washington had capably maintained the capacity to launch appropriate nuclear reprisals for relevant forms of aggression (nuclear and perhaps biological/non-nuclear),[23] and the will[24] to undertake such consequential firings. About the first belief criterion, it would almost certainly lie beyond any juristic standard of “reasonable doubt.”
The second expectation, however, could prove problematic and more-or-less “fatally” undermine US nuclear deterrence. In assorted ways that are not yet clearly understood, the necessary national will could sometime be impacted by pandemic-related pandemic-created factors.[25] Significantly, there would be certain hard-to-foresee interactions or synergies taking place between US policy decisions and those of worrisome American adversaries.
In those more perplexing matters involving an expectedly irrationalnuclear enemy,[26] successful US deterrence would need to be based on credible threats to enemy values other than national survival. Here, in the future, the prospect of enemy irrationality could be related to pandemic factors. In extreme cases, disease could also play a tangible and determinative role in producing an enemy’s decisional irrationality.
More typically, America will also need to demonstrate the continuously substantial invulnerability of its nuclear retaliatory forces to enemy first-strike aggressions. It will remain in America’s long-term survival interests to emphasize its variegated submarine-basing nuclear options.[27] Otherwise, as is plainly reasonable to contemplate, America’s land-based strategic nuclear forces could potentially present to a strongly-determined existential enemy (e.g., North Korea) as being “too-vulnerable.”
For the moment, this is not a palpably serious concern, though Washington will want to stay focused on any still-planned deployment of submarines by its Israeli ally in the Middle East. The general point of this secondary focus would be to strengthen Israeli nuclear deterrence, which – in one way or another – would be to the overall strategic benefit of the United States.[28] Looking ahead to “biological variables,” Israel’s nuclear deterrence could be affected by assorted pandemic-related factors, including some with reciprocal consequences for the United States.
Enhanced Nuclear Deterrence
More and more, America will have to rely on a broadly multi-faceted doctrine of nuclear deterrence.[29] In turn, like its already-nuclear Israeli ally,[30] specific elements of this “simple but difficult” doctrine could sometime need to be rendered less “ambiguous.” This complex and finely nuanced modification will require an even more determined focus on prospectively rational and irrational enemies, including national and sub-national foes.
To deal most successfully with its presumptively irrational or non-rational enemies, the United States will need a continuously-updating strategic “playbook.” Again, it could become necessary for Washington to consider, at least on occasion, policies of feigned irrationality. In such analytically-challenging cases, it would be important for the American president not to react to provocations in any ad hoc or “seat-of-the-pants” fashion, but to derive or extrapolate specific policy reactions from a pre-fashionedand fully-comprehensive strategic nuclear doctrine. Without such thoughtful doctrine as guide, “pretended irrationality” could become a double-edged sword, bringing more rather than less security harms to the United States.[31]
There is one more critical observation. It is improbable, but not inconceivable, that certain of America’s principal enemies would be neither rational nor irrational, but “mad.”While irrational decision-makers could already pose special problems for US nuclear deterrence – because these decision-makers would not value collective survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences – they might still be rendered susceptible to alternate forms of deterrence.
Resembling rational decision-makers, they could still maintain a fixed, determinable and “transitive” hierarchy of preferences. This means, at least in principle, that “merely” irrational enemies could still sometimes be successfully deterred. Such an observation is well worth further analytic study, especially as US planners could need to confront potentially fearsome “simultaneities.” On the other hand, mad or “crazy” adversaries would have no such calculable hierarchy of preferences and might not be subject to any strategy of American nuclear deterrence. Although it would likely be far worse for the United States to have to face a mad nuclear enemy than a “merely” irrational one, Washington would have no foreseeable choice in this matter. This country will need to maintain, perhaps indefinitely, a “three track” system of nuclear deterrence and defense, one track for each of its still-identifiable adversaries that are presumptively (1) rational (2) irrational or (3) mad.
This will not be task for the narrowly political or intellectually adverse US decision-maker. For the most notably unpredictable third track, special plans will be needed for undertaking certain potentially indispensable preemptions, and, simultaneously, for overlapping efforts atballistic missile defense. There could be no assurances that any one “track” would always present exclusively of the others. This means, portentously, that American decision-makers could have to face deeply intersecting or interpenetrating tracks and that these complicated simultaneities could sometime be synergistic.[32]
One final observation warrants note. Even if America’s military planners could reassuringly assume that enemy leaderships were fully rational, this would say nothing about the accuracy of the information used by these foes in making pertinent calculations. Always, it ought never to be forgotten, rationality refers only to the intention of maximizing designated preference or values. It says nothing about whether or not the information used is actually correct.
There is more. In this extraordinary time of a US policy shift from being Russia’s existential adversary to being Russia’s fawning surrogate, compensatory actions by NATO nuclear powers France and the UK could trigger bizarre nuclear crises. This curious fact should be sobering to America’s still-patriotic and reliable national security decision-makers. For these officials, this will represent a moment to disavow any inclinations to hubris or excessive pride, and accept instead an abundance of historically-unique caution.
Further Complexities: Facing Perils from Rational Adversaries
America is not automatically made safer by having rational adversaries. Among other things, even rational enemy leaderships could commit serious errors in calculation that lead them toward nuclear confrontation or nuclear/biological war. There are also related command and control issues that could impel a perfectly rational adversary or combination of rational adversaries (both state and sub-state) to embark on too-risky nuclear behaviors. It follows that even the most pleasingly “optimistic” assessments of enemy decision-making could never reliably preclude catastrophic outcomes.[33]
For the United States, understanding that no scientifically accurate judgments of probability can be made about unique events (by definition, any nuclear exchange would be sui generis, a unique event), the lesson for America’s president should favor determined decisional prudence and derivative postures of personal humility. Of special interest here is the always-erroneous presumption that having greater nuclear military power than a particular adversary automatically assures future bargaining or diplomatic success. When Donald Trump said during his first administration (“Trump I”) that though he and Kim Jung Un both have a “nuclear button,” his button “is bigger,” the American president misunderstood and overestimated US advantages of any such presumptive asymmetry.
Why? Because the tangible amount of deliverable nuclear firepower required for deterrence is necessarily much less than what could be required for “victory.”[34] This is a time for more nuanced and purposeful wisdom in Washington, not for more clichéd presidential thinking or more rancorous fusillades of empty witticisms.
For Washington, especially for this nation’s debilitated and debilitating president operating in the unpracticed nuclear age, ancient Greek tragedy warnings about excessive leadership pride are not only still relevant. They are more important and time-urgent than ever before. In mid-March 2025, Donald Trump said he was making plans to “reclaim the Panama Canal.” Though his visceral backers seem unaware or unconcerned, no such plans could be defensible in law. To begin, they point to multiple violations of US treaty commitments, and treaties represent “the supreme law of the land” under Article VI (“the “Supremacy Clause”) of the US Constitution.[35]
For the United States, hubris, left unchecked in the extant White House, could bring forth once-unimaginable spasms of “retribution.”[36] The classical Greek tragedians were not yet called upon to reason about nuclear decision-making. None of this culminating policy suggestion is meant to build upon America’s most reasonable fears or apprehensions, but only to remind that competent national security planning should remain a bewilderingly complex struggle of “mind over mind.”[37]
This sort of struggle remains fundamentally intellectual,[38] a challenge requiring meticulous analytic preparations[39] rather than just a self-congratulatory “attitude.”[40] Above all, competent national security planning ought never to become just another superficially calculable contest of “mind over matter;”[41] that is, never merely a reassuring inventory of comparative weaponization or a presumptively superior “order of battle.” Unless this rudimentary point is more completely understood by senior US strategic policymakers and by the president of the United States – and until these same policymakers can begin to see the overriding wisdom of expanded global cooperation[42] and human “oneness”[43] – America can never render itself secure from nuclear or biological war.[44]
A US President who can Attend to Reasoning
It’s time for culminating thoughts. Nuclear threats are “force multiplying” and pose a lethal hazard for the United States. To make this perilous simultaneity more manageable and tolerable will require a president with suitably intellectual moorings and inclinations.[45] Failing to meet this requirement could compel a once-promising nation to accept risks of terrible and explosive collapse.[46] Recalling twentieth-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers, this failure would represent the irremediable triumph of “magicians”[47] in the United States.[48] Ipso facto, it would be a murderous triumph.
When Donald J. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the United States immediately found itself amid a generalized crisis of decisional incoherence. Left to his own demonstrably anti-historical and anti-intellectual inclinations, US President Donald J. Trump could quickly bring this manipulated nation to unprecedented periods of harm and lamentation. Moreover, the urgency of such significant danger would depend on the extent to which Karl Jaspers’ “masses” would once again align themselves with a rambling and uncomprehending “magician.” Currently, this urgency is most apparent in Trump’s unambiguous support for Russian aggression against Ukraine. Though still only discussed sotto voce, in whispers, it is conceivable that a sitting US president could now function tangibly as a Russian asset.
Credo quia absurdum, reminds the ancient philosopher Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd.”
An antecedent question arises: Why do Americans remain subject to such an unhidden presidential deception? Visibly, the US electorate lives on the porous boundaries of what is needed for human understanding and planetary survival. French thinkers of the eighteenth-century Age of Reason liked to speak of a siecle des lumieres, a “century of light,” but today’s American politics are expansively befouled by “magical” celebrations of anti-scientific dogma.[49] In these United States, let us finally be candid, any “life of the mind” has become a vanishing text.[50]
What should be concluded? A dignified American life is being thwarted by the rancorous agitations of “Trump II.” More precisely, even measurably, this country has been accelerating its unheroic presidential retreat from justice (e.g., Trump’s un-American support for Russian crimes of war, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity) and toward a nuclear war. From such a “final epidemic,” one that could emerge in the Middle East, Asia or Ukraine, there would be neither escape nor sanctuary. Accordingly, it would be far better for Americans to conclusively reject “magic” as their inspiration for political action. The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher.
[1] Dialectical thinking originated in Fifth Century BCE Athens, as Zeno, author of the Paradoxes, had been acknowledged by Aristotle as its inventor. Further, in the middle dialogues of Plato, dialectic emerges as the supreme form of philosophic/analytic method. The dialectician, says Plato, is the special one who knows how to ask and then answer vital questions. From the standpoint of a necessary refinement in US strategic planning, this knowledge should never be taken for granted.
[2] Recall here the speech of Creon, King of Thebes, in Sophocles’ Antigone: “I hold despicable, and always have, anyone who puts his own popularity before his country.”
[3]See by this writer, Professor Louis René Beres, at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (August 2016): https://thebulletin.org/2016/08/what-if-you-dont-trust-the-judgment-of-the-president-whose-finger-is-over-the-nuclear-button/
[4] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at BESA (Israel): https://besacenter.org/limited-nuclear-war-and-israels-national-strategy/
[5] For a timely analysis of deterring not-yet-nuclear adversaries in the case of Israel, see article co-authored by Professor Louis René Beres and (former Israeli Ambassador) Zalman Shoval at the Modern War Institute, West Point (Pentagon): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/
[6] Recall here the classic statement of Julius Caesar: “Men as a rule believe what they want to believe.” See: Caesar’s Gallic War, Book III, Chapter 18.
[7] See, on these enduring issues, Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952).
[8] This “hybrid” concept could also be applied to various pertinent ad hoc bilateral state collaborations against US strategic interests. For example, during June 2019, Russia and China collaborated to block an American initiative aimed at halting fuel deliveries to North Korea. The US-led cap on North Korea’s fuel imports had been intended to sanction any continuing North Korean nuclearization. Prima facie, of course, this narrowly visceral plan was entirely futile.
[9] On “escalation dominance,” see article by Professor Louis René Beres at The War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making-and-nuclear-war-an-urgent-american-problem/
[10]The seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal remarks prophetically in Pensées: “All our dignity consists in thought…It is upon this that we must depend…Let us labor then to think well: this is the foundation of morality.” Similar reasoning characterizes the writings of Baruch Spinoza, Pascal’s 17th-century contemporary. In Book II of his Ethics Spinoza considers the human mind, or the intellectual attributes, and – drawing further upon René Descartes – strives to define an essential theory of learning and knowledge.
[11] Sigmund Freud sought to “excavate” deeper meanings concerning irrational human behavior. He was a modern-day philosophe, a proud child of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, one who discovered profound analytic and therapeutic advantages in exploring arcane literary paths to psychological knowledge. Freud maintained an extensive personal collection of antiquities which suggested certain penetrating psychological insights to him. Some of his pertinent collection was placed directly on his work desk; reportedly, he would often touch and turn the artifacts while deeply engaged in variously challenging thoughts.
[12] This decision concerns the crime of genocide as well as the crime of aggression. Neither international law nor US law specifically advises particular penalties or sanctions for states that choose not to prevent or punish genocide committed by others. Nonetheless, all states, most notably “major powers” belonging to the UN Security Council, are bound, inter alia, by the peremptory obligation (defined at Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties) known as pacta sunt servanda, to act in continuous “good faith.” In turn, this pacta sunt servanda obligation is derived from an even more basic norm of world law. Commonly known as “mutual assistance,” this civilizing norm was most famously identified within the classical interstices of international jurisprudence, most notably by the eighteenth-century legal scholar, Emmerich de Vattel in The Law of Nations (1758) and by William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765).
[13] See, also by this author, Louis René Beres, at Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School): https://harvardnsj.org/2013/10/lessons-for-israel-from-ancient-chinese-military-thought-facing-iranian-nuclearization-with-sun-tzu/
[14] See, for example, by this author, at Yale: https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/nuclear-treaty-abrogation-imperils-global-security
[15] Regarding “covenants,” US decision-makers should nonetheless be continually attentive to relevant considerations of international law as well as strategy. More particularly, under authoritative law, states must judge every use of force twice: once with regard to the underlying right to wage war (jus ad bellum) and once with regard to the means used in conducting an actual war (jus in bello). Following the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 and the United Nations Charter (1945), there remains no defensible legal right to waging an aggressive war. However, the long-standing customary right of post-attack self-defense does remain codified at Article 51 of the UN Charter. Similarly, subject to conformance, inter alia, with jus in bello criteria, certain instances of humanitarian intervention and collective security operations may also be consistent with jus ad bellum standards. The law of war, the rules of jus in bello, comprise: (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at The Hagueand Geneva Conventions, these rules attempt to bring discrimination, proportionality and military necessity into all belligerent calculations.
[16]International law remains a “vigilante” or “Westphalian” 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.
[17] Though composed in the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan may still offer us a prophetic vision of this prospective condition in modern world politics. During chaos, which is a “time of War,” says the English philosopher in Chapter XIII (“Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery.”): “… every man is Enemy to every man… and where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Still, at the actual time of writing Leviathan, Hobbes believed that the condition of “nature” in world politics was less chaotic than that same condition extant among individual human beings. This was because of what he had called the “dreadful equality” of individual men in nature concerning the ability to kill others. This once-relevant differentiation has effectively disappeared with the continuing manufacture and spread of nuclear weapons, a spread soon apt to be exacerbated by an already-nuclear North Korea, by a not-yet-nuclear Iran and by the largely unpredictable effects of an ongoing disease pandemic.
[18]The precise legal origins of such a strike as anticipatory self-defense 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).
[19] For a pertinent Israeli example, by this author, see: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2017-09-06/10-years-later-israels-operation-orchard-offers-lessons-on-north-korea
[20]In regard to such questions, US strategic thinkers must inquire whether accepting a visible posture of limited nuclear war would merely exacerbate enemy nuclear intentions or whether it could enhance this country’s overall nuclear deterrence. Such questions have been raised by this author for many years, but usually in more explicit reference to broadly theoretical or generic nuclear threats. See, for example, Louis René Beres, The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis (1972); Louis René Beres, Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (1979; second edition, 1987); Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (1984); Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (1986); and Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (2016).
[21]Related legal issues concern the differential permissibility of reprisals. In law, the core problem of reprisal as rationale for the use of force by states is identified and explained in the U.N. Declaration of Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States (1970) (https://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/formidable/18/1970-Declaration-on-Principles-of-International-Law-Concerning-Friendly-Relations.pdf). Additionally, a possible prohibition of reprisals is deducible from the broad regulation of force expressed in the UN Charter at Article 2(4); the obligation to settle disputes peacefully at Article 2(3); and the general limiting of permissible force (codified and customary) by states to necessary self-defense.
[22] On the prospective shortcomings of Israeli BMD systems, from which certain authoritative extrapolations could be made about US systems, see: Louis René Beres and (Major-General/IDF/ret.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,” Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Louis René Beres and M-G Isaac Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,” Washington Times, June 10, 2007; and Professor Louis René Beres and M-G Isaac Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009.
[23]For the crime of aggression under international law, see: Resolution on the Definition of Aggression, adopted by the UN General Assembly, Dec. 14, 1974. U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 UN GAOR, Supp (No. 31), 142, UN Doc A/9631 (1975) reprinted in 13 I.L.M., 710 (1974).
[24] The modern philosophy origins of “will” lie in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew freely upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Nietzsche drew just as freely and perhaps more importantly upon 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 occasion of 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).
[25] A prospectively positive impact, however, could center on improved opportunities for world-wide cooperation. See, on this hopeful point, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://www.21global.ucsb.edu/global-e/march-2020/virulent-pathogens-and-global-solidarity-unseen-benefits-covid-19
[26] See, on deterring a prospectively irrational nuclear Iran, Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely deter a Nuclear Iran? The Atlantic, August 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Israel; and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. Though dealing with Israeli rather than American nuclear deterrence, these articles authoritatively clarify the common conceptual elements. General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[27] On the Israeli sea-basing issue, see Louis René Beres and Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney, “Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: A Larger Role for Submarine-Basing,” The Jerusalem Post, August 17, 2014; and Professor Louis René Beres and Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney, “A Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent for Israel,” Washington Times, September 5, 2014. Admiral Edney was NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic (SACLANT).
[28] See, in this connection, by Professor Louis René Beres, with a postscript by General (USA/ret.) Barry R. McCaffrey, Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and America’s National Security; https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf
[29] On the primary importance of doctrine, by this author, see Louis René Beres, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/01/louis-beres-seeking-plausible-strategic-goals-iran/ See also, concerning US ally Israel: https://strategicassessment.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/antq/fe-676949421.pdf
[30] See, by this author (who was Chair of Project Daniel for Israeli PM Ariel Sharon): http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.htm See also: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-nuclear-ambiguity/ and https://www.idc.ac.il/he/research/ips/Documents/2013/%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA/LouisReneBeres.pdf
[31] This brings to mind the closing query of Agamemnon in The Oresteia by Aeschylus: “Where will it end? When will it all be lulled back into sleep, and cease, the bloody hatreds, the destruction”?
[32] See, for example, by this author, at Harvard National Security Journal: (Harvard Law School): https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/
[33] In this connection, expressions of decisional error (including mistakes by the United States) could take different and overlapping forms. These forms 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 internal dissonance generated by any authoritative structure of collective decision-making (e.g., the US National Security Council).
[34] See, by this author, at Oxford University Press: https://blog.oup.com/2011/10/war-winning/
[35]Treaties are also the principal source of authoritative international law, per Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.
[36]For much earlier similar warnings, by this author, see his October 1981 article at World Politics (Princeton): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2010149?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
[37] Clausewitzian friction refers to the unpredictable effects of errors in knowledge and information concerning strategic uncertainties; on presidential under-estimations or over-estimations of US relative power position; and on the unalterably vast and largely irremediable differences between theories of deterrence and enemy intent “as it actually is.” See: Carl von Clausewitz, “Uber das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst,” Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, 1 (1832); cited in Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, McNair Paper No. 52, October, 1996, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Washington, D.C. p. 9.
[38] This also brings to mind an apt warning by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, in The New Spirit and the Poets (1917): “It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” Today, when the United States is under the flagrantly anti-intellectual leadership of Donald J. Trump, the poet’s warning should have a clear and compelling resonance.
[39] Or “thorough study,” in the language of Sun-Tzu.
[40] The meaningless bifurcation of “attitude” and “preparation” was expressly invoked by Donald Trump before going off to his first summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. In that curious distinction, the US President openly favored the former.
[41] This vital reminder is also drawn from the strategic calculations of ancient Greece. See, for example, F.E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (University of California, 1962).
international law, which is an integral part of the legal system of all states in world politics, already assumes a reciprocally common general obligation to supply benefits to one another, and to avoid war at all costs. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity is known formally as a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one that is not even subject to question. It can be found already in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625) and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).
[42]On this indispensable wisdom, international law, which is an integral part of the legal system of all states in world politics, assumes a reciprocally general obligation to supply benefits to one another and to avoid war at all costs. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity, which must apply especially to avoidance of a nuclear war, is a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one not subject to any question. It can be found, inter alia, at Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis; Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).
[43] We may learn from ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “”You are a citizen of the universe.” A broader idea of such “oneness” followed the death of Alexander in 322 BCE; with it came a coinciding doctrine of “universality.” By the Middle Ages, this political and social doctrine had fused with the notion of a Respublica Christiana, a worldwide Christian commonwealth, and Thomas, John of Salisbury and Dante were looking at Europe as a single and unified Christian community. Below the level of God and his heavenly host, all the realm of humanity was to be considered as one. This is because all the world had been created for the same single and incontestable purpose; that is, to provide background for the necessary drama of human salvation. Only in its relationship to the universe itself was the world correctly considered as a part rather than a whole. Said Dante in De Monarchia: “The whole human race is a whole with reference to certain parts, and, with reference to another whole, it is a part. For it is a whole with reference to particular kingdoms and nations, as we have shown; and it is a part with reference to the whole universe, which is evident without argument.” Today, of course, the idea of human oneness can be justified and explained in more secular terms of analytic understanding.
[44] In this connection, says Thomas Hobbes in Chapter XXI of Leviathan, “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, then the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.”
[45]Inter alia, this means a leadership willing to reject “marching orders” from America’s “mass man.” This “mass-man,” as we were earlier warned by Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y’ Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses (1930) “has no attention to spare for reasoning; he learns only in his own flesh.”
[46]Sigmund Freud was always darkly pessimistic about the United States, which he felt was “lacking in soul” and a demeaning place of great psychological misery or “wretchedness.” In a letter to Ernest Jones, Freud declared unambiguously: “America is gigantic, but it is a gigantic mistake.” (See: Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man’s Soul (1983), p. 79.
[47]A similar metaphor is used by German Nobel laureate Thomas Mann in his novella, Mario and the Magician, a fictive warning against citizen capitulations leading to authoritarian domination.
[48]Ultimately, any such triumph could have discoverable roots in twisted individual associations of personal and national survival. 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 and sacrilizing 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.
[49]The reader may think here of Nobel Literature laureate Hermann Hesse’s apt description of the false national leader. Wrote Hesse in The Glass Bead Game: “The dull-witted brute, blindly trampling around in the flower gardens of intellect and culture” (1943).
[50]Americans should also cease making themselves into what C.G. Jung calls a “quantité négligible,” a creature who is a “conscious, reflective being, gifted with speech, but still lacking all criteria for self-judgment.”
