Nuclear Escalation Scenarios: Impact Of American and Russian “Firebreak” Theories on Israeli Security Doctrine

“Theory is a net. Only those who cast, can catch.”- Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)

In assessing Israel’s nuclear deterrence and escalation doctrine, one element remains consistently overlooked. This element concerns US-Russian differences regarding “nuclear firebreak theory.” These differences could have significant “spillover effects” in other parts of the world, especially the Middle East.

               What exactly is at stake? In principle, at least, the two superpowers maintain asymmetrical nuclear firebreak doctrines. Longstanding US doctrine holds that any use of nuclear weapons could prod an irreversible and potentially unmanageable military escalation. Russian doctrine, on the other hand, because it considers conventional and nuclear weapons as complementary parts of a seamless military continuum, places less importance on differences between theatre nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear weapons.

               But what is intended here by “spillover effects?” In essence, these are strategic policies of other states in world politics that reflect one or the other superpower’s nuclear firebreak doctrine. These policies could be reflected either by adopting a pertinent doctrine for tangible military initiatives and/or by expecting an acknowledged enemy state to undertake such adoption.  In all cases, there would be variable risks of decision-maker miscalculation. Moreover, ipso facto, if the United States under President Donald J. Trump were to act to minimize its doctrinal asymmetry with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, these other states would have to plan for a world with fewer evident constraints on nuclear escalation and nuclear warfighting.

               The following analysis considers “spillover effects” on one particular state; Israel. The specific analytic objective is to identify plausible connections between US/Russian theories of nuclear escalation and Israeli theories of nuclear deterrence. Pertinent connections could originate with the presumed effects of a selected firebreak theory (Russian or American) on enemy state calculations (e.g., Iran, Turkey, Pakistan), or with the effects of such a selection on Israeli military calculations. Whatever the doctrinal origin, there would be interactions (foreseeable and unforeseeable) which could immediately or incrementally become “synergistic.” By definition, this means that (1) the “whole” firebreak theory outcome would exceed the sum of its “parts;” and (2) the cause-and-effect dynamic involved in this outcome would represent a continuous feedback loop.

Defining Nuclear Firebreaks

               How should “firebreak theory” be operationalized in this analysis?  As all states coexist amid global anarchy – a condition first formalized at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648[1] – any rational state would seek “escalation dominance” routinely and in extremis. For the “superpowers,” a determinative security factor will be the apparent asymmetry in nuclear escalation doctrine.[2] More specifically, as the two superpowers seemingly maintain sharply divergent orientations toward “escalation dominance,” Washington could sometime conclude that Moscow was more willing to use theatre/tactical nuclear forces than might once have seemed credible.

                There are multiple scenarios and nuances. Vladimir Putin’s expressed doctrine on theater nuclear forces could effectively lower his country’s operational threshold for nuclear weapons use.[3] Though nothing scientific[4] could be affirmed about such unprecedented matters (“sui generis” matters, in formal scientific terms), estimatingprobabilities could still be gainful exercise. Moreover, for nuclear strategists and policy-makers, there would be variously associated obligations. At a minimum, their estimated calculations of probability would  need to be dialectical.[5]

               Plainly, when they are examined from the standpoint of deterrent threat credibility, Putin’s theatre/tactical nuclear forces are apt to appear more persuasive than his strategic nuclear forces. Among other things, this is because the retaliatory use of shorter-range/lower-yield nuclear forces would seem less “unthinkable”[6] than initiating a strategic exchange. Such reasoning would be neither new nor contrived. Rather, it would remain consistent with almost four generations of self-reflective and self-refining strategic theory. It would remain focused not just on enemy threat capabilities (including comparisons of conventional and nuclear force destructiveness), but also on enemy intentions.[7] 

               In world politics, nothing is more practical than good theory. Accordingly, for any meaningful “spillover” assessments of US and Russian nuclear doctrine, adversarial capabilities and intentions should be examined in their widest array of conceivable intersections. Some of the most problematic possibilities could be synergistic.[8] Among other things, this complicating development would render useful “spillover” estimations more difficult to ascertain.

Superpower Differences on Firebreak Theory

               A truly basic question needs to be addressed at the outset: How did humanity manage to create such a bewildering and lethal strategic universe? During the Soviet Union’s last years, Moscow incorporated basic elements of nuclear “first use” doctrine into its codified strategic posture. Presently, it would appear that such incorporation is continuing and that President Putin is actively re-committing to Soviet-era nuclear doctrine.

               Simultaneously, at least if we disregard the “Trump Factor,”[9] United States “firebreak theory” rejects Russian assumptions that a first-use of theatre nuclear weapons would not necessarily breach a critical escalatory threshold. Ipso facto, Putin’s recommitment to Soviet-era strategic thinking could at some point become radically destabilizing. In a worst-case scenario, this ongoing recommitment would trigger a more-or-less symmetrical nuclear war. Amon other things, this would mean world system transformation from anarchy to “chaos.”

               In understanding these uniquely challenging matters, history will deserve conspicuous pride of place. From 1949 onward, traditional Soviet nuclear doctrine minimized the singularly straightforward and seemingly prudent “firebreak” that distinguished between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons. In general, earlier Russian military doctrine assumed few escalatory differences between theater nuclear forces and high-consequence conventional forces. Included as conventional weapons in this original doctrine were both chemical forces and biological forces.

               Historically, concerning military firebreak distinctions, the United States has held a different view. Always, for Washington, strategic doctrine has identified the true escalatory “firebreak” as one that distinguishes between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons of any sort. In contrast, Russian doctrine and posture have asserted that an escalation from non-nuclear weapons to theater nuclear weapons need not signal an existential or otherwise unacceptable threat to the United States. Per this assertion, such escalation would merely introduce one more warfighting option into an existing continuum of armaments. Ominously, this “seamless” Russian stance seemingly ignores any correlative apprehensions that could arise in Washington.

                Going forward, the United States and its NATO allies should recognize such core doctrinal differences between Washington and Moscow, and also identify this recognition as an intellectual (not political) task.[10] In the context of any future US-Russia competition for “escalation dominance,” the primary battlefield will be a cognitive landscape decipherable only by broadly capable thinkers. Figuring out this dense landscape should never be left to politicians or designated military specialists.

               In consequence of their expected assessments, Russian and American strategists will find themselves confronted by accumulating challenges of bewildering complexity. In the most imaginable venues of prospective nuclear confrontation, both latent and already-visible hazards will be exacerbated by long-standing asymmetries of nuclear doctrine and by the corresponding interactions of asymmetrical nuclear doctrine. In addition, whether foreseen or unforeseen, such interactions could rapidly become synergistic.

               There is more. Force-multiplying interactions would be ones wherein the recognizable “whole” of any designable armed conflict would be greater than the expected sum of its “parts.”[11]  These prospects concern not just arcane or minor points of academic deliberation, but (at least potentially) the elemental foundations of civilizational survival.

Implication of Superpower Firebreak Theories for Israel and the Middle East

               To extend these investigations to Israel and the Middle East, all reasoning will apply beyond Russian and American “self” concerns. Prospectively, the states most likely to act on behalf of Iran against Israel would be Russia and/or North Korea. If Russia were ever willing to act as Iran’s nuclear surrogate (here, Iran would still be “pre-nuclear”), direct escalatory moves involving Moscow and Washington could ensue.There are no circumstances under which any direct Israeli first-moves against Russia or North Korea[12] could be rational or cost-effective. This same assessment applies to both Pakistan and China.

               To recapitulate, in all such existential security matters, relevant analyses would be speculative. At the same time, sans nuanced and dialectical analyses, there could be no way for Israel to make operational sense of doctrinal asymmetries. More particularly, certain useful Israeli assessments will need to focus on presumed escalation differences between Vladimir Putin’s “firebreak theory” and that of U.S. president Donald J. Trump. For Jerusalem, the point will not be to better understand these differences per se, but to extrapolate their generic implications for the Middle East.

               An antecedent question presents itself: Does Trump’s nuclear threshold posture remain unchanged from traditional escalation doctrine; that is, does it continue to affirm the primacy of any escalation to nuclear engagement? Or does Trump’s escalation threshold more closely resemble the traditional Russian theory that “small” nuclear weapons (i.e., tactical or theater ordnance) need not necessarily signal intent to initiate a full-scale or no-holds-barred nuclear war?

                To this point, American and Russian nuclear escalation doctrines have remained asymmetrical. But now, the implications of continuing such a crucial difference in orientation to firebreak theory could “spill-over” to Israel-Iran belligerent calculations. At some point, though glaringly counter-intuitive, a nuclear war could take place even while Iran remained non-nuclear.

                Recently, with the United States plainly in mind, the Russian president declared significant “enhancements” to his country’s nuclear escalation doctrine. Now, there are additional reasons to worry about a nuclear war stemming from Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine.[13] Most worrisome is that Moscow could react more forcefully against the United States and/or Ukraine because of Volodymyr Zelensky’s widened gamut of missile-firing authority and because Vladimir Putin’s reaction could include Russian enlargements of theater nuclear forces. Inter alia, any such Russian enlargements would likely lower Russia’s discernible threshold of nuclear weapons use.

               There is more. Such threshold lowering would apply at both doctrinal and operational levels. Though nothing theoretic could be determined about competitive risk-taking in extremis,[14]war probabilities concerning Moscow and Washington will still need to be estimated. This includes examining certain derivative warfare scenarios between Israel and Iran or Israel and North Korea or Pakistan. In part, this means deductive narratives in which Jerusalem might rely on US nuclear deterrence to protect against Russian-backed North Korean forces or against Pakistani forces. In the parlance of traditional nuclear strategy, these scenarios would signify Israeli reliance on “extended nuclear deterrence.” Not to be ignored in this particular dialectic is that North Korea is an already-nuclear Iranian ally with a documented history of actual warfighting against Israel. Pakistan has never established diplomatic relations with Israel, and routinely takes an anti-Israel posture in world politics. In May 2026, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif referred to Israel as “a curse or humanity,” adding: “I hope and pray the people who created this cancerous state on Palestinian land to get rid of European Jews burn in hell.”

Nuclear Firebreak Theories and Imperatives of “Mind”

               It’s time for a preliminary or intermediate summary:Everywhere on earth, nuclear war avoidance should be approached by national leaders as an inherently intellectual problem.[15]For the United States, any such obligatory avoidance would reference a challenge that needs to be confronted in line with current strategic circumstances. During this relentlessly anti-intellectual “Time of Trump,” an era of American military incoherence,[16] suggestions of scientific assessment and legal obligation are routinely brushed aside by the White House. All too frequently, these lethal dismissals are accompanied by policies of proud indifference to challenges of “mind.”

               What could happen next? How might such retrograde American attitudes impact Israel? Most specifically, how could well-reasoned answers impact Israel’s escalation exposures to a nuclear war?

                Today, prima facie, US national security problems are being framed by an incapable American president in gratuitously rancorous terms. Regarding plausible concerns of a nuclear war triggered by Russia’s grievously criminal behaviors in Ukraine,[17] these frameworks are founded on militarily senseless appeals to a leader’s visceral preferences. They are not founded on what is most urgently needed. Among a growing assortment of evident deficits, the haphazardly constructed American security policies of Donald Trump are not being fashioned with any concern for the complex challenges of “escalation dominance.”[18]

               There is more. Routinely, as understood from the interrelated standpoints of disciplined doctrine and formal logic, Trump’s antipathy to science-based calculations exhibit grave errors in strategic calculation.[19] Most obvious among these errors or “fallacies” is the argument known correctly as argumentum ad bacculum.[20] From the start of his first presidency, Donald J. Trump worked to aggravate this potentially irremediable misrepresentation. Warned ancient philosopher Tertullian, about such misguided human behaviors: Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.”

                Presently, if armed with a much greater regard for intellectual factors, American planners and policy-makers could look more systematically at what might lie ahead. What will happen next in Vladimir Putin’s determinedly cruel war against Ukraine,[21] a war of aggression and genocide being waged against hospitals, schools, shopping malls, nursing home and child-care centers?[22] How can the United States best prepare for nuclear war avoidance or genocide[23] in a European theater being rendered increasingly unstable by an unapologetic tyrant? How can it prepare when the American president is himself a witting servitor of his Russian counterpart?

               But let us assume that even the incumbent American president could at some point find himself in a “nuclear firebreak” crisis with Vladimir Putin. Should Washington seek to persuade Moscow of America’s willingness to “go nuclear” according to Russian-defined policy thresholds or should the United States proceed “asymmetrically” according to its own declared firebreak? And how might Washington’s decision affect wider considerations of world politics, especially Israel’s national security?

               In the end, a crucial question will be as follows: How could the United States best respond to any Russian war’s probable outcomes,[24] a hard-to-decipher military quandary that contains the existential perils of asymmetrical nuclear firebreak doctrine?

               For the United States and its Israeli ally, it’s high time for fewer clichés and more intellection.[25] Regarding their indispensable responsibilities for world peace and global stabilization (these goals can never be achieved by ordinary politicians of any ideological stripe), capable strategic thinkers will need to focus on two always-pertinent and closely-interrelated criteria of military danger: probability and disutility. This first dimension concerns issues of presumed likelihood. The second deals with matters ofpresumed suffering.            

Nuclear Escalations and Future Wars

               In principle, at least, “Cold War II”[26] represents a comprehensive systemic context within which contemporary world politics could be meaningfully categorized and systematically evaluated. Current “Great Power” dispositions to war, however ascertained, offer more-or-lessauspicious analytic backgrounds for still-wider nuclear interactions. How could this opaque context be suitably tempered or decently modified?

               One core difficulty will express unprecedented irony. In a future war between Russia and NATO, US President Trump could conceivably urge American support for the aggressor (Putin) rather than the victim (Zelensky). In late summer 2026, US and NATO officials even stated that Putin may launch attacks against Poland or the Baltic states to create a face-saving off-ramp from his irrational and illegal war against Ukraine.

               In all these matters, only right questions could lead to right answers. Planning ahead, what explanatory theories and scenarios could best guide the United States and (correlatively) Israel in foreseeable interactions with North Korea, China, Iran, Pakistan and/or Russia? Before answering this question with adequate conceptual clarity, “correct” answers will depend on a more closely-considered awareness of relevant intersections and recognizable overlaps.

               Going forward with an informed understanding of Russian leadership escalation firebreaks, US and Israeli strategic decision-makers will have to consider one overarching assumption: This is the always-troubling expectation of adversarial irrationality.[27] Depending on the outcome of any such consideration, determined judgments will be vastly variable and variably urgent.

               A primary “order of business” for both American and Israeli strategic planners will be reaching accurate conclusions about a specified 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. Could this category include Putin’s Russia? What about other prospective adversaries? What about China, North Korea, Pakistan and a still-aspiring nuclear Iran? And what would be the impact of asymmetrical nuclear firebreaks seemingly accepted by the world’s two superpowers?

               For scholars and policy-makers, additional basic questions will need to be considered. First, what are the operational meanings of relevant terminologies and/or vocabularies? In the formal study of international relations and military strategy, decisional irrationality is never the same as madness. Nonetheless, certain residual warnings about madness ought still to warrant serious US and Israeli policy consideration. This is because “ordinary” irrationality and full-scale madness could exert comparable effects on an adversary state’s national security decision-making processes.

               There is nothing here for the intellectually faint-hearted.[28] This is not an issue about “attitude” (the analytically empty term Trump uses to describe what is allegedly most important to securing diplomatic “deals”), but about science-based “preparations.”[29]

               For the United States and (derivatively or correlatively) for Israel, anticipating these ascertainable effects could display existential importance. In such considerations, word selection could have tangible implications. In normal strategic parlance, “irrationality” identifies a decisional foundation wherein national self-preservation is not summa, i.e., not the highest or ultimate preference. This “idiosyncratic” preference ordering could have significant policy impacts on Jerusalem as well as Washington.

               There is more. An irrational decision-maker in Moscow need not be determinably “mad” to be considered troubling for strategic policy planners in the United States and Israel. Such an adversary would need “only” to be more prominently concerned about discernible preferences or values than its own collective self-preservation. Normally, though any such national behavior should be unexpected and counter-intuitive, it would not be unprecedented or inconceivable. Moreover, identifying the specific criteria or decipherable correlates of such preferred alternatives could prove dauntingly subjective.

               Whether different decision-making adversaries were deemed irrational or “mad,” US and Israeli military planners would still have to input generally similar intra-crisis calculations. Here, the analytic premise would likely be advanced that a particular adversary “in play” might not be deterred from launching a military attack by threats of retaliatory destruction even where these threats would be both credible and massive. Such failure of US and/or Israeli military deterrence could include conventional and nuclear retaliatory threats.

               In fashioning nuclear strategy vis-à-vis nuclear and not-yet-nuclear adversaries,[30] US and Israeli military planners will have to include a mechanism to determine whether the pertinent foe would more likely be rationalor irrational. Operationally, this means calculating whether this enemy would value its collective survival (whether as a sovereign state or organized terror group) more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences. Always, this early judgment would need to be based on defensibly sound analytic and intellectual principles. This judgment should never be affected by what particular analysts might “want to believe.”[31]

Inadvertent Nuclear War versus Accidental Nuclear War

At this stage, a further analytic distinction is needed between inadvertent nuclear war and accidental nuclear war. By definition, an accidental nuclear war would be inadvertent. Reciprocally, however, an inadvertent nuclear war need not be accidental.[32] False warnings, which could be spawned by mechanical, electrical or computer malfunction (or by hacking)[33] would not signify the origins of an inadvertent nuclear war. Rather, they would fit under the more clarifying conceptual narratives of an accidental nuclear war.

               Most concerning should be avoiding a nuclear war caused by miscalculation. In striving for “escalation dominance,” competitive nuclear powers caught up with bewildering complexities in extremis atomicum could find themselves embroiled in an inadvertent nuclear exchange. Ominously, any such catastrophic outcome could arise suddenly and irremediably, and even though neither side had wanted such a war.[34]

One problem, in this regard, would be asymmetrical views on what constituted the critical nuclear threshold or firebreak. If the Russian side believed the critical threshold was between theatre and strategic nuclear weapons and the American or Israeli side believed this threshold was between conventional and nuclear weapons of any size or range, there would arise certain mutual and extraordinarily large decisional risks. These risks would surface without any historical precedent.

 In facing off against each other, even under optimal assumptions of mutual rationality, American and Russian presidents would have to concern themselves with all possible miscalculations, errors in information, unauthorized uses of strategic weapons, mechanical or computer malfunctions and assorted nuances of cyber-defense/cyber-war. Even if Putin were judged to be entirely rational, Europe could descend rapidly into some form or other of nuclear conflagration. If this prospect of an unprecedented chaos were not sobering enough, it would also be reasonable to expect that the erasure of a once-universal nuclear taboo would heighten the likelihood of nuclear risk-taking in other parts of the globe, especially the Middle East (Israel, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, etc.).

There is more. Even a still non-nuclear Iran would have access to radiation dispersal weapons and to conventional rockets for use against Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona. An Israeli nuclear war with a not-yet-nuclear Iran could arise if already- nuclear North Korea, a close ally of Iran, were willing to act as Tehran’s military surrogate against Israel. Such willingness, in turn, would be impacted by variously presumed expectations of Russia and/or China.

Figuring all this out represents a survival-determining challenge for Jerusalem. In mid-November 2024, Vladimir Putin announced that an already-nuclear state willing to transfer nuclear weapons to an enemy of Russia (i.e., from the United States to Ukraine) would be regarded as a “co-belligerent” of Russia’s foe. This announcement declared that a “state of war” would exist with the United States as well as with Ukraine and that this condition of belligerency would allow Moscow to employ nuclear weapons as needed. Ominously, such employment would be consistent with recently-underscored Russian firebreak theory.

For Israel, there is conspicuous irony and opportunity wrapped up in Moscow’s forceful declaration. If Russia is entitled to use nuclear weapons against non–nuclear Ukraine because that adversary (allegedly) has a cooperating nuclear ally in Washington, Israel could be similarly entitled to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Among other things, this is because the Iranian adversary has a nuclear enabling ally in Pyongyang.  In this scenario, Vladimir Putin’s change in national nuclear doctrine vis-à-vis the United States and NATO would be “turned on its head” and used against Iran if that Islamic regime were to accept nuclear military assistance from North Korea. For Jerusalem, the overriding rationale of any nuclear weapons use should be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.[35]

               What about the Trump-brokered “Abraham Agreements?” There was never any convincing reason to believe that these politically contrived accords could reduce the tangible risks of a nuclear war in the Middle East. On the contrary, the intended effect of these agreements to weaken Shiite Iran is already backfiring in certain unforeseen and force-multiplying ways. Moreover, Israel never had any credible reasons to worry about entering into war with Bahrain, Morocco or the United Arab Emirates.

Bottom line: For Israel, the Abraham Agreements “put an end” to nonexistent hazards. Simultaneously, they enlarged Sunni national hopes (e.g., Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) to join the “nuclear club.” Credo quia absurdum, said Roman philosopher Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd.” Under no circumstances did “Abraham” create any meaningful national security benefits for Israel.

               Going forward, one joint US-Israel obligation will be to assess whether a nuanced posture of “pretended irrationality” could enhance Jerusalem’s nuclear deterrence posture. On several earlier occasions, it should be recalled, Donald Trump openly praised the untested premises of such a posture. Ipso facto, such presidential praisewas never warranted on intellectual grounds.

               US and Israeli enemies continue to include both state and sub-state foes, whether considered singly or in their multiple forms of possible collaboration. Such forms could be “hybridized” in different ways between state and sub-state adversaries.[36] In dealing with Washington, each recognizable class of enemies could sometime choose to feign irrationality.

               This could represent a potentially clever strategy to “get a jump” on the United States or Israel in any still-expected or already-ongoing competition for “escalation dominance.”  Naturally, any such calculated pretense could fail, perhaps calamitously. Cautionary strategic behavior based on serious conceptual thinking should always be the US and Israeli “order of the day.”[37] Indeed, nothing ought to be more important or more obvious.

 Rationality, Irrationality and Chaos

                There is more. On occasion, enemies of Israel or the United States could “decide,” wittingly or unwittingly, to be irrational.[38] In such circumstances, it would become incumbent on strategic planners to capably assess which basic form of irrationality –  pretended or authentic – was actually “in play.” Thereafter, these planners would need to respond with a dialectically-orchestrated and optimally counterpoised set of plausible reactions.

                In this context, the term “dialectically” (drawn originally from ancient Greek thought, especially Plato’s dialogues) would need to be used with precision. Regarding strategic reasoning, this warning signifies a continuous or ongoing question-and-answer format. For an American president or Israeli prime minister, nothing less disciplined could reasonably suffice.

                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 national survival. For the moment, for America and potentially Israel, the prospect of facing an irrational nuclear adversary is most worrisome with regard to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Apropos of such apprehensions, it is unlikely they could ever be suitably reduced by formal treaties or any other traditional law-based agreements.[39]

               For the United States and Israel, it would be worth remembering seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ classic warning in Leviathan:  “Covenants, without the sword, are but words….”[40] If the enduring problem of global anarchy were not daunting enough for strategists and decision-makers in Washington or Jerusalem, it is now further complicated by the effects of any consequent chaos.

               Further conceptual clarifications remain in order. As a start, chaos is not the same as anarchy. Chaos is more than anarchy.[41] We have all lived with anarchy or the absence of global central government since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,[42] but we have yet to descend into any full-blown chaos.[43]

                Even in the midst of anarchy (unlike chaos), there can be law. Since the 17th century, international law has functioned according to an always-unpredictable “balance of power.” For an American president who would be conversant with the Constitution, international law[44] could be made manifest as an integral part of United States law. Accordingly, when the incumbent president actively undermines international  law,  he is acting contrary to both normative systems, national (domestic/municipal) and international.[45] The fact that these that systems are overlapping and inter-penetrating now goes widely unacknowledged.

Managing the Risks of a Nuclear War

               How should the American president proceed to manage potential nuclear war risks over Ukraine, a decision with potential and derivative consequences for Israel? If Vladimir Putin were ever to escalate military options in the Ukraine war to include tactical/theatre nuclear forces, the United States “firebreak” interpretation of this escalation could be starkly different from what Russia had expected. Though Moscow would not likely view this regional escalation as existentially threatening to the United States, Washington (US presidential “idiosyncrasies” notwithstanding) could calculate otherwise. In short order, there could then take place an American escalation to more sequentially destructive military involvements. Ultimately, this could include strategic nuclear weapons.

               How likely is such a catastrophic misinterpretation and outcome? As the scenario is sui generis, it is impossible to answer any such question scientifically. Accordingly, any suggestion of predictability by political or military “experts” should be taken as plainly contrived and instantly dismissible.

               In regard to crisis decision-making, the American side would need to consider how its nuclear weapons could be leveraged in any plausible nuclear war scenario, optimally by non-use. More specifically, a rational answer could likely never include the operational use of such weapons. The only relevant questions for a US president’s strategic planners should concern the calculable extent to which an asymmetrical US threat of nuclear escalation (from theater/tactical to strategic nuclear weapons) could be simultaneously credible and prudent.[46]

               All this implies a primary obligation for the United States and also Israel to focus on incremental enhancements to nuclear deterrence posture and the development of a wide range of nuanced nuclear retaliatory options. The rationale of any such development would be the counter-intuitive understanding that credibility of nuclear threats could vary inversely with perceived levels of destructiveness. In certain foreseeable circumstances, this means that successful nuclear deterrence could depend on nuclear weapons that are ascertainably low-yield or “small.”

               Sometimes, in fashioning a national nuclear deterrence posture,[47] counter-intuitive strategic insight would be “on the mark,” Earlier, when Donald Trump reminded his North Korean counterpart that though both had a “nuclear button,” his button was “bigger,” the American president displayed near-total unawareness of disciplined nuclear deterrence. In certain nuclear crisis circumstances, however unique, threat-based credibility could vary inversely with threat-related harms. At this moment in history, such an understanding could also be indispensable to Israel’s future wars, wars for national survival in which an adversary would still be non-nuclear, but wherein nuclear threats could still prove purposeful.

               There is more. A US president or Israeli prime minister should always bear in mind that any national nuclear posture ought to remain focused on war prevention, not punishment. In all still-identifiable circumstances, using a portion of its available nuclear forces for vengeance rather than deterrence would miss the most overriding point; i.e., to fully optimize national security obligations.

               Any American or Israeli nuclear weapons use based on narrowly-corrosive notions of revenge, even if only as a residual or default option, would be irrational. Among other things, this would be a good time for US and Israeli nuclear crisis planners to re-read Clausewitz regarding primacy of the “political object.” Absent such an object, there could be no meaningful standard or metric of “escalation rationality.”

               Technologically advanced anti-missile systems should remain indefinitely as a steadily-modernizing component of America’s and Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture. Significantly, too, there are certain hard-to-foresee interactions or synergies taking place between policy decisions and those of corresponding adversaries. In those more perplexing matters involving an expectedly irrationalnuclear enemy,[48] successful US or Israeli deterrence would need to be based on credible threats to enemy values other than (or additional to) national survival.

Nuclear Deterrence and Selective Nuclear Disclosure

                Israel, like the United States, will have to rely on a multi-faceted doctrine of nuclear deterrence.[49] Specific elements of this “simple but difficult” doctrine (see Carl von Clausewitz On War), should immediately be rendered less “ambiguous.”[50] This complex and finely nuanced modification will require an even more determined focus on prospectively rational and irrational enemies, and will include national and sub-national foes.[51] This means eschewing any “seat-of-the-pants” attraction to each and every new strategic development or eruption, and (instead) to derive or extrapolate all specific policy reactions from pre-fashionedand comprehensive strategic nuclear doctrine.

               There remains at least one critical observation. It is improbable but not inconceivable that certain of America’s and Israel’s principal enemies would sometime be neither rational nor irrational, but mad. While irrational decision-makers could already pose special problems for nuclear deterrence – by definition, because these decision-makers would not value collective survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences – they might still be susceptible to alternate forms of dissuasion.

                As with rational leaderships, these decision-makers could still maintain a fixed, determinable and “transitive” hierarchy of preferences. This means, at least in principle, that “merely” irrational enemies could be successfully deterred. This point warrants further analytic study, especially when even more sweeping Russian aggressions could become de rigeur.

               By definition, mad or “crazy” adversaries would have no calculable hierarchy of preferences and not be subject to any strategy of American or Israeli nuclear deterrence. Although it would likely be worse to face a mad nuclear enemy than “just” an irrational one, neither Washington nor Jerusalem would have any real choice in defining enemy preferences. Like it or not, the US and Israel will need to maintain, perhaps indefinitely, a “three track” system of nuclear deterrence and defense, one track each for identifiable adversaries that are presumptively (1) rational (2) irrational or (3) mad.

               This will not be a task for narrowly political or intellectually adverse strategic decision-makers. Among other things, it will require exhaustive assessment of plausible synergies, some of them dissemblingly subjective or “idiosyncratic.” For the most plausibly unpredictable third track, special plans would be needed for potentially indispensable preemptions and for variously overlapping efforts atballistic missile defense.

                These are sobering observations. There could be no reliable assurances that any one “track” would consistently present exclusively of the other two. This suggests that American or Israeli decision-makers could at some point have to face deeply intersecting or interpenetrating tracks and that these complicated simultaneities could also be synergistic.[52]

                Even if American and Israeli military planners could reassuringly assume that enemy leaderships were fully rational, this would say nothing about the accuracy of information used by these foes in making strategic calculations. Always, it should never be overlooked, rationality refers only to the intention of maximizing specifically designated preferences (aka “utilities” in game-theoretic or Bayesian formulas). To clarify further, designations of rationality say nothing about whether the information being used by adversarial decision-makers is correct or incorrect.

Law and Strategy: The Essential Reconciliation

                From the standpoint of international law, it is always necessary to distinguish “preemptive” attacks from “preventive” ones. Preemption is a military strategy of striking first in the expectation that the only foreseeable alternative is to be struck first oneself.  A preemptive attack, therefore, is launched by a state that believes enemy forces are about to attack.  A preventive attack, on the other hand, is not launched out of any concern for “imminent” hostilities, but on account of reasonable fears concerning longer-term deteriorations in military balance.

                In a preemptive attack, the length of time by which the enemy’s action is anticipated is presumptively very short. In a preventive strike, the anticipated interval is considerably longer. A related problem here for the United States, Israel and certain other states is not only the practical difficulty of determining “imminence,” but also that delaying a defensive strike until imminence is more precisely ascertainable could produce or hasten existential harms.

               A resort to “anticipatory self-defense” could be nuclear or non-nuclear and be directed at either a nuclear or non-nuclear adversary. Any such resort involving nuclear weapons on one or several sides would prove catastrophic. It follows that core decisions to launch high-lethality preemptions should rest on intellectual and law-based foundations.

               There are further nuances. America and Israel are not automatically made safer by having only rational adversaries. Even fully rational enemy leaderships could commit errors in calculation that would lead them toward nuclear confrontation and/or nuclear/biological war. Also, there are related command and control issues that could impel a rational adversary or combination of rational adversaries (both state and sub-state) to embark on risky nuclear behaviors. Even the most pleasingly “optimistic” assessments of enemy leadership decision-making could never reliably preclude manifestly catastrophic outcomes.[53]

                For the United States and a lesser extent Israel, classical Greek commentaries concerning hubris point “prophetically” toward no-longer-unimaginable spasms of “retribution.”[54] The ancient tragedian leadership figures, moreover, were not called upon to reason about military decision-making involving nuclear weapons, and present-day “kings” are subject to unique (sui generis) decisional uncertainties. This fact should underscore that competent national security planning in Washington and Jerusalem should always be conceptualized as a tragic or at least herculean  struggle of “mind over mind.”[55]

               For the United States and Israel, issues of calibrated nuclear deterrence remain fundamentally intellectualchallenges, i.e., issues requiring meticulous analytic preparation[56] rather than leadership “attitude.”[57] Such planning ought never become just another contest of “mind over matter;”[58] that is, a vainglorious inventory of advanced weaponry or a superior “order of battle.” Unless this warning is finally understood by senior US and Israeli strategic policymakers – and until these same policymakers can begin to see the overriding wisdom of “human oneness”[59] – America and Israel will never render themselves secure from a nuclear war.

               Looking ahead, especially on the Korean peninsula, in Ukraine-Russia engagements and in multiple parts of the Middle East, the anarchic conditions bequeathed at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) could come to resemble the primordial barbarism of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Long before Golding, lest we forget, Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, warned in Leviathan (Chapter XIII) that in the “state of nature” (aka the “state of war”) there must be “continual fear, and danger of violent death….”

An Orderly and Unambiguous Summation

               In the end, differences between Russian and American views on nuclear “firebreak” theory may not prove policy-determinative in destabilizing certain parts of the world, but they nonetheless warrant analyticattention in Jerusalem and Washington. As the Russians are conspicuously re-cycling Soviet-era doctrine on tactical nuclear weapons, updated iterations of nuclear threshold will need to be constantly fashioned and meaningfully reassessed. Among other things, such prospective strategic examinations should focus on the deterrence implications of lower yields and shorter ranges in adversarial military planning.

                If Putin should sometime prove willing to cross the conventional-tactical nuclear firebreak on the assumption that such a move would not invite any reciprocal cycle of nuclear escalation with the United States, the American president could face a genuinely tragic choice: total capitulation or nuclear war.Though it would be best for the United States to avoid ever having to reach such a fateful decisional moment, there could still be no guarantees of “mutual assured prudence” between Washington and Moscow. In essence, the growing perils of asymmetrical nuclear doctrine will need to be countered incrementally, intellectually and without narrowly political interference.

               Looking ahead, American and Israeli security will hinge on fostering vital “perceptions of credibility,” Regarding Russia’s nuclear doctrine, only dedicated analytic minds could suitably distance Planet Earth from World War III. Taken together with Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s crisis escalation posture blurs critical conceptual lines between conventional and nuclear conflict and creates potentially existential hazards for the United States and Israel. The only rational response from Washington and Jerusalem should be to understand these hazards as unsustainable and to plan appropriately for their efficient minimization or complete removal.

               For the United States and Israel, the threat posed by asymmetrical nuclear firebreaks could impact the likelihood of both deliberate and inadvertent nuclear war. The central situation of asymmetrical nuclear firebreak theory cannot be remediated by international treaty or unilateral fiat, but it still deserves a place of subject matter primacy in competent strategic planning. For Jerusalem, this means an accelerated obligation to convince its Russian-backed adversary in Tehran that any use of North Korea as a nuclear surrogate could invite an Israeli nuclear reprisal. Ironically, Jerusalem would find compelling support for such a policy position in Vladimir Putin’s basic nuclear stance vis-à-vis the United States. By this stance, Putin has declared that any nuclear-state ally of Ukraine that allows its nuclear assets to be used against Russian territory would be considered by Moscow as Ukraine’s co-belligerent.

               Whatever the results of the Fall 2026 elections in Israel, that country’s prime minister should pay enhanced heed to the implications of nuclear firebreak theory. Special points of concern should be the “Mecca Pact” between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; the incremental transformation of Syria into a Turkish proxy; US presidential threats against Oman; Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia; US-Saudi strikes on pro-Iran militants in Iraq and the optimal deployment of next-generation submarines from Germany.

               Finally, though rarely mentioned as an enemy of Israel, an already-nuclear Pakistan deployed troops to Saudi Arabia in March 2026 to blunt missiles and drones launched from Iran. Even if Jerusalem succeeds in keeping Iran non-nuclear, Islamabad will still loom as a potential nuclear threat to Israel and its chosen firebreak theory (more or less derived from identifiable superpower firebreak theories) could then become all-important. In this connection, though primarily to equalize its tangible ordnance disadvantages vis-à-vis nuclear India, Pakistan has already accepted a nuclear warfighting concept of nuclear deterrence.

               For Israel, Iran is not the only source of nuclear escalation concerns. There are credible scenarios in which a “defeated” Iran would hasten and enlarge latent nuclear threats from other adversaries. To best identify, decipher and manage these prospective threats, strategic thinkers in Jerusalem should pay special attention to US and Russian nuclear firebreak theories and the several ways in which these theories could impact Israel’s national survival. For Israel, everything depends on Reason.[60]

               These assorted ways include (1) military threats originating among Israel’s state and sub-state enemies, and (2) Israeli military threats directed at the country’s state and sub-state foes. Regarding the second category of nuclear firebreak impact, relevant threats would factor in presumed adversarial orientations and be examples of either preventive or preemptive war. From the standpoint of authoritative international law, only preemptive war could qualify as a lawful expression of “anticipatory self-defense.”[61]

               It’s time for a final observation. The plan of the foregoing analysis has been to examine the effects of US-Russian nuclear firebreak asymmetries on Israeli nuclear deterrence and escalation management. Still, there are circumstances in which US doctrine on nuclear firebreaks could align with (rather than challenge) Russia’s nuclear escalation doctrine. Identified above as the “Trump Factor,” these equalizing circumstances would create different “spillover effects” for Israeli nuclear doctrine. Above all, they would nudge (1) a loosening rather than tightening of traditional nuclear taboos; and (2) a greater adversarial willingness to commence or continue nuclear warfighting operations.[62]

[1] 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, Taken together, these two treaties comprise the Peace of Westphalia.

[2] I use the modifier “apparent” because of the bewilderingly opaque “Trump Factor.” More precisely, because America’s current president has effectively (and lawlessly) aligned himself with the Russian aggressor rather than the Ukrainian victim, US doctrinal firebreaks could come to resemble or even replicate Russia’s traditionally “seamless” approach to nuclear weapons use. In this narrative, Jerusalem’s military planners would be forced to reconsider any prior notions of superpower firebreak theories and their implications for Israel’s national security.

[3] On Vladimir Putin’s bellicosity concerning operational nuclear weapons use, see: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-russia-could-usenuclear-weapons-if-its-sovereignty-or-territory-was-2024-06-05/

[4] “Theory is a net,” 20th century philosopher Karl Popper learned from the German poet Novalis, “only those who cast, can catch.”

[5] 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.

[6]This key term was made famous among nuclear thinkers by Herman Kahn in seminal works On Thermonuclear War, Thinking About the Unthinkable (1962) (above) and Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (1984).

[7] See, for example, by this writer: Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (The University of Chicago Press, 1980).

[8]See earlier, by this author, at Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School: Louis René Beres, https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/)

[9] See Note # 2 (supra).

[10] See, by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Horasis (Zürich):  https://horasis.org/capping-existential-nuclear-crisis-in-ukraine/

[11] For early accounts by this author of nuclear war risks and effects, see: Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986). Most recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy

[12] A case in point is the rising tension between North Korea and South Korea in late August 2026. Though the United States remains a de jure ally of Seoul, it is plausible that any extant treaty-based obligations could suddenly or incrementally be cast aside by a seat-of-the-pants US presidential decision-maker. Accordingly, Donald J. Trump periodically reaffirms his “affection” for Kim Jung Un (earlier, Trump said that the two “fell in love”) and demanded that South Korea assume greater responsibilities for its own defense. More tangibly, Trump eviscerated summer 2026 US policy plans for joint war exercises with South Korea.

[13] 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.

[14] 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/

[15] As part of this problem, Sun-Tzu’s Art of War calls for gaining the upper hand through the “unorthodox.” In Chapter 5, on “Strategic Military Power,” Sun-Tzu states succinctly: “In general, in battle, one engages with the orthodox and gains victory through the unorthodox.” The ancient Chinese author’s idea of “battle” would surely include present-day nuclear deterrence. After all, as he says elsewhere in the Art of War, at Chapter 3, “Planning Offensives:” “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting, is the true pinnacle of excellence.”

[16] North Korean nuclearization was allegedly kept “under control” by Trump because Kim Jong Un had “fallen in love” with the American president. But that “love” was not lasting. Credo quia absurdum, said the ancient philosophers: “I believe because it is absurd.”

[17]This brings up the jurisprudential issues of Nuremberg-category criminality. Three principal categories of criminality were identified at the London Charter (August 1945) and in the subsequent Nuremberg Tribunal indictments. Similar but not identical terms were used at the later Tokyo Trial of Japanese war criminals. For the Nuremberg prosecutions, see: Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1944‑1 October 1946, 42 vols., IMT Secretariat, Nuremberg, 1947‑9. Cited by A.P. D’entreves, Natural Law 110 (1951).

[18] See, by this author, at The War Room (Pentagon):  Louis René Beres,  https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making/ 

[19] See, by this writer, at US News & World Report:  Louis René Beres, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/op-ed/articles/2017-07-13/donald-trump-and-the-triumph-of-anti-reason-in-america

[20] See earlier, by this author, at US News & World Report, Louis René Beres: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-08-17/how-donald-trump-fails-logic-and-presidential-thinking. As policy, “America First” stands in sharp contrast to authoritative legal principles concerning solidarity between states. These jurisprudential standards concern a presumptively common legal struggle against aggression, genocide and terrorism. Such a “peremptory” expectation, known formally in law as a jus cogens assumption, was already mentioned in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis (533 CE); Hugo Grotius, 2 De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, Ch. 20 (Francis W. Kesey., tr, Clarendon Press, 1925) (1690); and Emmerich de Vattel, 1 Le Droit des Gens, Ch. 19 (1758).

[21]In law, responsibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin for such crimes is not limited by his official position or by any requirement of his direct personal actions.  On the principle of command responsibility, or respondeat superior, see: In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1945); The High Command Case (The Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb) 12 LAW REPORTS OF TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS 1, 71 (United Nations War Crimes Commission Comp. 1949); see: Parks, COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY FOR WAR CRIMES, 62 MIL.L.REV. 1 (1973); O’Brien, THE LAW OF WAR, COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY AND VIETNAM, 60 GEO.L.J. 605 (1972); U.S. DEPT OF THE ARMY, ARMY SUBJECT SCHEDULE No. 27 – 1 (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Hague Convention No. IV of 1907) 10 (1970).  The direct individual responsibility of leaders for crime s of war, genocide and genocide-like crimes is unambiguous in view of the London Agreement, which denies defendants the protection of the Act of State defense.  See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS, Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Strat.  1544, E.A.S.  No. 472, 82 U.N.T.S.  279, Art. 7.  Under traditional international law, violations were the responsibility of the state, as a corporate actor, and not of individual human decision-makers in government or the military. Today, even if Putin could somehow argue persuasively that Russian military violations in Ukraine were being committed without his express authorization, he would remain legally responsible.

[22]International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, comprise: (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules.  Codified primarily at The Hague and Geneva Conventions, and known thereby as the law of The Hague and the law of Geneva, these rules seek to bring discrimination, proportionality and military necessity into belligerent calculations.  On the main corpus of jus in bello, see: Convention No. IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, With Annex of Regulations, Oct. 18, 1907, 36 Stat. 2277, T.S. No. 539, 1 Bevans 631 (known commonly as the “Hague Regulations”); Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T.  3114, T.I.A.S.  No. 3362, 75 U.N.T.S.  85; Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T.  3316, T.I.A.S.  No. 3364, 75 U.N.T.S.  135; Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T.  3516, T.I.A.S.  No. 3365, 75 U.N.T.S.  287.

[23]Neither international law nor US law specifically advises particular penalties or sanctions for states that choose not to prevent or punish genocide by others. All states, most notably the “major powers” belonging to the UN Security Council, are bound, among other things, 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.” This pacta sunt servanda obligation is itself derived from an even more basic norm of world law commonly known as “mutual assistance.” This civilizing norm was most notably identified within the classical interstices of international jurisprudence by eighteenth-century Swiss legal scholar, Emmerich de Vattel, in The Law of Nations (1758).

[24] There are pertinent legal questions and answers here. According to William Blackstone, echoing Vattel, each state and nation is expected “to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon offenses against that universal law….” See: 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, “Of Public Wrongs.” Lest anyone ask about the significance of Blackstone for American jurisprudence, one need only remind that his Commentaries represent the core foundation of United States law.

[25] See, by this author: Louis René Beres, “Nuclear War Avoidance: Why It Is Time to Start Worrying, Again,” Air and Space Operations Review, Spring 2022, United States Air Force, Pentagon, pp. 69-81.

[26]Earlier, “Cold War II” meant expecting the world system to once again become “tightly” bipolar. For previous writings, by this author, see: Louis René Beres, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Reliability of Alliance Commitments,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 25, No.4., December 1972, pp. 702-710; Louis René Beres, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Tragedy of the Commons,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 26, No.4., December 1973, pp, 649-658; and Louis René Beres, “Guerillas, Terrorists, and Polarity: New Structural Models of World Politics,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 27, No.4., December 1974, pp. 624-636. Today, in 2026, any reference to “Cold War II” must concern hardening of US-Russian dualism but also the impact of a concurrent “third pole” in China. At the same time, while Donald J. Trump is president of the United States, it is plausible that he will more likely side with aggression Vladimir Putin than with the victims of Russian aggression.

[27]  Expressions of enemy irrationality could take various different and 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).

[28]The Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin coined a new term to denote the vital sphere of intellect or “mind.” This term is “noosphere;” it builds upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s well-known stance (especially in Zarathustra) that human beings must always challenge themselves, must continuously strive to “overcome” their otherwise meager “herd”-determined yearnings.

[29] Says 20th-century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y’Gasset in Man and Crisis: “…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.”

[30] For 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/

[31] 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.

[32] Reminds strategic theorist Herman Kahn in his On Escalation (1965): “All accidental wars are inadvertent and unintended, but not vice-versa.”  In his seminal writings, Kahn introduced a novel distinction between a surprise attack that is more-or-less unexpected and a surprise attack that arrives ex nihilo or “out of the blue.” The former, he counseled, “…is likely to take place during a period of tension that is not so intense that the offender is essentially prepared for nuclear war….” A total surprise attack, however, would be one without any immediately recognizable tension or warning signal. This particular subset of a surprise attack scenario could be difficult to operationalize for any tangible national security policy benefit. See: Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (Simon & Schuster, 1984).

[33] This prospect now includes the plausible advent of so-called “cyber- mercenaries.”

[34]This brings to mind the nuclear deterrence issue of “deliberate ambiguity,” a doctrinal issue most commonly associated with Israel in the Middle East.  In the end, nuclear deterrence is as much a matter of perceived intent as perceived capacity. Israel’s posture of “deliberate ambiguity” has centered on the latter; that is, on the country’s presumptive possession of nuclear weapons. For the United States, however, still facing potential prospects of nuclear engagement with Russia (intentional and unintentional), matters of deliberate ambiguity would focus only on the issue of American nuclear intent.

[35] This brings to mind classical Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu’s axiomatic point that “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.” See by this writer at Harvard Law School, Harvard National Security Journal, Louis René Beres: https://harvardnsj.org/2013/10/24/lessons-for-israel-from-ancient-chinese-military-thought-facing-iranian-nuclearization-with-sun-tzu/

[36] 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, this narrowly visceral plan was intrinsically futile.

[37]Anticipating 20th century Spanish thinker Jose Ortega y’Gasset (cited above), 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.

[38] In his own work, Sigmund Freud sought to “excavate” certain deeper meanings concerning irrational human behavior. Always, he was a modern-day philosophe, a proud child of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, one who discovered profound analytic and therapeutic advantages in exploring sometimes-arcane literary paths to psychological knowledge. Freud maintained an extensive personal collection of antiquities which suggested various penetrating psychological insights to him. Some of his collection was placed directly on his work desk; reportedly, he would often touch and turn the individual artifacts while deeply engaged in some challenging thought.

[39] See, for example, by this author, at Yale:  Louis René Beres, https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/nuclear-treaty-abrogation-imperils-global-security

[40] Regarding “covenants,” US and Israeli decision-makers should nonetheless be continually attentive to relevant considerations of 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 (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.

[41]Whether it is described in the Old Testament or other major sources of ancient Western thought, chaos can also be viewed as a source of human betterment. In essence, chaos is that which prepares the world for all things, both sacred and profane. Further, as its conspicuous etymology reveals, chaos represents the yawning gulf or gap wherein nothing is as yet, but where all civilizational opportunity must inevitably originate. Appropriately, the great German poet Friedrich Hölderlin observed: “There is a desert sacred and chaotic which stands at the roots of the things and which prepares all things.” Even in the pagan ancient world, the Greeks thought of such a desert as logos, which indicates to us that it was presumed to be anything but starkly random or without conceivable merit.

[42]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.

[43]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. Significantly, this once-relevant differentiation has effectively disappeared with the continuing manufacture and spread of nuclear weapons, a dispersion now being exacerbated by an already-nuclear North Korea.

[44]For the authoritative sources of international law, see art. 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice; done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force, Oct. 24, 1945; for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945.  59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, 3 Bevans 1153, 1976 Y.B.U.N., 1052.

[45]In the words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination.  For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.”  See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900).  See also:  The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900); Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774, 781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 184) (per curiam) (Edwards, J. concurring) (dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1003 (1985) (“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.'”).

[46]Regarding Israel, see, by this author, Louis René Beres, at BESA (Israel): Limited Nuclear War and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, https://besacenter.org/limited-nuclear-war-and-israels-national-strategy/. Regarding the United States, American strategic thinkers should inquire whether accepting a visible posture of limited nuclear war would exacerbate enemy nuclear intentions or whether it would 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).

[47] Such fashioning would need to distinguish elements of strategy from elements of doctrine. Military doctrine is not the same as military strategy. Rather, doctrine “sets the stage” or foundation 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.

[48] 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. General Chain (deceased), a close friend of the present author, was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).

[49] 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

[50]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

[51]The prospect of sub-national nuclear foes brings to attention the threat of nuclear terrorism. See, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://search.yahoo.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1410&context=gjicl

[52] See, for example, by this author, Louis René Beres, at Harvard National Security Journal:  https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

[53] In this connection, expressions of decisional error (including mistakes by the United States or Israel) 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).

[54] For much earlier similar warnings, by this author, see his October 1981 article at World Politics (Princeton):  Louis René Beres: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2010149?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[55] 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.

[56] Or “thorough study,” in the language of Sun-Tzu.

[57] The trivializing bifurcation of “attitude” and “preparation” was first invoked by Donald Trump before going off to his June 2018 “Singapore Summit” meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. In that incoherent distinction, the US President had favored the former.

[58] 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).

[59] 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 fully justified and explained in more purely secular terms of analytic understanding.

[60]Here, “everything” includes considerations of law and justice. Appropriately, the critical importance of Reason to legal judgment was prefigured in ancient Israel, which accommodated this concept within a special system of revealed law. Insofar as it displays the evident markings of a foundational Higher Law, Jewish theory of law offers a transcending order revealed by the divine word as interpreted by human Reason.  In the words of Ecclesiastes 32.23, 37.16, 13-14:  “Let reason go before every enterprise and counsel before any action…And let the counsel of thine own heart stand…For a man’s mind is sometimes wont to tell him more than seven watchmen that sit above in a high tower….”

[61] The precise origins of anticipatory self-defense under international 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).

[62]One should think here of the High Lama’s warning in James Hilton’s classic, Lost Horizon: “The storm…this storm that you talk of…. It will be such a one, my son, as the world has not seen before. There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage until every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are leveled in a vast chaos…. The Dark Ages that are to come will cover the whole world is a single pall; there will be neither escape nor sanctuary.”