Prof. Louis René Beres

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LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. His twelfth and most recent book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (2016) (2nd ed., 2018) https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy Some of his principal strategic writings have appeared in Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard University); Yale Global Online (Yale University); Oxford University Press (Oxford University); Oxford Yearbook of International Law (Oxford University Press); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); Special Warfare (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon); World Politics (Princeton); INSS (The Institute for National Security Studies)(Tel Aviv); Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); BESA Perspectives (Israel); International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; The Atlantic; The New York Times and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Exclusive articles:

Israel And “Last Things”

Examined historically, war and terror against Israel are better explained by eschatology (the study of “last things”) than by enemy hopes for “self-defense” or...

Could Israeli Nuclear Deterrence Protect Against Iranian Non-Nuclear Attacks?

Abstract: As Israel approaches a full-scale war with Iran, its nuclear weapons and strategy are generally presumed irrelevant to deterring that state’s non-nuclear threats....

Nuclear Command Authority and the U.S. Presidential Election

“The terrible ifs accumulate.” Winston Churchill An Overlooked “If” Until the eleventh hour of his incoherent presidency, Donald J. Trump held effectively unchecked nuclear command authority....

Impending War with Iran: Israel’s Lawful Opportunity to Prevent Iranian Nuclear Weapons

Abstract: Israel’s “no choice” Gaza War has been fought primarily against sub-state terrorist adversary Hamas. In the coming weeks, however, a threatened “retaliation” from...

Still Calculable Connections: Israeli Nuclear Deterrence and War with Iran

“The worst does sometimes happen.”-Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss Playwright The author, Emeritus Professor Louis René Beres, has been lecturing and publishing for more than fifty years...

Nuclear War and Anti-Reason

 “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.” -Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in...

A Second Trump Presidency? Expect a Three-Pronged Assault on Law, Justice and National Security

“I hold despicable, and always have…anyone who puts his own popularity before his country.” -Sophocles, Antigone, Speech of Creon, King of Thebes It’s high time...

Safeguarding America’s Nuclear Command Authority: Security Obligations in an Absurd World Order

Credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it is absurd.”-Tertullian It should be inconceivable. A previous American president, law-breaking and manipulative in his every significant policy...

“Wanting To Know Nothing of Truth”: The Origins of Trump-Inflicted Harms

"The enemy is the unphilosophical spirit which knows nothing and wants to know nothing of truth." -Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time...

Israel And Hamas: A Legal Assessment of the Gaza War

“An intentional act of injustice is an injury. A Nation has therefore the right to punish it…. This right to resist injustice is derived...

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