“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.”
Jose Ortega y’ Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958)
For now, the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria has seemingly weakened Iranian influence in world politics. At the same time, this recent turn of events is apt to make Tehran feel both cornered and desperate. Though counterintuitive, it could effectively hasten Iran’s commitment to acquire national nuclear weapons.
What happens next? Because Israel preemptively destroyed Syria’s then-emerging nuclear infrastructure in 2007, there need be no fears that the Assad government collapse will create “loose nukes.” [1] Still, this collapse is occasioning a re-configuration of assorted jihadi terror groups in the region, many with conceptual and operational origins in al-Qaeda or ISIS. Among other things, this development could diminish Israel’s geopolitical position in the “balance-of-power” and render it susceptible to mass casualty warfare with Iran or Turkey. In a worst case scenario, Israel could sometime find itself at war with an already-nuclear Pakistan or North Korea. [2] It was the government in Pyongyang (one that remains closely allied to present-regime Iran) that built the Syrian nuclear facility destroyed by Israel’s 2007 Operation Opera.
In the final analysis, these are manifestly strategic problems for Israel, not narrowly operational or tactical ones. Though it is impossible to predict unprecedented events (in technical terms, a nuclear war of any kind would be unique or sui generis), Jerusalem will still need to forecast pertinent risks as best it can. For now, during any direct intra-war escalations vis-à-vis Iran, Israel would remain the only participant with a capacity for “escalation dominance.” [3]
There are vital nuances and specifics. To make rational use of its conspicuous nuclear advantage, Israel will need to (1) shift from its traditional doctrine [4] of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity;” and (2) clarify its presumptive “Samson Option.” [5] This shift and clarification should be implemented immediately and simultaneously. Prima facie, there are no determinably logical reasons to delay implementation of these interrelated and mutually-reinforcing doctrinal changes.
The Strategic Background
Context will be all-important. Potentially, Israel’s survival vulnerabilities are substantial and unprecedented. Because its Iranian foe is approaching final stages of “going nuclear” and remains openly genocidal toward Israel after Assad (in law, Iran continues to display mens rea or criminal intent), Jerusalem should understand that Iran’s loss of its Syrian surrogate could effectively harden the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.
Understandably, Israel has always had to plan on some form or other of preemption; now, in the midst of protracted uncertainty vis-à-vis Syria/Iran, there would no longer be any need to defend the prerogatives of “anticipatory self-defense.” [6] Though there could remain a residual need to prepare for need for “bolt-from-he-blue” defensive strikes against Iranian nuclear assets and infrastructures, Jerusalem’s principal legal obligations are apt to concern codified and customary constraints of humanitarian international law (the law of war). Inter alia, these constraints reference peremptory [7] principles of “distinction,” “proportionality” [8] and “military necessity.”
For Israel, by any reasonable calculation, facing-off against a still pre-nuclear Iran would be preferable to confronting an already-nuclear foe. While a continuing conventional war between Israel and Iran could produce grave harms for Israel, even the most glaringly injurious harms would pale in comparison to those of a nuclear conflict, [9] whether “symmetrical” (against a nuclear adversary) or “asymmetrical (against a non-nuclear adversary). This is the case even if only “small” (low-yield) nuclear weapons were used by Tehran. [10]
For Israel, the first principle of any Iran strategy should be nuclear war avoidance. In any delineated hierarchy of national military objectives, no other national security goal could arguably come close. Israel’s presumptive nuclear deterrence posture should be oriented to keeping Iran non-nuclear. Significantly, this core obligation has not been reduced by the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
A correlative question should be raised: Even if Israel is able to remain the sole nuclear contestant in its struggle with Iran, to what extent could its asymmetrical nuclear advantage be “leveraged?” To what extent, if any, could Jerusalem use assorted nuclear threats to “balance” a not-yet-nuclear Iran? [11]
To respond, it would be unreasonable to argue that Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture should necessarily parallel prospective enemy destructiveness and/or that non-nuclear enemy threats – whether issued by individual states, alliances of states, terror-group adversaries [12] or state-terror group “hybrids” – should be countered symmetrically. At first glance, a “symmetry hypothesis” would appear to make perfect sense. Still, strategic truth can be bewilderingly complex and prove historically dependent or stubbornly recalcitrant. Also, because virtually all Israel-related nuclear scenarios are without determinable precedent, nothing of any authentic scientific value could be extrapolated.
The Primacy of Intellect
These are “dense” intellectual or analytic matters. In addition to applicable history and law, Israel’s core strategies will need to be informed by appropriate philosophies of science. In this connection, worthwhile assessments of hypotheses concerning “asymmetrical deterrence” and Israeli national security should be founded on formal deductive examination.
Among other things, this fixed imperative indicates that strategic assessments devoid of recognizable empirical content could still be predictive. At the same time, through lacking in any historical foundations, these assessments must be supportable by the stringent logical standards of internal consistency, thematic interconnectedness and dialectical reasoning. [13]
How ought Israel to proceed? A good place for working strategists to operationalize a functional strategic dialectic would be with Iranian threats that are non-nuclear but unconventional. Most obvious would be ascertainably credible threats of chemical warfare, biological warfare and/or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weaponry. While non-nuclear by definition, biological warfare attacks could also produce grievously injurious event outcomes for Israel.
What about Iranian conventional threats that would involve neither nuclear nor biological hazards, but still prospectively massive enough to produce existential or near-existential harms? In such all-too-credible cases, a prospective conventional aggressor in Tehran could reasonably calculate that Jerusalem would make good on at least some of its decipherable nuclear threats. Here, however, Israel’s nuclear deterrent threat credibility would prove dependent on certain antecedent doctrinal shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (the so-called “bomb in the basement”) to “selective nuclear disclosure.” [14]
Why? Any correct answer must hinge on Israel’s operational flexibility. To wit, in the absence of any prior shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity,” Iran might not understand or accept that the State of Israel maintains a sufficiently broad array of graduated nuclear responses. In the absence of such a perceived array, Israeli nuclear deterrence could be more-or-less severely diminished.
Additional nuances will warrant close attention. As a direct consequence of any presumptively diminished nuclear ambiguity, Jerusalem could signal its Iranian adversary that Israel would wittingly cross the nuclear retaliatory threshold to punish all acts of existential or near-existential aggressions. Using more expressly military parlance, Israel’s recommended shift to certain apt forms of nuclear disclosure would intend to ensure the small country’s [15]success in “escalation dominance.” [16]
The nuclear deterrence advantages for Israel of moving from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would lie in the signal it would “telegraph” to certain non-nuclear foes such as Iran. This signal would warn Iran that Jerusalem was not limited to launching retaliations that employ massive and/or disproportionate levels of nuclear force. A still-timely Israeli move from nuclear ambiguity to nuclear disclosure – as long as such a doctrinal move were suitably nuanced and purposefully incremental – could improve Israel’s prospects for deterring large-scale conventional attacks with variously “tailored” nuclear retaliatory threats. [17]
A Complex Strategic Dialectic
There is more. Israeli nuclear deterrence benefits against non-nuclear threats from Iran could extend to threats of nuclear counter-retaliation. If, for example, Israel should sometime consider initiating a non-nuclear defensive first-strike against a pre-nuclear Iran, a preemptive act that could represent “anticipatory self-defense” [18] under Westphalian international law, [19] the likelihood of suffering any massive Iranian conventional retaliation might be diminished. In essence, by following a properly charted path from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure,” Jerusalem could expect to upgrade its overall deterrence posture vis-à-vis both nuclear and non-nuclear perils. [20]
“Everything is very simple in war,” counsels Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but even the simplest thing is difficult.” This generally useful insight remains persuasively valid not only during periods of active military conflict, but also in those unsteady periods of latent hostility that may obtain between still-possible or still-impending wars of aggression. [21]
Until today, Israel’s national nuclear doctrine and posture have remained “deliberately ambiguous.” At the same time, traditional ambiguity was already breached at the highest possible levels by two of Israel’s prime ministers, Shimon Peres on December 22, 1995 and Ehud Olmert on December 11, 2006. Peres, speaking to a group of Israeli newspaper and magazine editors, had affirmed publicly: “…give me peace, and we’ll give up the atom. That’s the whole story.” When Olmert later offered similarly general but revelatory remarks, they were widely but perhaps wrongly interpreted as “slips of the tongue.”
Formal Israeli doctrine should represent the conceptual framework from which a more gainfully pragmatic security posture of “selective nuclear disclosure” could be extrapolated. In all military institutions and traditions, such doctrine would describe the tactical or operational manner in which designated national forces could fight in certain plausible combat situations; the prescribed “order of battle;” and all manner of corollary or contingent operations. Appropriately, the literal definition of “doctrine” derives from Middle English, from the Latin doctrina, which means teaching, learning and instruction.
There is more. The central importance of codified Israeli military doctrine lies not only in the particular way it could animate, unify and optimize national military forces, but also in the efficient manner it could transmit desired “messages” to enemy state Iran, enemy sub-state proxies [22] or state-sub-state “hybrids. Understood in terms of Israel’s strategic nuclear policy, any indiscriminate, across-the-board ambiguity could prove net-injurious to the country’s national security. Though counter-intuitive, this understanding is likely because any truly effective Israeli deterrence and defense stance would call for a military doctrine that is at least partially recognizable by Iran and sub-state jihadi terrorist foes now reconfiguring in post-Assad Syria.
In any routine military planning, having available options for strategic surprise could prove helpful (if not actually prerequisite) to successful combat operations. But successful nuclear deterrence is another matter entirely. In order to persuade would-be adversaries not to strike first – in these circumstances, a manifestly complex effort of dissuasion – projecting too much secrecy could conceivably prove counter-productive.
Deterrence ex ante, not Revenge ex post
In the matter of Israel and existential state enemy Iran, any significant military success must lie in credible deterrence, not actual war-fighting. [23] Examined in terms of ancient Chinese military thought offered by Sun-Tzu in The Art of War, “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” With this worthy dictum in mind, there are times for Israel when successful nuclear deterrence policies would require the deliberate “loosening” of information that formerly had been tightly held. Such information would concern Israel’s capabilities, its intentions or both of these qualities together.
Sometimes, strategic truth will be counterintuitive. There are, after all, circumstances wherein ordinary secrecy could be too much secrecy, and would undermine Israel’s national security. We may recall, in this connection, a popular Cold War I-era movie in which Dr. Strangelove, an “eccentric” strategic advisor to the American president (and name of the film itself) discovers, to his horror, that the existence of America’s “doomsday machine” had not been made known in advance to the Soviets: “The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost,” complains Dr. Strangelove, “if you keep it a secret.”
To have been suitably deterred, the film instructs, the Soviets ought to have been given prior warnings of the “doomsday machine.” This device had been designed to ensure the perceived automaticity of America’s nuclear retaliatory response. Remembering the commonly-held strategic posture then known as MAD, this response would have been instantly recognizable to the Kremlin as “assuredly destructive.”
It follows from all this and also from the general expectations of the laws of war that Israel’s nuclear weapons should remain oriented to deterrence ex ante, not war fighting or revenge ex post. As designated instruments of a law-based system of deterrence, nuclear weapons can succeed only in their protracted non-use. Once they have been employed for any tangible “battle,” deterrence will have failed. [24] And once such weapons were actually used, any traditional meanings of “victory” (especially if both sides were nuclear) would instantly become moot. [25]
Cold War I is over, but Israel’s emerging deterrence relationship to a prospectively nuclear Iran is not reasonably analogous or comparable to the historic American-Soviet “balance-of-terror.” [26] Still, there are crucial elements of “Cold War II” antagonisms that could substantially impact Israel’s nuclear strategic choices concerning Iran. This means that Israel should never construct its nuclear strategic doctrine apart from continuously close assessments of US-Russia-China relations. [27]
Still, there are certain “Cold War I” deterrence lessons to be learned and adapted by Israel during Cold War II. Any unmodified continuance of total nuclear ambiguity concerning Israel’s (a) strategic targeting doctrine; (b) secure basing modes; and/or (c) capacity to penetrate a designated state enemy’s active air defenses could cause a steadily-nuclearizing Iran to underestimate Israel’s retaliatory capacity or resolve. Israel should understand that (1) even an Iranian enemy not yet authentically nuclear (i.e., not yet able to combine rockets or missiles with chain-reaction nuclear explosives) could threaten massive attacks against large cities; and (2) even an Iranian enemy still limited in nuclear ordnance to radiation dispersal weapons could be deterred by Israeli nuclear threats. These Israeli threats would likely benefit from (3) visibly antecedent shifts from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure; and (4) more-or-less coinciding revelations about a “Samson Option.”
This residual option would be oriented toward enhanced nuclear deterrence, not to any prospectively apocalyptic outcomes drawn from the Biblical Book of Judges. In all cases, the Samson Option’s sole function should be to help Israel “live,” not to “let it die with the Philistines.”
As a subsidiary but still-urgent nuclear concern, Israeli planners will need to assess the capability and intentions of Pakistan, an already-nuclear Islamic state and one that has openly adopted a “nuclear war fighting” concept of national nuclear deterrence. Returning to the formative lexicon of Cold War I, this non-Arab Islamic state has already taken a tangible formal shift from “mutual assured destruction” to “nuclear utilization theory.” In the specialized discourse and parlance of orthodox nuclear strategic thinking, this shift represents an overt move from MAD (mutual assured destruction) to NUT (nuclear utilization theory). [28]
There are associated issues of law. By definition, any such shift could have profound legal consequences concerning the presumed likelihood of a nuclear conflict (probability) and the presumed injuriousness of such a conflict (disutility).
Examined during Cold War II, uncertainties surrounding the presumed components of Israel’s nuclear arsenal could lead Iran to reach substantially incorrect conclusions. To some extent, this is because Israel’s willingness to make good on any threatened nuclear retaliation could be interpreted as inversely related to weapon system destructiveness. Ironically, this means that because Israel’s nuclear weapons were presumed “too-destructive, [29] they might not deter.
Certain derivative inferences should now be highlighted. Any continuing Israeli policy of complete nuclear ambiguity could cause Iran (whether already nuclear or merely pre-nuclear) to overestimate the first-strike vulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces. In part, such an overestimation could be the result of too-complete Israeli silence concerning measures of national protection that had been deployed to safeguard Israeli’s nuclear weapons. Such silence, in turn, could be the product of Israel’s perceived alignments with the United States.
In principle, a related problem would reflect Israeli doctrinal obfuscations regarding the country’s defense potential, a silence that could be taken by Iran as indication of inadequate Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). To be maximally useful, certain strengths and capabilities of active defense (interrelated and multi-layered) will need to be revealed, perhaps even in previously unimaginable operational detail. Any such revelations should always be accompanied by information relevat to credible Israeli nuclear deterrence.
Immediately, to best understand the utilitarian and legal content of Israel’s nuclear posture, designated planners should first clarify the core foundations of the state’s nuclear deterrence. These foundations concern prospective Iranian attackers’ perceptions of Israel’s nuclear capability, and its will [30] to use this capability. Potentially, any selective telegraphing of Israel’s strategic nuclear doctrine could enhance Israel’s overall nuclear deterrence posture. Jerusalem would accomplish this enhancement by heightening Iranian perceptions of Israel’s capable nuclear forces and by an announced willingness to use these forces in reprisal for certain designated (first-strike and/or retaliatory) attacks.
The Question of Enemy Rationality
To deter an Iranian attack or an Iranian post-preemption retaliation, [31] Jerusalem must always prevent a rational aggressor, by threat of unacceptably damaging retaliation or counter-retaliation, from deciding to strike. [32] Here, Israel’s national security would be sought by convincing a potential and rational Iranian attacker (irrational state enemies would pose an altogether different problem) that the costs to Tehran of any considered attack would exceed the expected benefits. Assuming that Iran: (1) values national self-preservation most highly; and (2) will always choose rationally between alternative options, Iran will refrain from launching any attack on an Israel that is presumed willing and able to deliver an unacceptably destructive response. It is in such foreseeable circumstances that Israeli nuclear weapons and doctrine would most clearly benefit from “selective nuclear disclosure.”
In particular circumstances, Iran could also be deterred by the prospect of a more limited Israeli attack, one that would be directed only at the Islamic Republic’s national leaders. In usual parlance adopted by military and intelligence communities, this prospect would refer to more-or-less credible threats of “regime targeting.” Whether credible or incredible, such threats could prove severely problematic in legal terms, [33] even when compared to the more tangibly catastrophic consequences of a broad-spectrum military strike.
There would be further nuances and particularities. Always, two factors must combine to communicate Israel’s deterrent credibility: capability and willingness. In terms of military capability, moreover, there are two component parts: payload and delivery system. In brief, it must be successfully communicated to any calculating Iranian attacker that Israel’s firepower and its available means of delivering that firepower are invariably capable of inflicting unacceptable levels of destruction. This means that Israel’s retaliatory or counter-retaliatory forces should always appear sufficiently invulnerable to enemy first-strikes and sufficiently elusive to penetrate the prospective Iranian attacker’s active defenses.
It may not need to be communicated to Iran that such Israeli firepower and delivery vehicles are in any way superior. Deterrence, Israel’s planners should continuously bear in mind, is not about “victory.” The capacity to deter may not be as great as the capacity to “win.” [34] In the Israel-Iran matters here at hand, “winning” should never represent a primary goal for Jerusalem.
For better understanding, Israeli planners could think about North Korea vis-a-vis the United States. In this potentially war-prone dyad of international adversaries, the U.S. is clearly superior to North Korea in all traditional expressions of battle-readiness, but Pyongyang could still bring formidable harms to US armed forces and to certain American civilian populations. Moreover, this is to say nothing about parallel or corollary damages that could be visited by Kim Jung Un on US allies South Korea or Japan.
With Israel’s strategic nuclear forces and doctrine kept “locked” in a metaphoric “basement,” Iran could sometime conclude, rightly or wrongly, that a first-strike attack or post-preemption reprisal against Israel would be rational and cost-effective. But if relevant Israeli nuclear doctrine were selectively made more obvious to Iran – a disclosure concerning payload and/or delivery system capacities – Israel’s nuclear forces could more reliably serve their existential security function.
The second element of strategic doctrine concerning Israel’s required communication of nuclear deterrent credibility is willingness: How may Israel convince a potential Iranian attacker that it possesses the will to deliver an appropriately destructive retaliation and/or counter retaliation? The core answer to this question should be discoverable in Israeli doctrine; that is, in Israel’s demonstrated strength of commitment to carry out such an attack and its operationally “usable” nuclear ordnance.
Here, too, continued across-the-beard ambiguity over nuclear doctrine could wrongfully create the impression of an Israel sans will. Conversely, any doctrinal movement toward some as-yet-undetermined level of disclosure could gainfully heighten the impression that Israel was willing to follow-through on now-explicit nuclear threats. In such calculations, Jerusalem would need to ensure that its perceived “follow through” willingness not be taken by Iran as an incentive to strike first.
Persuasive connections would obtain between any incrementally disclosed Israeli nuclear doctrine/strategy and Iranian perceptions of Israeli nuclear deterrence. One such connection would center on the expected relationship between prospectively greater doctrinal openness and the perceived vulnerability of Israeli nuclear forces to preemptive destruction. Another such connection would concern the relationship between greater doctrinal openness and the perceived capacity of Israel’s nuclear forces to reliably penetrate Iran’s active defenses.
To be deterred by Israel, a newly-nuclear Iran [35] or any other newly-nuclear adversary would need to believe that at least a critical number of Israel’s retaliatory forces could successfully survive enemy first-strikes and that these forces could not be prevented from hitting pre-designated targets in Iran or elsewhere. Regarding the “presumed survivability” component of such adversarial belief, continued or enhanced sea-basing (submarines) by Israel could become a clarifying case in point.
Disclosure and “Friction”
Carefully reasoned and articulated, expanding doctrinal openness or selective nuclear disclosure would represent a prudent option for Israel, at least to the extent that a front-line enemy state like Iran were made aware of Israel’s comprehensive and secure nuclear capabilities. The presumed operational benefits of any such expanding doctrinal openness would accrue from certain deliberate flows of information about dispersion, multiplication and hardening of strategic nuclear weapon systems and certain other technical features of these systems. Most important, doctrinally-controlled and orderly flows of information could serve to remove any lingering Iranian doubts about Israel’s assorted nuclear force capabilities and intentions. Left unchallenged, such doubts could lethally undermine Israeli nuclear deterrence and pertinent war-avoidance expectations of international law.
A key problem in refining Israeli strategic nuclear policy on deliberate ambiguity issues has to do with what Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz famously called “friction.” No military doctrine can ever fully anticipate the actual pace of combat activity, or, as a corollary, the precise reactions of individual human commanders under fire. It follows that Israel’s nuclear doctrine must be encouraged to combine adequate tactical flexibility with selective doctrinal openness. To understand exactly how such seemingly contradictory objectives could best be reconciled in Jerusalem now presents a primary intellectual challenge to Israel’s national military command authority. [36]
In the end, Israeli planners will need to think about paths to nuclear war that include the risks of an inadvertent or accidental conflagration. [37] Though the risks of a deliberate nuclear war involving Israel and Iran could conceivably be small, the Jewish State would still be vulnerable to conflict occasioned by mechanical/electrical/computer malfunction and/or by assorted decisional errors (i.e., leadership miscalculation).
To properly assess the different but intersecting risks between a deliberate nuclear war and an inadvertent or accidental nuclear war should be regarded as overriding in Jerusalem. These risks, including various corollary legal implications, could exist independently of one another and/or could be impacted in various ways by Cold War II alignments. Israel, like the much larger United States (Israel is half the size of America’s Lake Michigan), will need to continuously prepare for bewildering scenarios of cyber-attack and cyber-war. These scenarios will need to be considered together with the evident growth of “digital mercenaries.”
One more core conceptual distinction warrants prominent mention. This distinction references the difference between an inadvertent and an accidental nuclear war. By definition, any accidental nuclear war would need to be inadvertent. Conversely, however, an inadvertent nuclear war would not need to be accidental. False warnings, for example, which could be generated by various types of technical malfunction and/or sparked by third-party hacking/digital mercenary interference, would not be included under causes of an unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. Instead, they would represent cautionary narratives of an accidental nuclear war.
Most critical among the plausible causes of any inadvertent nuclear war would be errors in calculation by one, both or several sides. The most blatant example could involve misjudgments of enemy intent or enemy capacity that would emerge and propagate as any particular crisis escalated. Such consequential misjudgments could stem from an understandably amplified desire by one or several belligerent parties to achieve “escalation dominance.” During any major crisis between Israel and Iran, it would be a mutual desire for “escalation dominance” that could prove unmanageable.
There are variously applicable nuances. In any crisis competition for “escalation dominance,” each side, acting rationally, would strive for calculable advantage without incurring too-great a risk of existential harms. But what would be the operative standards for determining rational striving? Expectedly, there would still be “opportunities” for serious misunderstanding and miscalculation. Naturally, where the risk-taking Israeli and Iranian competitors were no longer rational, all once-reassuring deterrence “bets” would be “off.”
Other causes of inadvertent nuclear war between Israel and Iran could include flawed interpretations of computer-generated nuclear attack warnings; an unequal willingness between adversaries to risk catastrophic war; overconfidence in deterrence and/or defense capabilities on one or both sides; Iranian regime changes; outright revolution or coup d’état in Iran and poorly-conceived pre-delegations of nuclear launch authority by Iran and/or by Israel.
Serious problems of overconfidence could be aggravated by successful tests of a contending nation’s missile-defense operations, whether Israel or Iran. In part, these problems could be encouraged by any too-optimistic assessments of Cold War II alliance guarantees. An example might be intra-crisis judgments in Jerusalem that Washington would stand reliably behind Israel’s every crisis move. Reciprocally, Iran could exaggerate the seriousness and commitment of its own preferred Cold War II guarantor, whether Russia or North Korea. Significantly, North Korea continues to maintain close ties with Tehran and could wittingly act as a pre-nuclear Iran’s nuclear surrogate during intense crises with Israel.
A potential source of inadvertent nuclear war coinciding with Cold War II could be “backfire” effect from strategies of “pretended irrationality.” A rational Iranian enemy of Israel that had managed to convince Jerusalem of its own decisional irrationality could spark an otherwise avoidable Israeli military preemption. Conversely, an Iranian leadership that had begun to take seriously any presumed hint of decisional irrationality in Jerusalem could be frightened into striking first. Regarding this second scenario, it should be remembered that many years back, General Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s Minister of Defense, argued: “Israel must be seen as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”
Though analytic and science-based, Israeli thinkers and planners are facing a unique adversarial “nightmare.” According to the etymologists, the root is niht mare or niht maere, the demon of the night. Dr. Johnson’s dictionary says this corresponds to Nordic mythology – which regarded all nightmares as the product of demons. This would make it a play on or a translation of the Greek ephialtes or the Latin incubus. In all such interpretations of nightmare, the non-rational idea of demonic origin is central and determinative.
But the demons of nuclear strategy and nuclear war take a very different form. For the most part, their mien is not incoherent, but (though often bombastic) still “rational.” If Iran’s leaders are thought to be sinister, it’s not that particular quality that should be most strategically or legally worrisome to Israel. While the state of nations has always been in the “state of nature,” [38] at least since the seventeenth century and the historic Peace of Westphalia (1648), current conditions of nuclear capacity and worldwide anarchy portend a sui generis amalgam of law-violating circumstances. It would not be far-fetched to accept the prospect of incremental or sudden transition from global anarchy to global chaos. [39]
Among other things, the reasons behind such dire portents lie in the indispensability of rational decision-making to nuclear deterrence and the subtly interpenetrating fact that rational decision-making could become subject to corrosive modifications. Though not reassuringly predictable, such impacts upon Iranian enemy rationality could derive from the ever-changing dynamics of Cold War II. An example of what is being described here would be any future nuclear decisions in Tehran based in whole or in part on that enemy state’s subjective interpretations of U.S./Russia/China relations.
Strategic Complexity and Science
With largely unpredictable enlargements of Cold War II in the offing, Israeli decision-makers should systematically prepare for progressively complex war scenarios. To manage these foreseeably challenging events, these leaders will first have to prepare for literally unprecedented levels of world-systemic upheaval. In some cases, these decision-maker calculations would have to acknowledge varying levels of prospective Iranian irrationality. What then?
For Israel, ultimate survival will require durable “victories” of “mind over mind.” [40] In turn, these analytic victories will depend on prior Israeli capacities to more fully understand the context-shaping elements of Cold War II. In principle, at least, such antecedent capacities could lead Israel to consider certain ambitious preemption options. Properly, any final decisions on such residual options would be based upon (a) expectations of Iranian rationality or irrationality; (b) expected likelihood of Iranian first-strikes; (c) expected costs of Iranian first-strikes; (d) expected schedule of Iranian nuclear or biological weapons deployments; (e) expected efficiencies of Iranian active defenses over time; (f) expected efficiencies of Israel’s active defenses over time; (g) expected efficiencies of Israeli hard-target counterforce operations over time; (h) expected reactions of still-unaffected regional enemies; and (i) expected US, Russian, Chinese and world community reactions to Israeli preemptions. [41]
Israel’s “ace-in-the-hole” regarding direct military aggression from Iran lies in nuclear deterrence and in its correlative capacity to achieve “escalation dominance” without eliciting uncontrollable conventional war or ultimately a nuclear war. This deterrence objective could represent an existential challenge for Israel even before the Islamic Republic of Iran became an authentic nuclear power. At some point, a still pre-nuclear Iran, together with various state and sub-state allies/proxies, could push Israel toward the escalatory brink, thus leaving Jerusalem with just a binary choice between advantaged nuclear warfare and outright military capitulation. The only way for Jerusalem to prevent or modify such an intolerable choice would be to upgrade its life-saving nuclear deterrent from the specific standpoints of “selective nuclear disclosure” and a plausible “Samson Option.”
In this matter of national self-preservation, confronting a still pre-nuclear Iran by conventional war would be much more reasonable. Optimally, any such necessary war would be initiated by Iran and would render unnecessary any “bolt-from-the-blue” Israeli preemption. In a next-to-worst case scenario, Israel would be forced to strike certain hard military targets in Iran as a first move of war, and not as a reprisal. A worst-case scenario would allow Iran to “become nuclear” and eliminate Israel’s pre-existing survival advantage.
In circumstances where competitive risk-taking could no longer be undertaken by Israel with a strategic advantage, Jerusalem could no longer count on maintaining intra-crisis “escalation dominance.” While it is plausible that Israel would still display nuclear superiority vis-à-vis Iran, such a seemingly advantaged position would remain subject to a broad variety of enemy misperceptions and miscalculations. Though Jerusalem could incrementally leverage its then-apparent nuclear superiority vis-a-vis Iran, that capacity would be contingent on (1) prior Israeli shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure;” and (2) purposeful clarifications of Israel’s presumptive “Samson Option.”
In essence, the collapse of the Assad regime in Damascus did not remove or diminish Iran’s determination to become a nuclear power. For Israel, which should always view its nuclear doctrine and strategy as interrelated processes of continuous refinement, this obligates a recognizable counter-determination to block Iran from its uninterrupted strategic objective. Accordingly, Jerusalem will need to deal with largely-unpredictable reconfigurations of jihadi terror groups in Syria and Iran and stay committed to its dual Iran policy of credible nuclear deterrence and incremental preemptive action. Overall, especially because any authentic nuclear war would represent a first-time event, this policy should draw on the vision of science advanced by Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y’Gasset more than a half century ago:
This timeless vision includes “imagination” as well as “observation.” [42]
Notes
[1] See by this writer at The Jerusalem Post, January 7, 2025: Louis René Beres, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-836335 Still, there is good reason to be concerned that Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons could fall into the hands of newly-configured Islamist terrorists, most plausibly held together by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). See, at BESA (Israel): https://besacenter.org/is-the-moment-at-hand-to-rid-syria-of-its-chemical-weapons/
[2] Under international law, the question of whether or not a formal “state of war” exists between states is generally ambiguous. Traditionally, it was held that a declaration of war was necessary before any true state of war could be said to exist. Hugo Grotius divided wars into declared wars, which were legal, and undeclared wars, which were not. (See Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, Chapters. III, IV, and XI.) By the start of the twentieth century, the position that war obtains only after a conclusive declaration of war by one of the parties was codified by Hague Convention III. This treaty stipulated that hostilities must never commence without a “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. (See Hague Convention III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, 1907, 3 NRGT, 3 series, 437, article 1.) Currently, declarations of war may be tantamount to admissions of international criminality, because of the express criminalization of aggression by authoritative international law, and it could therefore represent a clear jurisprudential absurdity to tie any true state of war to formal and prior declarations of belligerency. It follows that a state of war may now exist without any formal declarations, but only if there exists an actual armed conflict between two or more states, and/or at least one of these affected states considers itself “at war.”
[3] 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/
[4] “Doctrine” is not the same as “military strategy.” Doctrine “sets the stage” for strategy. It identifies various central beliefs that must subsequently animate any actual “order of battle.” Among other things, military doctrine describes underlying general principles on how a particular war ought to be waged. The reciprocal task for military strategy is to adapt as required in order to best support previously-fashioned military doctrine.
[5] The point of this “Option” is not to suggest that Israel is prepared to “die with the Philistines,” but to indicate that the Jewish State’s nuclear capacities could operate at the highest levels of military nuclear engagement.
[6] Certain origins of pertinent legal considerations would have their conceptual roots in ancient Israel. According to Grotius, citing to Deuteronomy in The Law of Prize and Booty, the Israelites were exempted from the issuance of warning announcements when dealing with previous enemies (what we might reference today as an ongoing or protracted war, precisely the condition that currently obtains between Israel and Iran.) The Israelites, recounts Grotius, had been commanded by God to “refrain from making an armed attack against any people without first inviting that people, by formal notification, to establish peaceful relations ….” “Yet,” he continues, “the Israelites… thought that this prohibition was inapplicable to many of the Canaanite tribes, inasmuch as they themselves had previously been attacked in war by the Canaanites.” Hence,” says Grotius, “we arrive at the following deduction: “Once the formality of rerum repetitio [request of restitution or reparations] has been observed, and a decree on the case in question has been issued, no further proclamation or sentence is required for the establishment of that right which arises in the actual process of execution. For in such circumstances [and this is especially relevant to the modern State of Israel] one is not undertaking a new war but merely carrying forward a war already undertaken.” The plain fact that justice has formerly been demanded and not obtained, suffices to justify a return to life-preserving warfare. Earlier, Roman Stoic philosopher Cicero argued similarly in The Laws: “The safety of the people shall always be the highest law.”
[7] According to Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: “…a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.” See: Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Done at Vienna, May 23, 1969. Entered into force, Jan. 27, 1980. U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 39/27 at 289 (1969), 1155 U.N.T.S. 331, reprinted in 8 I.L.M. 679 (1969).
[8] See by this author, Louis René Beres, at JURIST: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/05/louis-rene-beres-israel-hamas-war/
[9] It should be understood that a war against a pre-nuclear Iran could still involve the use of Israeli nuclear weapons and/or Iranian resort to radiation dispersal weapons. Moreover, at some undeterminable point, Iran could fire conventional missiles against Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona or (at least in principle) engage an already-nuclear North Korean ally to act tangibly on its behalf
[10] This brings to mind the idea of a “limited nuclear war.” On this idea, see by this author, Louis René Beres, “Limited Nuclear War and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” BESA (Israel): https://besacenter.org/limited-nuclear-war-and-israels-national-strategy/
[11] Historically, the idea of a balance of power – an idea of which the nuclear-age balance of terror is a current variant – has never been more than a facile metaphor. In fact, it has never had anything to do with ascertaining any true equilibrium. As such a balance is always a matter of individual and more-or-less subjective perceptions, adversary states can never be sufficiently confident that identifiable strategic circumstances are “balanced” in their favor. In consequence, each side perpetually fears that it will be left behind, and the continual search for balance produces ever- wider patterns of insecurity and disequilibrium.
[12] Following the post-Assad weakening of Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas, Yemen-based Shiite Houthi have become more actively important Iranian surrogates against Israel.
[13]. 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.
[14] See by this author, Louis René Beres, at INSS (Tel Aviv): file:///C:/Users/lberes/AppData/Local/Temp/adkan17_3ENG%20(3)_Beres.pdf
[15] Israel is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan.
[16] Embedded in attempts to achieve this success would be variously credible threats of “assured destruction.” This term references ability to inflict “unacceptable damage” after absorbing an attacker’s first strike. In the traditional nuclear lexicon, mutual assured destruction (MAD) describes a stand-off condition in which an assured destruction capacity is possessed by both (or all) opposing sides. Counterforce strategies would be those which target only an adversary’s strategic military facilities and supporting infrastructure. Such strategies could be dangerous not only because of the “collateral damage” they might produce, but also because they could heighten the likelihood of first-strike attacks. Collateral damage would refer to harms done to human and non-human resources as a consequence of strategic strikes directed at enemy forces or military facilities. Even such “unintended” damage could quickly involve large numbers of casualties/fatalities.
[17] In effect, Israel’s posture of deliberate nuclear ambiguity was already breached by two of the country’s prime ministers, first, by Shimon Peres, on December 22, 1995, and second, by Ehud Olmert, on December 11, 2006. Then, Peres, speaking to a group of Israeli newspaper and magazine editors, stated publicly: “…give me peace, and we’ll give up the atom. That’s the whole story.” When, later, Olmert offered similarly general but still revelatory remarks, they were described widely as “slips of the tongue.”
[18] The most precise origins of anticipatory self-defense in authoritative law lie in the Caroline, a case that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally justified certain militarily defensive actions. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that did not require an antecedent attack. Here, the jurisprudential framework permitted a military response to a threat so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” See: Beth M. Polebaum, “National Self-defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 187, 190-91 (1984) (noting that the Caroline case had transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a legal doctrine). Still earlier, see: Hugo Grotius, Of the Causes of War, and First of Self-Defense, and Defense of Our Property, reprinted in 2 Classics of International Law, 168-75 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1925) (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations, reprinted in 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1916) (1758). Also, Samuel Pufendorf, The Two Books on the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, 32 (Frank Gardner Moore., tr., 1927 (1682).
[19] The Peace of Westphalia (1648) concluded the Thirty Years War and created the still-existing state system. See: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119. Together, these two treaties comprise the “Peace of Westphalia.” Incontestably, since this Peace put an end to the last of the major religious wars sparked by the Reformation, the “state system” has been ridden with evident strife and recurrent calamity. As a global “state of nature” characterized by interminable “war of all against all” (a bellum omnium contra omnes), the conspicuous legacy of Westphalia has proven disappointing and frightful.
[20] In this connection, conspicuous preparations for nuclear war fighting could be conceived not as distinct alternatives to nuclear deterrence, but as essential and even integral components of nuclear deterrence. Earlier, Colin Gray, reasoning about U.S.-Soviet nuclear relations, argued that a vital connection exists between “likely net prowess in war and the quality of pre-war deterrent effect.” (See: Colin Gray, National Style in Strategy: The American Example,” INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, 6, No. 2, fall 1981, p. 35.) Elsewhere, in a published debate with this writer, Gray said essentially the same thing: “Fortunately, there is every reason to believe that probable high proficiency in war-waging yields optimum deterrent effect.” (See Gray, “Presidential Directive 59: Flawed but Useful,” PARAMETERS, 11, No. 1, March 1981, p. 34. Gray was responding directly to Professor Louis René Beres, “Presidential Directive 59: A Critical Assessment,” PARAMETERS, March 1981, pp. 19 – 28.).
[21] For the specific crime of aggression under international law, see: Resolution on the Definition of Aggression, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, 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).
[22] Explicit applications of the law of war to insurgent combatants’ dates to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. As more than codified treaties and conventions must comprise the law of war, the obligations of jus in bello (justice in war) are part of “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations” (from Art. 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice) and thereby bind all categories of belligerents. (See Statute of the International Court of Justice, art. 38, June 29, 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. 993). Further, Hague Convention IV of 1907 declares that even in the absence of a precisely published set of guidelines regarding “unforeseen cases,” the operative pre-conventional sources of humanitarian international law obtain and still govern all belligerency. The related Martens Clause is included in the Preamble of the 1899 Hague Conventions, International Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War by Land, July 29, 1899, 187 Consol. T.S. 429, 430.
[23] This was a major conclusion in this author’s Project Daniel Report (2003) to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It was titled Israel’s Strategic Future. http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.htm
[24] There could also be attendant and possibly unprecedented crimes of war. Moreover, criminal responsibility of leaders under international law is not limited to direct personal action or limited by official position. On this peremptory 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 (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 is also 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 Stat. 1544, E.A.S. No. 472, 82 U.N.T.S. 279, art. 7.
[25] On “victory” in a nuclear war, see, by this author: Louis René Beres, https://blog.oup.com/2016/04/war-political-victories/ See also: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/28931
[26] Recalling the Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman, Cicero, in The Letters to His Friends: “For what can be done against force, without force?” During the nuclear age, the traditional term, “balance of power” has sometimes been replaced with a more technologically appropriate “balance of terror.” For the conceptual origins of this historic replacement, see: Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 37, No.2., January 1959, pp. 211-234.
[27] In this connection, Jerusalem must always ensure that it does not enter into any legal agreements that might threaten its overall physical survival. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, wrote about this core obligation as generic for all nations. Writing in his Opinion on the French Treaties (April 28, 1793), Jefferson opined: “The nation itself, bound necessarily to whatever it’s preservation and safety require, cannot enter into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations.” See: Merrill D. Peterson, The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Monticello Monograph Series, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1993, p. 115.
[28] Several of this author’s earlier books deal expressly with the pertinent distinctions. See, for example, by Louis René Beres: The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis; Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics; Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order; Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy; Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy; and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and US National Security (Tel Aviv), a 2016 monograph authored by Professor Beres (with special postscript by General (USA/ret.) Barry McCaffrey.
[29] The underlying idea here of some palpable apocalypse seems to have been born in ancient Iran (Persia), specifically, with the Manichaeism of the Zoroastrians. Interestingly, at least one of these documents, The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, found in a Qumran cave, is a comprehensive description of Jewish military tactics and regulations at the end of the Second Commonwealth. In essence, the “Sons of Light” were expected to prevail in battle against the “Sons of Darkness” before the “end of days,” and the later fight at Masada was widely interpreted as an apocalyptic struggle between a saintly few and the wicked many.
[30]In modern philosophy, origins of the term “will” lie prominently 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 even more importantly upon Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas (1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s 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).
[31] Regarding preemption, the obvious Israeli precedents for any such defensive moves would be Operation Opera directed against the Osiraq (Iraqi) nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981, and, later (though lesser known) Operation Orchard against Syria on September 6, 2007. In April 2011, the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that he bombed Syrian site in the Deir ez-Zoe region of Syria had indeed been a developing nuclear reactor. Both preemptions were lawful assertions of Israel’s “Begin Doctrine.”
[32] Expressions of decisional irrationality could take different or overlapping forms. These include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and the internal dissonance generated by any structure of collective decision-making (i.e., assemblies of pertinent individuals who lack identical value systems and/or whose organizational arrangements impact their willing capacity to act as a single or unitary national decision maker).
[33] Such legal difficulties could bring up the authoritative “Nuremberg Principles.” In this connection, the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal were affirmed by the U.N. General Assembly as AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL. Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 11, 1946. U.N.G.A. Res. 95 (I), U.N. Doc. A/236 (1946), at 1144. This AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL (1946) was followed by General Assembly Resolution 177 (II), adopted November 21, 1947, directing the U.N. International Law Commission to “(a) Formulate the principles of international law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the judgment of the Tribunal, and (b) Prepare a draft code of offenses against the peace and security of mankind….” (See U.N. Doc. A/519, p. 112). The principles formulated are known as the PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED IN THE CHARTER AND JUDGMENT OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL. Report of the International Law Commission, 2nd session, 1950, U.N. G.A.O.R. 5th session, Supp. No. 12, A/1316, p. 11.
[34] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Jurist: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/06/louis-beres-winning-war/
[35]Regarding this issue, see Louis René Beres and John T. Chain (General/USAF/ret.), “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran”? The Atlantic, August, 2012; and also: Professor Louis René Beres and General Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[36] “It must not be forgotten,” writes French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in “The New Spirit and the Poets” (1917), “that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.”
[37] 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).
[38] Says Thomas Hobbes: “But though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times, Kings and Persons of Sovereign Authority, because of their Independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators, having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on one another…(Leviathan).
[39]Nonetheless, whether it is described in the Old Testament or in other sources of ancient thought, chaos is potentially as much a source of human betterment as one of disarray and declension. Here, chaos is that which prepares the world for all things, both sacred and profane. And as its conspicuous etymology reveals, chaos represents that yawning gulf or gap wherein nothing is as yet, but where all civilizational opportunity must inevitably originate. Appropriately, the great German poet 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 should indicate to us that it was presumed to be anything but random or without merit.
[40] For this term I am indebted to F.E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (1957)
[41] For early scholarly commentary by this author on anticipatory self-defense under international law, with special reference to Israel, see: Louis René Beres and (COL./IDF/Res.) Yoash Tsiddon Chatto, “Reconsidering Israel’s Destruction of Iraq’s Osiraq Nuclear Reactor,” TEMPLE INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 9., No. 2., 1995, pp. 437 – 449; Louis René Beres, “Preserving the Third Temple: Israel’s Right of Anticipatory Self-Defense Under International Law,” VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 26, No. 1., April 1993, pp. 111- 148; Louis René Beres, “After the Gulf War: Israel, Preemption and Anticipatory Self-Defense,” HOUSTON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 13, No. 2., Spring 1991, pp. 259 – 280; Louis René Beres, “Striking `First:’ Israel’s Post-Gulf War Options Under International Law,” LOYOLA OF LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 14, Nov. 1991, No. 1., pp. 1 – 24; Louis René Beres, “Israel and Anticipatory Self-Defense,” ARIZONA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW, Vol. 8, 1991, pp. 89 – 99; and Louis René Beres, “After the SCUD Attacks: Israel, `Palestine,’ and Anticipatory Self-Defense,” EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW, Vol. 6, No. 1., Spring 1992, pp. 71 – 104. For an examination of assassination as a permissible form of anticipatory self-defense by Israel, see, Louis René Beres, “On Assassination as Anticipatory Self-Defense: The Case of Israel,” HOFSTRA LAW REVIEW, Vol. 20, No. 2., Winter 1991, pp. 321 – 340. For more general assessments of assassination as anticipatory self-defense under international law by this author, see: Louis René Beres, “The Permissibility of State-Sponsored Assassination During Peace and War,” TEMPLE INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1991, pp. 231 – 249; and Louis René Beres, “Victims and Executioners: Atrocity, Assassination and International Law,” CAMBRIDGE REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Winter/Spring, 1993.
[42] In principle, the ideal vision would be one that transcends any world system based on belligerent Realpolitik – a vision founded on notions of “human oneness.” As we may ultimately learn from ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “”You are a citizen of the universe.” A broader idea of universality or “oneness” followed the death of Alexander in 322 BCE, and 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 considered as a part rather than whole. Observes 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, the idea of human oneness can be justified and explained in more expressly secular terms of scientific understanding.
Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971). He is the author of many major books and monographs dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (Westview,1979); Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (The University of Chicago Press,1980); Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1983); and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth and latest 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 In December 2016, a monograph was published at Tel Aviv University (with a special postscript by retired USA General Barry McCaffrey) titled: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and America’s National Security https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf
Professor Beres’ articles have appeared in US News & World Report; The New York Times; Israel National News; The Hill; The Atlantic; JURIST; The Jerusalem Post; Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); BESA (Israel); Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Yale Global Online; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Security (Harvard University); Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs (Israel); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (West Point); Small Wars Journal; World Politics (Princeton); The Brown Journal of World Affairs; INSS Strategic Assessment (Israel); Oxford University Press; and International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. He has lectured widely on law and strategy issues at various United States and Israeli military/intelligence institutions, including the IDF National Security College; INSS (Tel Aviv) and BESA.
Dr. Louis René Beres was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.
