Though the fall of Syria’s Assad would appear gainful for Israel prima facie, a potential nuclear threat from Iran not only remains, but is plausibly greater than before. One reason for such a counter-intuitive suggestion is that Tehran is now more likely to feel “cornered” in certain crisis circumstances (both foreseeable and unforeseeable) and to act irrationally in extremis. Whatever its specific nuances, any Israel-Iran conflict would drive each adversary to seek “escalation dominance” during crises. For the moment, at least, irrespective of any expectedly-positive Syrian collapse outcomes, such conflict would pit an already-nuclear Israel against a still pre-nuclear Iran. Because all conceivable scenarios would be unprecedented or hard-to-predict, it is uncertain that Israel’s tangible military superiority would signify correlative advantages in decipherable war outcomes. The following “post-Syria” assessment by Professor Louis René Beres suggests a key determinant of Israel’s presumptive bargaining advantage will lie in prompt policy shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” [1] To succeed after the Syrian collapse, such shifts will depend in part on Iranian decision-making rationality [2] and on Israel’s core operational focus. Prima facie, this focus should be fixed on simultaneously preventing an intentional and unintentional nuclear war.
After the apparent benefits to Israel of Syria’s government collapse, the best time to ensure “escalation dominance” and a non-nuclear Iran will still be while its recalcitrant enemy in Tehran is still pre-nuclear. Though Israel’s capacity for missile defense against Iran has already been demonstrated by Jerusalem, [3] even the best active defenses could never offer Israel a reliably long-term survival substitute for apt strategies of offense. [4] Finally, because Iran maintains close security ties with an already-nuclear North Korea, Israel will have to consider that non-Islamist adversary in its “post-Syria” calculations and calibrations. [5] Of related importance, Israel will need to determine how the fall of Russia’s surrogate in Damascus will impact Moscow’s continued support of Tehran.
Plus, ca change: Adapting Israel’s nuclear strategy to a non–nuclear Iran
After the Syrian collapse, Israel’s nuclear strategy will remain relevant to Iranian non-nuclear threats. Determining variously precise levels of strategic relevance, however, would be difficult in periods of active warfare. During such bewildering periods, Israeli determinations would depend significantly on “soft” explanatory factors such as Iranian leadership rationality [6] and the anticipated destructiveness of Iran-inflicted non-nuclear harms. Moreover, this critical dependence would apply to Iranian first-strike attacks, retaliatory attacks and counter-retaliatory attacks.
Variously intersecting issues will need to be considered in Jerusalem. It would be capricious to argue ex nihilo that Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture should necessarily parallel prospective Iranian destructiveness (closely or partially) or that Iranian non-nuclear threats (whether singly by Iran, Iran-based interstate alliances (including North Korea) or Iran-terror-group “hybrids” should be symmetrically countered.
Only one thing is certain: appearances will be unreliable predictors. At first glance, a “symmetry hypothesis” could seem to make perfect sense. But strategic truth is excruciatingly complex and could quickly or incrementally prove indecipherable. Because virtually all Israel-related nuclear scenarios would be sui generis (i.e., without determinable precedent), nothing of any scientific value could be extrapolated. Concerning Israeli nuclear decision-makers’ usable probabilities, all they could reasonably be asked to accept would be competing iterations of subjective belief. [7]
Israel’s core strategies will still need to be informed by refined philosophies of science. In this primary obligation, meaningful assessments of hypotheses concerning “asymmetrical nuclear deterrence” and Israeli national security will need to be founded on formal deductive examinations. This unchallengeable imperative indicates that Israeli intelligence assessments devoid of verifiable empirical content could still be usefully predictive. Even in the midst of future war with Iran, these assessments should be supportable by immutably basic standards of logic-based assessment: internal consistency, thematic interconnectedness and dialectical reasoning.
Iranian threats of biological warfare, biological terrorism, electromagnetic weapons (EMP), or massive conventional attack
A good place for Israeli strategists to accelerate time-urgent investigations would be within the “grey area” of Iranian non-nuclear threats that are unconventional. Most obvious would be credible enemy threats of biological warfare, biological terrorism and/or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks. While non-nuclear by definition, biological warfare attacks could produce grievously injurious or near-existential event outcomes for Israel. Apart from science-based expectations of significant human harms, biological warfare attacks would likely have material impact on public fears and national decisions. Similar impacts could be expected from different scenarios involving EMP ordnance.
Israeli policies of calibrated nuclear reprisal for biological warfare (BW) attacks could exhibit compelling deterrent effectiveness against certain limited types of adversary. Such policies would be inapplicable against any threats issuing from terror groups that function alone, i.e., without recognizable state alignments. In such residual cases, Israel, lacking any operational targets more suitable for nuclear targeting, would need to “fall back” on the more usual arsenals of counter-terrorist methods. In the future, such a tactical retrogression would be required even if the particular terror group involved had revealed believable nuclear threat capabilities. Because such terrorists could identify personal death as a sanctifying expression of religious martyrdom, Israeli planners might have to draw upon continuously mutating psychological assessments. [8]
What about Iranian conventional threats that would involve neither nuclear nor biological hazards, but be massive enough to produce near-existential harms? As a conventional aggressor, Iran could reasonably calculate that Jerusalem would make good on some identifiable portion of its nuclear threats. Here, however, Israel’s nuclear deterrent threat credibility would be dependent on variously antecedent or coinciding shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (the so-called “bomb in the basement”) to “selective nuclear disclosure.” [9]
Winning a struggle for escalation dominance
Additional nuances will require correlative Israeli decisions. As a direct consequence of diminished nuclear ambiguity, Jerusalem should signal its Iranian adversary that Israel would wittingly cross the nuclear retaliatory threshold to prevent any acts of existential or near-existential aggression. Using more expressly military parlance, Israel’s immediate shift to apt forms of selective nuclear disclosure should seek to ensure the Jewish State’s success in expected struggles for “escalation dominance.” [10]
In part, the nuclear deterrence advantages for Israel of moving from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would lie in the signal it could “telegraph” to a still non-nuclear Iran. Such a signal would warn this adversary 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 could improve Israel’s prospects for deterring large-scale conventional attacks with “tailored” nuclear threats. [11] After Syria’s collapse, a not-yet-nuclear Iran might more reasonably fear certain new Israel-Sunni Arab alignments. [12]
Israeli nuclear deterrence benefits against non-nuclear threats could extend to threats of nuclear counter-retaliation. If, for example, Israel initiates the next and more protracted cycle of war with Iran – a survival-based initiative that could represent “anticipatory self-defense” [13] under Westphalian international law [14] – the likelihood of suffering any massive Iranian conventional retaliation might be diminished. In essence, by moving immediately from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure, Jerusalem could upgrade its overall deterrence posture vis-à-vis Iran.
Escalation dominance and inadvertent nuclear war
In protecting itself from deliberate nuclear attack, Israeli strategists should accept certain core assumptions of Iranian enemy rationality. But even if these assumptions were well-founded, there would remain variously attendant dangers of unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. These potentially existential dangers could be produced by enemy hacking operations, computer malfunction (an accidental nuclear war) or decision-making miscalculation (whether by Iran, by Israel, or by both/all parties.) In the portentous third scenario, damaging synergies could arise that would prove extremely difficult or even impossible to halt.
To an unforeseeable extent, the geo-strategic search for “escalation dominance” by all sides to a potentially nuclear conflict would enlarge the risks of an inadvertent nuclear war. These risks would include prospects of a nuclear war by accident and/or decisional miscalculation. The “solution” here could not be to simply wish-away the common search for “escalation dominance” (any such wish would be contrary to the “logic” of balance-of-power world politics), [15] but to manage all prospectively nuclear crises at their lowest possible levels of destructiveness. Wherever feasible, it would be best to avoid such crises altogether, and to maintain in place reliable “circuit breakers” against strategic hacking or technical malfunction.
In the expanding cauldron of Middle Eastern chaos, Israel will need to assess and re-assess its ties to certain Sunni Arab states. Among other things, Israeli nuclear strategists should competently re-assess the Trump-era “Abraham Accords:” [16] Have these agreements given Israel any greater cause for security confidence, or do they enhance “peace” only where there have never been actual adversaries? And have the Abraham Accords hardened the Middle East Sunni-Shia dualism, thereby rendering Iran and its terror-surrogates an even greater threat to Israel?
Though Israel has no regional nuclear adversaries at present, the steady approach of a nuclear Iran [17] could encourage rapid nuclearization among such Sunni Arab states as Saudi Arabia, Egypt or United Arab Emirates (UAE). [18] Following the turnover of Afghanistan to Taliban and other Islamist forces, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and ISIS offshoots in post-Assad Syria and the Pakistan cultivation of improved relations with Iran, non-Arab Pakistan could more likely become a direct adversary of Israel. [19]
Pakistan is an already nuclear Islamic state with substantial ties to China and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan, like Israel, is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or NPT. [20] During any war with Iran, Jerusalem would need to “keep an eye” on Islamabad.
“Everything is very simple in war,” says Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is very difficult.”
“Palestine,” preemption, and potential nuclear threats to Israel
Longer term, salient issues of Israeli nuclear deterrence against non-nuclear threats could be impacted by Palestinian statehood. [21] To wit, while rarely mentioned in the same breath as nuclear war, the creation of Palestine could meaningfully affect Israel’s war preparations against a still non-nuclear Iran. Ipso facto, if Israel’s war against Iran were fought or continued after that enemy state became nuclear, the presence of a Palestinian state could negatively affect the correlation of military forces in the region.
For the moment, a Palestinian state is generally “off the radar.” Nonetheless, it is reasonable to argue that once Palestine came into formal or de jure existence as a sovereign state, [22] any prior shift in Israel’s nuclear strategy from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would reduce Israel’s Jerusalem’s incentive to war against Iran. This expectation could make strategic sense only if Israel were first willing to believe that its nuclear deterrent threat, as a determinable consequence of this shift, was being taken with greater seriousness by Iran.
Several corollary problems will soon need to be considered. First, how would Israel’s leadership actually know that taking its bomb out of the “basement” had improved its nuclear deterrence posture regarding Iran? To an unpredictable extent, the credibility of Jerusalem’s nuclear threats would be contingent upon the variable severity of different provocations. It might prove believable if Israel were to threaten nuclear reprisals for provocations that endanger the physical survival of the state, but it would almost certainly be unbelievable to threaten such reprisals for relatively minor territorial infringements or almost any level of terrorist attack. Whatever analysts might conclude on such questions, because there exists no discoverable frequency of pertinent past events, judgments of probability Israel’s planners could represent only what Oswald Spengler famously called “glorified belief” in The Decline of the West.
There are other problems. To function successfully, Israel’s nuclear deterrent, even after conspicuous removal from the “basement,” would have to appear secure from Iranian preemptive strikes. Accordingly, Israel would need to be especially wary of “decapitation,” of losing the “head” of its military command and control system as a result of Iranian strikes.
If Iran should remain unpersuaded by Jerusalem’s sudden shift away from deliberate nuclear ambiguity, it could initiate non-nuclear strikes that weaken or eviscerate Israel’s order of battle. These strikes could include use of radiation dispersal weapons or electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP). Also to be taken seriously by Jerusalem would be an Iranian and/or surrogate conventional missile attack on Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona.
Imminence of war and Iranian vulnerabilities
In weighing different arguments concerning the effect of Palestine upon Israeli nuclear deterrence, specific attention should be directed toward (1) Israel’s presumptions about the imminence and longevity of unconventional war; and (2) Israel’s long-term expectations regarding Iranian strategic vulnerability. Should Israel’s leaders conclude that the creation of Palestine would make an imminent unconventional war more destructive and that Iranian vulnerability to Israeli strikes would diminish, Jerusalem’s inclination to strike massively against Iran could be increased. To a still-indecipherable extent, Israel’s tactical/operational judgments on striking first would be affected by antecedent decisions on nuclear strategy. Inter alia, these critical decisions would concern “counter value” vs. “counterforce” targeting issues.
If Israel should opt for nuclear deterrence based on an “assured destruction” (“counter value”) strategy, Jerusalem would likely choose a relatively small number of weapons that might be relatively inaccurate. A “counterforce” strategy, on the other hand, would require a larger number of more accurate weapons, ordnance that could destroy even the most hardened enemy targets. To an extent, “going for counterforce” could render Israeli nuclear threats more credible. This conclusion would be based largely on the assumption that because the effects of war-fighting nuclear weapons would be more precise and controlled, they would also be more amenable to actual use. Already, this precise calculation animates Pakistan’s strategy vis-à-vis India.
Other things being equal, openly war-fighting postures of Israeli nuclear deterrence would more likely encourage Israeli defensive strikes. If counterforce targeted nuclear weapons were ever fired, especially in a proliferated regional setting, the resultant escalation could produce extensive counter value nuclear exchanges. Even if such escalations were averted, the “collateral” effects of counterforce detonations could prove devastating.
In making its nuclear choices, Israel will have to confront a paradox. Credible nuclear deterrence, essential to Israeli security and survival in a world made more dangerous by the creation of Palestine, [23] would require “usable” nuclear weapons. If, after all, these weapons were patently inappropriate for any reasonable objective, they would not deter. At the same time, the more usable such nuclear weapons become in order to enhance nuclear deterrence, the more likely it is, at one time or another, they will actually be fired. While this paradox would seem to suggest the rationality of Israel deploying only the least-harmful forms of usable nuclear weapons, the fact that there could be no reliably coordinated agreements with Iran on deployable nuclear weapons points to a markedly different conclusion.
Unless Israel were to calculate that more harmful weapons would produce greater hazards for its own population as well as for target populations, there would exist no tactical benefit to opting for the least injurious nuclear weapons. For the moment, at least, it appears that Israel has rejected any nuclear warfighting strategies of deterrence in favor of a still-implicit counter-value engagement posture. But this could change in response to the pace and direction of any ongoing Israel-Iran war and of Iranian nuclearization.
Israel’s national ‘will’
In view of what is now generally recognized, there is every good reason to assume that Israel’s nuclear arsenal does exist and that Israel’s assorted enemies share this critical assumption. The most critical question about Israel’s nuclear deterrent, however, is not about capability, but will. [24] How likely is it that Israel, after launching non-nuclear strikes against Iranian hard targets would respond to enemy reprisals with a nuclear counter-retaliation?
To answer this core question, Israel’s decision-makers will first have to put themselves into the shoes of pertinent Iranian leaders. Will these leaders calculate that they can afford to retaliate massively against Israel, i.e., that such retaliation would not produce a nuclear counter-retaliation? In asking this question, they will assume, of course, a non-nuclear retaliation against Israel.
Depending upon the way in which the enemy decision-makers interpret Israel’s authoritative perceptions, they will accept or reject the cost-effectiveness of a non-nuclear retaliation against Israel. This means that it is likely in Israel’s best interests to communicate the following strategic assumption to all its existential enemies: Israel could be acting rationally by responding to Iranian non-nuclear reprisals to Israeli attacks with a nuclear counter-retaliation. The plausibility of this assumption would be enhanced if enemy reprisals were to involve chemical, biological or EMP weapons.
All such “glorified belief” [25] calculations assume enemy rationality. In the absence of calculations that compare the costs and benefits of all strategic alternatives, what will happen in the imminent Israel-Iran must remain a matter of conjecture. The prospect of non-rational judgments in such a conflict is always plausible, especially as the influence of Islamist/Jihadist ideology could remain determinative among Iranian decisional elites. Still, various dangers of a nuclear war will obtain even among fully rational adversaries. This includes both deliberate nuclear war and inadvertent unclear war.
Israel’s nuclear deterrent should always remain oriented toward dominating escalation at multiple and intersecting levels of conventional and unconventional enemy threats. For this to work, Israeli strategic planners should continuously bear in mind that intra-war operational success will depend on prior formulations of suitable national doctrine or strategic theory. [26] In the end, the truest forms of Israeli power will have to reflect “a triumph of mind over mind,” not just of “mind over matter.”
The primacy of ‘Power Over Death’
The most persuasive forms of military power on planet earth are not guns, battleships or missiles. Rather, they are believable promises of “life everlasting” or personal immortality. [27] When one finally uncovers what is most utterly important to the vast majority of human beings, this factor is a presumptive power over death. Lamentably, individuals all over the world too often regard the corrosive dynamics of belligerent nationalism as a preferred path to personal immortality. [28]
Why else, in essentially all global conflict (international and intra-national) would each side seek so desperately align with God? Always, the loudest nationalistic claim is manipulatively reassuring: “Fear not,” the citizens and subjects are counseled, “God is on our side.” In our present analytic context, what promise could possibly prove more heartening to Israel’s enemies and more fearsome to Israel?
Ultimately, Israel’s most compelling forms of strategic influence will derive not from high technology weaponry, but from the evident advantages of intellectual power. These always-overriding advantages must be explored and compared according to two very specific but overlapping criteria of assessment: law and strategy. In certain circumstances, these complex expectations might not be congruent or “in synch” with each other, but contradictory. Here, the underlying “mind over mind” challenges to Israel would become excruciatingly difficult; nonetheless, successful decision-making outcomes could still be kept in plain sight and remain sufficiently credible.
What will be required will be a suitably theoretical appreciation of decisional complexity [29] and a corresponding willingness to approach all relevant issues from convergent standpoints of science, [30] intellect and dialectical analysis. [31] In principle, at least, cumulative policy failures could produce broadly existential outcomes. Acknowledging this, Israel’s policy planners and decision–makers should strive to ensure that the beleaguered country’s nuclear deterrent could protect against large-scale non-nuclear attacks. [32]
A first step in reaching this assurance should be the systematic application of formal decision-theory to the “Iran problem,” a deductive task that would (1) not depend on historical precedent or data; and (2) give informed support to Israeli leadership decisions on nuclear deterrence and “escalation dominance.” For Israel, the primary battlefield with Iran should always be viewed as an intellectual rather than territorial arena.
Despite recurrent threats of annihilation, Israel has never issued any expressly nuclear threats to Iran or its proxies. But present times are more strategically uncertain than ever before, and Israel’s optimal path to managing a potentially catastrophic war with Iran should be to keep that threat non-nuclear. It follows that Jerusalem should prepare to use graduated nuclear threats against Iran in extremis. Among other things, this raises the prospect of a “limited nuclear war.” [33]
Immediately, to best ensure that Israeli paths to escalation dominance remain “navigable,” Jerusalem will need to implement far-reaching shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” For the moment, there would appear to be no more promising way to protect the Jewish State from an unconventional and eventually nuclear war with Iran. Such implementation could also serve Israel’s security needs vis-à-vis a nuclear North Korea functioning as Iranian military proxy, and prospectively-nuclear Sunni Arab states such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
Though the rationale for Sunni state nuclearization would be national self-defense from a nearly-nuclear Shiite state adversary in Tehran, this does not mean that these Arab states would become “friends of Israel.” Instead, it could signal the beginnings of a worst-case scenario in which the still-beleaguered Jewish State would face similarly recalcitrant nuclear foes. Summing up all pertinent arguments, [34] there is nothing about the recent collapse of Syria’s al-Assad regime that should diminish Israel’s protection efforts against a still-nuclearizing Iran.
Quite the contrary.
Notes
[1] The author’s first comprehensive examination of this issue was: Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (1986). But see also more recent: Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (2016; 2nd ed., 2018).
[2] Expressions of enemy irrationality could take different or overlapping forms. These include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and the internal dissonance generated by any structure of collective decision-making (i.e., assemblies of pertinent individuals who lack identical value systems and/or whose organizational arrangements impact their willing capacity to act as a single or unitary national decision maker).
[3] See authoritative assessment at BESA (Israel).
[4] Says Carl on Clausewitz: “Defensive warfare does not consist of waiting idly for things to happen. We must wait only if it brings us visible and decisive advantages. That calm before the storm, when the aggressor is gathering new forces for a great blow, is most dangerous for the defender.” (See Principles of War, 1812). A similarly timeless argument was made much earlier by ancient Chinese military thinker Sun-Tzu in The Art of War: “Those who excel at defense bury themselves away below the lowest depths of Earth. Those who excel at offense move from above the greatest heights of Heaven. Thus they are able to preserve themselves and attain completer victory.” See also an article by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Harvard Law School, Harvard National Security Journal.
[5] Such calculations would essentially be dialectical. The term “dialectical” originates from 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 intra-war deterrence strategy vis-à-vis Iran, the following operations should 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] In world politics and law, a state or insurgent-group is determinedly rational to the extent that its leadership always values collective survival more highly than any other conceivable preference or combination of preferences. An insurgent/terrorist force will not always display such a clarifying or “helpful” preference ordering. Pertinent “post-Syria” examples regarding Israel are assorted Sunni jihadists spawned or strengthened by al-Assad’s overthrow. In essence, these coalescing terror groups represent new variants of al-Qaeda and ISIS.
[7] See: Anatol Rapoport, Strategy and Conscience (1964). Says Rapoport, in an early observation that now applies usefully to Israel, Iran and nuclear war avoidance: “Formal decision-theory does not depend on data…. The task of theory is confined to the construction of a deductive apparatus, to be used in deriving logically necessary conclusions from given assumptions.”
[8] See, for example, by this author: Louis René Beres, “Martyrdom and International Law,” Jurist, September 10, 2018; and Louis René Beres, “Religious Extremism and International Legal Norms: Perfidy, Preemption and Irrationality,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 39, No.3., 2007-2008, pp. 709-730.
[9] See article by this author, Louis René Beres, at INSS (Tel Aviv).
[10] 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) would describe 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.
[11] 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. Peres, speaking to a group of Israeli newspaper and magazine editors, then stated publicly: “…give me peace, and we’ll give up the atom. That’s the whole story.” When, later, Olmert offered similarly general but also revelatory remarks, they were described widely (and benignly) as “slips of the tongue.”
[12] It’s now a very delicate regional balance of power for Israel to negotiate. For years, a Salafi/Deobandi (Sunni) Crescent has emerged to challenge the Shiite axis. With the fall of al-Assad in Syria, this axis has been weakened, most obviously Iran. At the same time, Iran will still find support in parts of Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, while Israel will now have to deal with the potentially more problematic Sunni terrorists actively institutionalizing operations in Damascus.
[13] This lawful option can be found in customary international law. The most precise origins of anticipatory self-defense in such authoritative law lie in the Caroline, a case that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally justified certain militarily defensive actions. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that did not require an antecedent attack. Here, the jurisprudential framework permitted a military response to a threat so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” See: Beth M. Polebaum, “National Self-defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 187, 190-91 (1984) (noting that the Caroline case had transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a legal doctrine). Still earlier, see: Hugo Grotius, Of the Causes of War, and First of Self-Defense, and Defense of Our Property, reprinted in 2 Classics of International Law, 168-75 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1925) (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations, reprinted in 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1916) (1758). Also, Samuel Pufendorf, The Two Books on the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, 32 (Frank Gardner Moore., tr., 1927 (1682).
[14] 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.
.[15] The idea of a balance of power – an idea of which the nuclear-age balance of terror is merely a modern variant – has never been more than facile metaphor. Oddly, it has never had anything to do with ascertaining equilibrium. As such, balance is always more-or-less a matter of individual subjective perception. Adversarial states can never be sufficiently confident that identifiable strategic circumstances are actually “balanced” in their favor. In consequence, each side must perpetually fear that it will be left behind, a fear creating ever-wider patterns of world system insecurity and disequilibrium.
[16] See the Abraham Accords Declaration; Also to be considered as complementary in this connection is the Israel-Sudan Normalization Agreement (October 23, 2020) and Israel-Morocco Normalization Agreement (December 10, 2020).
[17] See David Albright and Sarah Burkhard, “IAEA’s December 6th Update on Iran,” Institute for Science and International Security (December 10, 2024). In essence, this technical report “sounds an alarm” that there is taking place “a dangerous increase in Iran’s enrichment activities at the Fordow enrichment plant.”
[18] In principle, the existential dangers posed by Iran could be more-or-less effectively balanced by a new Sunni Arab nuclear capability in Riyadh, Cairo or Abu Dhabi. In that ironic circumstance, Jerusalem might conclude that certain expressions of selective Arab nuclearization would represent a helpful or even benign development.[18] In the longer term view, however, Jerusalem would be forced to decide which particular adversary or pair of adversaries was potentially more intolerable, and whether or not some form of preemption might sometime be required.
[19] Seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, instructs that although international relations (the state of nations) is in the state of nature, it is nonetheless more tolerable than the condition of individual men in nature. This is because, with individual human beings, “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” Now, with the advent of nuclear weapons, there is no reason to believe that the state of nations remains more tolerable. Rather, nuclear weapons are bringing the state of nations closer to the true Hobbesian state of nature. See, also, David P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 207. As with Hobbes, Pufendorf argues that the state of nations is not quite as intolerable as the state of nature between individuals. The state of nations, reasons Pufendorf, “lacks those inconveniences which are attendant upon a pure state of nature….” And similarly, Spinoza suggests “that a commonwealth can guard itself against being subjugated by another, as a man in the state of nature cannot do.” See, A.G. Wernham, ed., The Political Works, Tractatus Politicus, iii, II (Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 295.
[20] See UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)
[21] For much earlier original writings by this author on the prospective impact of a Palestinian state on Israeli nuclear deterrence, see: Louis René Beres, “Security Threats and Effective Remedies: Israel’s Strategic, Tactical and Legal Options,” Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), ACPR Policy Paper No. 102, April 2000, 110 pp; Louis René Beres, “After the `Peace Process:’ Israel, Palestine, and Regional Nuclear War,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 15, No. 2., Winter 1997, pp. 301-335; Louis René Beres, “Limits of Nuclear Deterrence: The Strategic Risks and Dangers to Israel of False Hope,” ARMED FORCES AND SOCIETY, Vol. 23., No. 4., Summer 1997, pp. 539-568; Louis René Beres, “Getting Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: Israel, Intelligence and False Hope,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, Vol. 10., No. 1., Spring 1997, pp. 75-90; Louis René Beres, “On Living in a Bad Neighborhood: The Informed Argument for Israeli Nuclear Weapons,” POLITICAL CROSSROADS, Vol. 5., Nos. 1/2, 1997, pp. 143-157; Louis René Beres, “Facing the Apocalypse: Israel and the `Peace Process,’” BTZEDEK: THE JOURNAL OF RESPONSIBLE JEWISH COMMENTARY (Israel), Vol. 1., No. 3., Fall/Winter 1997, pp. 32-35; Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why Golan Demilitarization Would Not Work,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XXIV, No. 1., Winter 1996, pp. 75-76; Louis René Beres, “Implications of a Palestinian State for Israeli Security and Nuclear War: A Jurisprudential Assessment,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 17., No. 2., 1999, pp. 229-286; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” CROSSROADS: AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIO-POLITICAL JOURNAL, No. 31, 1991, pp. 97-104; Louis René Beres, “The Question of Palestine and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Vol. 62, No. 4., October-December 1991, pp. 451-460; Louis René Beres, “Israel, Palestine and Regional Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF PEACE PROPOSALS, Vol. 22., No. 2., June 1991, pp. 227-234; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State: Implications for Israel’s Security and the Possibility of Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF THE JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR WESTERN DEFENCE (Israel), Vol. 4., Bulletin No, 3., October 1991, pp. 3-10; Louis René Beres, ISRAELI SECURITY AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PSIS Occasional Papers, No. 1/1990, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, 40 pp; and Louis René Beres, “After the Gulf War: Israel, Palestine and the Risk of Nuclear War in the Middle East,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XIX, No. 4., Fall 1991, pp. 48-55.
[22] Contending Palestinian authorities still remain unable to meet variously codified expectations of statehood identified at the 1934 Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. This “Montevideo Convention” is the treaty governing statehood in all applicable international law. Jurisprudentially, Palestine still remains a “Non-Member Observer State.”
[23] The argument that a Palestinian state would be more benign because it could be “demilitarized” is unsupportable in strategic, political or jurisprudential terms. See, by this writer, Louis René Beres, “Why the Allen Plan and Palestinian Demilitarization Could Never Protect Israel,” Israel Defense, 16 July, 2017. Earlier law journal articles on this limitation, co-authored with former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Zalman Shoval, include: Louis René Beres and Zalman Shoval, “Why a Demilitarized Palestinian State Would not Remain Demilitarized: A View Under International Law,” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, Winter 1998, pp. 347-363; and Louis René Beres and Zalman Shoval, “On Demilitarizing a Palestinian `Entity’ and the Golan Heights: An International Law Perspective,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 28, No.5., 1995m pp. 959-972.
[24] The modern philosophic origins of “will” are discoverable in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Friedrich Nietzsche drew just as importantly upon Arthur Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic twentieth-century work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas;1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for Die Neue Rundschau of Berlin on the centenary of Goethe’s death. It is reprinted in Ortega’s anthology, The Dehumanization of Art (1948) and is available from Princeton University Press (1968).
[25] “I believe,” says Oswald Spengler in his magisterial The Decline of the West (1918), “is the one great word against metaphysical fear.”
[26] “Military doctrine” is not the same as “military strategy.” Doctrine “sets the stage” for strategy. It identifies various central beliefs that must subsequently animate any actual “order of battle.” Among other things, military doctrine describes underlying general principles on how a particular war ought to be waged. The reciprocal task for military strategy is to adapt as required in order to best support previously-fashioned military doctrine.
[27] In world politics, says philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, any deeply-felt promise of immortality must be of “transcendent importance.” See his Religion in the Making, 1927.
[28] In the nineteenth century, in his posthumously published lecture on Politics (1896), German historian Heinrich von Treitschke observed: “Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.” Earlier, German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel opined, in his Philosophy of Right (1820), that the state represents “the march of God in the world.” The “deification” of Realpolitik, a transformation from mere principle of action to a sacred end in itself, drew its originating strength from the doctrine of sovereignty advanced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Initially conceived as a principle of internal order, this doctrine underwent a specific metamorphosis, whence it became the formal or justifying rationale for international anarchy – that is, for the global “state of nature.” First established by Jean Bodin as a juristic concept in De Republica (1576), sovereignty came to be regarded as a power absolute and above the law. Understood in terms of modern international relations, this doctrine encouraged the notion that states lie above and beyond any form of legal regulation in their interactions with each other.
[29]At the same time, strategists cannot be allowed to forget, that theoretical fruitfulness must be achieved at some more-or-less tangible costs of “dehumanization.” Accordingly, Goethe reminds in Urfaust, the original Faust fragment: “All theory, dear friend, is grey, And the golden tree of life is green.” Translated by Professor Beres from the German: “Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum.”
[30]In the words of Jose Ortega y’Gasset: “Science, by which I mean the entire body of knowledge about things, whether corporeal or spiritual, is as much a work of imagination as it is of observation…. The latter is not possible without the former.” (Man and Crisis, 1958).
[31] This does not mean trying to account for absolutely every pertinent explanatory variable. Clarifications can be found at “Occam’s Razor” or the “principle of parsimony.” This stipulates preference for the simplest explanation still consistent with scientific method. Regarding current concerns for Israel’s nuclear strategy, it suggests, inter alia, that the country’s military planners not seek to identify and examine every seemingly important variable, but rather to “say the most, with the least.” This presents an important and often neglected cautionary, because all too often, policy-makers and planners mistakenly attempt to be too inclusive. This attempt unwittingly distracts them from forging more efficient and “parsimonious” strategic theories.
[32]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
[33] See article by this author at BESA (Israel), Louis René Beres.
[34] For a coherent and comprehensive summation, see recent article by Yaakov Lapin.
Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University. His twelfth and latest book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published in 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield (2nd ed. 2018). In December 2016, Professor Beres authored a monograph at Tel Aviv University (with a special postscript by retired USA General Barry McCaffrey) titled Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and American National Security. Dr. Beres’ publications have appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard); JURIST; World Politics (Princeton); Yale Global Online (Yale); International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; BESA Perspectives (Israel); INSS Strategic Assessment (Tel Aviv); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College; The War Room (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (West Point); The Jerusalem Post; Oxford University Press; The New York Times; and The Atlantic. In Israel, Professor Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Ariel Sharon, 2003). He was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.
