Selective Nuclear Disclosure and Israel’s Strategic Deterrence

For Israel, a principal component of national strategic policy has always been to keep presumptive military nuclear assets (aka “the bomb”) shrouded in the “basement.” Arguably, at least until now, nuclear ambiguity (sometimes also called “opacity”) has managed to work. Although this unique stance has apparently done little or nothing to deter various ordinary (conventional) aggressions or acts of terror, it has succeeded in keeping the country’s multiple enemies from launching any determinedly existential aggressions. Significantly, such potentially catastrophic aggressions could sometime have been mounted even without nuclear or biological weapons.

Conceptually, the underlying issues are largely about “mass.” Quite plainly, Israel has no meaningful mass. In the foreseeable worst case, this irremediable lack of territory could combine with enemy nuclearization, most plausibly Iran.

Were this ominous fusion ever to take place, Israel could find itself having to consider becoming the first “player” to introduce related nuclear weapons into a rapidly deteriorating conventional conflict. Although normally counter-intuitive (capable analysts usually think exclusively in terms of an enemy first-use scenario), a coordinated conventional attack by certain determined adversaries could sometime compel Jerusalem to choose between accepting wholesale defeat or reluctantly using its related atomic arms.

Jurisprudentially, choosing the latter option in unpredictable circumstances of genuinely imperiled national survival would not necessarily represent a violation of international law. This is because of the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion issued on 8 July 1996. Inter alia, the landmark ICJ ruling concluded that while “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict….,” this orthodox finding might not obtain “in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

Nonetheless, the most urgent considerations in any such future narratives would be broadly operational, and not narrowly jurisprudential. In more expressly military nuclear matters, any national security strategy based exclusively upon sotto voce threats would have distinctly conspicuous limits. Accordingly, Israel’s longstanding policy of deliberate ambiguity will not work indefinitely. Instead, to be reliably deterred, a fully nuclear adversary would require readily verifiable assurances that Israel’s related attribute nuclear weapons were effectively (1) invulnerable and (2) “penetration-capable.” This second expectation means that Israel’s nuclear weapons would not only need to be sufficiently well-protected from any adversarial first-strikes, but that they should also be presumptively able to “get through” any nuclear adversary’s active defenses. There is more. Any adversary’s judgments concerning Israel’s willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons would depend in significant measure upon its useable foreknowledge of these weapons and on their corollary operational capabilities.

There are some pertinent ironies. Looking ahead, certain enemy perceptions of only mega-destructive, high-yield Israeli nuclear weapons could effectively undermine the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrence. Expressed more formally, in such calculations, Israel’s strategic deterrence could sometime vary inversely with the perceived destructiveness of its nuclear arms. While (again) seemingly counter-intuitive, this argument reasonably suggests not only that Israel should have available a purposefully wide range of nuclear retaliatory options, but also that it take proper steps to ensure that any such suitably expansive range be widely and instantly recognizable.

In the future, should an already-nuclear enemy state ever decide to share some of its offensive atomic assets with a surrogate anti-Israel terrorist group (e.g., Iran and Hezbollah), Jerusalem would then need to have already prepared satisfactorily for the nuclear deterrence of assorted non-state adversaries.

In all such still-conceivable scenarios, what will first need to be calculated, among other things, is the precise extent of subtlety with which Israel should be communicating its nuclear positions, intentions, and capabilities to various categories of possible adversaries.

A refined doctrine is necessarily antecedent to any sound nuclear posture. The core rationale for Israeli nuclear disclosure would inhere in the absolutely basic and immutable understanding that nuclear weapons can serve Israel’s security in several very specific ways. Once it is faced with a nuclear fait accompli in Tehran or elsewhere, Israel would need to convince its then-relevant enemy or enemies that it possessed both the will and the capacity to make any intended adversarial nuclear aggression more costly than gainful. By definition, of course, no Israeli move from ambiguity to disclosure could help in the bewildering case of an irrational nuclear enemy, whether Iran or any other recalcitrant foe.

To protect itself against enemy military strikes, particularly those attacks that could potentially carry authentic existential costs, Israel must quickly and correctly exploit every aspect and function of its still opaque nuclear arsenal. In this connection, the success of Israel’s efforts will depend not only upon its carefully selected configuration of “counterforce” and “counter value” operations, but also upon the precise extent to which this important choice was made known in advance to particular enemy states and to certain of their non-state surrogates. Always, before such enemies could be deterred from launching any first strikes against Israel, and before they could be deterred from launching any retaliatory attacks following an Israeli non-nuclear preemption (always a possibility), it will not be enough for them to know only that Israel has “The Bomb.”

It’s time for particulars. Removing the bomb from Israel’s basement could enhance the Jewish State’s strategic deterrence only to the extent that it would heighten enemy perceptions of secure and capable Israeli nuclear forces. Any such calculated end to deliberate ambiguity could also helpfully underscore Israel’s apparent willingness to use these nuclear forces in reprisal for enemy first-strike and/or retaliatory attacks. But would an Israeli move from deliberate nuclear ambiguity or opacity also be purposeful with regard to non-nuclear threats?

Surprisingly, perhaps, this conspicuously important question still lies latent among capable strategic analyses and theories. In other words, it is effectively never really asked. Appropriately, it should immediately become part of a much wider “strategic dialectic.”

Intuitively, the credibility of any Israeli nuclear retaliatory threat would inevitably be greatest where the aggression posed was nuclear. Nonetheless, there are plausibly distinct circumstances in which a determined enemy or coalition of enemies (both state and non-state) might contemplate “only” a devastating conventional first-strike against Israel. Here, the adversarial decision to restrict activity to non-nuclear weapons would stem from a firm assumption that any such purely conventional assault would not likely elicit an Israeli nuclear retaliation.

In these altogether conceivable circumstances, the enemy or coalition of enemies (state and non-state) would already have concluded that any non-nuclear first strike against a nuclear Israel could be entirely rational. This is because, in this complex calculation, Israel’s anticipated retaliation would necessarily stop short of crossing the specifically nuclear threshold. If, on the other hand, the prospective aggressor(s) had previously been made aware that Israel was in possession of a meaningfully wide array of capable nuclear retaliatory forces – capability being expressed in terms of both range and yield – those enemies would more likely be effectively deterred.

Here, as an expectedly welcome consequence of certain incremental and previously-nuanced disclosures, Jerusalem will have signaled its adversaries that it could and would cross the nuclear retaliatory threshold in order to punish any potentially existential national destruction. In more narrowly military parlance, Israel’s actions would then be designed to ensure Jerusalem’s “escalation dominance.” For this particular scenario, the pertinent nuclear deterrence advantages to Israel of implementing particular moves away from deliberate nuclear ambiguity would lie in the presumptively compelling “signal” it had managed to send.

This critical signal would reveal that Israel does not need to retaliate in these circumstances with exclusively massive and/or conspicuously disproportionate nuclear force.