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Louis René Beres

Louis René Beres
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Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is the author of many books, monographs, and scholarly articles dealing with various legal and military aspects of  nuclear strategy. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). Over the past years, he has published extensively on nuclear warfare issues in the Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Yale Global Online (Yale University); JURIST; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; The Atlantic; The Washington Times; US News & World Report; Special Warfare (Pentagon); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); The New York Times; The Hill; The Jerusalem Post; and Oxford University Press. His twelfth book,  published in 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield, is titled: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy.

 

Following The “Magicians”: Origins of America’s Political Defilement

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Louis René Beres
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“The masses have followed the magicians again and again…Socrates and Plato were the first to take up the struggle against them in a clear awareness of what was at stake.”-Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in...
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© WikiMedia (Israel Defense Forces)

Israel, Preemption and Anticipatory Self-Defense

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Louis René Beres
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For Israel, core issues surrounding Iran’s still-accelerating nuclear weapons program have been strategic and political, rather than legal. Nonetheless, if Israel should ever decide that it no longer has any reasonable alternative to launching a...
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To Prevent a Nuclear War: America’s Overriding Policy Imperative

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Louis René Beres
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Abstract: Though current US defense policy centers on matters of conventional war and terrorism, other problems remain more existentially worrisome. Most conspicuous in this regard are variously intersecting issues of nuclear war avoidance. The following article examines...
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Murderous Immortalities: Taliban Victory, Palestinian “Resistance” and Jihadi Terrorism

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Louis René Beres
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“An immortal person is a contradiction in terms.”-Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death and Time (2000) Taliban Victory and Jihadi Terror: Strategic and Legal Connections At the surface, there are no clear connections between Taliban victory in Afghanistan and wider...
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After Afghanistan: Taliban Power, Palestinian Terrorism and Islamist Sacrifice

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Louis René Beres
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“History is an illustrious war against death.” – José Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958) Afghanistan and “Palestine”: Newly Emerging Linkages At first glance, there are no obvious connections between the Taliban victory over the United States in Afghanistan and...
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North Korea’s Nuclear Shadow: A Worrisome Expansion

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Louis René Beres
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Abstract: The nuclear news from North Korea remains clear and threatening.  Ignoring both political warnings and legal prohibitions, Kim Jong Un has continued testing shorter range weapons that could imperil U.S. allies South Korea and...
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Presidential Irrationality and Wrongdoing in US Nuclear Command Authority

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Louis René Beres
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Abstract: In post-World War II memory, no greater political danger has confronted the United States than the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Endowed with nuclear command authority, this unstable and openly law-violating American leader...
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Can Israeli Nuclear Threats Protect Against Non-Nuclear Attacks?

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Louis René Beres
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Abstract: It is widely assumed that a state’s nuclear weapons and strategy are irrelevant to non-nuclear threats. A contrary argument is advanced by Louis René Beres with particular reference to the State of Israel. Urging...
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“God loves from Whole to Part,” proclaims Alexander Pope, “but human soul must rise from Individual to the Whole.” In the end, any viable system of world politics must acknowledge the determinative connections between Individual and Whole. Only by finally grasping this critical nexus can scholars and policy-makers craft a durable path to species survival. In essence, Afghanistan is a warning. The crisis in that beleaguered country has much deeper meanings than what is currently under discussion by “experts.” Though the questions being debated are enormously important in their own right – (e.g., What are corollary prospects for US leadership in the world? What are the implications for expanded Islamist insurgencies? What are the expected consequences for Palestinian statehood and Middle East peace? How will the Afghanistan crisis impact Iranian nuclear aspirations and related regional developments?) – there are also less obvious but more fundamental issues. Afghanistan represents both the whole world in microcosm (war; religious conflict; irrational prejudice; bitter rancor) and the individual human being in macrocosm (non-rational; death-focused; anti-intellectual; superstition-bound; willfully self-destructive). It’s a curious but telling juxtaposition. It is the second set of issues, the “macrocosm” set framed as metaphor, that ought to most concern thinkers and planners. “Why,” we should now inquire, “do entire nation-states put themselves in harm’s way again and again, sometimes in the path of plainly existential harms”? “Why do countries that may optimally access the incomparable benefits of science and education fall back again and again upon myth, ignorance and aggression?” “Why do human populations continue to favor exterminatory paths in national and international affairs over always available mechanisms of collective security and dignified peacemaking?” Sigmund Freud has a precise answer: “Wars will only be prevented with certainty if mankind unites in setting up a central authority to which the right of giving judgment upon all shall be handed over.” Still, virtually no one is listening. In The Law of Nations (1758), classical Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel observes: “The first general law, which is to be found in the very end of the society of Nations, is that each Nation should contribute as far as it can to the happiness and advancement of other Nations.” Though a “general law,” this rationality-based imperative is quite generally disregarded. Why? Afghanistan is metaphor; it should be studied accordingly. Now, Afghanistan provides scholars with a real-world and real-time “laboratory.” What this laboratory can reveal to us is a visceral and overriding human death fear. Among other things, this utterly primal terror splits all human civilizations into camps of “us” and “them,” a categorization that can allow the slaughter of certain designated “others” to ensure one’s own immortality. Ultimately, to recall a telling lyric by Bob Dylan, what matters most is to have “God on our side.” This meaning expressed the unhidden message of both “Deutschland uber alles” (“Germany over all”) and “America First.” It’s time to look beyond the daily news. Unless we finally take tangible steps to move toward an organic planetary civilization – one based on the central truth of human “oneness” – there will be no secure civilization at all. We are all still at the beginning. Until now, we humans have consistently managed to miss what is most important on planet earth. The truth here is simple and straightforward: There exists a latent but determinative “oneness” to all world politics. But why have we made ourselves existentially vulnerable? The correct answer may be summarized as follows: We humans display a continuous determination to seek personal identity in belonging, in membership. There is more. Human beings generally fear solitude or “aloneness” more than anything else on earth, sometimes more than death. Amid the palpably growing chaos that is already stampeding across Afghanistan, long-suffering individuals still abide unswerving loyalties to the incontestable claims of “tribe.” Always, everywhere, people more-or-less desperate “to belong” wittingly subordinate themselves to predatory expectations of nation, class and faith. Too often, of course, such subordination carries with it a corrosive celebration of “martyrdom.” Recalling the marooned English schoolboys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, we may be reminded that the veneer of civilization is razor thin. As revealed so conspicuously within the dynamics of conflict in Afghanistan, huge swaths of humankind remain fiercely dedicated to ancient practices of “sacrifice.” Such atavistic dedication lies at the very heart of both war and terrorism. To survive on this imperiled planet, all of us must seek to survive together; to rediscover an individual life that is detached from variously patterned obligations “to belong.” Only after such an indispensable rediscovery could we reasonably hope to reconstruct world politics. As Afghanistan reveals, we must seek an unprecedented fusion of global interdependence and human “oneness.” In his The Decline of the West, first published during World War I, Oswald Spengler comments: “`I believe'” is the great word against metaphysical fear, and at the same time it is an avowal of love.'” This is because undimmed religious faith is the only “plausible” path to immortality or life-everlasting. In the end, we will need to take much more seriously that global survival requires prompt escape from the contentious spirit of competitive tribes and a corresponding acceptance of human “oneness.” Learning from Afghanistan, the actual likelihood of meeting such a difficult requirement is precariously low. Still, in a wholly ironic development, the common adversary of disease pandemic could now become a potent global unifier. E pluribus unum. “Out of many, one.” These three words on the great seal of the United States can tie us all together. At present, they can offer a timely prescription for understanding Afghanistan as much more than just the latest US foreign policy imbroglio. This crisis is now best understood broadly as a world-clarifying metaphor.

Looking Beyond The News: Afghanistan As Metaphor

Op-Eds
By
Louis René Beres
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“God loves from Whole to Part,” proclaims Alexander Pope, “but human soul must rise from Individual to the Whole.” In the end, any viable system of world politics must acknowledge the determinative connections between...
Read more
Photo: Donald Trump speaking with the media at a hangar at Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona, by Gage Skidmore

The Infinite Insignificance of Donald J. Trump

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Louis René Beres
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Life can only be understood backwards: but it must be lived forwards.”-Soren Kierkegaard For good reason, millions of Americans remain wary of any Trump return to presidential politics. Nonetheless, though his time in office was...
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