“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.”
Jose Ortega y’Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958)
At first glance, the just-halted Israel-Iran war[i] carried no evident risks of nuclear escalation. The main purpose of Israel’s effort, after all, was to prevent Iranian nuclearization. Nonetheless, in any residual or resumed armed conflict between Israel and the Islamic Republic: (1) Israel could find itself issuing deterrent threats of “asymmetrical nuclear war” (here, only Israel would be nuclear-capable); or (2) Iran could discover itself enlisting already-nuclear state surrogates (most plausibly North Korea[ii] or Pakistan) as proxy belligerents.
In both scenarios, Israel’s nuclear deterrent would benefit from carefully calibrated shifts to “selective nuclear disclosure.”[iii] Plausibly, Tehran will eventually recover from the deleterious effects of Israeli and American bombings, and still succeed in becoming nuclear.[iv] At that “firebreak” stage, Israel’s survival could become contingent on more openly accepting risks of a “symmetrical nuclear war.” As the outcome of competitive risk-taking in a world that lacks central global authority, such military hazards would be unprecedented and would obtain even if Israel was the stronger or superior nuclear adversary.
Background would be important. For Israel, little if anything was meaningfully improved by previously-brokered (US) pacts with the UAE and Bahrain[v] – agreements that formally aligned Jerusalem with certain Sunni Arab opponents of Shiite Iran. Though Israeli planners might still believe that Iran’s nuclear threat was diminished by the “Abraham Accords,” such thinking (Sigmund Freud would call it “wish fulfilment”) would be unscientific prima facie. Among other things, it would rest on a too-optimistic view of “countervailing” Sunni military power at conceptual and policy-making levels. Lacking opportunities for what philosopher Jose Ortega y’ Gasset calls “observation,” Israel’s only residual options must rest on “imagination.”
For Israel, science-based strategic thinking will be many-sided and gravely complicated. Though counter-intuitive, no incremental growth of Sunni Arab power, however achieved, could be in Israel’s overall security interest.[vi] Over time, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or even a smaller Gulf Arab state could decide to “go nuclear.” Turkey, too, could accept similar kinds of decision. Any logic-based assessment by Israeli strategists would clarify that expected costs to the Jewish State of any Iranian, Arab or European adversary “going nuclear” would exceed expected gains.
Much would depend on the then-prevailing balance of Sunni-Shiite power, a theoretical equilibrium that would be inherently subjective and potentially indecipherable. In a worst case scenario, enemy states once presumably “neutralized” by the so-called Abraham Accords could no longer offer Israel a purposeful anti-Shiite alliance bloc. Though downplayed in Washington, these Sunni Arab states (joined potentially by Turkey) could become a formidable adversarial coalition unto themselves, potentially rivaling Shiite Iran as Jerusalem’s most worrisome enemy.
There is more. Even if there were no Sunni-Arab nuclear proliferation issue, Israel’s nuclear forces and strategy could still prove relevant to conventional war avoidance.[vii] In brief, nuclear weapons could offer substantial security benefits to Israel in deterring non-nuclear foes. Pertinent Arab adversaries could include a sub-state enemy or enemies and/or a “hybridized” (state-sub-state) coalition.[viii]
Creating a Viable and Law-Enforcing Nuclear Deterrent
After the recent missile war with Iran, how should Israel best ensure a viable, comprehensive and law-based nuclear deterrence posture?[ix] Generically, military assessments of any individual state’s nuclear deterrent should focus on variegated and complementary elements. These elements would concern weapon systems (both offensive and defensive); weapon system infrastructures and corresponding issues of threat credibility. In the specific case at hand, analytic focus has generally highlighted (1) Israel’s presumptive missile and anti-missile capabilities;[x] and (2) its expected willingness to launch under widely-assorted enemy threat scenarios.[xi]
To suitably reinforce Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture after recent preemptions against Iran, a more refined assessment is now in order. This improved focus should take account of world system context, an obligation that embraces both geo-strategic and legal foci. At times, these foci could be strongly interdependent or overlapping. At other times, they would be “force-multiplying” or synergistic. One should think here of ongoing or future developments in Ukraine, North Korea, India-Pakistan and/or China.
For competent investigators, deeply serious questions will need to be asked and answered; sequentially, capably, dialectically.[xii] How should such analyses actually proceed? A useful expression of current world system context would encompass all variables being shaped as “Cold War II.” This is not because US-Russian rivalry is necessarily more perilous than the anarchic system structure bequeathed at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,[xiii] but because such rivalry (unlike the historically-underlying system of geopolitics or decentralized power balancing[xiv]) is prospectively manageable. For Israel, it is an optimal time for tangibly greater detail, not the usual sorts of experiential particulars (e.g., target sets, bomb damage assessments, escalatory scenarios, etc.), but a priori narratives that suitably exemplify philosopher Ortega y’Gassett’s “imagination.”
Intersections and Synergies
To assess the prospective impact of interstate interactions, scholars and policy-makers will have to account for starkly bewildering linkages between them. On occasion, such interactions could be expressly synergistic. This term describes an always-daunting quality, one in which the “whole” of any single effect is necessarily greater than the calculable sum of its “parts.”
These hard-to-predict expectations will require very special and capable evaluations.[xv] To a greater or lesser extent, such hard-to-quantify effects would be filtered by appropriate and sometimes “peremptory” considerations of international law.[xvi] In the end, at least if it is taken seriously, such law could represent a distinct survival asset for a Jewish State that is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan.
There is more. For Israeli military planners and for some others who might also be interested in Israel’s nuclear strategy, US-Russian antagonisms should be studied together with Israel’s relevant weapon systems and nuclear threat credibility. For refined analysts, these system-defining antagonisms are constantly in flux and changing simultaneously in foreseeable and unforeseeable ways.
Going forward, superpower antagonisms, tempered or buffered by international law, could become increasingly vital or determinative for Israeli nuclear deterrence. A great deal will depend on the precise manner in which the resurrected or reborn rivalry would impact this equation and, derivatively, on critically underlying elements of Israel’s strategic posture.[xvii] This discoverable manner of impact could depend considerably upon Jerusalem/Tel Aviv’s multiple and overlapping national nuclear power alignments with Russia or the United States, or (conceivably) with both. Here, too, China and/or North Korea could represent a determinative “wild card.”
Reason and Anti-Reason
Antecedent to such complex considerations, much will depend upon (1) the expected rationality or non-rationality of each national nuclear power; and on (2) the plausible interactions or synergies detectable between these nuclear adversaries and their respective alliance partners or clients. Regarding the first concern, Israel’s planners will always need to bear in mind the timeless wisdom of German philosopher Karl Jaspers’ Reason and Existence (1935): “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.”
“Never without it.” This compelling assumption exhibits a rudimentary understanding for almost anyone engaged in strategic nuclear threat analyses. “Everything is very simple in war,” counsels Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but even the simplest thing is difficult.”[xviii] This generally useful insight remains persuasively valid not only during periods of active conflict, but also in those unsteady periods of latent hostility (what Thomas Hobbes meant as a “state of war” in Leviathan) that obtain between still-possible or still-impending wars of aggression.[xix]
That considerations of operational difficulty may obtain during “only” a “cold war” had already been forecast by seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. In his classic analytic text, Leviathan, this early political thinker (one who had been widely read by the founding fathers of the United States, especially Jefferson) opines that a condition of war exists not only during periods of “actual fighting,” but also whenever there exists merely “a known disposition thereto.” Today, such a “disposition” is instantly recognizable throughout the Middle East, but observably in continuously changing ways.
Even during the expansive pre-nuclear era in world law and politics, a precarious logic of deterrence obtained within the global state of nature. Already, there had been operative an evidently fearful condition of raw competition, corrosive violence and seemingly perpetual anarchy. Despite considerable nuance from century to century, and from year to year, this balance of power obtained since the 17th century Peace of Westphalia (1648.) In specifically legal terms, this “Westphalian” system is generally thought of as a decentralized or “horizontal” system of international law.[xx]
Long before the advent of nuclear weapons, the worst “state of war” (including ones without any “actual fighting”) would have been characterized by a “dreadful equality.” Here, world politics would have taken place within a broadly chaotic bellum omnium contra omnes, a vastly confusing context wherein “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” In such opaque circumstances, especially ones where “dreadful equality” would be coincident with asymmetrical nuclear capacities, potential sources of decision-making bewilderment could multiply.
In any such worst case configuration – most apparent today wherever nuclear proliferation would manage to continue without any meaningfully correlative legal inhibitions – the life of individual human beings and entire states would inevitably (per Thomas Hobbes) be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” For Israel, the shifting parameters of regional conflict and related issues of enemy rationality could soon have indeterminate or unforeseeable effects on its presumptive nuclear doctrine and strategy.[xxi] This includes diverse issues surrounding any still-upcoming Iran policy choices between “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and “selective nuclear disclosure.”[xxii]
Nuclear Ambiguity and Nuclear Deterrence
For Israel, a state utterly lacking in strategic depth,[xxiii] the former posture has prevailed unchallenged. This problematic stance is sometimes referred to metaphorically as Israel’s “bomb in the basement.”[xxiv] Still, as a more multipolar axis of conflict is now being reaffirmed in world politics by three principal superpowers (US, Russia and China), and as prospects for enemy irrationality are arguably greater than before,[xxv] Jerusalem will have to make appropriate modifications to its nuclear deterrence doctrine and strategy. Included here would be assorted policy considerations of preemption or (as described in international law) “anticipatory self-defense.”[xxvi]
Until today, in principle at least, Israel’s national nuclear doctrine and strategy have remained determinedly ambiguous. At the same time, traditional ambiguity was already breached at the highest possible level by two of Israel’s prime ministers; first, by Shimon Peres, on December 22, 1995, and again by Ehud Olmert on December 11, 2006. Peres, speaking to a group of Israeli newspaper and magazine editors, had then affirmed publicly: “…give me peace, and we’ll give up the atom. That’s the whole story.” When Olmert later offered similarly general but also revelatory remarks, they were widely (but perhaps wrongly) interpreted as “slips of the tongue.”
Today, as Iran is likely to resume its search for nuclear capability and as prospective nuclear surrogates in North Korea and/or Pakistan could sometime create newly lethal escalation scenarios, a basic question should be addressed in Jerusalem:
Is comprehensive nuclear secrecy still in the best survival interests of the Jewish State?
To respond properly to this multi-layered question, Israel should begin with the assumption that in any such unique or sui generis strategic matters, “truth” would need to emerge from “imagination,” not “observation.” A useful answer to this query should be grounded in expectations and exigencies of formal strategic doctrine. Whatever else Jerusalem may already have in mind concerning such doctrine, it’s response ought never be merely a series of incremental ad hoc decisions or “seat-of-the-pants” policies; that is, positions that are casually invented or re-invented “as needed” from one beleaguering national security crisis to the next.
In principle, fashioning Israeli strategic doctrine should never consist of disjointed and/or ad hoc calculations. Any purposeful loosening of Israeli nuclear ambiguity would need to be subtle, nuanced, more-or-less indirect and visibly incremental. Contrary to the often parodied views of any such prospective disclosure that may be found in popular news stories or on television, this loosening would not have to take expressly provocative forms of openly forthright or otherwise official Israeli policy pronouncements. Instead, it could be allowed to “leak out” on its own, thereby allowing a crucial point to be made without precipitating any immediate crisis or tangible misfortune.
From Nuclear Doctrine to Nuclear Strategy
Among other things, formal doctrine, consistent with world law, would represent the vital framework from which any gainfully pragmatic Israeli nuclear policy of ambiguity or disclosure could most suitably be extrapolated. In all military institutions and traditions, such doctrine must describe the tactical or operational manner in which designated national forces ought to fight in various plausible combat situations; the prescribed “order of battle;” and all manner of corollary operations. Appropriately, the literal definition of “doctrine” derives from Middle English, from the Latin doctrina, which means teaching, learning and instruction.
The central importance of codified Israeli military doctrine lies not only in the particular way it can animate, unify and optimize national military forces, but also in the expectedly efficient manner it can transmit desired “messages” to an enemy state, enemy states, sub-state proxies or state-sub-state “hybrids.[1] 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. In this regard, it could unwittingly jeopardize certain protective functions of relevant international law.[xxvii] This is likely the case because any truly effective deterrence and defense could sometimes call for a military doctrine that is at least partially recognizable by adversary states and certain sub-state insurgent/terrorist group foes.
In any routine military planning by Israel, having available options for strategic surprise could prove helpful (if not fully prerequisite) to successful combat operations. But successful 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 (at least on occasion) prove counter-productive.
In the matter of Israel and its reconfiguring enemies following recent war with Iran, optimal military success will lie in credible deterrence and not in any actual war-fighting.[xxviii] 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 could require the deliberate “loosening” of information that had formerly been tightly held. In essence, such information would concern Israel’s capabilities, its intentions, or both of these complex qualities taken together.
Back to basics. Strategic truth may be counterintuitive. There are, after all, foreseeable circumstances wherein ordinary secrecy could be too much secrecy, thereby undermining any particular country’s national security. We may recall, in this connection, a popular Cold War-era movie in which Dr. Strangelove, an “eccentric” strategic advisor to the American president (and also the name of the film) 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 then instructs, and not too subtly, the Soviets ought to have been given sufficiently 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 known as MAD, this response would have been instantly recognizable to the Kremlin as “massive” and “assuredly destructive.”
Deterrence Ex Ante, Not Revenge Ex Post
It follows from all this and from the more 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 actually been employed for any tangible “battle,” deterrence, by definition, will have failed.[xxix] Also worth noting, once nuclear weapons are used, any traditional meanings of “victory” would instantly become moot.[xxx]
Among other things, Israel’s emerging deterrence relationship to a still prospectively nuclear Iran is not reasonably comparable to the historic American-Soviet “Balance-of-Terror.”[xxxi] Nonetheless, there are crucial elements of current superpower antagonisms that should impact Israel’s nuclear strategic choices. This means that Israel ought never construct its reformulating nuclear strategic doctrine and policy wholly apart from close assessments of US-Russia-China relations.[xxxii]
Presently, there are Cold War deterrence lessons to be learned and adapted by Israel. Accordingly, any unmodified continuance of deliberate nuclear ambiguity concerning Israel’s (a) strategic targeting doctrine; (b) secure basing modes; and/or (c) capacity to penetrate a designated enemy’s active air defenses could cause a still-nuclearizing Iran or an already-nuclear Iranian state proxy (North Korea or Pakistan) to underestimate Israel’s retaliatory capacity and/or resolve.
Pakistan, an Islamic state, has openly declared a “nuclear war fighting” concept of national nuclear deterrence. Returning to formative lexicons of the Cold War, this non-Arab adversary has already codified a shift from “mutual assured destruction” to “nuclear utilization theory.” In the specialized discourse and parlance of all orthodox nuclear strategic theory, this represents an overt move from MAD (mutual assured destruction) to NUT (nuclear utilization theory).[xxxiii]By definition, any such change could have profound consequences concerning the presumed likelihood of nuclear conflict (probability) and the presumed injuriousness of such a conflict (disutility). There would also be corresponding consequences for considerations of international law.
Going forward assorted uncertainties surrounding the presumed components of Israel’s nuclear arsenal could lead enemy states to reach “wrong” conclusions. In part, this is because Israel’s willingness to make good on any threatened nuclear retaliation could be seen as inversely related to weapon system destructiveness. Ironically, if Israel’s nuclear weapons were sometime believed to be too destructive, too apocalyptic,[xxxiv] they might not credibly deter. In these cases, and more or less unwittingly, such beliefs would underscore various basic expectations of humanitarian international law (aka the law of armed conflict). These are the always-core expectations of distinction, proportionality and military necessity.[xxxv]
Enemy Miscalculations and Authoritative International Law
In the future, any continuing Israeli policy of deliberate nuclear ambiguity could cause an already-nuclear enemy state to overestimate the first-strike vulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces. In part, at least, this overestimation could be the result of a too-complete silence concerning measures of protection that had been deployed to safeguard Israeli nuclear weapons and launch platforms. Such silence, in turn, could be the product of Israel’s perceived alignments with one or the other current superpower by any then-relevant regional foe.
A related problem could represent the product of certain Israeli doctrinal obfuscations regarding the country’s defense potential, a silence that could be mistakenly taken by enemy states as an indication of inadequate Israeli Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). To be maximally useful, certain relevant strengths and capabilities of Arrow3 and variously interrelated and multi-layered elements of active defense would need to be revealed, perhaps in previously-unimaginable contours of operational detail.
To best understand the utilitarian and jurisprudential content of Israeli strategic nuclear doctrine and posture, analysts should first clearly identify for themselves the variously significant foundations of Israeli nuclear deterrence. These foundations would concern prospective attackers’ perceptions of Israel’s nuclear capability, and Israel’s willingness to actually use this capability. Potentially, any selective telegraphing of Israel’s strategic nuclear doctrine could enhance Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture and simultaneously support peace and international law. It would accomplish this enhancement by heightening enemy state perceptions of Israel’s capable nuclear forces and by announced willingness to use these forces in reprisal for designated first-strike and/or retaliatory attacks.
To deter an enemy attack, or a post-preemption retaliation against Israel,[xxxvi] Jerusalem should always prevent a rational aggressor, by threat of unacceptably damaging retaliation or counter-retaliation, from deciding to strike. Here, Israel’s national security would be sought by convincing the potential rational attacker (irrational state enemies could of course would pose an altogether different and possibly insurmountable problem) that the costs of any considered attack will always exceed expected benefits. Assuming that Israel’s state enemies: (1) value self-preservation most highly; and (2) choose rationally between all alternative options, they will necessarily refrain from any attack on an Israel that is believed willing and able to deliver an unacceptably destructive response.
These enemy states might also be deterred by the plausible prospect of a more limited Israeli attack, one that would be directed only at national leaders. In the usual parlance adopted by military and intelligence communities, this particular prospect refers to more-or-less credible threats of “regime targeting.” Whether credible or incredible, any such threats could be severely problematic in specifically legal terms.[xxxvii]
Two factors must combine to communicate such potentially essential belief. First, in terms of capability, there are two critical components: payload and delivery system. It must be successfully communicated to any calculating 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 must always appear sufficiently invulnerable to enemy first-strikes and aptly elusive to penetrate the prospective attacker’s active and civil defenses.
It may or may not need to be communicated to a potential attacker that such firepower and delivery vehicles are in any way superior to those of the relevant adversary. Deterrence, Israel’s planners must continuously bear in mind, is never about “victory.” Significantly, the capacity to deter may or may not be as great as the capacity to “win.”[xxxviii]
As a current example, Israeli planners could think about North Korea and the United States. In this problematic dyad of international adversaries, the Americans are in fact clearly superior in all of the usual expressions of hardware and battle-readiness, but the North Koreans could still bring serious harms to US armed forces and potentially to portions of the American mainland. And this is to say nothing about parallel or corollary damages that might be visited on US allies in South Korea or Japan.
Increasingly Complex Calculations
With Israel’s strategic nuclear forces and doctrine kept locked in the “basement,” enemy states could sometime conclude, rightly or wrongly, that a first-strike attack or post-preemption reprisal would be cost-effective. But were relevant Israeli doctrine made more plainly obvious to enemy states contemplating an attack – obvious in that Israel’s nuclear assets seemingly met both its indispensable payload and delivery system objectives – Israel’s nuclear forces could then better serve their existential security functions.
The second factor of nuclear doctrine for Israel concerns willingness. How may Israel convince any potential nuclear attackers that it possesses the resolve to deliver an appropriately destructive retaliation and/or counter retaliation? Again, the answer to this question lies largely in doctrine, that is, in Israel’s demonstrated strength of commitment to actually carry out such an attack and in the nuclear ordnance that would presumably be made available to its forces.
Here, too, continued ambiguity over nuclear doctrine could wrongfully create the impression of an unwilling Israel. Conversely, any doctrinal movement toward some as-yet-undetermined level of disclosure could meaningfully heighten the impression that Israel was in fact willing to follow-through on its now explicit nuclear threats.
There are determinably persuasive connections between any incrementally more “open” or disclosed Israeli strategic nuclear doctrine and certain enemy state perceptions of Israeli nuclear deterrence. One such connection centers on the expected relationship between prospectively greater openness and the perceived vulnerability of Israeli strategic nuclear forces to preemptive destruction. Another such connection concerns the relation between greater openness and the perceived capacity of Israel’s nuclear forces to reliably penetrate the offending state’s active defenses.
To be deterred by Israel, a future-nuclear Iran[xxxix] or a newly-nuclear adversary (potentially, one of the major Sunni Arab states also worried about Iran) would need to believe that at least a critical number of Israel’s retaliatory forces would survive any enemy first-strike, and that these Israeli forces could not subsequently be stopped from hitting their pre-designated targets. Regarding the “presumed survivability” component of such adversarial belief, reliable sea-basing (submarines) by Israel would prove an incontestable case in point.
Carefully articulated, expanding doctrinal openness or partial nuclear disclosure could represent a distinctly rational option for Israel, at least to the extent that Iran and other potentially-pertinent enemy states were made appropriately aware of Israel’s nuclear capabilities. The presumed operational benefits of any such expanding doctrinal openness would accrue from certain deliberate flows of information about assorted matters of dispersion, multiplication and hardening of its strategic nuclear weapon systems, and about certain other technical features of these systems. Most important, doctrinally controlled and orderly flows of information could serve to remove any lingering enemy state doubts about Israel’s strategic nuclear force capabilities and also its plausible intentions. Left unchallenged, such doubts could literally and lethally undermine Israeli nuclear deterrence and, correspondingly, certain war-avoiding elements of pertinent international law.
Israel and “Friction”: Inadvertent versus Deliberate Nuclear War
A key problem in purposefully refining Israeli strategic nuclear policy on deliberate ambiguity issues has to do with what the Prussian military thinker, Carl von Clausewitz, famously called “friction.”[2] 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 and strategy must be encouraged to combine adequate tactical flexibility with selective doctrinal openness. To understand exactly how such seemingly contradictory objectives can be reconciled in Jerusalem now presents a primary intellectual challenge to Israel’s national command authority.[xl]
In the end, Israeli planners should think about plausible paths to a nuclear war that include relevant risks of inadvertent or accidental nuclear war. It is possible (even plausible) that the risks of any deliberate nuclear war involving Israel would be small, but that the Jewish State could still remain vulnerable to a nuclear war occasioned by a mechanical/electrical/computer malfunction on one side or another and/or by decisional errors or miscalculation in related reasoning.
To properly assess the different but intersecting risks between a deliberate nuclear war and an inadvertent or accidental nuclear war should be regarded in Jerusalem as an absolutely overriding obligation. These risks, including corollary legal implications, could exist independently of one another and/or could be impacted in various ways by Cold War II alignments. Moreover, Israel – like the much larger United States – should continuously prepare to deal with issues of cyber-attack and cyber-war. Such bewildering issues now need to be considered together with the destabilizing impacts of “digital mercenaries.”
One more conceptual distinction warrants prominent mention at this concluding point of assessment. This distinction references the difference between inadvertent and accidental nuclear war. By definition, any accidental nuclear war would need to be inadvertent. Conversely, however, an inadvertent nuclear war would not necessarily be accidental. False warnings, for example, which could be generated by various types of technical malfunction or sparked by third-party hacking/digital mercenary interference (which might or might not have something to do with the dynamics of Cold War II) 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 or both (or several) sides. The most conspicuous example would involve misjudgments of either enemy intent or enemy capacity that would emerge and propagate as any particular crisis would escalate. Such consequential misjudgments could stem from an understandably amplified desire by one or several parties to achieve “escalation dominance.”
Always, in any such projected crisis condition, all rational sides would likely strive for calculable advantage without too severely risking total or near-total destruction. Where one or several adversaries would not actually be rational, all of the usual deterrence “bets” would immediately be “off.” Where one or several sides would not be identified as rational by Israel, Jerusalem would then need to input various unorthodox sorts of security options, including some that could derive in whole or in part from certain prevailing adversarial alignments.
Still other causes of an inadvertent nuclear war involving Israel could include flawed interpretations of computer-generated nuclear attack warnings; an unequal willingness among adversaries to risk catastrophic war; overconfidence in deterrence and/or defense capabilities on one or several sides (including Israel); adversarial regime changes; outright revolution or coup d’état among adversaries and poorly-conceived pre-delegations of nuclear launch authority among apparent foes.
Markedly serious problems of overconfidence could be aggravated by successful tests of a nation’s missile defense operations, whether by Israel itself or by any of its relevant adversaries. These problems could also be encouraged by too-optimistic assessments of Cold War II alliance guarantees. An example might be an intra-crisis judgment in Jerusalem that Washington stands firmly behind its every move during an ongoing crisis, up to and including certain forms of reprisal that are more plausibly imagined than genuine. Reciprocally, an enemy of Israel could similarly mistake the seriousness and commitment of its own preferred state guarantor (whether Russian, Chinese or American).
A potential source of inadvertent nuclear war could be the “backfire” effect from strategies of “pretended irrationality. A rational enemy of Israel that had managed to convince Jerusalem of its own decisional irrationality could spark an otherwise avoidable Israeli military preemption. Conversely, an enemy leadership that had begun to take seriously any hint of decisional irrationality in Jerusalem could then be frightened into striking first. Regarding this second scenario, it should also be remembered that many years back, General Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s Minister of Defense, had argued expressly that “Israel must be seen as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”
Nightmare: New Strategic Meanings
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 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 any event, in all such interpretations of nightmare, the non-rational idea of demonic origin is central.
But the demons of nuclear strategy and nuclear war would take very different form. For the most part, their mien is not frightful, but (hopefully) “rational” and ordinary. If they are thought to be sinister, it is not because their national leaders necessarily crave wanton bloodshed and carnage, but because they seek maximum safety for their own nations amid a growing cacophony of global chaos.
And while the state of nations has always been in the “state of nature,”[xli] at least since the seventeenth century and the Peace of Westphalia (1648), current conditions of nuclear capacity and worldwide anarchy portend a uniquely dangerous amalgam of law-violating circumstances.
Among other things, the reasons for such dire portents lie in the indispensability of rational decision-making to operationally viable nuclear deterrence, and in the subtly interpenetrating fact that rational decision-making may sometime become subject to corrosive modifications or complete disappearance.
Although not readily discernible or predictable, these significant impacts upon enemy rationality could be derived from ever-changing dynamics of superpower competition. A future example of what is being described would be Iranian strategic nuclear decisions that are based in whole or in part on that enemy state’s interpretations of time. Unlike Israel, which operates according to standard chronologies based on clocks (i.e., clock time is the only real time), the Islamic Republic operates according to religion-based distinctions between “profane time” (same as clock time) and “sacred time.”[xlii]
It follows, among other things, that Iranian leaders will not discard their manifestly “sacred” ambitions for military nuclear capacity. On the contrary, US allegations of a successful “obliteration” will only strengthen their resolve to “go nuclear.” As for meeting nuclear fuel requirements, the fissile materials needed to assemble primitive or simple weapons are already within operational reach.
What next? Facing an assortment of discrepant nuclear foes, Israeli decision-makers should systematically prepare usefully decipherable scenarios. To avoid worst case scenarios, they will have to prepare simultaneously for unprecedented levels of structural or world-system upheavals. In some cases, these complex calculations will have to assume varying levels of enemy irrationality that could obtain among state, sub-state and/or “hybridized” adversaries.
For Israel, a country smaller than America’s Lake Michigan, the ultimate survival tasks will be profoundly intellectual and require durable victories of “mind over mind.”[xliii] These victories, in turn, will depend on prior capacities to fully understand the many-sided elements of Israel’s recent war with Iran. In principle, at least, such prior capacities could lead Israel to again consider assorted preemption options.
There is mire. Final decisions regarding such options would be based on (a) expectations of enemy rationality or irrationality; (b) expected likelihood of enemy first-strikes; (c) expected costs or “disutility” of enemy first-strikes; (d) expected schedule of enemy nuclear (or biological) weapons deployments; (e) expected efficiencies of enemy 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 unaffected regional enemies; and (i) expected US, Russian, China and “world community” reactions to Israel’s latest preemptions.[xliv]
Always, there will be forces pushing Israel to accept still-greater instabilities, but these forces of destabilization could still remain subject to law-based controls. Among the many qualities examined above, what will be most critically demanded of Israel is a conspicuous national willingness to face world politics with more than just a perfunctory nod to extant superpower alignments.[xlv] Looking ahead to increasingly dense elements of international relations and international law, this continuously resurrecting expression of superpower impact will define the systemic context within which Israel’s evolving nuclear doctrine and strategy must be fashioned.
In shaping this posture, Israel should strive imaginatively to consider certain interrelated prospects, especially: (1) Iranian “resurrection” of military nuclear development that puts the Islamic Republic on even a more advanced footing than existed status quo ante bellum; (2) incremental or sudden willingness of some already-nuclear state allies to act as Iranian nuclear surrogates in extremis; and (3) prompt shifts in Israeli nuclear deterrence posture from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.”
Today, shortly after the June 2025 Israel-Iran war, a scientific summing-up is indispensable for Jerusalem. Accordingly, all the above-recommended foci of proposed Israeli assessments could strengthen Reason[xlvi] vis-à-vis Realpolitik in our anarchic planet’s expanding world struggles.[xlvii] Because there exist no histories of adversarial nuclear military operations against Israel (that is, no facts or data based on what Ortega calls “observation”[xlviii]), Israel’s plans for identifying science-based threat scenarios must rest exclusively on “imagination.”
Though this limitation represents a tangible impediment to what is ordinarily called “science,” it is by no means an insurmountable barrier. In unique matters of nuclear doctrine and strategy, deductive analysis and formal logic could still protect Israel with purposeful military scenarios. For Jerusalem to understand this conclusion would be more gainful than continuously assessing the scribblings of politicos or pundits.
[1] See Ehud Eilam, https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/96178545/israel-s-military-doctrine/ehud-eilam/
[2] See most recently by this author, Louis René Beres, at War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/author/louis-rene-beres/
[i] Under pertinent international law, a cease-fire or armistice between states is never a war-terminating agreement, but the prior question of whether or not a condition of war even existed is generally unclear. Traditionally, a “formal” war was said to exist only after a state had issued a formal declaration. The Hague Convention III codified this position in 1907. Inter alia, this Convention provided that hostilities must not commence without “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. See Hague Convention III on the Opening of Hostilities, Oct. 18, 1907, art. 1, 36 Stat. 2277, 205 Consol. T.S. 263. Presently, a declaration of war could be tantamount to a declaration of criminality because international law prohibits “aggression.” See Treaty Providing for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, Aug. 27, 1948, art. 1, 46 Stat. 2343, 94 L.N.T.S. 57 (also called Pact of Paris or Kellogg-Briand Pact); Nuremberg Judgment, 1 I.M.T. Trial of the Major War Criminals 171 (1947), portions reprinted in Burns H. Weston, et. al., INTERNATIONAL LAW AND WORLD ORDER 148, 159 (1980); U.N. Charter, art. 2(4). A state may compromise its own legal position by announcing formal declarations of war. It follows that a state of belligerency may exist without formal declarations, but only if there exists an armed conflict between two or more states and/or at least one of these states considers itself “at war.”
[ii] See by this author, Louis René Beres: https://www.jns.org/the-north-korean-threat-to-israel/
[iii] These would be shifts away from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” or (expressed as metaphor) the “bomb in the basement.”
[iv] See BBC News: https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-could-start-enriching-uranium-064853726.html
[v]See: https://www.jurist.org/news/2020/10/israel-cabinet-unanimously-approves-uae-peace-agreement/ See also https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/ To be considered as complementary accords are the Israel-Sudan Normalization Agreement (October 23, 2020) and the Israel-Morocco Normalization Agreement (December 10, 2020).
[vi] An intervening factor here (an “intervening variable”) would be the persistence of Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian terrorism. For the moment, at least, it would appear that the UAE and Bahrain agreements only exacerbated Palestinian fears and may have played a role in spawning the October 7, 2023 music festival terror attacks.
[vii] See, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-nuclear-deterrence/; and (with Ambassador Zalman Shoval): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/
[viii] All Palestinian terror groups, Hamas as well as PA/Fatah, etc., have decipherable roots in the Palestinian National Covenant. Calling officially for sustained Arab violence against Israel, this document was adopted in 1964, three years before the 1967 Six Day War. This means that the PLO’s core guidance on terror was first published – together with its explicit references to the annihilation of Israel – three years before there were any “occupied territories.” For the Palestinian Authority, which until October, 2015, had still officially agreed to accept a “Two-State Solution,” the underlying position of protracted war was part of a broader strategy of incorporating Israel into “Palestine.” This irredentist incorporation was already codified on all PA maps. The most unambiguous Palestinian call for the removal of Israel remains the PLO’s “Phased Plan” of June 9, 1974. Under the authoritative laws of war, this Plan represents an unhidden commitment to carry out certifiable crimes against humanity.
[ix] Ultimately, the prospective success of Israeli nuclear deterrence vis-à-vis any pertinent enemy aggressions, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, should remain contingent on the core assumption of enemy rationality. At the same time, as an intriguing corollary, it could prove useful for Israel itself, on limited occasion, to pretend or feign irrationality. See, for example, by this writer: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/articles/2016-03-31/case-for-irrationality-in-israels-nuclear-deterrence-and-defense-strategy See also, by Professor Beres, coauthored with General (USAF/ret) John T. Chain:http://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Loius-Rene-Beres-and-General-John-T-Chain-Living-with-Iran-PP249-May-28.pdf General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, US Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[x] Israel’s anti-missile defense shield likely has four basic layers: The Iron Dome system for intercepting short-range rockets; David’s Sling for medium-range rockets; Arrow-2 against intermediate-range ballistic missiles; and Arrow-3 for deployment against ICBM’s and satellites.
[xi] It should be borne continuously in mind that Israel’s nuclear security includes its capacity to threaten or use nuclear weapons offensively and to fend of nuclear threats and attacks from others. These capacities are always more-or-less interdependent/synergistic.
[xii] Dialectical thinking originated in Fifth Century BCE Athens, as Zeno, author of the Paradoxes, had been acknowledged by Aristotle as its inventor. Further, in the middle dialogues of Plato, dialectic emerges as the supreme form of philosophic/analytic method. The dialectician, says Plato, is the special one who knows how to ask and then answer vital questions. From the standpoint of a necessary refinement in Israeli strategic planning, this knowledge should never be taken for granted.
[xiii] 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. This “Westphalian” anarchy stands in stark contrast to the legal assumption of solidarity between all states in the presumably common struggle against aggression and terrorism. Such a peremptory expectation (known formally in international law as a jus cogens assumption), is already mentioned in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis (533 C.E.); Hugo Grotius, 2 De Jure Belli Ac Pacis Libri Tres, Ch. 20 (Francis W. Kesey, tr., Clarendon Press, 1925) (1690); and Emmerich De Vattel, 1 Le Droit des Gens, Ch. 19 (1758).
[xiv] Historically, the idea of a balance of power – an idea of which the nuclear-age balance of terror is a current variant – has never really 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.
[xv] See, by this author: Louis René Beres, https://mwi.usma.edu/threat-convergence-adversarial-whole-greater-sum-parts/
[xvi] 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).
[xvii] One core issue here would concern Israeli reliance on the US for “extended deterrence.” See: Louis René Beres, “Staying Strong: Enhancing Israel’s Essential Strategic Options,” Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School, June 13, 2014.
[xviii] This statement refers to the unpredictable effects of errors in knowledge and information concerning intra-Israel (IDF/MOD) strategic uncertainties; on Israeli and Iranian under-estimations or over-estimations of relative power position; and on the unalterably vast and largely irremediable differences between theories of deterrence, and enemy intent “as it actually is.” See: Carl von Clausewitz, “Uber das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst,” Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, 1 (1832); cited in Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, McNair Paper No. 52, October, 1996, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Washington, D.C. p. 9.
[xix] For the codified 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).
[xx] Notes Sigmund Freud: “Wars will only be prevented with certainty if mankind unites in setting up a central legal authority to which the right of giving judgment upon all shall be handed over. There are clearly two separate requirements involved in this: the creation of a supreme agency and its endowment with the necessary power. One without the other would be useless.” (See: Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, cited in Louis René Beres, The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis, University of Denver, Monograph Series in World Affairs, Vol. 10 (1973-73), p, 27.)
[xxi] “Doctrine” is not the same as “strategy.” Doctrine “sets the stage” for strategy. Among other things, it identifies various beliefs that would animate any prescribed “order of battle.” In essence, doctrine describes underlying general principles on how a particular war ought to be waged. The reciprocal task for strategy is to adapt as required to best support previously-fashioned doctrine.
[xxii] See, by this writer, Louis René Beres, at INSS Tel-Aviv: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/changing-direction-updating-israels-nuclear-doctrine/
[xxiii] A great deal has been written on pertinent questions of “strategic depth.” The heart of this issue was addressed as early as June 29, 1967, when a U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum specified that returning Israel to pre-1967 boundaries would drastically increase its vulnerability. The then- Chairman of the JCS, General Earl Wheeler, concluded that for minimal deterrence and defense, Israel must retain Sharm el Sheikh and Wadi El Girali in the Sinai; the entire Gaza Strip; the high ground and plateaus of the mountains in Judea and Samaria; and the Golan Heights, east of Quneitra.
[xxiv] The writer, Professor Louis René Beres, is author of one of the earliest books on this theme, Security of Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington Books; 1986).
[xxv] In scientific terms, there are no reliably accurate ways to appraise unprecedented prospects as true and ascertainable probabilities.
[xxvi]This permissible option can be found not in the conventional law (art. 51 of the UN Charter supports only post-attack expressions of individual or collective self-defense), but in customary international law. The precise origins of anticipatory self-defense in such customary 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).
[xxvii] No state, including Israel, is under any per se legal obligation to renounce access to nuclear weapons. In certain distinctly residual circumstances, the actual resort to such weapons could be lawful. To wit, on July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice at The Hague handed down its Advisory Opinion on “The Legality of the Threat or Use of Force of Nuclear Weapons.” The final paragraph of this Opinion, concludes, inter alia: “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law. However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”
[xxviii] This was a major conclusion of 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
[xxix] 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.
[xxx] On “victory” in a nuclear war, see, by this author: https://blog.oup.com/2016/04/war-political-victories/ See also: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/28931
[xxxi] 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, se Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 37, No.2., January 1959, pp. 211-234.
[xxxii] Jerusalem should always ensure that Israel does not enter into any 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.
[xxxiii] 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.
[xxxiv] 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.
[xxxv]The law of armed conflict, or the law of war, is comprised of: (1) rules on weapons; (2) rules on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at The Hague and Geneva Conventions, these norms attempt to bring discrimination, proportionality and military necessity into all belligerent calculations.
[xxxvi] 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. In this writer’s judgment, both preemptions were lawful assertions of Israel’s “Begin Doctrine.”
[xxxvii]https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2019/01/30/assassination-and-targeted-killing-a-timely-jurisprudential-brief/ This paper was first published at The Brown Journal of World Affairs.
[xxxviii] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Jurist: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/06/louis-beres-winning-war/
[xxxix]Regarding Iran’s pre-war history with Israel (i.e., before the June 2025 American and Israeli preemptive attacks), 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).
[xl] “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.”
[xli] 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).
[xlii] See by this writer at Israel Defense: Louis René Beres, https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/65219
[xliii] For this term I am indebted to F.E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (1957).
[xliv]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.
[xlv] A long-studied passage in Francis Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning explains that earlier Scholastics were like spiders, weaving webs out of their own heads without any consideration of surrounding facts. While these webs were inherently admirable on account of their workmanship and “fineness of thread,” they were nonetheless lacking in any true explanatory substance. (I, iv., 5). Presently, in explaining Israel’s nuclear doctrine and strategy amid historical structural anarchy, it is important to base dialectical arguments on well-reasoned analytic foundations.
[xlvi] The critical importance of Reason to all legal judgment was prefigured in ancient Israel, which prominently accommodated the core concept within its special system of revealed law. Jewish theory of law, insofar as it displays the evident markings of a foundational Higher Law, offers a transcending order revealed by the divine word interpreted by human reason. In the words of Ecclesiastes 32.23, 37.16, 13-14: “Let reason go before every enterprise and counsel before any action…And let the counsel of thine own heart stand…For a man’s mind is sometimes wont to tell him more than seven watchmen that sit above in a high tower….”
[xlvii] Under international law, the idea of a Higher Law – drawn originally from ancient Hebrew Scripture and fundamental to creating US Constitutional law – is contained within the wider principle of jus cogens or peremptory norms. See especially: Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969).
[xlviii] See also, by Jose Ortega Y Gasset: “The true historical reality is not the datum, the fact, the thing, but the evolution formed when these materials melt and become fluid. History moves; the still waters are made swift.” From Ortega’s The Dehumanization of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968 (1925), p.107.