Taking Nuclear War Seriously: Israel's Strategic Imperative

To best prepare itself for any and all nuclear conflict possibilities, Israeli planners must comprehensively examine pertinent narratives concerning nuclear retaliation, nuclear counter-retaliation, nuclear preemption, and nuclear warfighting. Opinion

 

Taking Nuclear War Seriously: Israel's Strategic Imperative

Photo: IAF

"The worst does sometimes happen." (Friedrich Durrenmatt, Swiss Playwright)

In the final analysis, Israel's nuclear weapons and doctrine must be about national survival. Already, in the early 1950s, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, had understood the need for a unique "equalizer" to secure his otherwise too-vulnerable Jewish State. More precisely, he recognized early on that in the absence of its own appropriate nuclear assets, Israel could sometime have no reasonable chance to endure.

But no category of weapons is ever per se meaningful. Rather, all weapons need to be informed by suitable strategy and tactics. How, therefore, should these very special Israeli assets actually be "used?"

Back in the early days, when Americans and Soviets were still first defining a narrowly bipolar Cold War nuclear strategy ex nihilo, Israel had nowhere to turn for a template or guidance.

What Jerusalem did understand, from the start, is that nuclear ordnance can succeed only through non-use.

Although seemingly illogical, this paradox is really just another way of describing military deterrence in general – a longstanding and plainly generic national security posture by which certain specified kinds of adversaries can be discouraged from striking first. In essence, deterrence works to the extent that prospective aggressors can calculate that the expected costs of striking first will exceed their expected gains.

Such designated adversaries must also be considered rational, and must be nation-states. Sometimes, however, these states could operate in tandem with other states (alliance), or together with assorted terror groups (hybrid). In the future, moreover, Israel's enemies could include particular sub-state nuclear foes acting by themselves; to wit, Hezbollah, after it had become the recipient of some reassuring nuclear largesse from Iran, or perhaps even from North Korea.

For now, at least, Israel has no already nuclear enemies, unless one were to consider Pakistan. This fully nuclear Islamic state is potentially subject to coup d'état by Jihadist elements, and is also very closely aligned with Saudi Arabia.

Presently, Iran leads a widening array of heavily armed Shiite proxies and militias. For example, Tehran supplies missiles to Yemen's Houthi Ansar al-Allah Shiite army, which has then fired them at Saudi cities.

Iran's recent missile strikes against ISIS targets in eastern Syria represented another search for "escalation dominance" in the expanding conflict between radical Shiites and Sunnis across the region. Here, for the first time since the Iran-Iraq war nearly 30 years ago, Damascus used advanced solid-fuel ballistic missiles. Over time, such escalations could conceivably include nuclear warheads, not against insurgent targets, but against a formidable enemy state such as Saudi Arabia or Israel.

Israel must be intellectually creative and conceptually well-prepared. Specifically, for deterrence to work long-term, would-be aggressor states would need to be told more rather than less about (1) Israel's pertinent nuclear targeting doctrine; and (2) the expected invulnerability and penetration-capability of Jerusalem's nuclear forces. However counter-intuitive, this means that to best prepare for all plausible attack scenarios, Israel must plan conscientiously for the incremental replacement of "deliberate ambiguity" with presumptively apt levels of "disclosure."

Soon, therefore, it will be time to begin to remove the bomb from the "basement."

For Israel, the only true and continuous purpose of nuclear weapons must be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. Nonetheless, there remain residual circumstances under which Israeli nuclear deterrence could fail, and where there could then take place certain belligerent firings of these weapons.

How might such fearful circumstances arise? Four principal though not mutually exclusive scenarios now warrant mention and examination. Israel's strategic planners should study these paradigmatic narratives closely, and prepare to deal effectively with any and all of them.

There is more. Very soon, inter alia, these military planners must begin to fashion similarly guiding narratives involving significant non-state adversaries, both Sunni and Shiite. It may sometimes also be necessary for Israel to "choose sides" in these matters, thus intentionally lining up with one Israeli adversary against another. In this connection, of course, special attention should be directed toward comparatively assessing and then thwarting pertinent adversarial opportunities to "go nuclear."

Taken together with the four basic scenarios outlined below, these "parallel" narratives could help provide Israel with needed intellectual armaments to prevent "the worst." Presently, though Israel need not worry about any existing nuclear adversary, state or sub-state, it's nuclear weapons and doctrine could already represent an indispensable "ultimate" deterrent against certain forms of massive conventional/biological/chemical attack.

(1)          Nuclear Retaliation

Should an enemy state or alliance of enemy states ever launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel, Jerusalem would respond, assuredly, and to whatever extent possible, with a nuclear retaliatory strike. If enemy first-strikes were to involve other available forms of unconventional weapons, such as chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Israel might then still launch a nuclear reprisal. This grave decision would depend, in large measure, upon Jerusalem's informed expectations of any follow-on enemy aggression, and also on its associated calculations of comparative damage-limitation.

If Israel were to absorb a massive conventional attack, a nuclear retaliation could not automatically be ruled out, especially if: (a) the state aggressors were perceived to hold nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons in reserve; and/or (b) Israel's leaders were to believe that non-nuclear retaliations could not prevent annihilation of the Jewish State. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out only in those rapidly discernible circumstances where enemy state aggressions were clearly conventional, "typical" (that is, consistent with all previous instances of attack, in both degree and intent) and hard-target oriented (that is, directed towards Israeli weapons and related military infrastructures, rather than at its civilian populations).

(2)          Nuclear Counter-retaliation

Should Israel ever feel compelled to preempt enemy state aggression with conventional weapons, the target state(s)' response would largely determine Jerusalem's next moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, Israel would doubtlessly turn to some available form of nuclear counter-retaliation. If this retaliation were to involve other non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, Israel could also feel pressed to take the escalatory initiative. Again, this decision would depend upon Jerusalem's judgments of enemy intent, and upon its corollary calculations of essential damage-limitation.

Should the enemy state response to Israel's preemption be limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that the Jewish State would then move to any nuclear counter-retaliations. If, however, the conventional enemy retaliation were "all-out" and directed toward Israeli civilian populations as well as to Israeli military targets, an Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation could not immediately be excluded. Such a counter-retaliation could be ruled out only if the enemy state's conventional retaliation were identifiably proportionate to Israel's preemption; confined to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by the legal limits of "military necessity;" and accompanied by certain explicit and verifiable assurances of non-escalatory intent.

(3)          Nuclear Preemption

It is highly implausible that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Although circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would be both perfectly rational, and permissible under authoritative international law, it is unlikely that Israel would ever allow itself to reach such irremediably dire circumstances. Moreover, unless the nuclear weapons involved were usable in a fashion still consistent with longstanding laws of war, this most extreme form of preemption could represent an expressly egregious violation of international law.

Even if such consistency were possible, the psychological/political impact on the entire world community would be strongly negative and far-reaching. In essence, this means that an Israeli nuclear preemption could conceivably be expected only: (a) where Israel's pertinent state enemies had acquired nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction judged capable of annihilating the Jewish State; (b) where these enemies had made it clear that their intentions paralleled their genocidal capabilities; (c) where these enemies were believed ready to begin an operational "countdown to launch;" and (d) where Jerusalem believed that Israeli non-nuclear preemptions could not achieve the needed minimum levels of damage-limitation – that is, levels consistent with physical preservation of the Jewish State.

(4)          Nuclear Warfighting

Should nuclear weapons ever be introduced into any actual conflict between Israel and its many enemies, either by Israel, or by a regional foe, nuclear warfighting, at one level or another, could ensue. This would hold true so long as: (a) enemy first-strikes would not destroy Israel's second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy the Jewish State's nuclear counter-retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy enemy state second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for conventional first-strikes would not destroy the enemy's nuclear counter-retaliatory capability.

This means that in order to satisfy its most indispensable survival imperatives, Israel must take appropriate steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b) above, and the simultaneous unlikelihood of (c) and (d).

"The worst does sometimes happen." However inadvertent, this casual observation by Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt carries with it an apt and existential security warning for Israel. It is to prepare prudently and systematically for all possible nuclear war contingencies, even when any such express preparation would be frightfully expensive, operationally daunting, and societally disconcerting.

Candor counts. In all matters of national strategy, as in all core matters of law, truth is exculpatory. For Israel, going forward, even its most conspicuously threatening nuclear weapons could prove useless or even self-defeating unless there had first been suitable advance planning for virtually every imaginable war scenario.

For Israel, looking ahead, national survival must always be about what the ancient Greeks and Macedonians had insightfully described as a needed struggle of "mind over mind," not one of "mind over matter."

In the end, for Israel, the most consequential "battlefield" will no doubt prove to be analytical. Retrospectively, if all goes well, there will have been duly meticulous considerations of enemy rationality, and, correspondingly, a duly measured doctrinal shift from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure. Without such urgently required intellectual antecedents, a catastrophic conflict, whether nuclear or "merely" conventional, could sometime become unavoidable.

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Louis René Beres, a frequent contributor to Israel Defense, is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. He is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war. He was Chair of Project Daniel, which submitted its special report on Israel’s Strategic Future to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on January 16, 2003.