During the past year, the ACPR has expertly examined
problems of Israeli deterrence. Aharon Levran’s “The Decline of Israeli
Deterrence” (ACPR policy paper no. 113) is an especially important and
informed assessment. The article below by Professor Louis René Beres –
cast in the form of a Memorandum to the Prime Minister – looks more
specifically at the conditions and limitations of Israeli nuclear
deterrence. Based upon the assumption that Israel’s survival depends
entirely upon self reliance, this memorandum urges PM Sharon
immediately to strengthen the country’s nuclear deterrence posture, and to
take critical steps to ensure that a failure of Israeli nuclear deterrence
will not bring about nuclear warfare. These steps will require: (1) a
multifaceted nuclear strategy involving deterrence, preemption and
warfighting capabilities; and (2) a corollary conventional strategy that
can function in spite of serious security weaknesses created by the Oslo
“peace process”.
Israel needs a strong nuclear deterrent – and the
complex conditions of such a deterrent are identified and evaluated
carefully in the Memorandum – but it cannot rely upon this one base of
national security any more than it can rely only upon conventional
deterrence. Israel’s survival now requires complementary nuclear and
conventional forces, and the continuing and associated availability of
certain preemption options. Taken together, these multiple bases of
national security could endow Israel with at least tolerable measures of
safety.
Specific issues addressed in the Beres Memorandum
are: convincing prospective attackers that Israel maintains both the
willingness and the capacity to retaliate in certain situations
with nuclear weapons; the risks and benefits to Israel of intentionally
detectable measures to reduce Israeli nuclear force vulnerabilities; the
associated risks and benefits to Israel of active and passive defenses;
the precise nature of Israeli nuclear weapons; the issue of disclosure vs.
“deliberate ambiguity” (the “Bomb in the Basement”); the types and
openness of nuclear targeting doctrine; the problem of enemy irrationality
for Israeli nuclear deterrence; the interrelatedness of Israeli
conventional and nuclear deterrence; and (should Israeli nuclear
deterrence fail), the expected consequences of regional nuclear war.
Finally, the Beres Memorandum imaginatively considers different scenarios
of how a nuclear attack upon Israel might take place and the particular
place for a “Samson Option”.
Professor Louis René Beres is the author of some of
the earliest published writings on Israeli nuclear deterrence. This
Memorandum looks soberly and in considerable detail at today’s urgent
strategic challenges to Israel. Taken as a whole, the Memorandum points
toward a comprehensive and coherent nuclear “master plan” from which
specific policy options might be suitably extrapolated.