Summary
Following the recent war in
Lebanon, Israel will have to draw certain major lessons to ensure its long-term
strategic survival. What is needed now, immediately and urgently, are thoughtful
and coherent guidelines concerning national defense, deterrence, targeting and
even preemption (anticipatory self-defense). It is no longer adequate for Israel
(more or less capably) to merely stumble from one war to the next without an
appropriate “master plan” for direction. Armed with such a framework of expanded
conceptual understanding, the Jewish state could quickly begin to deduce
pertinent tactics and policy options to match particular situations and crises.
In the near-term, of course, the need for such a plan will be especially plain
in matters of both nuclear war avoidance and counter-WMD terrorism.
Taking the “falling rockets from
Lebanon” as its starting point, this learned policy paper by Professor Louis
René Beres (USA) explores a wide range of topics and themes concerning Israel’s
war performance and its resultant outlook for peace and security. To carry out
this exploration, the author looks closely at various complex synergies between
international law and geopolitics. He also examines emerging IDF doctrine
against the essential background of Arab/Islamic visions of faith and war.
Divided into six chapters, After the Falling Rockets from Lebanon begins
with brief appraisals of “Law, Strategy, Reason and Death” (Chapter 1) and ends
with a look at “Myth, Heroism and Unending Struggle” (Chapter 6). Intermediate
chapters deal with “Jewish Pain, Suffering and Life” (Chapter 2); “Logic,
Persuasion, American Guarantees and Preemption” (Chapter 3); “Language,
Thinking, Dialectic and Contemplation” (Chapter 4); and “Assassination, Anarchy,
Rules and Dogmas” (Chapter 5). There is, in short, nothing narrowly operational
about these crisp and critical essays. Rather, of varying length, they offer a
panoply of far-reaching perspectives from which – ultimately – relevant Israeli
strategy and tactics can be extrapolated.
Professor Beres is known to
readers of ACPR publications, inter alia, as Chair of “Project Daniel”, a
small advisory group that had presented former Prime Minister Sharon with an
important report titled Israel’s Strategic Future. In that now
no-longer-confidential report, Beres and his distinguished colleagues –
including a former member of the IDF General Staff – issued specific warnings to
the Prime Minister about Iranian nuclearization and the need for a suitable
Israeli response. More specifically, the Daniel Group recommended an end to
nuclear ambiguity in certain specified circumstances and also a resort to
preemption (anticipatory self-defense) as a last-resort measure to prevent
nuclear-inflicted genocide from Tehran. Project Daniel also advised that Israel
adopt an openly counter-value nuclear targeting doctrine, including the explicit
identification of various high-value population centers and resources in
selected parts of the Arab/Islamic world. The recommendations were very
controversial, but the authors were guided by their informed view of the
genuinely existential threats now facing Israel, and by their understanding that
catastrophic war avoidance requires credible deterrence.
After the falling rockets from
Lebanon, Israel has much to fear. But Israel also has both the will and the
capacity to learn from this latest war, not merely the singular lessons of
strategy and tactics, but also the much broader insights of religion,
philosophy, law and politics. It is with this distinctly broader view in mind
that Professor Beres now offers us his latest ACPR Policy Paper. We all share
his belief that war can be a dreadful preceptor, but that it can be a deeply
meaningful teacher nonetheless.
Following the recent war in
Lebanon, Israel will have to draw certain major lessons to ensure its long-term
strategic survival. What is needed now, immediately and urgently, are thoughtful
and coherent guidelines concerning national defense, deterrence, targeting and
even preemption (anticipatory self-defense). It is no longer adequate for Israel
(more or less capably) to merely stumble from one war to the next without an
appropriate “master plan” for direction. Armed with such a framework of expanded
conceptual understanding, the Jewish state could quickly begin to deduce
pertinent tactics and policy options to match particular situations and crises.
In the near-term, of course, the need for such a plan will be especially plain
in matters of both nuclear war avoidance and counter-WMD terrorism.
Taking the “falling rockets from
Lebanon” as its starting point, this learned policy paper by Professor Louis
René Beres (USA) explores a wide range of topics and themes concerning Israel’s
war performance and its resultant outlook for peace and security. To carry out
this exploration, the author looks closely at various complex synergies between
international law and geopolitics. He also examines emerging IDF doctrine
against the essential background of Arab/Islamic visions of faith and war.
Divided into six chapters, After the Falling Rockets from Lebanon begins
with brief appraisals of “Law, Strategy, Reason and Death” (Chapter 1) and ends
with a look at “Myth, Heroism and Unending Struggle” (Chapter 6). Intermediate
chapters deal with “Jewish Pain, Suffering and Life” (Chapter 2); “Logic,
Persuasion, American Guarantees and Preemption” (Chapter 3); “Language,
Thinking, Dialectic and Contemplation” (Chapter 4); and “Assassination, Anarchy,
Rules and Dogmas” (Chapter 5). There is, in short, nothing narrowly operational
about these crisp and critical essays. Rather, of varying length, they offer a
panoply of far-reaching perspectives from which – ultimately – relevant Israeli
strategy and tactics can be extrapolated.
Professor Beres is known to
readers of ACPR publications, inter alia, as Chair of “Project Daniel”, a
small advisory group that had presented former Prime Minister Sharon with an
important report titled Israel’s Strategic Future. In that now
no-longer-confidential report, Beres and his distinguished colleagues –
including a former member of the IDF General Staff – issued specific warnings to
the Prime Minister about Iranian nuclearization and the need for a suitable
Israeli response. More specifically, the Daniel Group recommended an end to
nuclear ambiguity in certain specified circumstances and also a resort to
preemption (anticipatory self-defense) as a last-resort measure to prevent
nuclear-inflicted genocide from Tehran. Project Daniel also advised that Israel
adopt an openly counter-value nuclear targeting doctrine, including the explicit
identification of various high-value population centers and resources in
selected parts of the Arab/Islamic world. The recommendations were very
controversial, but the authors were guided by their informed view of the
genuinely existential threats now facing Israel, and by their understanding that
catastrophic war avoidance requires credible deterrence.
After the falling rockets from
Lebanon, Israel has much to fear. But Israel also has both the will and the
capacity to learn from this latest war, not merely the singular lessons of
strategy and tactics, but also the much broader insights of religion,
philosophy, law and politics. It is with this distinctly broader view in mind
that Professor Beres now offers us his latest ACPR Policy Paper. We all share
his belief that war can be a dreadful preceptor, but that it can be a deeply
meaningful teacher nonetheless.
* * *
Foreword
The recent war in Lebanon was an event that
has already left significant marks, and it is certainly bound to have a
continued impact on developments in Israel, the Middle East region and beyond.
For Israel, this was a fight against Iran by proxy. Hizbullah and its allies,
both inside Lebanon and in the broader Middle East, have claimed a “divine
victory” in its confrontation with Israel. Although the facts are somewhat
different – in concrete terms neither side has really been victorious and the
overall perception was very damaging to Israel in more than one respect. While
Israel certainly created greater damage to Hizbullah than vice versa, the
well-oiled propaganda apparatus run by Hizbullah, aided by the less-than-perfect
PR effort on the Israeli side, produced distinctly negative consequences. Not
only may Israel’s own deterrent capability have been damaged, at least
temporarily, but so too, indirectly, has that of the United States vis-à-vis
Hizbullah’s patron, Iran. Both of these matters will thus have to be decisively
and urgently dealt with.
In the Arab world, perceptions are often
stronger than facts. Even though the Israeli air force had great success in
totally eliminating Hizbullah’s long-range missiles and missile launchers, and
in spite of the fact that there wasn’t a single actual combat in which Israeli
soldiers didn’t have the upper hand, the image created in the minds of many
people was totally different. In addition to a more general problem, how modern
armies should deal with militarized terrorist groups, the war has given rise to
serious questions with regards to the present Israeli leadership and the command
structure in the IDF. It is too early, of course, to predict what the
ramifications of this will be. There is no doubt, however, that both Israel’s
friends and enemies will be watching.
While the recent fighting in Lebanon is
fresh in our memory, more important are the overall implications for Israel’s
future in the confrontation with its enemies. These implications are enlarged by
the fact that, like it or not, Israel also finds itself in the eye of the
gathering storm between the Free World and Islamic “Jihadism”.
Professor Beres’s policy paper addresses
all these issues – and more! All of it is important. Consider, for example, this
crucial observation:
In calculations of strategic deterrence, Israel’s planner must
always recall that what matters is whether a prospective attacker perceives
secure Israeli retaliatory forces. Where a prospective attacker perceives
vulnerable retaliatory forces, it might judge the first-strike option against
Israel to be entirely cost-effective. This means, inter alia, that Israel’s
intelligence estimates must always keep close watch over enemy perceptions...
One can only hope that this analysis by
Professor Beres will be diligently studied by Israel’s strategic planners.
Ambassador Zalman Shoval
For the
complete text of this paper in English, click
here.
