In explaining national security and world politics, nothing is more practical than good theory. Nowhere is this assertion more meaningful than in matters of nuclear war avoidance. At the same time, because a nuclear war has never been fought, any search for clarifying theory would need to take place without history-based verifications.
What should be done? There is a science-based answer. As pertinent issues concern formal decision-theory, the theory-building task can be accomplished by systematic deductions. Though it is impossible to theorize about unprecedented matters using empirical generalizations (i.e., inductive modes of inference), it remains purposeful to deduce valid conclusions from plausible assumptions.
On these issues of scientific understanding, Israel should pay special heed. While Israel’s thinkers and citizens remain fixated on tangible current events (e.g., resumption of Iranian nuclearization; jihadi terror attacks; Hamas reconfigurations; ISIS resurgence; Donald J. Trump’s “Board of Peace,” etc.), all such particulars will need to be assessed within disciplined frameworks of deductive analysis. In science, including strategic military analyses, generality is always a core trait of theoretical meaning.
Still, history matters, especially for Israel. As a nuclear war has never been fought, there are no experts on “conducting” or “winning” such a war. Reciprocally, however, Jerusalem ought also to disavow any strategic counsel drawn from “common sense.”
Complicated military problems can never be solved by “seat-of-the-pants” judgments or declarations. Presently, the most conspicuous example of non-theoretic approaches to Israel’s national security are the glaringly-visceral peace proposals of US President Donald J. Trump.
In Jerusalem, nothing could be more important than to delegate complex nuclear calculations to small cadres of “high thinkers.” In terms of intellectual caliber, we are speaking here of such stunningly exceptional figures as Szilard, Fermi, Oppenheimer, Einstein and Bohr, not to continuously update military technologies (these technologies are indispensable prima facie), but to plan for broad-spectrum nuclear deterrence via calculated non-use.
Accordingly, all such theory-based planning should combine Sun Tzu’s dictum on military efficacy and conflict avoidance (The Art of War) with Carl von Clausewitz’s idea of “friction” (On War). Well-known to strategic planners for almost two centuries, friction represents the difference between war on paper and war as it actually is.
There is more. Providing for Israeli national security amid multiple geo-strategic reconfigurations and recalibrations ought never to become an ad hoc game of chance. Without suitably long-term, systematic and theory-based plans in place, Israel would render itself unprepared for durable nuclear war avoidance and for actual nuclear conflict - whether deliberate or inadvertent.
More precisely, at every stage of renewed military competition with Tehran or the Islamic Republic’s potential nuclear surrogates (e.g., North Korea, Russia, China or Pakistan), Jerusalem should bear in mind that the only sensible rationale for continuously refining national nuclear weapons and doctrine is (1) stable war management at all identifiable levels; and (2) reliable nuclear deterrence.
Among other things, good theory would help clarify that Israel could at some point find itself engaged in a nuclear war with a non-nuclear adversary. In this scenario, Israel could find itself having to achieve intra-crisis “escalation dominance” by launching carefully-measured nuclear reprisals. Described in formal strategic parlance, this narrative would signify an “asymmetrical nuclear war.”
More than anything else, Israel’s strategic plans should include a prompt policy shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” The theory-based logic of this shift would not be to reframe the obvious (i.e., that Israel is an extant nuclear power), but to remind would-be aggressors that Jerusalem’s nuclear weapons are operationally usable at all imaginable levels of warfare.
Nonetheless, even with optimal theoretical planning, Iranian, North Korean, Russian, Chinese or Pakistani threats to Israel could at some stage become overwhelming. Ipso facto, Jerusalem will need to remain prepared for all plausibly-related nuclear scenarios, including ones that describe synergistic or “force-multiplying” intersections. In a synergistic intersection, strategic planners should be reminded, the “whole” injurious effect is greater than the simple sum of its “parts.”
Reduced to its essentials, a worst case scenario for Israel would commence with progressively explicit warnings from Moscow or China about new Israeli preemptions against Iran.
The Jewish State, aware that it could not reasonably expect to coexist with a nuclear Iran, would proceed with its planned acts of “anticipatory self-defense” in spite of Russian or Chinese warnings. In subsequent response, superpower enemy forces would act directly against Israel, seeking to persuade Jerusalem that Moscow or Beijing remains in a permanently superior position to dominate all conceivable escalations. Alternatively, Russia or China could delegate military responsibilities to North Korea, an Iranian ally that is already augmenting Russian military forces in Ukraine.
For Vladimir Putin, at least, such persuasive effort should not be a “hard sell.” Unless the United States were willing to enter the already-chaotic situation with unambiguous and unrestricted support for Israel, Moscow would have no foreseeable difficulties in establishing “escalation dominance.”
There is no clear way in which the capabilities and options of a state smaller than America’s Lake Michigan could “win” at competitive risk-taking vis-à-vis Russia, China, North Korea or Pakistan. In such unprecedented matters, self-deflating candor would be much safer for Israel than self-deluding bravado. As a strategic objective, Israel’s theory-directed avoidance of “bee sting” nuclear capacity would be indispensable. To clarify this metaphor, certain kinds of honey bee die once they have used their stinger.
What else about the United States? Would an American president ever accept an alliance commitment to Israel that could place millions of Americans in positons of grievous vulnerability? For the most part, the correct answer would lie with the character and theoretical inclinations or disinclinations of America’s head of state.
If US President Trump should ever decide to honor American security guarantees to Israel in extremis, the world could be looking at another Cuban Missile Crisis or something much worse. If, however, the American leader would take the prospectively logical position not to act in “good faith” (pacta sunt servanda in international law), Jerusalem could have no choice but capitulation to a nuclear ultimatum.
There are additionally important issues of nuclear doctrine. In his continuing war of aggression and genocide against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has been recycling provocative elements of Soviet-era strategic theory. One critical element concerns the absence of any apparent “firebreak” between conventional and tactical nuclear force engagements. Now, much as it was during the “classical” era of US-Soviet nuclear deterrence, Moscow identifies the determinative escalatory threshold with a first-use of high-yield, long-range strategic nuclear weapons, not of tactical (theater) nuclear weapons.
This perilous nuclear escalation doctrine is not shared by Israel’s US ally, and could erode any once-stabilizing barriers of intra-war deterrence between the two superpowers. Whether sudden or incremental, any such erosion could impact the plausibility of both a deliberate and an inadvertent nuclear war. As Israel could need to depend on firm US support in countering certain Russian military threats, Vladimir Putin should be granted a prominent place in Israel’s theory-based nuclear threat assessments.
For Israel, the bottom-line of all strategic analysis is an invariant obligation to assess all strategic options as a theoretical task. Inter alia, reaching rational judgments on another round of defensive first strikes against a still pre-nuclear Iran would require informed anticipations of (1) Russian, North Korean, Chinese and/or Pakistani intentions; and (2) United States willingness to stand by Israel during eleventh-hour crises.
Immediately, as part of Jerusalem’s continuously-nuanced calculations, the above scenarios should assume a place of primary importance.
In summary, from the standpoint of scientific prediction, there could be no basis for dismissing nuclear war outcomes as “improbable.” In science, true probabilities must always rest on the determinable frequency of past events. For now, at least, such relevant events do not include nuclear war. It is by informed use of deductive decision-theory that Israel’s “high thinkers” could best ensure this exclusion stays reliably in place.