Excavating Israel’s 'bomb in the basement'

Special to 'The Jerusalem Post': The next step in preserving national security.

By LOUIS RENÉ BERES
Dimona nuclear reactor 521 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Dimona nuclear reactor 521
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Si vis pacem, para bellum, atomicum. "If you want peace, prepare for atomic war." Though unacknowledged, Israel's survival as a state may ultimately hinge on the extent to which it has adhered to this plainly controversial rule.
In all critical calculations regarding Israeli nuclear strategy, what has mattered most is what has not been said. Until now, strategic correctness has demanded absolute nuclear secrecy. Indeed, such imperative secrecy has never even been seriously questioned.
Initially, when considered from the standpoint of Israeli decisional prudence, this position of silence would appear to have been ideal, or natural, or what career strategists might prefer to call “optimal.” After all, from the beginning, every element of Israel’s "bomb" has remained conspicuously ambiguous. Cast in a less ironic but more "architectural" strategic parlance, the Israeli bomb has remained purposefully buried in the always- beleaguered country's nuclear "basement."
Historically, of course, it has been a lucid and convenient metaphor. Now, however, some notably very good reasons have arisen that should call into question the longstanding Israeli doctrine of total nuclear secrecy. Intellectually, these reasons stem from underlying and overriding issues of nuclear threat credibility, core strategic issues that are notably more universally generic, than Israel-specific.
In the final analysis, all military doctrine aims to describe how particular national forces will fight in various combat contexts and operations. The literal definition of doctrine derives from Middle English, from the Latin doctrina. Cumulatively, it means teaching, learning, and instruction.
Strategy always has its own unique grammar and syntax. The true importance of strategic doctrine lies not only in the special way it can animate and unify national military forces, but also in the manner that it can transmit desired "messages"; that is, the ways it can communicate these vital messages to assorted allies, and to identifiable enemy states. In certain circumstances, an undifferentiated or across-the-board commitment to nuclear ambiguity could be distinctly harmful to a particular nation’s overall security. This is because effective deterrence and defense may sometimes require a military doctrine that is at least partially recognizable, by friends, by foes, and even by certain insurgent groups.
For Israel, now confronting a verifiably high-probability prospect of Iranian nuclear capacity, continued and complete secrecy on strategic targeting doctrine, and/or on nuclear weapon yields, could prove to be a serious problem. Eventually, "deliberate ambiguity" could even cause a newly-nuclear Iran to underestimate Israel's retaliatory resolve. In part, at least, such an underestimation could be triggered by a particular hidden or unanticipated nuance of nuclear strategic thinking.
This obscured feature could be that Israel's willingness to actually make good on nuclear retaliation might be seen, correctly or incorrectly, as inversely related to nuclear weapon system destructiveness. Although certainly counter-intuitive, if Israel were believed to have only very high-yield nuclear weapons in its arsenals, it could suffer a consequent loss or diminution of its nuclear deterrence credibility. It is similarly important that Israel’s most potentially dangerous enemies should be able to recognize that the Jewish State maintains adequately secure and penetration-capable nuclear forces.
Other basic matters of doctrine relate to pertinent perceptions of Israel’s strategic nuclear capability. An unchanging Israeli national policy of total ambiguity could cause a potentially powerful enemy state to overestimate the vulnerability of Israel's nuclear retaliatory forces to a first-strike attack. This particular misjudgment could be the result, among other things, of a too-complete Israeli silence concerning various measures of protection provided for its nuclear weapons.
It could also be the product of a too-great Israeli silence on its active defense potential, a silence that could be wrongly understood, by enemy states, as an indication of inadequate Israeli Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). Although Israel’s recent Pillar of Defense experience with Iron Dome was highly successful, its Arrow BMD system would have to achieve much higher levels of interception effectiveness. More exactly, facing longer-range missiles with WMD warheads, Arrow would require a literally 100% reliability of intercept. To be sure, in the urgent matter of a nuclear Iran, absolutely no “leakage” could be considered tolerable.
To best assess Israeli strategic nuclear doctrine, one must first recall the most basic foundations of Israeli nuclear deterrence. These foundations concern prospective attackers' perceptions of Israel's nuclear capability, and of Israel's corollary willingness to use this capability. A selective telegraphing of Israel's strategic nuclear doctrine, therefore, could gainfully enhance Israel's nuclear deterrence posture. It would do this by heightening enemy state perceptions of both Israel's capable nuclear forces, and also its willingness to engage these forces in reprisal for certain already-stipulated (first-strike and retaliatory) attacks.
To deter an enemy first-strike attack, or even a post-preemption retaliation, Israel must first be able to prevent a rational aggressor, by threat of inflicting an unacceptably damaging reprisal or counter-reprisal, from deciding to strike. Here, security would be sought by convincing the would-be rational attacker (irrational state enemies would present an altogether different problem) that the costs of any considered attack will exceed its expected benefits. Assuming that Israel's state enemies: (1) always value self-preservation most highly; and (2) always choose rationally between alternative options, these foes would assuredly refrain from any attack upon an Israel that is believed willing and able to deliver a massively destructive response.
It is conceivable, of course, that these enemy states might sometime also be deterred by the prospect of a more limited Israeli attack. This is an attack that would be directed at national leaders as such. These prospects would involve more-or-less plausible threats of "regime targeting."
Two intersecting factors would need to transmit such threats. First, in terms of capability, there are two essential components: payload and delivery system. It must always be successfully communicated to a prospective attacker that Israel's firepower, and also its available means of delivering that firepower, are fully capable of inflicting unacceptable levels of destruction.
Israel's retaliatory and counter-retaliatory nuclear forces must always appear sufficiently invulnerable, and sufficiently elusive, to penetrate the prospective aggressor's active and civil defenses. It may or may not need to be communicated to a potential attacker that such nuclear firepower and delivery vehicles are actually superior. This is because the capacity to deter may or may not be as great as the capacity to win. Going forward, as I have written widely, determining tangible thresholds of "victory" and "defeat" will become much more difficult than it once would have been for military theorists Sun-Tzu or Clausewitz.
With Israel's strategic nuclear doctrine kept locked away in the "basement," enemy states could sometime conclude, rightly or wrongly, that a first-strike attack or post-preemption reprisal, would be cost-effective. Were relevant doctrine made more plainly obvious to enemy states contemplating an attack, that Israel's nuclear assets had met both payload and delivery system objectives, Israel's nuclear forces could then better serve their ultimate or existential security function.
The second factor of nuclear doctrine for Israel concerns willingness. How can Israel best convince potential attackers that it possesses the resolve to deliver an immensely destructive retaliation, and/or counter retaliation? The answer to this important question lies largely embedded in formal doctrine, in Israel's demonstrated strength of commitment to carry out such an attack, and in the nuclear ordnance that would be available.
Continued ambiguity over nuclear doctrine could create the injurious impression of an unwilling Israel. Conversely, doctrinal movement toward some as-yet-undetermined level of disclosure could heighten the impression of an Israel that is, in fact, willing to follow-through on its nuclear threats.
There are, then, persuasive connections between a more open strategic nuclear doctrine, and enemy state perceptions of Israeli nuclear deterrence. One such connection centers on the relation between openness, and perceived vulnerability of Israeli strategic nuclear forces to preemptive destruction. Another such connection concerns the relation between openness, and the perceived capacity of Israel's nuclear forces to penetrate any offending state's active defenses.
Doctrinal openness, carefully articulated, could represent a rational and prudent option for Israel to the extent that enemy states were made appropriately aware of Israel's relevant nuclear capabilities. The determinable operational benefits of Israeli doctrinal openness would then accrue from deliberate flows of information about such matters as dispersion, multiplication, and hardening of strategic nuclear systems, and also about certain technical features of strategic nuclear weapon systems. Above all, meticulously-controlled doctrinal flows of information could serve to remove any lingering enemy state doubts about Israel's strategic nuclear force capabilities, and its associated order of battle. If left unchallenged, such doubts could lethally undermine Israeli nuclear deterrence.
The most urgent case in point is obviously the growing strategic threat from Iran. Over time, however, certain other equally challenging threats could arise elsewhere. For example, what if Islamist forces were to take over in an already-nuclear Pakistan?
It's high time for more creative strategic thinking in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Si vis pacem, para bellum, atomicum.
Louis René Beres was born in Zürich, Switzerland, and educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971). He is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (1979), Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (1980), and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (1986). For more than a quarter-century, Professor Beres has lectured on these issues at leading United States and Israeli military or intelligence institutions. In the United States, Professor Beres has published in Special Warfare and Parameters (Department of Defense). In Israel, where he was Chair of Project Daniel (2003), his writings appear often in The Jerusalem Post. He has also been a frequent contributor to the Working Papers series of Israel's annual Herzliya Conference on national strategy, including Herzliya, 2013.