“Then fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”-Archilochus
At first glance, the June 2025 military operation against Iran carried no risks of a nuclear war. After all, the cooperative effort by Israel and the United States was designed to prevent Iranian nuclearization. Nonetheless, in any resumption of armed conflict between Israel and the Islamic Republic, Jerusalem (potentially, in tandem with Washington): (1) could issue deterrent threats of “asymmetrical nuclear war” (only Israel would be nuclear-capable); or Tehran (2) could enlist state allies (e.g., North Korea or Pakistan) as witting nuclear surrogates.
These are merely basic scenarios, and now need to be augmented with clarifying details and pertinent nuances. Accordingly, in both scenarios, Israel’s nuclear deterrent would benefit from a carefully calibrated shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Inter alia, if granted a reprieve from Israeli and/or US military strikes, Tehran could recover sufficiently from the effects of its 12-day war with Jerusalem/Washington and press ahead aggressively with long-planned military nuclearization.
There is more. At some not yet determinable point, Israel’s survival could be made contingent on the conspicuous risks of a “symmetrical nuclear war.” Though contrary to conventional wisdom or “common sense,” these risks could be substantial and would obtain even if Israel were to appear the stronger or “more powerful” nuclear adversary.
To meaningfully understand all this, diplomatic background will be important. For Israel, little if anything was improved by US-brokered pacts with the UAE and Bahrain[1] – hastily contrived agreements that formally aligned Jerusalem with Sunni Arab opponents of Shiite Iran. Though some Israeli planners might still believe that Iran’s nuclear threat was diminished by the “Abraham Accords,” such thinking (Sigmund Freud would call it “wish fulfilment”) would be erroneous ipso facto. Among other things, it would rest on a too-optimistic view of “countervailing” Sunni military power at both conceptual and policy-making levels.
Looking ahead at the Israel-Iran axis of conflict, strategic thinking will be many-sided and densely complicated. Though counter-intuitive, an incremental growth of Sunni Arab power, however achieved, would not be in the long-term security interests of Israel.[2] Over time, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or even non-Arab Turkey could decide to “go nuclear.” Whether such development would be net-positive or net-negative for Israel’s national security is impossible to predict, but a logic-based assessment by Israeli strategists will be indispensable.
Much will depend on the prevailing balance of Sunni-Shiite power, a theoretical equilibrium that would be inherently subjective and potentially indecipherable. In a worst case scenario, enemy states presumably “neutralized” by the Abraham Accords would no longer offer Israel a purposeful anti-Shiite bloc. Instead, these Sunni Arab states could constitute themselves as an adversarial coalition and rival or replace Shiite Iran as the Jewish State’s most formidable enemy.
Even if there were no Sunni Arab nuclear proliferation factor to consider, Israel’s nuclear forces and strategy would remain relevant to conventional war avoidance.[3] While rarely discussed publicly, nuclear weapons could offer substantial security benefits to Israel in deterring non-nuclear foes.These foes could include various sub-state enemies and/or “hybridized” (state-sub-state) coalitions.[4]
Creating a Viable and Law-Enforcing Nuclear Deterrent
A comprehensive question warrants emphasis: After the 12-day missile war with Iran in June 2025, how should Israel best ensure a viable and law-based nuclear deterrence posture?[5] Generically, military assessments of any individual state’s nuclear deterrent should focus on a number of different and complementary elements. These elements would concern weapon systems (offensive and defensive); weapon system infrastructures and variously-corresponding issues of threat credibility. In the specific case at hand, analytic focus has generally highlighted (1) Israel’s presumptive missile and anti-missile capabilities;[6]and (2) its expected willingness to launch under widely-diverse enemy threat narratives.[7]
To suitably reinforce Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture, a more refined assessment is in order. This improved focus should be directed, like a laser beam, at world system context, an obligation that brings forth geo-strategic and jurisprudential foci. At times, these foci may be strongly interdependent or overlapping. At other times, they may be “force-multiplying” or synergistic. Presently, military planners should think of ongoing and future developments in Ukraine, North Korea, India-Pakistan and China/Taiwan.
For competent investigators, deeply serious questions will need to be asked and answered; sequentially, capably, dialectically.[8] How should such analyses proceed? A useful expression of current world legal system context would encompass all variables being shaped or coalesced as “Cold War II.” This is not because US-Russian rivalry is necessarily more significant than the anarchic system structure originally bequeathed at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,[9] but because such recurrent rivalry (unlike the historically-underlying system of geopolitics or decentralized power balancing[10]) is potentially manageable or subject to strategic manipulation.
As an ironic “Cold War II” caveat, the original superpowers could sometime find themselves on the same side. To wit, under President Donald J. Trump, the United States has effectively sided with the Russian aggressor against the Ukrainian victim. And in a once-unimaginable scenario, it is now plausible that Trump’s “Department of War” would at some point align with Vladimir Putin against NATO. Credo quia absurdum, cautioned Roman philosopher Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd.”
Intersections and Synergies
There is more. To assess the prospective impact of inter-state interactions, scholars and policy-makers will have to account for starkly bewildering relationships between them. On occasion, interactions could be expressly synergistic. This would express an always-daunting quality, one in which the “whole” of any single effect is actually greater than the sum of its “parts.”
Suchhard-to-predict expectations will require capable evaluations.[11] To a greater or lesser extent, hard-to-quantify effects could be filtered by variously appropriate and “peremptory” considerations of international law.[12] In the final analysis, Israel’s strategic choices should always take jurisprudential factors into close account. In the end, neither Israel nor the United States could ever benefit from transient military victories in a continuously Hobbesian “state of nature.”[13]
For Israeli military planners and certain others who might be interested in Israel’s nuclear strategy, US-Russian antagonisms should be studied together with Israel’s relevant weapon systems and nuclear threat credibility. For refined analysts, these system-defining antagonisms are in constant flux and changing in foreseeable and unforeseeable ways.
Going forward, superpower relations, whether or not tempered by authoritative international law, could become increasingly vital or determinative for Israeli nuclear deterrence. A great deal will ultimately depend on the precise manner in which Trump- era American realignments (pro-Putin, anti-NATO) will impact this equation and the underlying elements of Israel’s strategic posture.[14] To the extent discoverable, this manner of impact would depend on Jerusalem’s multiple and overlapping national nuclear power alignments with Russia and the United States. Moreover, in figuring Israel’s strategic moves, China and North Korea could represent a prospectively “wild card.”
Reason and Anti-Reason
Antecedent to any such complex considerations, much will depend on (1) the expected rationality or non-rationality of each national nuclear power; and on (2) the plausible interactions or synergies detectable between these nuclear adversaries and their respective alliance partners/clients. Regarding the first concern, Israel’s planners will need to bear in mind the subtle wisdom of German philosopher Karl Jaspers’ Reason and Existence (1935): “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.”[15]
Never without it. This unambiguous assumption exhibits a rudimentary understanding for anyone engaged in strategic nuclear threat analyses. “Everything is very simple in war,” counsels Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but even the simplest thing is difficult.”[16] This generally useful insight remains persuasive not only during periods of active conflict, but also in those unsteady periods of latent hostility (what Thomas Hobbes meant as a “state of war” in Leviathan) that obtain between still-possible or still-impending wars of aggression.[17]
Even during the expansive pre-nuclear era in world law[18] and world politics, a precarious logic of deterrence obtained within the global state of nature. Already, there had been operative a palpably fearful condition of raw competition, corrosive violence and seemingly perpetual anarchy. Despite considerable nuance from century to century, and from year to year, this balance of power existed since the 17th century Peace of Westphalia (1648.) In more specifically legal terms, this “Westphalian” system is generally described as a decentralized or “horizontal” system of international law.[19]
Long before the advent of nuclear weapons, the worst “state of war” (including ones without any “actual fighting”) would have been characterized by “dreadful equality.” Here, world politics would have taken place within a broadly chaotic bellum omnium contra omnes, a vastly bewildering contextwherein “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” In such opaque circumstances, the potential sources of decision-making bewilderment could quickly multiply.
In any such worst case configuration – most apparent today wherever nuclear proliferation would manage to continue without any meaningfully correlative legal inhibitions – the life of individual human beings and entire states must inevitably be (per Thomas Hobbes) “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” For Israel, the shifting parameters of Cold War II and certain related issues of enemy rationality could soon have indeterminable or foreseeable effects upon its presumptive nuclear doctrine and strategy. These effects include diverse issues surrounding any still-upcoming policy choices between “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and “selective nuclear disclosure.”[20]
Nuclear Ambiguity and Nuclear Deterrence
For Israel, a state sorely lacking in strategic depth,[21] the former posture has prevailed unchallenged. This doctrinal stance is sometimes referred to as Israel’s “bomb in the basement.”[22] Still, as a multipolar axis of conflict is now being shaped in world politics by the three principal superpowers, and as prospects for enemy irrationality are tangibly greater than ever before,[23] Jerusalem will have to make appropriate and incremental modifications to its nuclear deterrence doctrine. Included here, among other things, would be assorted policy considerations of preemption or (as described under authoritative international law) “anticipatory self-defense.”[24]
In principle at least, Israel’s national nuclear doctrine and posture have remained determinedly ambiguous. At the same time, traditional ambiguity was ostentatiously breached at the highest possible level by two of Israel’s prime ministers, first, by Shimon Peres, on December 22, 1995, and then by Ehud Olmert on December 11, 2006. Peres, speaking to a group of Israeli newspaper and magazine editors, had affirmed publicly: “…give me peace, and we’ll give up the atom. That’s the whole story.” Later, when Olmert offered similarly general but still revelatory remarks, they were widely (but perhaps wrongly) interpreted as “slips of the tongue.”
Today, a very basic question should be resurrected in Jerusalem:
Is comprehensive nuclear secrecy always in the best survival interests of the Jewish State?
To respond properly, Israel should begin with the problematic assumption that in any such complex strategic matters, “truth” could prove counter-intuitive. A useful answer to this challenging query ought to be grounded in the delineable expectations and exigencies of formal strategic doctrine.Whatever else Jerusalem may already have in mind concerning such doctrine, it’s response should never be a series of ad hoc decisions or otherwise unreflective”seat-of-the-pants” policies; that is, positions that are casually invented or re-inventedfrom one beleaguering national security crisis to the next.
In principle, at least, fashioning Israeli strategic doctrine should never consist of disjointed and/or ad hoc calculations. Any purposeful loosening of Israeli nuclear ambiguity would need to be subtle, nuanced, more-or-less indirect and visibly incremental. Contrary to the often parodied views of any such prospective disclosure that may be found in popular news stories or on television, this loosening would not have to take the provocative form of official Israeli policy pronouncements. Instead, it could be allowed to “leak out” or “spill out” on its own, thereby allowing a crucial point to be made without precipitating any immediate sense of crisis or misfortune.
From Doctrine to Strategy
Among other things, formal doctrine, consistent with world law, would represent the vital framework from which any gainfully pragmatic Israeli nuclear policy of ambiguity or disclosure could most suitably be extrapolated. In all military institutions and traditions, such doctrine must describe the tactical or operational manner in which designated national forces ought to fight in various plausible combat situations; the prescribed “order of battle;” and all manner of corollary operations. Appropriately, the literal definition of “doctrine” derives from Middle English, from the Latin doctrina, which means teaching, learning and instruction.
There is more. The central importance of codified Israeli military doctrine lies not only in the particular way it can animate, unify and optimize national military forces, but also in the expectedly efficient manner it can transmit desired “messages” to an enemy state, enemy states, sub-state proxies or state-sub-state “hybrids.[25] Understood in terms of Israel’s strategic nuclear policy, any indiscriminate, across-the-board ambiguity could prove net-injurious to the country’s national security. In this regard, it could unwittingly jeopardize certain protective functions of international law.[26] This is likely the case because any truly effective deterrence and defense could call for a military doctrine that is at least partially recognizable by adversary states and certain sub-state insurgent/terrorist group foes.
In fashioning Israel’s strategic military plans, creating operational options for strategic surprise could prove necessary to subsequent combat operations. But successful deterrence is another matter entirely. In order to persuade would-be adversaries not to strike first – in current circumstances, a manifestly complex effort of dissuasion – projecting too much secrecy could (at least on occasion) prove counter-productive.
In matters of Israel and its enemies, both new and “traditional,” optimal military success must lie in credible deterrence, not in actual war-fighting.[27] Examined in terms of ancient Chinese military thought offered by Sun-Tzu in The Art of War, “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” With this still-worthy dictum in mind, there are times for Israel when successful deterrence policies could require the deliberate “loosening” of information that had formerly been tightly held. Such information would concern Israel’scapabilities, its intentions or both of these complex qualities taken together.
We may recall, in this connection, a popular Cold War I-era movie in which Dr. Strangelove, an “eccentric” strategic advisor to the American president (and also the name of the film) discovers, to his horror, that the existence of America’s “doomsday machine” had not been made known in advance to the Soviets. “The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost,” complains Dr. Strangelove, “if you keep it a secret.” To have been suitably deterred, the film instructs, and not too subtly, the Soviets ought to have been given sufficiently prior warnings of the “doomsday machine.” This device had been designed to ensure the perceived automaticity of America’s nuclear retaliatory response. Remembering the commonly-held strategic posture known as MAD, this response would have been instantly recognizable to the Kremlin as “massive” and “assuredly destructive.”
Deterrence Ex Ante, Not Revenge Ex Post
It follows from all this and from the more general expectations of the laws of war that Israel’s nuclear weapons should remain oriented to deterrence ex ante, not to war fighting or revenge ex post. As designated instruments of a law-based system of deterrence, nuclear weapons can succeed only in their protracted non-use. Once they have actually been employed for any tangible “battle,” deterrence, by definition, will have failed.[28] Also worth noting, once nuclear weapons are used, any traditional meanings of “victory” would instantly become moot.[29]
Cold War I is over, and Israel’s emerging deterrence relationship to a prospectively nuclear adversary is not reasonably analogous or comparable to the historic American-Soviet “Balance-of-Terror.”[30] Still, there are crucial elements of now-prevailing superpower antagonisms that will necessarily and substantially impact Israel’s nuclear choices. This means that Israel ought never construct its own nuclear strategic doctrine and policy apart from variously close assessments of US-Russia-China relations.[31]
There are Cold War deterrence lessons to be learned and adapted by Israel. More precisely, any unmodified continuance of total nuclear ambiguity concerning Israel’s (a) strategic targeting doctrine; (b) secure basing modes; and/or (c) capacity to penetrate a designated enemy’s active air defenses, could cause a newly-nuclearizing or still-nuclearizing enemy state to critically underestimate Israel’s retaliatory capacity or resolve.
As a subsidiary but still urgent nuclear concern, Israeli planners will need to continually assess the capability and intentions of Pakistan, an already-nuclear Islamic state and one that has openly declared a “nuclear war fighting” concept of national nuclear deterrence. Returning to the formative lexicon of Cold War, this non-Arab Islamic state has already undertaken a formal shift from “mutual assured destruction” to “nuclear utilization theory.” In the specialized discourse and parlance of all orthodox nuclear strategic theory, this represents an overt shift from MAD (mutual assured destruction) to NUT (nuclear utilization theory).[32]
Any such shift, by definition, could have profound legal consequences concerning both the presumed likelihood of a nuclear conflict (probability) and the presumed injuriousness of such a conflict (disutility).
Going forward, assorted uncertainties surrounding the presumed components of Israel’s nuclear arsenal could lead enemy states to reach the “wrong” conclusion. In part, this is because Israel’s willingness to make good on any threatened nuclear retaliation could then be seen, widely perhaps, as inversely related to weapon system destructiveness. Ironically, if Israel’s nuclear weapons were sometime believed to be too destructive, too apocalyptic,[33] they might not credibly deter. In these cases, and more or less unwittingly, such beliefs would underscore various basic expectations of humanitarian international law or the law of armed conflict. These are the core expectations of discrimination (aka distinction); proportionality and military necessity.[34]
Enemy Miscalculations and Authoritative International Law
In the future, any continuing Israeli policy of complete ambiguity could cause an already-nuclear enemy state to overestimate the first-strike vulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces. In part, at least, this overestimation would be the result of a too-complete silence concerning measures of protection that had been deployed to safeguard Israeli nuclear weapons and launch platforms. Such silence, in turn, could be the product of Israel’s perceived alignments with one or the other current superpower by any then-relevant regional foe.
A related problem could represent the product of certain Israeli doctrinal obfuscations regarding the country’s defense potential, a silence that could be mistakenly taken by enemy states as an indication of inadequate Israeli Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). To be maximally useful, certain relevant strengths and capabilities of Arrow3 and other interrelated and multi-layered elements of active defense would need to be revealed, perhaps in previously unimaginable contours of operational detail.
Going forward, certain elements of strategic truth – especially in such wholly unprecedented contextual circumstances – could prove counter-intuitive. Then-prevailing conditions of rivalry could expect to have certain meaningful impacts on any such considered revelations.
To best understand the utility and legal content of Israeli strategic nuclear doctrine and posture, analysts must first clearly identify for themselves the variously core foundations of Israeli nuclear deterrence. These foundations concern prospective attackers’ perceptions of Israel’s nuclear capability, and also Israel’s willingness to use this capability. Any selective telegraphing of Israel’s strategic nuclear doctrine could potentially enhance Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture and thereby support both peace and international law.
It would accomplish this enhancement by heightening enemy state perceptions of Israel’s capable nuclear forces and by its announced willingness to use these forces in reprisal for certain designated first-strike and/or retaliatory attacks.
To deter an enemy attack, or a post-preemption retaliation against Israel,[35] Jerusalem must always prevent a rational aggressor, by threat of an unacceptably damaging retaliation or counter-retaliation, from deciding to strike. Here, Israel’s national security would be sought by convincing the potential rational attacker (irrational state enemies could of course pose an altogether different and possibly insurmountable problem) that the costs of any considered attack will always exceed the expected benefits. Assuming that Israel’s state enemies: (1) value self-preservation most highly; and (2) choose rationally between all alternative options, they will necessarily refrain from any attack on an Israel that is believed both willing and able to deliver an unacceptably destructive response.
These enemy states might also be deterred by the plausible prospect of a more limited Israeli attack, one that would be directed only at national leaders. In the usual parlance adopted by military and intelligence communities, this particular prospect refers to more-or-less credible threats of “regime targeting.” Whether credible or incredible, any such threats could be severely problematic in specifically legal terms.[36]
Two factors must combine to communicate such potentially essential belief. First, in terms of capability, there are two critical components: payload and delivery system. It must be successfully communicated to any calculating attacker that Israel’s firepower, and its available means of delivering that firepower, are invariably capable of inflicting unacceptable levels of destruction. This means that Israel’s retaliatory or counter-retaliatory forces must always appear sufficiently invulnerable to enemy first-strikes and aptly elusive to penetrate the prospective attacker’s active and civil defenses.
It may or may not need to be communicated to a potential attacker that such firepower and delivery vehicles are in any way superior to those of the relevant adversary. Deterrence, Israel’s planners must continuously bear in mind, is never about “victory.” Significantly, the capacity to deter may or may not be as great as the capacity to “win.”[37]
As a current example, Israeli planners could think about North Korea and the United States. In this increasingly problematic dyad of international adversaries, the Americans are in fact clearly superior in all of the usual expressions of hardware and battle-readiness, but the North Koreans could still bring significant harms to US armed forces and (potentially) to portions of the American mainland. And this is to say nothing about parallel or corollary damages that might be visited upon US allies in South Korea or Japan.
Increasingly Complex Calculations
With Israel’s strategic nuclear doctrine kept locked in the “basement,” enemy states could sometime conclude, rightly or wrongly, that a first-strike attack or post-preemption reprisal would be cost-effective. But if relevant Israeli doctrine were made more obvious to enemy states contemplating an attack – “obvious” in that Israel’s nuclear assets seemingly met both payload and delivery system objectives – Jerusalem’s nuclear forces could better serve their multiple security functions.
For Israel, the second requirement of nuclear deterrence concerns willingness. How could Israel convince any potential nuclear attackers that it possessed the resolve to deliver an appropriately destructive retaliation and/or counter retaliation? The answer to this question will lie largely in doctrine, that is, in Israel’s demonstrated strength of commitment to carry out such an attack and the nuclear ordnance that would be made available.
Here, too, continued ambiguity over nuclear doctrine could wrongfully create the impression of an unwilling Israel. Conversely, any doctrinal movement toward some as-yet-undetermined level of disclosure could heighten the impression that Israel was in fact willing to follow-through on its explicit nuclear threats.
There are variously persuasive connections between any incrementally more “open” or disclosed Israeli strategic nuclear doctrine and enemy state perceptions of Israeli nuclear deterrence. One such connection centers on the expected relationship between prospectively greater nuclear openness and the perceived vulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces to preemptive destruction. Another such connection concerns the relation between greater doctrinal openness and the perceived capacity of Israel’s nuclear forces to penetrate an offending state’s active defenses.
To be deterred by Israel, a newly-nuclear Iran[38] or any other newly nuclear adversary (potentially, at least, one of the major Sunni Arab states also worried about a resurgent Iran) would need to believe that at least a critical number of Israel’s retaliatory forces would successfully survive an enemy first-strike, and that these forces could not subsequently be prevented from hitting their pre-designated targets in Iran or elsewhere. Regarding the “presumed survivability” component of such an adversarial belief, reliable sea-basing (submarines) by Israel could prove a critical case in point.
There is more. Carefully reasoned, expanding doctrinal openness or partial nuclear disclosure could represent a rational option for Israel so long as situationally-pertinent enemy states were made aware of Israel’s nuclear capabilities. The presumed operational benefits of any such expanding doctrinal openness would accrue from certain deliberate flows of information about dispersion, multiplication and hardening of Israel’s strategic nuclear weapon systems, and from other technical features of these systems. Most important, orderly and doctrinally-controlled flows of information could remove any lingering enemy state doubts about Israel’s nuclear force capabilities and its plausible intentions.
Left unchallenged, such doubts could lethally undermine Israeli nuclear deterrence and, correspondingly, war-avoidance elements of pertinent international law.
Israel and “Friction”: Inadvertent versus Deliberate Nuclear War
A key problem in purposefully refining Israeli strategic nuclear policy on issues of deliberate nuclear ambiguity has to do with what Prussian military thinker, Carl von Clausewitz, famously called “friction.”[39] To wit, no military doctrine could ever fully anticipate the actual pace of combat activity or the precise reactions of individual human commanders under fire. It follows that Israel’s nuclear doctrine should somehow be encouraged to combine adequate tactical flexibility with selective doctrinal openness. To understand exactly how such seemingly contradictory objectives could be reconciled in Jerusalem now presents a primary intellectualchallenge to Israel’s national command authority.[40]
In the end, Israeli planners must think about plausible paths to a nuclear war that include variously relevant risks of an inadvertent or accidental nuclear war. It is possible (perhaps even plausible) that the risks of any deliberate nuclear war involving Israel would be very small, but that the Jewish State could still be vulnerable to such a war occasioned by (1) mechanical/electrical/computer malfunction on one side or the other; and (2) assorted decisional errors in reasoning (i.e., miscalculation).
To properly assess different but intersecting risks between deliberate nuclear war and inadvertent or accidental nuclear war should be regarded in Jerusalem as a core conceptual goal. These risks, including their corollary legal implications, could operate independently of one another and be impacted by Trump-era alignments. Also, Israel – like the much larger United States – should continuously prepare for issues of cyber-attack and cyber-war. Always, such challenging issues should be considered in tandem with the relentless proliferation of “digital mercenaries.”
One more analytic distinction warrants mention at this late-stage assessment. It references the difference between inadvertent nuclear war and accidental nuclear war. By definition, any accidental nuclear war would be inadvertent. An inadvertent nuclear warm however, need not be accidental. False warnings, which could be generated by technical malfunction or sparked by third-party hacking interference, would not be included under causes of an unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. Instead, they would represent cautionary narratives of accidentalnuclear war.
Most critical among the plausible causes of inadvertent nuclear war would be errors in calculation by one or both (or several) sides. The most conspicuous example would involve misjudgments of enemy intent or enemy capacity that would emerge and enlarge as a particular crisis escalated. In part, such consequential misjudgments could stem from an amplified desire by one, both or several parties to achieve “escalation dominance.”
In any such projected crisis, all rational sides would likely strive for calculable advantage without risking total or near-total destruction. Where one or several adversaries would not be rational, all usual deterrence “bets” would be “off.” Where one or several sides would not be identified as rational, Jerusalem would need to input variously unorthodox sorts of security options.
Still other causes of inadvertent nuclear war involving Israel could include flawed interpretations of computer-generated nuclear attack warnings; an unequal willingness among adversaries to risk catastrophic war; overconfidence in deterrence and/or defense capabilities on one or several sides (including Israel); adversarial regime changes; outright revolution or coup d’état among adversaries and (among apparent foes) poorly-conceived pre-delegations of nuclear launch authority.
There is more. Markedly serious problems of overconfidence could be aggravated by successful tests of a nation’s missile defense operations, whether by Israel or any of its relevant adversaries. These problems could be further encouraged by too-optimistic assessments of Trump era alliance guarantees. An example might be intra-crisis judgment in Jerusalem that Washington stands firmly behind its every move during ongoing escalations, up to and including certain forms of reprisal. Similarly, an enemy of Israel could mistake the seriousness and commitment of its own preferred guarantor, whether Russian, Chinese or American.
Going forward, a potential source of inadvertent nuclear war could be the “backfire” effect from strategies of “pretended irrationality. A rational enemy of Israel that had managed to convince Jerusalem of its decisional irrationality could spark an otherwise avoidable Israeli military preemption. Conversely, an enemy leadership that had begun to take seriously any hint of decisional irrationality in Jerusalem could be frightened into striking first.
Regarding this second scenario, it should be remembered that General Moshe Dayan, at that time Israel’s Minister of Defense, argued “Israel must be seen as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”
Nightmare: New Strategic Meanings
Nightmare! In all these matters, it is a reasonable metaphor. According to the etymologists, the root is niht mare or niht maere, the “demon of the night.” Dr. Johnson’s dictionary says this corresponds to Nordic mythology, which regarded nightmare as the product of demons. This would make it a play on or translation of the Greek ephialtes or the Latin incubus. In any event, in all such interpretations of nightmare, the non-rational idea of demonic origin is central.
But in matters of world politics, the demons of nuclear strategy and nuclear war take different form. For the most part, their mien is not extra-terrestrial, but generally “rational” and tangible. If these “demons” are thought to be sinister, it is not because certain national leaders necessarily crave wanton bloodshed and expanding carnage, but because they seek safety for their own nations amid the cacophony of global chaos.
There is still more. While the “state of nations” has always been a “state of nature,”[41] at least since the seventeenth century Peace of Westphalia (1648), current conditions of nuclear capacity and worldwide anarchy portend a uniquely dangerous amalgam of law-violating infringements. Among other things, reasons for such dire portents lie in the indispensability of rational decision-making to viable nuclear deterrence and the subtly interpenetrating fact that rational decision-making may sometime be subject to corrosive modifications or complete disappearance.
In a world morphing from “mere” anarchy to unmanageable chaos, Israeli decision-makers should prepare for increasingly “rough seas.” To avoid being pushed “out to sea,” these leaders will have to prepare capably for unprecedented levels of world-system upheaval and seemingly unfathomable levels of complexity. In some cases, decision-maker calculations will have to assume varying levels of enemy irrationality among state, sub-state or even “hybridized” adversaries.
For Israel, a country smaller than America’s Lake Michigan, ultimate survival tasks will be intellectual ones, and require durable victories of “mind over mind.”[42] In turn, these analytic victories will depend on prior capacities to fully understand the many-sided elements of Trump-era alliance reconfigurations. In principle, at least, such capacities could lead Israel to consider assorted preemption options. Final decisions regarding such residual options would be based on (a) expectations of enemy rationality or irrationality; (b) expectations of enemy first-strikes; (c) presumed costs (cumulative “disutility”) of enemy first-strikes; (d) presumed schedule of enemy nuclear or biological weapons deployments; (e) expected efficiencies of enemy active defenses over time; (f) expected efficiencies of Israel’s active defenses over time; (g) expected efficiencies of Israeli hard-target counterforce operations over time; (h) expected reactions of unaffected regional enemies; and (i) expected US, Russian and world community reactions to Israeli preemptions.[43]
There will be “higher-waves” pushing the Israeli ship of state toward greater instabilities, but these forces could still remain subject to sovereign national and law-based control. Among needed qualities, what is most critically required of Israel is a determined national willingness to face the bewildering complexities of world politics with more than just a perfunctory nod to comprehensive theory.[44] Looking ahead to increasingly complex elements of international relations and international law, continuously multipolar restructuring will deserve a central pride of place.
Recalling Archilochus’ famous maxim, Israel should strive to know “many things,” but still understand all seemingly singular factors as components of “one big thing.” In life or death security matters now confronting Jerusalem, it would be better for Israel to act as a “hedgehog” than a “fox.” Though such theory-centered suggestions might first be greeted with derision or outright execration, no other theory-based[45] stance could be more realistic or law-enforcing.[46]
[1]See:https://www.jurist.org/news/2020/10/israel-cabinet-unanimously-approves-uae-peace-agreement/
[2] An intervening factor here (an “intervening variable”) would be the persistence of belligerent Palestinian nationalism and virulent Palestinian terrorism. From the start, it would appear that the UAE and Bahrain agreements only exacerbated Palestinian fears and stoked corollary intentions. See, for example: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/10/malwade-mehta-israel-annexation/
[3] See, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-nuclear-deterrence/; and (with Ambassador Zalman Shoval): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/
[4] The Palestinian Authority should come specifically to mind, especially because it looks with strong disfavor on the Israel-UAE-Bahrain pacts. All prospective Palestinian terror would have formal roots in the Palestinian National Covenant. Calling officially for sustained Arab violence against Israel, this document was adopted in 1964, three years before the 1967 Six Day War. This means that the PLO’s core guidance on terror was first published – together with its explicit references to the annihilation of Israel – three years before there were any “occupied territories.” For the Palestinian Authority, the underlying acceptance of protracted war was part of its broader strategy of incorporating Israel into “Palestine.” This irredentist incorporation is already codified on PA maps. The most unambiguous Palestinian call for the removal of Israel remains the PLO’s “Phased Plan” of June 9, 1974. Under the authoritative laws of war, this Plan represents an unhidden commitment to carry out crimes against humanity.
[5] Ultimately, as I have written in other places, the prospective success of Israeli nuclear deterrence vis-à-vispertinent enemy aggressions, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, remains contingent on the core assumption of enemy rationality. At the same time, as an intriguing corollary, it could prove useful for Israel (on selective occasions) to pretend or feign irrationality. See, for example, by this writer: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/articles/2016-03-31/case-for-irrationality-in-israels-nuclear-deterrence-and-defense-strategy See also, coauthored with General (USAF/ret) John T. Chain:http://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Loius-Rene-Beres-and-General-John-T-Chain-Living-with-Iran-PP249-May-28.pdf General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, US Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[6] Israel’s anti-missile defense shield likely has four basic layers: The Iron Dome and Iron Beam systems for intercepting drones and short-range rockets; David’s Sling middle-tier air defense system; Arrow-2 for use against intermediate-range ballistic missiles; and Arrow-3 for intercepting ICBMs and (potentially) satellites.
[7] It should be continuously borne in mind that Israel’s nuclear security includes both its capacity to threaten or use nuclear weapons offensively and to fend off nuclear threats and attacks by others. These capacities are always more-or-less interdependent and sometimes synergistic.
[8] Dialectical thinking originated in Fifth Century BCE Athens, as Zeno, author of the Paradoxes, had been acknowledged by Aristotle as its inventor. In the middle dialogues of Plato, dialectic emerges as the supreme form of philosophic/analytic method. The dialectician, says Plato, is the special one who knows how to ask and then answer vital questions. From the standpoint of necessary refinements in Israeli strategic planning, this knowledge should never be taken for granted.
[9]See Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct 1648, 1, Consol. T.S. 119. This “Westphalian” anarchy stands in stark contrast to the legal assumption of solidarity between all states in the presumably common struggle against aggression and terrorism. Such a peremptory expectation (known formally in international law as a jus cogens assumption), is already mentioned in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis (533 C.E.); Hugo Grotius, 2 De Jure Belli Ac Pacis Libri Tres, Ch. 20 (Francis W. Kesey, tr., Clarendon Press, 1925) (1690); and Emmerich De Vattel, 1 Le Droit des Gens, Ch. 19 (1758).
[10] Historically, the idea of a balance of power – an idea of which the nuclear-age balance of terror is a current variant – has never really been more than a facile metaphor. In fact, it has never had anything to do with ascertaining any true equilibrium. As such a balance is always a matter of individual and more-or-less subjective perceptions, adversary states can never be sufficiently confident that identifiable strategic circumstances are “balanced” in their favor. In consequence, as each side perpetually fears that it will be left behind, the continual search for balance produces ever- wider patterns of insecurity and disequilibrium.
[11] See, by this author: Louis René Beres, https://mwi.usma.edu/threat-convergence-adversarial-whole-greater-sum-parts/
[12] According to Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: “…a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.” See: Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Done at Vienna, May 23, 1969. Entered into force, Jan. 27, 1980. U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 39/27 at 289 (1969), 1155 U.N.T.S. 331, reprinted in 8 I.L.M. 679 (1969).
[13]See Professor Louis René Beres, Oxford University Press, Global Community Yearbook on International Law:
https://academic.oup.com/book/55768/chapter-abstract/434255464?redirectedFrom=fulltext See also by Professor Beres at Modern Diplomacy: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/07/19/preparing-for-the-next-war-the-infinite-lethality-of-world-politics/
[14] One core issue here would concern Israeli reliance upon the US for “extended deterrence.” See:Louis René Beres, “Staying Strong: Enhancing Israel’s Essential Strategic Options,” Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School, June 13, 2014.
[15] The critical importance of Reason to all legal judgment was prefigured in ancient Israel, which prominently accommodated the core concept within its special system of revealed law. Jewish theory of law, insofar as it displays the evident markings of a foundational Higher Law, offers a transcending order revealed by the divine word as interpreted by human reason. In the words of Ecclesiastes 32.23, 37.16, 13-14: “Let reason go before every enterprise and counsel before any action…And let the counsel of thine own heart stand…For a man’s mind is sometimes wont to tell him more than seven watchmen that sit above in a high tower….”
[16] This statement refers to the unpredictable effects of errors in knowledge and information concerning intra-Israel (IDF/MOD) strategic uncertainties; on Israeli and Iranian under-estimations or over-estimations of relative power position; and on the unalterably vast and largely irremediable differences between theories of deterrence, and enemy intent “as it actually is.” See: Carl von Clausewitz, “Uber das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst,” Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, 1 (1832); cited in Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, McNair Paper No. 52, October, 1996, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Washington, D.C. p. 9.
[17] For the specific crime of aggression under international law, see: Resolution on the Definition of Aggression, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (xxix), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31), 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631 (1975), reprinted in 13 I.L.M., 710 (1974).
[18] In such jurisprudential matters, attention should be paid to long-standing ideas of a “higher law.” Under international law, these ideas, drawn originally from the ancient Greeks and ancient Hebrews, are contained within the principle of jus cogens or peremptory norms. In the language of Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969: “A peremptory norm of general international law….is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole, as a norm from which no derogation is permitted, and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.”
[19] In this connection, notes Sigmund Freud: “Wars will only be prevented with certainty if mankind unites in setting up a central legal authority to which the right of giving judgment upon all shall be handed over. There are clearly two separate requirements involved in this: the creation of a supreme agency and its endowment with the necessary power. One without the other would be useless.” (See: Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, cited in Louis René Beres, The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis, University of Denver, Monograph Series in World Affairs, Vol. 10 (1973-73), p, 27.)
[20] See, by this writer, Louis René Beres, at INSS Tel-Aviv: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/changing-direction-updating-israels-nuclear-doctrine/
[21] A great deal has been written on questions of “strategic depth.” The heart of this issue was addressed as early as June 29, 1967, when a U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum specified that returning Israel to pre-1967 boundaries would drastically increase its vulnerability. The then Chairman of the JCS, General Earl Wheeler, concluded that for minimal deterrence and defense, Israel must retain Sharm el Sheikh and Wadi El Girali in the Sinai; the entire Gaza Strip; the high ground and plateaus of the mountains in Judea and Samaria; and the Golan Heights, east of Quneitra.
[22] The writer, Professor Louis René Beres, is author of one of the earliest books on this theme: Security of Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington Books; 1986).
[23] In scientific terms, there are no reliably accurate ways to appraise these unprecedented prospects as ascertainable probabilities. This is because true probabilities are always derived from the determinable frequency of relevant past events.
[24]This permissible option can be found not in conventional law (art. 51 of the UN Charter supports only post-attack expressions of individual or collective self-defense), but in customary international law. The precise origins of anticipatory self-defense in customary law lie in The Caroline, a case that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally justified certain militarily defensive actions. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that did not require an antecedent attack. Here, the jurisprudential framework permitted a military response to a threat so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” See: Beth M. Polebaum, “National Self-defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 187, 190-91 (1984) (noting that the Caroline case had transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a legal doctrine). Still earlier, see: Hugo Grotius, Of the Causes of War, and First of Self-Defense, and Defense of Our Property, reprinted in 2 Classics of International Law, 168-75 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1925) (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations, reprinted in 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1916) (1758). Also, Samuel Pufendorf, The Two Books on the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, 32 (Frank Gardner Moore., tr., 1927 (1682).
[25] See Ehud Eilam, https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/96178545/israel-s-military-doctrine/ehud-eilam/
[26] No state on earth, including Israel, is under any per se legal obligation to renounce access to nuclear weapons; in certain residual circumstances, moreover, the actual resort to such weapons could still be lawful. To wit, on July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice at The Hague handed down its Advisory Opinion on “The Legality of the Threat or Use of Force of Nuclear Weapons.” The final paragraph of this Opinion, concludes, inter alia: “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law. However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”
[27] This was a major conclusion of this author’s Project Daniel Report (2003) to then Prime Minister Sharon. It was titled Israel’s Strategic Future. http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.htm
[28] There could also be attendant and possibly unprecedented crimes of war. Moreover, criminal responsibility of leaders under international law is not limited to direct personal action or limited by official position. On this peremptory principle of “command responsibility,” or respondeat superior, see: In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1945); The High Command Case (The Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb), 12 Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals 1 (United Nations War Crimes Commission Comp., 1949); see Parks, Command Responsibility for War Crimes, 62 MIL.L. REV. 1 (1973); O’Brien, The Law of War, Command Responsibility and Vietnam, 60 GEO. L.J. 605 (1972); U.S. Dept. Of The Army, Army Subject Schedule No. 27 – 1 (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Hague Convention No. IV of 1907), 10 (1970). The direct individual responsibility of leaders is also unambiguous in view of the London Agreement, which denies defendants the protection of the act of state defense. See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS, Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1544, E.A.S. No. 472, 82 U.N.T.S. 279, art. 7.
[29] On “victory” in a nuclear war, see, by this author: https://blog.oup.com/2016/04/war-political-victories/ See also: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/28931
[30] Recalling the Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman Cicero, in The Letters to His Friends: “For what can be done against force, without force?” During the nuclear age, the traditional term, “balance of power” has sometimes been replaced with a more technologically appropriate “balance of terror.” For the conceptual origins of this historic replacement, se Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 37, No.2., January 1959, pp. 211-234.
[31] In this connection, Jerusalem should always ensure that it does not enter into agreements that could threaten its physical survival. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, wrote about this core obligation as generic for all nations. Writing in his Opinion on the French Treaties (April 28, 1793), Jefferson opined: “The nation itself, bound necessarily to whatever it’s preservation and safety require, cannot enter into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations.” See: Merrill D. Peterson, The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Monticello Monograph Series, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1993, p. 115.
[32] Several of this author’s earlier books deal expressly with pertinent distinctions. See, for example, by Louis René Beres: The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis; Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics; Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order; Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy; Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy; and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and US National Security (Tel Aviv), a 2016 monograph with special postscript by General (USA/ret.) Barry McCaffrey.
[33] The underlying idea here of some palpable apocalypse seems to have been born in ancient Iran (Persia), specifically, with the Manichaeism of the Zoroastrians. Interestingly, at least one of these documents, The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, found in a Qumran cave, is a comprehensive description of Jewish military tactics and regulations at the end of the Second Commonwealth. In essence, the “Sons of Light” were expected to prevail in battle against the “Sons of Darkness” before the “end of days,” and the later fight at Masada was widely interpreted as an apocalyptic struggle between a saintly few and the wicked many.
[34]The law of armed conflict, or the law of war, is comprised of: (1) rules on weapons; (2) rules on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at The Hagueand Geneva Conventions, these norms attempt to bring discrimination, proportionality and military necessity into all belligerent calculations.
[35] Regarding preemption, the obvious Israeli precedents for any such defensive moves would be Operation Opera directed against the Osiraq (Iraqi) nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981, and, later (though lesser known) Operation Orchard against Syria on September 6, 2007. In April 2011, the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that he bombed Syrian site in the Deir ez-Zoe region of Syria had indeed been a developing nuclear reactor. In this writer’s judgment, both preemptions were lawful assertions of Israel’s “Begin Doctrine.”
[36]https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2019/01/30/assassination-and-targeted-killing-a-timely-jurisprudential-brief/ This paper was first published at The Brown Journal of World Affairs.
[37] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Jurist: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/06/louis-beres-winning-war/
[38]Regarding Iran, see Louis René Beres and John T. Chain (General/USAF/ret.), “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran”, The Atlantic, August, 2012; and also: Professor Louis René Beres and General Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[39] See most recently by this author, Louis René Beres, at War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/author/louis-rene-beres/
[40] “It must not be forgotten,” writes French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in “The New Spirit and the Poets” (1917), “that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.”
[41] Says Thomas Hobbes: “But though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times, Kings and Persons of Sovereign Authority, because of their Independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators, having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on one another…(Leviathan).
[42] For this term I am indebted to F.E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (1957)
[43]For early scholarly commentary by this author on anticipatory self-defense under international law, with special reference to Israel, see: Louis René Beres and (COL./IDF/Res.) Yoash Tsiddon Chatto, “Reconsidering Israel’s Destruction of Iraq’s Osiraq Nuclear Reactor,” TEMPLE INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 9., No. 2., 1995, pp. 437 – 449; Louis René Beres, “Preserving the Third Temple: Israel’s Right of Anticipatory Self-Defense Under International Law,” VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 26, No. 1., April 1993, pp. 111- 148; Louis René Beres, “After the Gulf War: Israel, Preemption and Anticipatory Self-Defense,” HOUSTON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 13, No. 2., Spring 1991, pp. 259 – 280; Louis René Beres, “Striking `First:’ Israel’s Post-Gulf War Options Under International Law,” LOYOLA OF LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 14, Nov. 1991, No. 1., pp. 1 – 24; Louis René Beres, “Israel and Anticipatory Self-Defense,” ARIZONA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW, Vol. 8, 1991, pp. 89 – 99; and Louis René Beres, “After the SCUD Attacks: Israel, `Palestine,’ and Anticipatory Self-Defense,” EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW, Vol. 6, No. 1., Spring 1992, pp. 71 – 104. For an examination of assassination as a permissible form of anticipatory self-defense by Israel, see, Louis René Beres, “On Assassination as Anticipatory Self-Defense: The Case of Israel,” HOFSTRA LAW REVIEW, Vol. 20, No. 2., Winter 1991, pp. 321 – 340. For more general assessments of assassination as anticipatory self-defense under international law by this author, see: Louis René Beres, “The Permissibility of State-Sponsored Assassination During Peace and War,” TEMPLE INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1991, pp. 231 – 249; and Louis René Beres, “Victims and Executioners: Atrocity, Assassination and International Law,” CAMBRIDGE REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Winter/Spring, 1993.
[44] A long-studied passage in Francis Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning explains that earlier Scholastics were like spiders, weaving webs out of their own heads without any consideration of surrounding facts. While these webs were inherently admirable on account of their workmanship and “fineness of thread,” they were nonetheless lacking in any true explanatory substance. (I, iv., 5). Presently, in explaining Israel’s nuclear doctrine amid historical structural anarchy, it is important to construct dialectical arguments upon well-reasoned analytic foundations, and not on any diaphanous constructions of modern-day Scholastics.
[45] “Theory is a net,” says philosopher of science Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery), “only those who cast, can catch.” Popper drew this metaphor from the classical German poet, Novalis.
[46] Or “more law-enforcing,” one might add here. Says Emmerich de Vattel, in his classic The Law of Nations (1758),”The first general law, which is to be found in the very end of the society of Nations, is that each Nation should contribute as far as it can to the happiness and advancement of other Nations.” The statement is not intended by the 18th century Swiss jurist to be a sign of naive idealism or charitable disposition, but rather as a pragmatic path to maximizing a commendable general interest.