“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
Aug 18, 2024
The war in Israel (Shutterstock)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Sunday, (08/18/2024)
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “nuclear regional war”, because any war that includes nuclear weapons, no matter how regional, will be joined by major nuclear armed countries. For instance the U.S. would join Israel if nuclear arms were used in the Palestinians could be aided by several countries, including Iran (if they successfully build their intended nuclear arsenal) and even North Korea, which would make such a regional war an immediate international war which would become WWIII.
But I have purposely avoided posting the Middle East war situation here until now, hoping that Israel would come to its senses, but when I read that Israeli leader Netanyahu wants a “larger war”, I was forced to change my mind. This article, which points out all the factions and discuses the possibilities of the future, seems like a logical place to begin . . . ~llaw
Still overlooked connections: Israel, “Palestine” and regional nuclear war
A “Two-State Solution” would enlarge not “only” the jihadist terror threat to Israel (conventional and unconventional), but also prospects for major regional war. In these existential security matters, Israel doesn’t need more common sense. It needs disciplined and dialectical thought. Opinion.
Prof. Louis René Beres
Aug 18, 2024, 1:07 PM (GMT+3
North Korea nuclear threatIsraeli Nuclear ProgramPakistani Nuclear ThreatNuclear WarProf. Louis René Beres
The war in IsraelShutterstock
Though significant, connections between Palestinian Arab statehood and nuclear war remain generally ignored. For Israel, the seemingly discrete perils of war with Iran and Palestinian Arab statehood are potentially intertwined and mutually reinforcing. This means that continuing to treat these issues as separate security problems could represent an especially grievous policy error.
There are variously clarifying particulars. Once established, a Palestinian state could tilt the balance of power between Israel and Iran. For the moment, there is no law-based Palestinian state (i.e., no Palestinian Arab satisfaction of authoritative requirements delineated at the Montevideo Convention of 1934). But if there should sometime come a point where Palestinian statehood and a direct war with Iran would coincide, the effects could prove determinative. In a worst case scenario, the acceleration of competitive risk-taking in the region would enlarge the risks of unconventional warfare.
For the moment, any direct war between Israel and Iran would be fought without any “Palestine variable.” Ironically, however, one more-or-less plausible outcome of such a war would be more pressure on Israel to accept yet another enemy state. To be sure, Iran’s leaders are unconcerned about Palestinian Arab well-being per se, but even a continuously faux commitment to Palestinian statehood would strengthen their overall power position.
Additionally, any formal creation of “Palestine” would be viewed in Tehran as a favorable development regarding wars fought against Israel. While nothing scientifically meaningful can be said about an unprecedented scenario (in logic and mathematics, true probabilities must always be based upon the determinable frequency of pertinent past events), there are persuasive reasons to expect that “Palestine” would become a reliably belligerent proxy of Iran.
A “Two-State Solution” would enlarge not “only” the jihadist terror threat to Israel (conventional and unconventional), but also prospects for major regional war. Even if such a war were fought while Iran was still pre-nuclear, it could still use radiation dispersal weapons or electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP) against Israel and/or target the Dimona nuclear reactor with conventional rockets. In a worst case scenario, Iran’s already nuclear North Korean ally would act in direct belligerency against the Jewish State.
In these complex strategic assessments, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations ought never be confined to “general principles.” Rather, variously specific issues will need to be addressed head-on: borders; Jerusalem; relations between Gaza and the “West Bank;” the Cairo Declaration of June 1974 (an annihilationist “phased plan”); the Arab “right of return” and cancellation of the “Palestine National Charter” (which still calls unambiguously and unapologetically for the eradication of Israel “in stages”).
Not to be overlooked by any means, any justice-based plan would need to acknowledge the historical and legal rights of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria. Such an acknowledgment would represent an indispensable corrective to lawless Hamas claims of “resistance by any means necessary” and to genocidal Palestinian calls for “liberating” all territories “from the river to the sea.” On its face, the unhidden Palestinian Arab expectation is that Israel would become part of “Palestine”. But this ought not to come as any surprise. All Islamist/Jihadist populations already regard Israel as “occupied Palestine.”
“Everything is very simple in war,” warns classical Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is still very difficult.” American presidents have always insisted that regional peace be predicated on Arab recognition of the Jewish people’s right to security in their own sovereign nation- state.
Concurrently, most Arab leaders in the Middle East secretly hope for a decisive Israeli victory over Hamas in Gaza and over Hezbollah in Lebanon. For these leaders, Hamas represents a foreseeably unmanageable scion of the Egyptian “Moslem Brotherhood” and Hezbollah a terror-surrogate of Shiite and non-Arab “Persia.”
What about North Korea and future Middle Eastern war? Pyongyang has a documented history of active support for Iran and Syria. Regarding ties with Damascus, it was Kim Jung Un who built the Al Kibar nuclear reactor for the Syrians at Deir al-Zor. This is the same facility that was preemptively destroyed by Israel in its “Operation Orchard” (also known in certain Israeli circles as “Operation Outside the Box”) on September 6, 2007.
For Israel, nuclear weapons, doctrine and strategy will remain essential to national survival. In this connection, the country’s traditional policy of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” or “bomb in the basement” should promptly be updated. The key objective of such dramatic changes would be more credible Israeli nuclear deterrence, a goal that will correlate closely with “selective nuclear disclosure.” Despite being counter-intuitive, Iran will need to become convinced that Israel’s nuclear arms are not too destructive for purposeful operational use. Here, in an arguably supreme irony, the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrent could vary inversely with its presumed destructiveness.
In order for Israel to construct theory-based nuclear policies, not policies that are merely visceral, ad hoc or “seat-of-the-pants” creations, Iran should be considered a rational foe. It remains conceivable that Iran would sometime act irrationally, perhaps in alliance with other more-or-less rational states (e.g., Syria, North Korea) or with kindred terror groups (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthi).
In any event, such altogether realistic prospects should never be dealt with in Washington or Jerusalem as matters of “common sense.” In existential security matters, Israel doesn’t need more common sense. It needs disciplined and dialectical thought.
What about non-Arab Pakistan? Unless Jerusalem were to consider Pakistan a genuine enemy, Israel has no present-day nuclear foes. Still, as an unstable Islamic state, Pakistan is subject to coup d’état by assorted Jihadist elements and is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia. At some point, the Sunni Saudi kingdom could decide to “go nuclear” itself, in large part because of Iran’s “Shiite” nuclear program.
Would such a decision by Riyadh represent a net gain or net loss for Israel?
It’s not too soon to ask this question.
For Israeli nuclear deterrence to work longer-term, Iran will need to be told more rather than less about Israel’s nuclear targeting doctrine and about the invulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces/infrastructures. In concert with such changes, Jerusalem will also need to clarify its still opaque “Samson Option.” The point of such clarifications would not be to suggest Israel’s willingness to “die with the Philistines,” but to enhance the “high destruction” pole of its nuclear deterrence continuum.
If the next US president maintains America’s support of Palestinian statehood,[1] Iran will more likely consider certain direct conflict options vis-à-vis Israel. At some point in these considerations, Israel could need to direct explicit nuclear threats (counter-value and/or counter-force) toward the Islamic Republic. As policy, this posture could represent a “point of no return.”
For Israel, the unprecedented risks of Palestinian statehood could prove irreversible and irremediable. These risks would likely be enlarged if they had to be faced concurrent with an Israel-Iran war. It follows that Jerusalem’s core security obligation should be to keep Iran non–nuclear and to simultaneously prevent Palestinian statehood. From the standpoint of authoritative international law, meeting this two-part obligation would be in the combined interests of counter-terrorism, nuclear war-avoidance and genocide prevention. Prime facie, meeting this overriding obligation would be in the interests of regional and global justice.
LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is Professor (Emer.) of International Law at Purdue. Born in Zürich at the end of World War II, he writes extensively on world politics, law, literature and philosophy and is a member of the Oxford University Press Editorial Advisory Board for the annual Yearbook on International Law and Jurisprudence. He is also a six-times contributor to this publication, including lead articles, and has been published at Horasis (Zurich); Jurist; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; global-e (U. of California); Yale Global Online; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard); World Politics (Princeton); The Atlantic; The New York Times; Israel National News; US News & World Report; Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); The Brown Journal of World Affairs; Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College; Modern War Institute (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon); BESA Perspectives (Israel); INSS (Israel); Israel Defense (Israel); The Hudson Review (New York) and others. His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2016 (2nd. ed., 2018)
[1] Supporters of a Palestinian state often argue that its prospective harms to Israel could be reduced or eliminated by expecting the new Arab state’s original “demilitarization.” For informed legal and diplomatic reasoning against this argument, see: Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why a Demilitarized Palestinian State Would Not Remain Demilitarized: A View Under International Law,” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, Winter 1998, pp. 347-363; and Louis René Beres and Ambassador Shoval, “On Demilitarizing a Palestinian `Entity’ and the Golan Heights: An International Law Perspective,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vo. 28., No.5., November 1995, pp. 959-972.
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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Sunday, (08/17/2024)
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
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… all things budget, taxation, indexation… and all others kinds of … Why I changed my mind about nuclear power | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxBerlin.
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“I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles …
Opinion: Special interests are pushing a dangerous new nuclear missile – The Portland Press Herald
The Portland Press Herald
The Pentagon is in the midst of an enormously expensive program aimed at building a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, …
Nuclear Power
NEWS
How likely is it that nuclear power plants will be hit in Ukraine, Russia? | DW News
YouTube
The Ukrainian airforce says they have struck and destroyed another bridge in Russia’s Kursk region – as they seek to disrupt Moscow’s combat …
Military experts suggest Iran may declare itself a nuclear power by year’s end | Fox News
Fox News
The move to declare itself a nuclear power would provide Iran protection at certain levels but ultimately does not create invincibility from any …
A New Era for Nuclear Power in the U.S. | OilPrice.com
Oil Price
… nuclear plants and the development of small modular reactors. Nuclear. The U.S. Palisades Power Plant could become the first nuclear plant to …
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Safety at Russian-Occupied Nuclear Plant Worsens After Drone Strike – BNN Bloomberg
BNN Bloomberg
… emergencies ministry. Ukrainian forces also attacked a fuel depot in Russia’s Rostov region overnight in a joint operation by military …
Zambia Weighs Emergency Power Price Hike as Crunch Deepens – Energy Connects
Energy Connects
Zambia Weighs Emergency Power Price Hike as Crunch Deepens. By Bloomberg. Aug … Nuclear energy poised for its global moment. Dr Sama 1920X1080 …
Flight attendant turned author reveals her top emergency safety tips – Daily Mail
Daily Mail
Her latest novel, Worst Case Scenario, looks at exactly that, with an airplane crashing into a nuclear power plant. But the Phoenix-based writer …
Nuclear War
NEWS
Ukraine war latest: Safety ‘deteriorating’ at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after drone strike
Sky News
Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear facility in Europe and has been occupied by Russian soldiers since the early stages of its war with Ukraine.
Still overlooked connections: Israel, “Palestine” and regional nuclear war | Israel National News
Arutz Sheva
Though significant, connections between Palestinian Arab statehood and nuclear war remain generally ignored. For Israel, the seemingly discrete …
Ukraine: Zaporizhzhia nuclear safety deteriorating, says IAEA – BBC
BBC
The plant was seized by Russia’s forces early in the war and has come under repeated attacks which both sides have blamed the other for. ‘Russians are …
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
Still overlooked connections: Israel, “Palestine” and regional nuclear war
Arutz Sheva
North Korea nuclear threatIsraeli Nuclear ProgramPakistani Nuclear ThreatNuclear WarProf. … nuclear threats (counter-value and/or counter-force) …
Clarifying Strategic Risks: Scenarios of an Israel-Iran War – Modern Diplomacy
Modern Diplomacy
Clarifying Strategic Risks: Scenarios of an Israel-Iran War … Iran continues to taunt Israel with threats of annihilation. But such threats have no …
“As The Only Victim…” China Pans Japan For “Not Learning From History” After Nuclear …
YouTube
… nuclear threats and regional tensions. Defense spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang denounced their actions as Cold War thinking and warned that the US .
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
Surprise Yellowstone geyser eruption highlights little known hazard at popular park
The Daily Gazette
Yellowstone encompasses the caldera of a huge, slumbering volcano that shows no sign of erupting any time soon but provides the heat for the …