Intercontinental ballistic missile (U.S. Air Force archive)

Louis Rene Beres, Professor Department of Political Science, Purdue University, was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is author of many publications dealing with Middle Eastern security issues. beres@polsci.purdue.edu
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Israel must review its nuclear defense options immediately and seriously consider first-strike options against enemies that openly declare their intentions to destroy the Jewish State.

This is the underlying suggestion of an open letter sent this month to Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon. Professor Louis Rene Beres of Purdue University's Political Science Department writes to Sharon that Israel can no longer continue its present policy of an unpublicized nuclear deterrent. According to Beres, Israel "cannot rely entirely upon this one base of national security any more than it can rely upon only conventional deterrence." Rather, Israel "must rely upon complementary nuclear and conventional forces, and upon the continuing and associated availability of critical preemption options."

Beres suggests that Israeli nuclear deterrence has been significantly eroded and offers little protection against the irrational calculations of Islamic fanatics who see the destruction of the Zionist entity as a religious commandment. He argues that the cost of an Israeli first strike on sources of the nuclear, chemical and biological threats may be lower than waiting, hopefully, for the elimination of these threats by other means or the possibility that political agreements will reduce the likelihood of their use.

Hope is Not Enough
Beres begins his memorandum to Sharon by quoting Thucydides. "Those who are risking their all on one cast find out what [hope] means only when they are already ruined." Beres ties this ancient Spartan reference to the modern State of Israel's pinning its hopes, "security prospects, indeed its very survival, on the presumed viability of nuclear deterrence." But, according to Beres, "there is certainly great danger in hoping too much." His security analysis attempts to "analyze the limits of Israeli nuclear deterrence."

Beres first relates to the assumption that Israel's security is protected from enemy nuclear missile attack by nuclear deterrence. Israel has never publicly disclosed its nuclear capabilities, but even "bringing the bomb out of the basement" would not be enough to provide security for the country, and might even encourage an enemy first strike.

An irrational enemy, according to Beres, is not necessarily a crazy one. He delves into the policies of Islamic Iran, considering the apparent willingness of Iranian leaders to strike out at the Zionist entity as fulfillment of the Islamic principles on which their regime is based. To survive in the hostile Middle East, Beres calls for Israel to strengthen its nuclear deterrence, to ensure that rational enemy states would find first-strike options of attack irrational and unbeneficial: "Israel must convince prospective attackers that it maintains both the willingness and the capacity to retaliate with nuclear weapons," he writes.

Beres then goes on to explain the dangers of Israeli dependence upon nuclear deterrence. "Even if [Israel was] prepared to respond to certain attacks with nuclear reprisals, enemy failure to recognize such preparedness could provoke an attack upon Israel." He argues against attempts by Israel to disguise its nuclear force protection capabilities. If Israel's enemies believed that Israel lacked nuclear response forces, they might choose to exploit this "potentially transient Israeli weakness."

The Samson Option
In his highly detailed and documented memorandum, Beres relates to the possible onset of nuclear war and the so-called Samson Option. He dismisses the Samson Option as a viable core of Israeli nuclear strategy. This option, which would have Israel "bring down the house" in the advent of a nuclear attack, is not a particularly attractive one, as "the primary mission of Israel's nuclear weapons must always be to preserve the Jewish State, not to wreak post-apocalyptic vengeance in a purposeless spasm of last-resort violence."

Beres admits that there is no magical formula for dealing with the heightened nuclear threat, or wishing it away. He argues that Israel must combine reliance on both nuclear deterrence and conventional defensive forces along with a urgent practical consideration of preemptive options. If these strategic directions are developed along with "suitably observable preparations for a Samson Option," Israel may have supplied itself with "the essential requirements of survival." He concludes that "Israel must always build its security upon altogether realistic assessments of danger" rather than "false hopes." Israel's leaders, he believes, must urgently identify the "precise configurations of nuclear deterrence, defense and preemption that are optimally purposeful."

This is the urgent message that Beres has sent to Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon, with hopes that it will be provoke not only thought but also urgent action. The extensively footnoted document makes for sobering reading, including a graphic description of the effects of a nuclear war in the region.

The memorandum is downloadable from israelinsider.com in Word format.

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