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By Louis Rene Beres February
22, 2001
"Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a
madman," asks Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV. "Madmen, lucky folk,
contruct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather."
What is true for individuals is true for states. In the always unpredictable
state of nations, constructions which rest upon the foundations of ordinary
logic may crumble before madness. Understood in terms of Israel's precarious
dependence (however implicit) upon nuclear deterrence, this suggests that
security built upon threats of retaliatory destruction could fail altogether.
For the moment, no single Arab/Islamic adversary of Israel would appear
to be irrational. That is, no such adversary would appear to be ready
to launch a major first-strike against Israel with weapons of mass destruction
- in the future, possibly even nuclear weapons - in the expectation that
it would elicit a devastating reprisal. Of course, miscalculations and
errors in information could still lead a perfectly rational enemy state
to strike first, but this decision would not be the product of irrationality.
What is true today, however, may not be true for the indefinite future.
Certain enemy states, Iraq and Iran come immediately to mind, could ultimately
decide that "excising the Jewish cancer" from the Middle East
would be worth the costs, however massive. In principle, this prospect
might be avoided by Israel by timely "hard target" preemptions,
but such expressions of anticipatory self-defense (the term used in international
law) are now exceedingly problematic for both tactical and political reasons.
Strictly speaking, an Iraqi and/or Iranian "bolt-from-the-blue"
CBN (chemical, biological or even nuclear) attack upon Israel with the
expectation of city-busting reprisals would not necessarily exhibit true
irrationality or madness. Rather, within these states' particular ordering
of preferences (that is, their particular hierarchy of wants), the presumed
religious obligation to annihilate the "Zionist Entity" could
be of absolutely overriding value. Here, the expected benefits of such
annihilation could exceed the expected costs of Israeli reprisal, however
overwhelming the latter.
To a certain extent, an enemy state with such orientations would represent
the individual suicide bomber writ large. Just as tens of thousands of
young Arab males are willing to die to achieve "martyrdom,"
so might certain individual states be willing to sacrifice themselves
to fulfil the presumed will of Allah. In the second case, however, it
is conceivable that Iraqi and/or Iranian leaders making the decision to
strike at Israel would be more willing to make "martyrs" of
their own peoples than of themselves. Here, it would be perfectly alright
to sacrifice huge portions of their respective populations, but only while
the leaders were already underway to Switzerland or Saudi Arabia.
What is Israel to do? It can't very well choose to live, indefinitely,
with enemies who might not be deterred by usual threats of retaliation
and who are themsleves armed with weaspons of mass destruction. It can't
very well choose to preempt against pertinent Iraqi and/or Iranian military
targets because the tactical prospects of success are very remote and
because the global outcry would be deafening. It assuredly cannot rely
upon the United Statess, which - in the context of such Arab/Islamic first-strikes,
would be helpful only in helping to bury a million Jewish dead.
And it cannot place too much faith in anti-tactical ballistic missile
defenses, which would require a near-100% reliability of intercept to
be purposeful (an inconceivable requirement).
The opportunities available to Israel are very limited; the consequences
of failure are nothing short of national extinction. What shall the Government
of Israel do? If Israel's enemies were all presumably rational, in the
ordinary sense of valuing physical survival more highly than any other
preference of combination of preferences, Jerusalem could begin to exploit
the strategic benefits of pretended irrationality. Here, recognizing that
in certain situations it can be especially rational to pretend irrationality,
it could create more cautionary behavior among its relevant adversaries.
In such a case, the threat of an Israeli resort to a "Samson Option"
could be enough to frighten away an enemy first-strike. If, however, Israel's
pertinent adversaries were presumably irrational in the ordinary sense,
there would likely be no real benefit to feigned irrationality. This is
the case because the more probable Israeli threat of massive counterstrike
associated with irrationality would be no more compelling to Iraq and/or
Iran than if they were confronted by a fully rational State of Israel.
It follows from all this that Israel could benefit from greater understanding
of the "rationality of pretended irrationality," but only in
particular reference to rational enemy states. In these circumstances
where such enemy states are presumed to be irrational in the ordinary
sense, something else will be needed - something other than nuclear deterrence,
preemption or ballistic missile defense. Although many believe the answer
to this quandry lies in far-reaching political settlements, it is an answer
born of frustration and self-delusion, not of deliberate and informed
calculation. No meaningful political settlements can be worked out with
enemies who seek only Israel's "liquidation" (a word used commonly
in Arab/Islamic newspapers and texts).
So what is Israel to do? "In the end," we learn from the poet
Goethe, "we depend upon creatures of our own making." What shall
Israel "make?" To begin, Israel must understand that irrationality
need not mean craziness or madness. Even an irrational state may have
a consistent and transitive hierarchy of wants. The first task for Israel,
therefore, is to ascertain this hierarchy among its several state enemies,
especially Iraq and Iran (and soon to include "Palestine").
Although these states might not be deterred from aggression by the persuasive
threat of massive Israeli retaliations, they could well be deterred by
threats to what they DO hold to be MOST IMPORTANT.
What might be most important to Israel's prospectively irrational enemies,
potentially even more important than physical survival as a state? One
answer is the avoidance of shame and humiliation. Another is avoidance
of the charge that they had defiled their most sacred religious obligations.
Still another is leaders' avoidance of their own violent deaths at the
hand of Israel, deaths that would be attributable to strategies of assassination
and/or "regime-targeting" by Jerusalem.
These answers are only a beginning; indeed, they are little more than
the beginning of a beginning. What is needed now is a sustained and conspicuously
competent effort to answer in greater depth and breadth. This effort cannot
be confined to Israel's established centers of strategic studies. Rather,
it must take place wherever informed and intellectually capable friends
of Israel can be found.
 
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