Israel Must Maintain An Advantage And If The Enemy Thinks They Have A Nuclear Device, So Be It.

YOU CAN'T ASK ISRAEL TO KILL ITSELF

DECEMBER 18, 2014 · 12:00 AM

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Author(s):  Louis René Beres
Source:  usnews.com.     Article date: December 12th, 2014

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It would seem preposterous to connect the United Nations General Assembly and genocide in causal terms, but this link is plausible today. On December 2, the world body overwhelmingly endorsed a plainly one-sided resolution, calling upon Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons, and, simultaneously, to join a Nuclear Weapons Free-Zone for the Middle East. Should Israel ever feel compelled to abide by such a carefully contrived proposal, it would immediately become complicit in its own planned disappearance.

Almost from the beginning, when first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion saw the primary need for a “great equalizer,” Israel's core security as a beleaguered state has depended upon nuclear weapons. Although still ambiguous and still undisclosed, this Israeli “bomb in the basement” has managed to keep a substantial number of potentially existential enemies at bay. And while it was never a suitable deterrent against historically “normal” wars, or acts of terrorism, this available nuclear option has successfully thwarted what enemy states have expressly wanted most of all – that is, in the precise words commonly favored in such recurrent Arab and/or Iranian pleas, a “liquidation of the Zionist Entity.”

Significantly, from the standpoint of Israel's enemies, there has never been any ambiguity. Presently, with Iran approaching full and effectively unobstructed membership in the Nuclear Club – a manifestly disingenuous approach, one assumed in stunning defiance of its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations – nuclear weapons and strategy have become indispensable to Israel's physical survival.

“Mass counts,” wrote the classic Prussian military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, and only Israel's enemies have mass. Each year, without fail, these determined enemies call sanctimoniously for some form or other of Israeli denuclearization. Now, it is high time to acknowledge that nuclear weapons are never truly evil in themselves, and that their potential harmfulness is contingent upon which individual state or alliance is in control. In certain circumstances, as should be cartographically obvious to anyone who can see that Israel is less than half the size of America's Lake Michigan, these weapons can be vital to self-defense and population survival.

Looking ahead, once an enemy state, and possibly its allies, could believe that Israel had been bent sufficiently to “nonproliferation” demands, adversarial military strategies – either singly, or in carefully calculated collaboration – could embrace extermination warfare. This sinister embrace could occur even if all of Israel's major adversaries were to remain non-nuclear themselves. Over time, moreover, such extermination warfare, by definition, could meet the literal tests of genocide under international law.

In such authoritative jurisprudential considerations, aggressive war and genocide would not need to be considered as mutually exclusive. Rather, they could qualify as fully complementary and mutually reinforcing categories of international criminality.

Any Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone for the Middle East, even if seemingly well-intentioned, would render Israel uniquely vulnerable. In principle, although such existential vulnerability might be prevented by instituting certain parallel forms of chemical/biological weapons disarmament among Israel's adversaries, these disarmament measures would never actually be implemented. Already, as Israel's enemies recognize, any needed verifications of compliance would prove conveniently impossible.

In the Middle East , underlying security problems have nothing to do with Israel's nuclear weapons and posture, defensive assets which have never been used to threaten or to intimidate recalcitrant enemies. Instead, these problems remain founded upon a persisting and unreconstructed Islamic/Jihadist commitment to “excise the Jewish cancer.” Moreover, this openly annihilatory commitment is more or less common to both Israel's Sunni Arab foes, and to Shiite non-Arab Iran.

Among other regional security benefits, Israel's nuclear weapons represent an unacknowledged but critical impediment to the actual use of nuclear weapons, and even to the commencement of an area nuclear war. U.N. resolutions notwithstanding, these weapons must remain at the vital center of Israel's national security policy, and should also be guided by continuously updated and refined strategic doctrine. Some essential elements of any such doctrine comprise a carefully calibrated end to “deliberate ambiguity,” more recognizable emphases on “counter value” or counter-city targeting, and recognizably expanding evidence of secure “triad” nuclear forces. Of course, such forces, which must include some forms of submarine-basing, will have to appear capable of penetrating any foreseeable nuclear aggressor's active defenses.

Israel's latest efforts at diversified sea-basing of nuclear retaliatory forces are costly, but still prudent. Similarly important efforts are needed for the Israeli Air Force. To prepare for anticipated strikes at distances of approximately 1,000 kilometers, whether preemptive, retaliatory, or counter-retaliatory, the air force needs the “full envelope” of air refueling capabilities, upgraded satellite communications, state-of-the-art electronic warfare technologies, armaments fully appropriate to inflicting maximum target damage, and, always, the latest-generation UAVs to accompany selected missions.

“Mass counts.” In the Middle East, deceptive U.N. resolutions notwithstanding, Israel's nuclear weapons represent an absolutely essential barrier to various last-stage enemy aggressions, and to an eventual nuclear war. With this in mind, the United States, which voted correctly against the recent General Assembly resolution, should continue to reject any proposals for a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the region. As for Jerusalem, it must never forget that the United Nations cannot require a member state to submit to genocide. In the particular case of Israel, moreover, the attendant ironies – most notably, the legally formative 1947 role of the General Assembly in birthing modern Israel – would be conspicuous and overwhelming.

Louis René Beres, professor of political science and international law at Purdue University, is the author of many books and articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including several very early works on nuclear terrorism. He received his Ph.D. at Princeton. He is a frequent contributor to U.S. News & World Report.