Attack on US by Grenada?

Strategy, Plague and War: Israel’s Complex Nuclear Future

By Prof. Louis René Beres

November 5, 2020

From <https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/11/05/strategy-plague-and-war-israels-complex-nuclear-future/>

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”-T S Eliot, The Waste Land

Despite the noise and aggressive self-promotion, Trump administration diplomacy in the Middle East and Africa has always been a net-negative for Israel. While Israelis have generally been grateful to the Trump White House for providing America’s “good offices” with Bahrain, UAE and Sudan, this gratitude is shortsighted and misplaced. In essence, negotiated pacts with these second-tier adversaries were designed only for the personal benefit of an unworthy American president.[1]

               At best, for Israel, these public-relations focused pacts will provide a small number of low-level security advantages and a larger number of high-level security costs.

               For Israel, even meaningfully improved relations with these states will likely do nothing to reduce the probability of major or minor wars in the region. More significantly, such alleged “improvements are apt to revive the portent of accelerating Palestinian terrorism. This enlarged prospect of insurgent Arab offensives, stemming from the new Trump-negotiated impediments to Palestinian statehood,[2] could sometime involve weapons of mass destruction  and/or attacks on Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona.[3] Moreover, these sub-state aggressions against Israel could be undertaken singly, or together with various state allies.

               By definition, in these latter cases of adversarial collaboration, the threat to Israel would derive from “hybrid” foes.

               For Israel, these complex issues all call for disciplined intellectual analysis, not casually contrived political responses. None of the so-called “enemy states” now in presumably improved relations with Israel had ever presented any recognizable or decipherable threat. The best that one can say in defense of this starkly deceptive Trump-mediated effort is that after all agreement details had been formally completed, Israel’s security outlook came to resemble (in one respect) United States security vis-à-vis Grenada  after 1983.

               In that year, Ronald Reagan executed an American invasion of  a tiny Caribbean nation. “Reassuringly,” since that 4-day operation, “Urgent Fury” has proven its enduring security value to the United States. After all, since “Urgent Fury” (though expressly condemned by the United Nations as a violation of international law[4]), the United States has never once been attacked by Grenada.

               Is there something wrong with this “logic?”

               Ought we really to be grateful for US President Reagan’s strategic foresight?

               Or are we really speaking of strategic self-parody?

               Stated succinctly, once treated with evident seriousness, a confirmation of US decisional success in this earlier operation would appear silly at best. What else can one say about having blunted a threat that could never have existed?

               All this is by way of  underscoring an historical reference point. For the future, Israel will have to deal with more credible and consequential strategic threats than the essentially fictive ones enumerated by America’s Trump diplomacy with minor Sunni states. In this connection, nuclear strategy and nuclear deterrence could figure importantly.

               Explained with greater specificity, Israel’s pertinent decision-makers will soon have to make certain core decisions about continuing with its longstanding posture of “deliberate ambiguity.”[5]

               This strategic posture, aka the “bomb in the basement,” will require vital and nuanced modifications in the year ahead. To best meet this inherently complex requirement – a prerequisite now made vastly more problematic by the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic – Israeli defense and security planners will have to fashion their continuously evolving strategies with unprecedented intellectual refinement and with more explicit reference to three specific types of adversary: (1) state; (2) non-state; and (3) “hybrid.”

               Most important, especially as US President Donald J. Trump’s disjointed policies could further destabilize world politics and tangibly accelerate Iranian nuclearization, IDF theorists will need to advance beyond their traditional emphases on technological innovation and remediation.[6]

               There is more. Recent Israeli successes with advanced ballistic missile defense are impressive and significant; still, they will need to be augmented by more incrementally credible strategies of nuclear deterrence.[7] Aside from various pertinent particulars, these strategies, while in ongoing development, should be fashioned as conspicuously seamless and calibrated military postures.[8]

               Among other expectations, this requirement will call for factoring in foreseeable and ever-growing effects of a worldwide biological enemy (Covid-19), including well-informed estimations of adversarial capabilities and intentions.

               All this will prove uncannily complex. The conceptual/analytic task now being placed before Israel’s military and national security planners is multi-faceted, intersectional and daunting.  It remains a task that is potentially indispensable. What follows  seeks to clarify what should soon be expected of that country’s most capable thinkers and defense policy planners. This is not a task that can benefit from the narrowly manipulative “insights” of a self-serving American president or his Israeli surrogates. For Israel, this is a moment for imaginative thinking, not for governance by cliché.

Multivariate Theory and National Survival

               Israel is not America. Nonetheless, it remains an “undisclosed” nuclear power, and must struggle with many of the same issues that now confront the United States. Though allocations of nuclear authority in Jerusalem are just as “opaque” as in Washington (possibly even more so), enough is known to hypothesize about certain expanding risks of a nuclear war. Indeed, because Israel remains a vital and substantial ally of the United States in the Middle East, there are foreseeable circumstances wherein certain nuclear risks common to the two countries could be overlapping or synergistic.

               Whenever the linkages would constitute an authentic synergy, the cumulative harms would be greater than their calculable sum.

               Understanding such circumstances – and using this understanding to enhance relevant security policies in Israel – presents a formidable intellectual task. This will not be a task for the analytically faint hearted. Like its much larger American ally, Israel must increasingly depend upon profoundly complex levels of strategic calculation – extraordinary levels of the sort that were earlier required during World War II of the Manhattan Project.

               On its face, that is a very presumptuous claim. The comparison is not meant to suggest anything about reinforcing or changing Tel Aviv’s particular policy requirements or expectations, but only to clarify just how staggering the small country’s security task must become.

                There is more. Israel’s strategic planners will have a set of very complex variables and relationships to consider. These are the many-sided factors that stem from an ongoing and ubiquitous microbial assault. The obvious reference here is the proliferating worldwide plague that is impacting friends and foes alike.

               What happens when the proliferation of disease epidemic coincides with the proliferation of nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons? What if these weapons include biological weapons? The ironies are apparent, and also formidable.

               What sorts of measurement or assessment can bring usable clarity to such unique challenges? In epistemological or philosophy of science terminology, the situation now being faced by the United States and Israel is sui generis. How, then, should this unprecedented situation be controlled?

               Above all, the core challenge to Israel concerns viable long-term deterrence of multiple regional adversaries. Now faced with an expanding disease pandemic superimposed upon all of the usual or “normal” strategic issues, Israel’s response will require herculean combinations of refined analysis and creative intuition. This task has already become so grievously complex and many-sided that nothing less than unprecedented applications of human intellectual effort can rise adequately to the challenge.[9]

               Reciprocally, however, there can be no compelling assurances that even such rarefied applications can ever succeed.

               Prima facie, the myriad difficulties of rising to this existential challenge represent a formidable barrier to success and long-term survival. In essence, there exists grave danger that these difficulties could occasion not any purposefully enhanced national commitment or “will,”[10] but rather incremental resignation or irremediable despair. It follows that before any necessary strategic policy modifications can be launched by Israeli thinkers and planners, those responsible will, like Lady Macbeth, first have to “screw up their courage to the sticking place.”

               But how to begin? For exactly half a century, I have been thinking and writing about Israel’s nuclear strategy. At least to some calculable extent, this has been an incomprehensible and foolhardy academic focus. Israel, after all, has never meaningfully acknowledged its possession of nuclear weapons, let alone identified any corresponding national nuclear infrastructures, strategies or tactics.

               None at all.[11]

               So, what exactly has actually been left to analyze?

               What, precisely, can be examined and usefully reconstituted right now, when virtually everything is in bewildering flux?

               There are coherent answers, but they cannot be offered ex nihilo, that is, from within an empirical or conceptual vacuum.

               In all world politics, but especially in the Middle East, the most enduring truth of what is taking place is always inconspicuous, what is not said. During the past several years, it has been relatively easy to extrapolate from various multiple and intersecting open sources that Israel’s nuclear capacity (in its broadest possible outline) represents just such an “enduring truth,” and that the country’s physical survival is closely intertwined with its “deliberately ambiguous” defense posture. Now, however, looking ahead, a core responsibility for both planners and politicians in Israel should be to more explicitly utilize/optimize their country’s always-evolving nuclear strategy, and to tackle this bold challenge against an ever-changing backdrop of both state and sub-state adversaries.

               There will be more substance to consider. The national security task will require various informed assessments not only of more-or-less decipherable prospects, but also of certain foreseeable “hybrid” enemies (e.g., Iran-Hezbollah; Iran-Hamas). In turn, these hybrids will represent substantially more complex foes; that is, adversaries comprised (in varying conceivable configurations) of both state and sub-state elements.[12]

                Inevitably, the suitability of Israel’s relevant national nuclear planning will vary, at least in part, according to the particular “mix” involved. To this point, of course, little published analysis has addressed the effective use of Israeli nuclear deterrence against sub-state and/or “hybridized” adversaries. Among other things, this once-reasonable inattention will have to be appropriately changed and properly updated.

               Soon.

               Inter alia, Israel will require more explicit considerations of nuclear deterrence strategies directed against conventional or non-nuclear enemies.[13] First and foremost, these demanding considerations will represent intellectual obligations; that is, analytic responsibilities that can be met only by more markedly purposeful and science-based theorizing,[14] never by the cleverly shallow rhetorical flourishes of market-centered national politicians.In the United States, unmistakably, we are still witnessing the catastrophic security consequences of a presidential leadership that was based entirely upon raw “intuition” or visceral “gut feeling.”[15]

                Left to its own anti-science devices, these consequences, which now include steadily cascading Covid-19 death counts, could alter the fabric of American national survival.

               Whether in Israel or the United States, national security challenges can never be dealt with capably under the manipulative guidance of commerce-centered impresarios. To wit, such inept American guidance did not reduce the North Korean nuclear threat to the United States when US President Donald Trump declared after the Singapore Summit that he and his counterpart in Pyongyang had “fallen in love.”

               There was not a scintilla of threat reduction; not a calculable bit.

               Since that substantively unplanned and intentionally unprepared-for summit, North Korea has accelerated and expanded its military nuclear programs. Ironically, Donald Trump responded by telling the American people that (based upon his “intuition” and “gut feelings”) all is actually improving.

               Credo quia absurdum, said the ancient philosophers. “I believe because it is absurd.”

               There is more. By definition, the imperative exploration of Israel’s nuclear strategy cannot be undertaken with a view to ascertaining any precise event probabilities. In science and mathematics, true statements of probability must always be drawn from the discernible frequency of pertinent past events. But very clearly, in the bewildering matters at hand, there has never been an authentic nuclear war.

               It follows that Israeli scholars and political leaders should remain aptly modest about offering any specific nuclear conflict predictions. Going back to ancient Greek philosophers and playwrights, especially Aristotle (both Poetics and Politics), this will not be a suitable time for any Israeli displays of hubris or “chutzpah.” Lest they forget, such misplaced displays led directly to the near-catastrophe of the 1973 Yom Kippur War or mechdal.

               For Israel, perhaps more than for any other imperiled state in world politics, it is vital not to prepare “retrospectively” for the dynamics and weapon-systems of a previous war. Though, at least for the moment, Israel faces no regional nuclear adversaries, this relatively favorable condition will not last indefinitely. When it does finally come to an end – such an eventual or incremental cessation is pretty much inevitable over time, especially as US President Trump’s policies can only hasten Iranian nuclearization and certain reciprocal Sunni Arab nuclear reactions – Jerusalem/Tel Aviv should be prepared to conceptualize a more future-oriented and systematic program of national strategic response.[16]

               Whether or not Israel is adequately prepared for such a difficult task will depend, at least in part, on whether adversarial nuclear capacities become evident in plausibly tolerable increments, or (instead) in variously tangible acts (witting or unwitting) of verifiable enemy disclosure. If the latter, the worst case for Israel would involve actual enemy resorts to nuclear conflict.

               What then? In any law-based world order,[17] it’s a question that should never have to be asked.

               Never.

               To best prepare for any impending nuclear adversary,[18] whether Shiite Iran[19] or a Sunni Arab enemy (Pakistan is already a Sunni non-Arab nuclear power and in-principle adversary), or both, Israel/IMOD must remain continuously analytic and theory-focused. This means, among other things, factoring into virtually every coherent nuclear threat assessment (a) the expected rationality of enemy decision-makers, and (b) the expected intentionality of these decision-makers during any conceivable crisis.[20]

               Unsurprisingly, there is also something else of prospectively grave significance. This factor is the ongoing Corona virus pandemic, a plague so corrosive, persistent and consequential that it could directly impact an adversarial state’s decisional rationality and policy intentions. More exactly, depending upon the actual impact of disease on the relevant enemy’s most senior decision-makers, such a foe could become more or less likely to initiate variable (minor or major) levels of conflict.

                Israel’s own senior decision-makers, already anticipating such changeable enemy orientations to war, could experience a heightened inclination to preempt.[21] In law, any such defensive first-strikes could be known formally as “anticipatory self-defense.”[22] It remains high time for Israeli strategists to be self-consciously scientific in the sense of producing more aptly comprehensive theoretic assessments. These are now the only appraisals that can capably explore a needed variety of “soft” human factors.[23] Until now, Israel’s defense establishment has been very capably scientific, but primarily in the operational sense of maintaining precise mathematical attention to assorted weapon systems and infrastructures.

               Just as importantly, IDF/MOD will now need to operationalize some less tangible but still markedly scientific orientations to any prospective nuclear conflict.[24]

Models of Strategic Decision-Making for Israel

               An appropriate example here would be the creation of multiple decisional “templates” to allow consideration of not-easily measurable explanatory factors. Even more precisely, if a basically dichotomous or two-part distinction could sometime be assumed concerning enemy rationality and intentionality, four logically possible categories or scenarios would result. These discrete narrative templates could then lucidly inform Israel’s long-term nuclear security policies and posture.

               Each template’s examination would take into account, to whatever extent analytically possible, likely Covid-19 impacts on enemy decision-makers.

               To proceed, IDF planners ought to consider the following more-or-less believable narratives, a determined consideration that could significantly enhance already-disciplined orientations to the country’s national defense:

(1) Rational/Intentional

Both Israeli and enemy leaders are presumptively rational (i.e., each set of leaders values national survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences), and any nuclear exchange between them would be the result of fully deliberate decision choices by one or both of the relevant decision-makers;

(2) Rational/Unintentional

Both sets of leaders are presumptively rational, and any nuclear exchange between them would be the result of certain unintended decision choices made by one or both of them;

(3) Irrational/Intentional

Either Israeli or enemy leaders, or both, are presumptively irrational, and any nuclear exchange between them would be the result of still fully deliberate decisional choices made by one or both; and

(4) Irrational/Unintentional

Either Israeli or enemy leaders, or both, are presumptively irrational, and any nuclear exchange between these adversaries would be the necessary outcome of unintended decisions made by one or both of them.

               In all such complex strategic matters (Clausewitz reminds us, in On War, “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is still very difficult.”), nothing could prove more practical than good theory.[25] Always, such duly general and comprehensive policy explanations could help guide Jerusalem beyond otherwise vague, ad hoc or simply “seat-of-the-pants” appraisals of adversarial nuclear conflict possibilities.[26]

               By definition, any future nuclear crisis between Israel and designable enemy states would be unique or sui generis. This means, among other things, that Israel’s Prime Minister and his principal national security advisors ought never become overly-confident about predicting specific nuclear crisis outcomes or their own expertise in being able to successfully manage such unprecedented crises. As hinted at earlier, such expertise could be affected by any still-ongoing disease pandemic. Israel’s own decision-makers, like all pertinent enemy decision-makers, would be meaningfully vulnerable to virulent forms of biological “insult.”

               Another key point emerges. There are no real experts in nuclear conflict situations. This conclusion includes a now-sitting American president who had earlier placed far-reaching and baseless faith in North Korea’s Kim Jung Un (“We fell in love”), and who still reveals no serious intellectual understanding of US nuclear deterrence obligations.

                None at all.

Further Relevant Strategic Distinctions

               Other thoughts dawn. Israeli strategic analysts must continuously upgrade any proposed nuclear investigations by identifying the basic distinctions between intentional or deliberate nuclear war and between unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. The tangible risks resulting from these different types of possible nuclear conflict are apt to vary considerably, in part because of certain hard-to-quantify or calculate “pandemic variables.” Those Israeli analysts who would remain too exclusively focused upon any deliberate nuclear war scenario could sometime too casually underestimate a more authentically serious and even overriding enemy threat.

               In principle, at least, any such underestimations could produce lethal or prospectively existential outcomes for Israel. To make the avoidance of these underestimations sufficiently problematic, nuclear war risks in the Middle East could be created or enhanced via various “spillover effects” from nuclear conflict situations in other regions. Presently, regarding Israel, the most credible “ignition points” for any such creation would be India-Pakistan escalations,[27] and/or North Korean aggressions. It goes without saying that such additionally portentous escalations and/or aggressions could themselves be affected by various Covid-19 considerations

               While any North Korea-Middle East nuclear intersections may at first appear far-fetched, literally any crossing of the nuclear threshold on this planet could impact nuclear use in other far-flung places.

               This expectation does not take into account historic ties between destabilizing North Korean nuclear technologies and the traditional Arab  state enemies of Israel. The  most obvious case in point is Syria, and Israel’s remediating preemption (Operation Orchard) undertaken back in September 2007.[28]

               There is more. Israel could sometime need to respond to expectedly bewildering conditions generated by any US war with Iran. This is the case even if Iran were itself to remain entirely non-nuclear.[29] Again, IMOD and the Prime Minister will need to anticipate such conditions in suitably systematic, scientific and dialectical fashion.

World Politics as System

               Always, international relations represent a system. What happens in any one component of this system can impact what happens in another. Sometimes, the cumulative impact of regional or global interactions can also be “synergistic.” In these very dense circumstances, by definition, the calculable “whole” of any relevant interactions will prove to be greater than the simple sum of the constituent “parts.”

               Here, too, the presence of pandemic factors could represent a relevant and significant “force multiplier.”

               In thinking about nuclear strategy, Israeli planners must calculate holistically, broadly considering the world as a multi-actor totality, one where consequential outcomes will have to be assessed in their most conceivably complex intersections. Also important here will be specific orientations to states, sovereignty and state meanings. In some cases, these diverse orientations could prove genuinely determinative.[30]

               Noteworthy here is a seemingly subtle but still meaningful difference between inadvertent nuclear war and accidental nuclear war. Any accidental nuclear war would have to be inadvertent; conversely, however, there could take place various recognizable forms of inadvertent nuclear war that would not be accidental. The policy-related differences here would not be insignificant or inconsequential.

               Most critical, in clarifying this connection, would be potentially serious errors in calculation, whether committed by one or both (or several) sides. The most evident example of any such grievous mistakes would concern such plausible misjudgments of enemy intent or capacity as might emerge during the course of a particular crisis escalation. Such tangible misjudgments would most likely stem from a predictably mutual search for strategic advantage during any ongoing competition in nuclear risk-taking.

               In orthodox military parlance, this would mean during a determinable multi-party search for “escalation dominance.” Such a search could be affected by literally any Covid-19 triggered conditions of chaos[31]. To achieve a proper or (better still) optimal start in this sort of required theorizing, Israeli analysts would first need to pinpoint and conceptualize the vital similarities and differences between deliberate nuclear war, inadvertent nuclear war, and accidental nuclear war.

               Subsequently, undertaking various related investigations of rationality and irrationality within each affected country’s decision-making structure would become necessary. One potential source of an unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war could be a failed strategy of “pretended irrationality.” To this point, a posturing Israeli prime minister who had too “successfully” convinced enemy counterparts of his own irrationality could unwittingly spark an otherwise-avoidable enemy preemption.

               At this time, US President Donald J. Trump has toyed vis-à-vis North Korea with intermittent displays of  “pretended irrationality,” but to no apparent avail. In part, this evident lack of success may be due to the president’s earlier public declarations concerning certain alleged benefits of feigned irrationality. In other words, having previously announced his own infatuation with the promise of pretended irrationality, there is too little good reason for Pyongyang to take any such recent threat as aptly credible.

               There is more. An Israeli leadership that had begun to take seriously an enemy leader’s self-declared unpredictability could sometime be frightened into striking first itself. In this diametrically opposite or reciprocal case, Jerusalem would become the preempting party that could then claim (rightly or wrongly) legality for its allegedly defensive first-strike. Under authoritative international law, as we have already noted, a permissible preemption could possibly be taken as a proper expression of “anticipatory self-defense.”[32]

               Also worth considering amid any such chess-like strategic and legal dialectics is that the first scenario could sometime end not with an enemy preemption, but with Israeli decision-makers deciding to “preempt the preemption.” Here, Israel, sensing the too-great “success” of its own pretended irrationality, might then “foresee” an enemy’s resultant insecurity.

               They might then decide (correctly or incorrectly) to strike first before they are struck first themselves.”[33]

               The very dense strategic dialectic[34] in such cases would be multi-factorial  and complicated, perhaps even bewildering.[35]

               One final point warrants a concluding emphasis. A future Israeli posture of feigned or pretended irrationality need not be inherently misconceived or inconceivable. Years ago, in precisely such a conceptual regard, Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan declared: “Israel must be seen (by its enemies) as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”

               Looking ahead, such seemingly “out-of-the-box” Israeli security postures are uncertain and untested, but they are not necessarily mistaken or beyond any serious consideration. The specific credibility of such potential military postures could be enhanced by considering more conspicuous characterizations of a last-resort “Samson Option.”[36] The key point of any such characterizations would not be to prepare for some actual “final battle” (an outcome that would be in no single country’s overall best interests), but rather to better convince an existential adversary of Israel’s willingness to take extraordinary risks in order to ensure its own survival.

               While Israel has yet to exploit this particular modality of strategic thinking, Russia made precisely such a calculation with its Burevestnik missile –  a self-declared “vengeance nuclear weapon.” Moscow is not hoping to employ such a missile as part of any operational policy, but instead to signal the United States that it is prepared to “go to the mat” with the Americans, even in starkly unpredictable nuclear terms. We may assume that the Russian “point” here is not to “fight a nuclear war,” but instead to successfully influence the choices that its American rival will most expectedly make.[37]

               Inevitably, this means to maximize Russia’s nuclear deterrent.

               Going forward, a major focus of changing Israel’s nuclear strategy will have to be the country’s longstanding posture of deliberate ambiguity or “bomb in the basement.”[38] The Prime Minister surely understands that adequate nuclear deterrence of increasingly formidable enemies could soon require lessrather than more Israeli nuclear secrecy. Accordingly, what will soon need to be determined by IDF planners will be the operational extent and subtlety with which Israel should communicate assorted core elements of its nuclear posture; that is, its corollary intentions and capabilities pertinent to selected enemy states.

               To protect itself against any enemy strikes that could carry intolerable costs, IDF defense planners will need to prepare to exploit absolutely every relevant aspect and function of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The success of Israel’s effort here will depend not only upon its particular choice of targeting doctrine (“counterforce” or “counter value”), but also upon the extent to which this key choice is made known in advance to enemy states and (at least sometimes, in hybridized scenarios) to these foes’ sub-state surrogates. Before such enemies can be suitably deterred from launching first strike aggressions against Israel,[39] and before they can be deterred from launching retaliatory attacks following any Israeli preemptions, it may not be enough for them merely to know that Israel has the bomb.

               In some cases, the credibility of an Israeli nuclear threat could vary inversely with its presumed destructiveness.

In Nuclear Crisis Mode: Complexity and Calculation

               In extremis atomicum, these enemies will also need to believe that Israeli nuclear weapons are sufficiently invulnerable to first-strike attacksand that they are pointed menacingly at appropriately high-value targets. The key message here is obvious and straightforward. Removing the bomb from Israel’s “basement” could enhance Israel’s nuclear deterrent to the extent that it would enlarge enemy perceptions of secure and capable Israeli nuclear forces.[40] Such a calculated end to deliberate ambiguity could also underscore Israel’s willingness to use these nuclear forces in reprisal for certain enemy first-strike and/or retaliatory attacks.[41]

               From the standpoint of successful Israeli nuclear deterrence, IDF planners must generally proceed on the assumption that perceived willingness is always as important as perceived capability. In all cases, Israel’s nuclear strategy and forces should remain fully oriented to deterrence, and never toward any actual nuclear war fighting. Already, with this in mind, Jerusalem/Tel Aviv has likely taken appropriate steps to reject tactical or relatively low-yield “battlefield” nuclear weapons, and, as corollary, any corresponding plans for counter-force targeting.

               For Israel, without any conceivable exception, nuclear weapons can make sense only for deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.[42]

               There are various attendant problems of nuclear proliferation among enemy states.[43] New nuclear powers could implement protective measures that would pose additional hazards to Israel. Designed to guard against preemption, either by Israel or by other regional enemies, such measures could involve the attachment of “hair trigger” launch mechanisms to nuclear weapon systems and/or the adoption of “launch on warning” policies, possibly coupled with measured pre-delegations of launch authority.

               This means, most plainly, that Israel could become increasingly endangered by steps taken by its newly-nuclear enemies to prevent an eleventh-hour preemption. Optimally, Israel would do everything possible to prevent such steps, especially because of the expanded risks of accidental or unauthorized attacks against its own armaments and populations. Still, if these steps were somehow to become a fait accompli, Jerusalem might then calculate, and quite correctly, that a preemptive strike would be both legal and operationally cost-effective.

               Here, the expected enemy retaliation, however damaging, might appear more tolerable than the expected consequences of enemy first-strikes  –  strikes likely occasioned by the failure of “anti-preemption” protocols.

               These are all complicated matters. They can never be solved or even understood by any country’s narrowly political planners or decision-makers.

               There is also the related matter of conventional deterrence.  In some circumstances, enemy states contemplating a conventional attack upon Israel might be dissuaded only by the threat of a strong conventional retaliation. Inasmuch as a conventional war could sometimes escalate into an unconventional war, Israel’s conventional deterrent could prove valuable in offering protection against chemical/biological/nuclear war[44] as well as against conventional war.[45]

               A persuasive conventional deterrent is a sine qua non of Israel’s security. This is the case irrespective of the persuasiveness of Jerusalem’s nuclear deterrent, and/or the availability of reasonable preemption options. Reciprocally, Israel’s conventional and nuclear deterrents are interrelated, even intertwined.  For the foreseeable future, any enemy states that would launch an exclusively conventional attack upon Israel would almost surely have to maintain multiple unconventionalweapons capabilities in reserve. 

               Even if Israel could rely upon conventional deterrence as its “first line” of protection, that line would need to be be augmented by Israeli nuclear deterrence in order to prevent intra-war escalations initiated by enemy actors.

               Looking ahead, Israel must prepare to rely upon a distinctly multi-faceted doctrine of nuclear deterrence. This critical doctrine will need to be less ambiguous and more determinedly “synergistic.” Its core focus should embrace prospectively rational and non-rational enemies, and include both national and sub-national foes.[46]

               Again, these intersecting requirements are not for consideration by narrowly political decision-makers or by the intellectually faint-hearted.

               They are offered herein for strategic consideration and analytic refinement.

               Over time, any such prudential reliance should prove agreeably “cost-effective.” Whether directed at nuclear or non-nuclear adversaries (or both), Israel’s nuclear strategy will play an increasingly important role in that country’s national security planning. At some point, Israel and Iran –  perhaps resembling the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War – could find themselves like “two scorpions in a bottle”[47] or rather enclosed like two “scorpions” amid three or four others.

               For good reason, it’s not a pretty metaphor.

New Pacts, Old and New Problems

               What happens then? Will Israel be ready? A positive answer is possible only if the task is viewed in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv as a preeminently intellectual one, a struggle not just about comparative ordnance or competitive “orders of battle,” but comprehensively about “mind over mind.” In these perplexing times, all relevant matters of mind will have to include various considerations of biology/pathology as well as the more usual military ones.

               Fortunately, Israel has always been in recognizably prominent possession of what is most durably important. This largely overlooked factor is intellectual power.[48] Going forward with its imperative strategic tasks, Israel’s senior planners and prime minister may now have to more fully appreciate the primacy of such an antecedent or utterly primary power.

               This would mean, inter alia, looking far beyond the usual focus on high-technology military solutions, including various unprecedented factors concerning Covid19/virulent disease pandemic.

               Among other things, these biological variables could impact actual processes  of crisis decision-making in Jerusalem and/or in certain enemy capitals, more-or-less simultaneous impacts with still-unknown force-multiplying effects. These effects, at some point, could also become literally synergistic.

               At that worrisome stage, the “whole” injurious impact of the pandemic on pertinent Israeli decision-making would have become greater than the simple sum of all its relevant “parts.” Immediately, therefore, because it would be impossible to anticipate in any detail such a profound impact in all or even most of its plausible disease-based consequences, the optimal course for Israel must be to hew in general to strategic postures recognizably averse to excessive threat-making or excessive risk-taking. In these expansively uncertain times, Israel’s defense and security decision-makers should consider maximizing their inclinations to more cooperative or collaborative interactions with particular adversarial counterparts.

               As long as the country maintains its “ace in the whole” nuclear strategy, which should be for a very long time, Israel must keep up its efforts to ensure a refined and uniformly credible national nuclear strategy. This strategy should continue to emphasize deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. Although recent Israeli pacts with Bahrain, UAE and Sudan may at first seem to have been net-gainful, a more careful strategic assessment (already imperative) should conclude otherwise. Among other things, over time, Jerusalem will face undiminished or enlarged strategic threats from Iran and assorted terrorist actors, and potentially new strategic threats from certain Sunni Arab states newly strengthened by ill-considered Trump diplomacy. With this complex nuclear future in mind, Jerusalem should remain focused on the critical intellectual antecedents of national security planning, and not be distracted by any chimerical promises or assurances from Washington.

               The new US-brokered pacts of recognition and reconciliation with Barhrain, UAE and Sudan may at first sound like commendable achievements, but their cumulative net benefits are calculably very small, and their prospective net costs are markedly considerable. Over time, these widely-unseen costs could become staggering, if not irremediable. In the worst case, the actual price of having trusted complex national security decision-making to contrived political solutions could even include a regional “waste land.”

               Unlike the poet’s more abstract conceptualization, this real-world declension could display fear not merely in “dust,” but also in the combined perils of virulent pathogens and radioactive ash. This is not a combination best prevented by public officials drawn from a one-dimensional background in politics, industry or commerce. Successful prevention calls for strategic thinkers who are well-schooled in such challenging dialectics, thinkers of uncommon erudition and unparalleled intellectual integrity.

               For Israel, the stakes are simply too high to settle for anything less.

[1] Similar conclusions can be drawn about Mr. Trump’s earlier decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Though Israelis quite naturally regard this diplomatic transfer as well-intentioned and geopolitically purposeful, it came without any costs to the Trump administration, but did exacerbate several of Israel’s much larger problems. While it has been taken as a clear victory by most Israelis, the protracted benefits to Israel will actually turn out to be very minor or insignificant, at best.

[2] For much earlier original writings by this author on the prospective impact of a Palestinian state on Israeli nuclear deterrence and Israeli nuclear strategy, see: Louis René Beres, “Security Threats and Effective Remedies: Israel’s Strategic, Tactical and Legal Options,” Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), ACPR Policy Paper No. 102, April 2000, 110 pp; Louis René Beres, “After the `Peace Process:’ Israel, Palestine, and Regional Nuclear War,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 15, No. 2., Winter 1997, pp. 301-335; Louis René Beres, “Limits of Nuclear Deterrence: The Strategic Risks and Dangers to Israel of False Hope,” ARMED FORCES AND SOCIETY, Vol. 23., No. 4., Summer 1997, pp. 539-568; Louis René Beres, “Getting Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: Israel, Intelligence and False Hope,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, Vol. 10., No. 1., Spring 1997, pp. 75-90; Louis René Beres, “On Living in a Bad Neighborhood: The Informed Argument for Israeli Nuclear Weapons,” POLITICAL CROSSROADS, Vol. 5., Nos. 1/2, 1997, pp. 143-157; Louis René Beres, “Facing the Apocalypse: Israel and the `Peace Process,'” BTZEDEK: THE JOURNAL OF RESPONSIBLE JEWISH COMMENTARY (Israel), Vol. 1., No. 3., Fall/Winter 1997, pp. 32-35; Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why Golan Demilitarization Would Not Work,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XXIV, No. 1., Winter 1996, pp. 75-76; Louis René Beres, “Implications of a Palestinian State for Israeli Security and Nuclear War: A Jurisprudential Assessment,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 17., No. 2., 1999, pp. 229-286; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” CROSSROADS: AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIO-POLITICAL JOURNAL, No. 31, 1991, pp. 97-104; Louis René Beres, “The Question of Palestine and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Vol. 62, No. 4., October-December 1991, pp. 451-460; Louis René Beres, “Israel, Palestine and Regional Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF PEACE PROPOSALS, Vol. 22., No. 2., June 1991, pp. 227-234; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State: Implications for Israel’s Security and the Possibility of Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF THE JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR WESTERN DEFENCE  (Israel), Vol. 4., Bulletin No, 3., October 1991, pp. 3-10; Louis René Beres, ISRAELI SECURITY AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PSIS Occasional Papers, No. 1/1990, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, 40 pp; and Louis René Beres, “After the Gulf War: Israel, Palestine and the Risk of Nuclear War in the Middle East,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XIX, No. 4., Fall 1991, pp. 48-55.

[3] In the past, in separate incidents, both Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and Palestinian terror-group Hamas fired rockets at Dimona. Though unsuccessful, Israel must remain wary of the consequences of any future attack that might prove more capable. For early and informed consideration of reactor attack effects in general, see: Bennett Ramberg, DESTRUCTION OF NUCLEAR ENERGY FACILITIES IN WAR (Lexington MA:  Lexington Books, 1980); Bennett Ramberg,  “Attacks on Nuclear Reactors: The Implications of Israel’s Strike on Osiraq,” POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY,  Winter 1982-83;  pp. 653 – 669; and Bennett Ramberg, “Should Israel Close Dimona? The Radiological Consequences of a Military Strike on Israel’s Plutonium-Production Reactor,”Arms Control Today,May 2008, pp. 6-13.

[4]See3:  https://sofrep.com/specialoperations/operation-urgent-fury-the-u-s-invades-grenada/

[5] See, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-nuclear-ambiguity/; by Professor Beres and General Isaac Ben-Israel (IDF/ret.): https://spme.org/boycotts-divestments-sanctions-bds/boycotts-divestments-and-sanctions-bds-news/louis-rene-beres-and-isaac-ben-israel-the-limits-of-deterrence/4207/; https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/11/15/israels-nuclear-ambiguity-would-a-shift-to-selective-nuclear-disclosure-enhance-strategic-deterrence; https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/; and https://strategicassessment.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/antq/fe-676949421.pdf.

[16] Such needed preparation must extend to multiplying enemy nuclear states, or the dynamic problem of nuclear proliferation. Philosophically, this problem has certain conceptual antecedents in the work of seventeenth-century English scholar, Thomas Hobbes. Here, instructs the author of Leviathan, although the “state of nations” exists in the condition of a “state of nature,” it is more tolerable than the condition of individuals in that state. This is because, in the case of individual human beings, “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” With nuclear weapons spread, however, there is no longer any reason to assert that the state of nations must be more tolerable. Instead, this spread will bring the state of nations much closer to a true Hobbesian state of nature. Similarly, the classical German philosopher, Samuel Pufendorf, also unable to imagine nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare, still reasoned, like Hobbes, that the state of nations “lacks those inconveniences which are attendant upon a pure state of nature….” And in the same vein, wrote Baruch Spinoza: “A commonwealth can guard itself against being subjugated by another, as a man in the state of nature cannot do.” See: A.G. Wernham, ed., The Political Works, Tractatus Politicus, iii, II (Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 295.

From <https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/11/05/strategy-plague-and-war-israels-complex-nuclear-future/>

Note to self

RE Iran

###quote -  BIG IDEA - SURRENDER IRAN…THAT WILL FCK UP THE PLAN…LESSON FROM GRENADA STRATEGY..is preemption, but if nothing to preempt, you foil the Israel/US plan

For Iran, the way to win is give up nukes---LOSE TO WIN…THAT WILL TOPPLE THE GOVERNMENT

======================

America's Bullshit Pretenses for Invading Grenada

Reality - preemptive strike…..

1. Rescue students

2. Request from regional organization

3. Cuban troops

4. Airport built by cubans for military purpose

5. REAL PURPOSE - STOP POSSIBLE DEPLOYMENT OF SOVIET ballistic missiles. Legit?

Casey's crazy plan--suriname grenada

https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/jomass/v11i1/f_0028145_22911.pdf

Captured documents in Grenada operation referenced

https://ndupress.ndu.edu/portals/68/documents/stratperspective/inss/strategic-perspectives-11.pdf

Muzzling media - national journal

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000100540001-2.pdf

Note to self -- Failing to get bin laden

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-111SPRT53709/html/CPRT-111SPRT53709.htm

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Fall and Winter 2008/9, Vol. 11, Issues 1 and 2.

GRENADA: PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/jomass/v11i1/f_0028145_22911.pdf

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Fall and Winter 2008/9, Vol. 11, Issues 1 and 2. 17

revolutionary “legitimacy.” It would take time to substitute the party over the individual as the source of political legitimacy. So, in the meantime, Bishop was necessary. American analysts would have been attentive to events in Grenada under ordinary circumstances as a standard approach of keeping track of country developments. Under the circumstances described in this paper they were especially attentive to the growing conflict within the leadership. Perhaps seeking to probe the possibility for improving relations, the administration gave Bishop an opening. In December, Vice President Bush attended a conference in Miami reviewing business opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean. In his remarks, the vice president described Grenada as an “economically weak,” “repressive” regime, wholly “dependent” upon Cuba and the Soviet Union. The Grenadian government immediately issued a low-key, diplomatically worded reply, rebutting the criticism and offered to send a high-level emissary to the United States to brief American leaders on the true state of affairs. 25

After a discreet interval, in February, Secretary of State Shultz replied to the Grenadian note with a conciliatory message to Bishop, the department’s first communication with the regime since shortly after it had taken power. The state department’s note was carried to Grenada by Congressman Mervyn Dymally, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, who was visiting the island. The ostensible purpose of the note was to inform the Grenadian government that all U.S. embassy personnel in Barbados, except Ambassador Milan Bish, were to be accredited to St. George’s. But Dymally also carried Shultz’s invitation for Bishop to  visit Washington. Bishop promptly responded in the affirmative, arranging for Transafrica, a black American political organization closely tied to the Congressional Black Caucus, to sponsor his visit.

Meanwhile, in March, a Soviet survey team visited the tiny, eleven-square-mile Grenadian dependency of Carriacou, home to some 7,000 fishermen and farmers. They decided to build an airfield, naval port, cement plant, and electric power generating plant on the island. The port at Tyrrell Bay had been a sheltered anchorage used by the British fleet in the 18 th century. Moscow offered a gift of 2,000 tons of steel as part of the developmental package. The Soviet bloc’s pervasive presence, including personnel from the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany, Libya, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and North Korea, were stifling any pretense of Grenadian independence. 27

It was under growing bloc pressure that Bishop made his visit to Washington, May 31 to June 10. Bishop anticipated that he would meet with President Reagan and Secretary Shultz, but, when he arrived, both declined. Instead, a lower profile meeting was arranged with Judge Clark and Kenneth Dam, Shultz’s deputy, on June 7. Clark welcomed Bishop’s proposal to “discuss differences,” as well as to “discuss cooperation.”

He felt that the United States and Grenada had “common strands of history” and hoped that their meeting would “lead to greater progress. Bishop, even while deploring Reagan’s attacks, wanted to reach an accommodation with the United States. He “agreed to moderate his shrill anti-American rhetoric—and even his Marxist policies—in return for improved relations with Washington.” Clark said the administration “held out hope” that Grenada would abandon the communist model and return to a constitutional form of government. 29 Bishop was “encouraged…that they are willing to accept talks on the normalization of relations.” 30 The upshot was that Bishop believed that he had reached an “understanding” with the Reagan administration and had “struck a deal.” Both sides agreed, however, that “the content of their meeting should ‘remain secret.’ 

....Clark said the administration “held out hope” that Grenada would abandon the communist model and return to a constitutional form of government. 29 Bishop was “encouraged…that they are willing to accept talks on the normalization of relations.” 30 The upshot was that Bishop believed that he had reached an “understanding” with the Reagan administration and had “struck a deal.” Both sides agreed, however, that “the content of their meeting should ‘remain secret.’” 31

Factional Strife Intensifies

When Bishop returned to Grenada, he attempted to fulfill his commitment to the United States, but only succeeded in intensifying the ongoing power struggle with Coard. The Central Committee reluctantly agreed to Bishop’s instruction to maintain the moratorium on anti-American rhetoric begun before his trip. But concern was expressed that Bishop had exceeded his instructions by holding “unscheduled” and “sensitive” discussions with Clark and Dam “without prior reference and without guidance.” Concern deepened when it was learned that Bishop was planning to reinstitute free elections. 32

Alarmed at Bishop’s trip to Washington, the Russians demanded to know what had transpired. But all that Grenadian ambassador Richard Jacobs could tell Vladimir Kazimirov, Director of the First Latin America Department, was that “the results were confidential.” 33 For the ever-suspicious Russians, this was the “turning point” in their relationship with Bishop. Jiri and Virginia Valenta thought that “given the traditional Soviet paranoia about the loyalty and orthodoxy of its socialist allies, the Soviet leadership had sufficient reason to lose confidence in Bishop.” 34 Traditional Soviet paranoia played its part, but the issue was far more important. Having made the decision to use Grenada in its missile scheme and invested heavily in preparing the grounds for it, they were not about to let it all slip away because Maurice Bishop had suddenly gotten cold feet.

The Soviets suspected that Bishop had struck a deal with Washington, which left

them with no choice but to accelerate Coard’s takeover timetable of the leadership. Responding to Moscow’s decision, Coard convened the Central Committee for its “first full-scale wholistic plenary,” a marathon, six-and-a-half-day meeting, lasting from July 13 to 19. The results of the meeting, called the July Resolutions, were that the party had failed “to transform itself ideologically and organizationally and to exercise firm leadership along a Leninist path.” 35

…Coard and his followers dominated the proceedings, but Bishop had managed to insert language into the resolutions that the party’s “line of march” was essentially correct. 36 Coard and his allies, no doubt under Moscow’s prodding, strongly objected to the conclusion that the party’s line was correct and demanded an emergency meeting, which convened on August 26. The heart of the problem was seen to be the party’s failure to criticize itself, including its highest leaders, which could lead to the party’s disintegration. So it was decided to hold a full Central Committee plenum in mid- September to rectify the party’s failings.

Indicators of Crisis

When, in late May, an SR-71 overflying Cuba photographed troops practicing “sophisticated amphibious landings,” on the beaches near Mariel harbor, the president and his close aides realized they were entering the outer edge of the crisis they were expecting. Analysts speculated as to the purpose of the amphibious training. Some thought that “the Cuban maneuvers [were] preparation for an invasion of some small Caribbean island.” Others were not so sure. Combined with the earlier Soviet dispatch to Cuba of two amphibious assault ships, the maneuvers lent credibility to assumptions that Cuba was preparing to insert forces rapidly onto a neighboring island, presumably Grenada, in the not to distant future.37

….At about this time, a second prime intelligence indicator triggered alarm bells. When Reagan decided that Moscow’s analogous deployment would be SS-20 missiles to Grenada, analysts were tasked with carefully scrutinizing the key indicators which would tell when the Soviets were preparing to move. The more obvious of these were the state of airfield construction on the island, the presence of Soviet rocket specialists on the island, the movement of Il-76 cargo jets, the movement of Cuban forces to the island, and the missiles themselves

 ….U.S. intelligence, as a matter central to the arms control negotiations, kept track of the construction, deployment, and movement of SS-20 missiles, which were “clearly identifiable in their shelters from spy-satellite pictures that regularly photograph them.” Suddenly, however, at mid-year, U.S. intelligence “lost” three entire regiments of SS-20 missiles. Each regiment had nine launchers, each missile had three warheads; three regiments meant that eighty-one missiles were missing. The sudden disappearance of such a large number of missiles was alarming. Moreover, when queried, the Soviets refused “to identify the precise location of the missing regiments.” 38  The president called for contingency plans. Using as a rationale the increase in Soviet shipping to Nicaragua, from the middle of July, the president authorized the conduct of naval exercises not only off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Nicaragua, but also in the Western Atlantic and the Caribbean Basin.

These exercises, designated Readex-2-83 were to “commence as soon as possible” and to continue for “four to six months.” 39 In an unprecedented move, Reagan deployed four carriers (the Independence, John F. Kennedy, Coral Sea, and Ranger) in three carrier battle groups, a massive display of firepower, which would rotate through the region to be in position during the time when the United States would deploy the Pershing II into West Germany and also when Moscow would be expected to attempt to make its analogous deployment into the Caribbean. Perhaps unwittingly, Soviet defense minister Dmitri Ustinov chose this moment to declare that the Soviet Union was “determined” to counter any U.S. deployment of Pershing II missiles to West Germany

We will take such countermeasures that will make the military threat to the territory of the United States and the countries on whose territories American missiles will be deployed the same as the one the United States is trying to create for the Soviet Union and our allies.40 To American officials there was no room for obfuscation, or delay. Making the same threat to the United States that Washington would make to Moscow meant missiles, SS-20 missiles, in the Caribbean.

To conduct a personal assessment, Bill Casey embarked upon a secret trip to Africa and the Middle East at the beginning of August. He stopped first in West Africa talking to the leaders of Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Zaire, Zambia, and South Africa—all nations whose airfields were possible transshipping points to Grenada. There were doubtless many items on Casey’s agenda, but one of the most important had to be a survey of air service arrangements currently available to Moscow. He would also want to explore the kind of cooperation the United States could expect to receive from these countries. 41

But the event that, more than anything else, focused attention on the growing U.S.-Soviet confrontation was the destruction of the Korean airliner on September 1. The crisis disguised a shift in Soviet policy, which resulted in an acceleration of events in Grenada. Throughout the arms control negotiations from the spring of 1982, the Soviet threat had been: “if the U.S. deployed, then the Soviet Union would deploy.” The KAL crisis produced a shift in that position reflected in the disappearance of Andropov and the ascendancy of the Chernenko/Ogarkov faction. Ogarkov had argued that………  

The president made the decision to invade early in the morning of October 22, while he was in Atlanta, shortly after receiving word that the OECS, joined by Jamaica and Barbados, had voted to request U.S. assistance. With a request for assistance in hand, the NSPG now “jettisoned the idea of a peaceful evacuation” of medical students in favor of “a military expedition to seize Grenada from local military forces.” The mission statement was accordingly expanded beyond the evacuation of American citizens, to the restoration of democratic government on Grenada and the deterrence of a Cuban attempt at intervention. 60  

Just as plans were being finalized, however, news came of a devastating blow to the United States in Lebanon. Early Sunday morning, October 23, in Beirut, two truck bombs, one driven into the U.S. Marine barracks and the other into the French military compound, exploded and killed 241 Marines and 56 French soldiers. For….. 

: “if this was right yesterday, it’s right today, and we shouldn’t let the act of a couple of terrorists dissuade us from going ahead.” 61 That evening, the president signed the final copy of the NSDD authorizing action in Grenada and the initial, pre-invasion troop insertion operations began

The Cuban force was a combination of combat troops (some 240 had arrived aboard the Vietnam Heroica on October 6) and construction workers (about 500 workers were building the airport). Including embassy personnel, there was a total of 784 Cubans on the island. 6 mprovising while under intense fire from Cuban forces dug in north of the airport, the Rangers hot-wired a bulldozer and other vehicles to clear the runway and permit the remainder of the 1,900-man invasion force to land by aircraft. Over the next several hours fierce fighting ensued, but, when ammunition stocks were exhausted, 250 Cuban and Grenadian troops surrendered.  

A crucial objective was to insure the safety of the Governor-General, Paul Scoon, who was under house arrest. Scoon, the Queen’s representative, was considered to be the remaining source of political legitimacy on the island. A dozen special forces troops parachuted into his residential compound, but, once inside, found themselves surrounded by Grenadian troops and forced to spend a harrowing night defending the residence and its valuable occupant  

In the process of evacuating these students, however, U.S. troops learned of yet a third group of several hundred students scattered in off-campus housing on the Lance aux Epines peninsula southwest of the True Blue campus. These would not be evacuated, or many even located, until after the main combat operations had ended on the 28 th . As it was, many students never left Grenada. All told, U.S. forces evacuated 599 American citizens of a reported 1,100 on the island and 121 foreigners. U.S. casualties were light for the operation: 19 killed and 116 wounded. For Cuba, there were 25 killed, 59 wounded and for Grenada, 45 killed, and 358 wounded.65  

Denying Moscow the ‘Analogous’ Option

The Reagan administration would struggle to justify the invasion against its critics, sliding from the president’s initial statement to “protect innocent lives,” “forestall further chaos,” and to restore “democratic institutions,” to a “rescue mission” after discovery of a purported Cuban plot to take over the island and hold the students hostage. 66 The most persuasive argument, however, was the reaction of the students who were evacuated. On October 27, when the first of the evacuees, Jeff Geller, landed at Charleston, South Carolina, he “dropped to his knees and kissed the runway,” cheered the United States, and “thanked the U.S. military for rescuing them from a chaotic and dangerous situation.”67

the actual reason for the invasion—to preempt a Soviet attempt to deploy SS- 20 missiles-- was never stated. Indeed, the president and his secretary of state differed publicly over their respective treatment of the Soviet role in Grenada. Secretary Shultz declared that the invasion was not intended to “send a message” to the Soviets or Cubans. 68 He insisted that this was “not an East-West confrontation,” by which he meant to emphasize that it was not a U.S.-Soviet confrontation. 69 That, however, was not how the president saw it. In his address on October 27th , Reagan explicitly saw Moscow behind not only the events in Grenada, but also those in Lebanon, and he saw them as “closely related.”   ……intercepts in which “Soviet rocket-force advisers discussed their military construction project at the airfield.”72

It would be nearly two months before another article pierced the veil of censorship about missiles and Grenada. Kent Bernhard noted the pre-invasion “concern in some quarters of the government that facilities which could be used for missiles were being prepared.” Also reviewing the photographic and radio intercept data, he asked: “Did the United States expect to find the beginning of Soviet missile installations on the tiny east Caribbean island?” 73 It was a question that would be left unanswered. The official explanation remained that the United States invaded to rescue the students and prevent Cuba and the Soviet Union from turning Grenada into a base for the export of terrorism.

Why not tell the truth?

The reason for the subterfuge lay in politics, particularly the leaders around Secretary of State Shultz, who were determined to erase all evidence that would undercut a move toward détente with the Soviet Union. Exposing the actual Soviet role would foreclose indefinitely any détente possibility. It would be the Cuban missile crisis all over again and reveal Moscow’s utter disdain for détente and its determination to achieve a zero-sum victory over the United States…  

Los angeles weekly -13 March 1987

DISINFORMATION: an examination of six years of incredible lying…

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7.pdf

The United States Invasion of Grenada: Stranger than Fiction

J Quigley - U. Miami Inter-Am. L. Rev., 1986 - HeinOnline

… 22-23), the decision to invade had been made and US ships were already positioned to

invade Grenada at dawn on October 25." That invasion would seem more legitimate if the US

https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1633&context=umialr

From <https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=invasion+grenada&btnG=>

The "McNeil Mission" and the Decision to Invade Grenada

Robert J. Beck

Naval War College Review, Vol. 44, No. 2 (SPRING 1991), pp. 93-112 (20 pages)

From <https://www.jstor.org/stable/44638029?seq=6>

Less Strategic Now, Grenada Is to Lose American Embassy

By Steven A. Holmes

May 2, 1994

New York Times article link

Little more than a decade after the United States invaded Grenada, ousting a left-wing Government that Ronald Reagan said was turning the tiny Caribbean island into an outpost of Fidel Castro's Cuba, the Clinton Administration plans to close its Embassy there to save money.

With the end of the cold war, the Administration has decided that the island, which recently resumed diplomatic relations with Cuba, is of little strategic importance.

"This action is to be taken only in response to budgetary pressures and in no way reflects on Grenadian-American relations or on the commitment of the United States Government to our friends in the region," the State Department said when it announced the closing recently.

The island's dwindling significance today is in marked contrast to how it was described on Oct. 25, 1983, when Mr. Reagan sent 7,000 troops to end political violence and, he said, to rescue American students at St. George's University Medical School.

The State Department told Congress last month of its intention to shut the modest Embassy compound and transfer its functions to the Embassy in Barbados, 150 miles to the northeast. The Embassy in Barbados had responsibility for Grenada until just after the 1983 invasion.

State Department officials said on Friday that closing the Embassy in Grenada, as well as the one in Antigua and a regional office of the Agency for International Development in Barbados, is part of an effort to shift resources to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Congress, which can overrule the State Department, has until May 13 to decide if it wants to keep the Embassies open. Grenadian officials are lobbying members of Congress and the Administration for a reprieve.

"Because of the special relationship that exists between our two countries, Grenadians would feel terribly let down if the American Embassy were to close its doors in St. George's," Prime Minister Nicholas A. Braithwaite wrote to President Clinton on April 22. The Lobbying Begins

Representative Donald M. Payne, a New Jersey Democrat who is head of the Congressional Black Caucus Task Force on the Caribbean, has also asked Mr. Clinton to reconsider the decision.

State Department officials are waiting to see if any groundswell emerges in Congress that will stay their hand. "You know how these things go," said a State Department official. "It ain't over till it's over."

Mr. Payne's office said 1,500 Americans are in Grenada at any given time: tourists, business executives, retirees -- and about 500 students at the medical school, which reopened after the invasion.

A lush, hilly island 90 miles north of Venezuela, Grenada has been declining in importance as a diplomatic post. There are only two Americans assigned to the Embassy.

State Department budget-cutters considered closing the Embassy last year but decided that to do so in the year marking the 10th anniversary of an invasion intended to "liberate" Grenada from Communism would have been poor public relations.

"It would have looked odd to close it within a few years of the operation," said State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But it was becoming harder to justify keeping it open. It's really not an active post in terms of any of the normal criteria: political and economic reporting, narcotics or consular affairs." 19 Americans Died

The invasion in 1983 led to the deaths of 19 American soldiers and sailors, 110 Grenadian militia and 71 Cubans, many of whom were armed construction workers with no formal military training.

Mr. Reagan explained the invasion of the 133-square-mile island, which has a population of 85,000, by saying that Cuba was turning the country into an outpost of Soviet expansionism and that an airstrip was being built that could be used by Russian warplanes. A month ago, on April 4, Mr. Braithwaite's Government announced it was re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, which were broken at the time of the United States invasion.

Mr. Reagan used the success of the invasion -- the troops secured the island in two days -- to proclaim the primacy of United States fighting forces, whose image and morale had been battered by the defeat in Vietnam and by the disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran three years earlier. The Pentagon awarded 9,802 decorations after the invasion, including 813 Bronze Stars.

"Our days of weakness are over," Mr. Reagan said, alluding to the invasion. "Our military forces are standing tall."

But declassified Defense Department documents later showed that the invasion suffered from poor planning and a lack of equipment. At one point, because ground troops and the Navy's shipboard command had incompatible radios, an Army officer had to use his personal credit card to telephone his office in North Carolina to coordinate Naval air support.

The documents also noted that the medical students were not in danger.

A version of this article appears in print on May 2, 1994, Section A, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: Less Strategic Now, Grenada Is to Lose American Embassy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

From <https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/02/world/less-strategic-now-grenada-is-to-lose-american-embassy.html>

 7 Operation Urgent Fury: Grenada

Michael Poznansky

https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190096595.003.0007

Pages 173–202

Published: June 2020

Abstract

This chapter analyzes Ronald Reagan’s decision to intervene in Grenada in October 1983 to remove the left-leaning New Jewel Movement from power. Plans for regime change began in earnest in mid-October after the sitting Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, was ousted by hardliners, and culminated in a full-scale invasion on October 25.

The evidence affirms the book’s central predictions, namely that the availability of two legal exemptions enabled the Reagan administration to pursue a public regime change.

The first was the presence of endangered medical students enrolled in St. George’s Medical School on the island.

The second legal exemption was an invitation for the United States to intervene to restore order from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, a collective security regime. Senior officials relied heavily on these exemptions over the course of the intervention and beyond as a means of demonstrating the legality of their actions to allies and other friendly regimes

From <https://academic.oup.com/book/40518/chapter-abstract/347839035?redirectedFrom=fulltext>
  

Book Review - In the Shado of Interational Law

Michael Poznansky, In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World (Oxford University Press, 2020)

During the Cold War, the United States undertook an extraordinary number of attempts to overthrow foreign governments. These interventions were mostly conducted in secret, and the majority failed to achieve their aims. One recent tally identified sixty-four covert operations and six overt ones between 1947 and 1989, with less than 40 percent of the covert operations installing a new regime in power. Some of these failures are quite well known. The Bay of Pigs intervention in Cuba, for example, not only failed to remove Fidel Castro from power, but also brought Cuba closer to the Soviet Union and helped precipitate the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even those operations that appeared successful at the time often had negative repercussions in the longer term. This was the case in Iran, where the United States helped oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh from power in 1953—but in doing so, also fueled anti-American sentiment and contributed to the 1979 revolution.

Why would the United States continue to pursue a strategy with such a poor track record? The central contention of Michael Poznansky’s fascinating and well-researched new book, In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World, is that the explanation lies in international law.

In 1945, the principle of nonintervention, which holds that states should not violate the sovereignty of others, came to enjoy the status of international law through incorporation into the charter of the United Nations and subsequent adoption in the charters of the Organization of American States and other regional organizations.

Once it did so, overt efforts to oust foreign rulers from power became costlier.

States that abrogate their formal commitments undermine their credibility and open themselves up to accusations of hypocrisy.

Drawing upon the rich trove of archival information now available on US regime change efforts in Latin America during the Cold War, the book argues that the United States used covert action to carry out regime change operations when legal exemptions that would permit them to intervene overtly were unavailable. The book compares overt operations in the Dominican Republic and Grenada, where US officials used the presence of American nationals and backing from international organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS) as legal justifications, with the choice to intervene covertly in Cuba and Chile, where no such legal loopholes could be found.

Through a careful analysis of archival materials and interviews with retired senior government officials, the book documents that US policymakers took seriously the potential for open violations of international law to damage American credibility.

Take the deliberations within the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations about efforts to topple Castro’s government between 1960 and 1961. Eisenhower is quoted as complaining, “Except for the existence of the OAS and its abhorrence of intervention, we would have to be thinking already of building up our force at Guantanamo” to remove Castro overtly.

The same concerns crop up for Kennedy and his advisors. In a memo from Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann to his boss, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Mann outlines the risks of an overt intervention, specifically emphasizing the risks to the United States’ reputation. Mann warned, “At best, our moral posture throughout the hemisphere would be impaired. At worst, the effect on our position of hemispheric leadership would be catastrophic.”

Interestingly, in these cases and others that the book dissects, policymakers did not appear to particularly care whether they could plausibly deny their involvement in covert actions. The Kennedy administration went ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion even though news reporting brought plans to light in advance. As Richard Bissell, the chief architect of the operation later explained, even if the operation was not plausibly deniable, “up to and through the invasion itself the operation remained to an extraordinary degree technically deniable.”

If the central benefit of covert operations is that they allow states to preserve credibility and avoid accusations of hypocrisy, the downside is that they rarely achieve this result in full. Poznansky spells out a number of reasons why this is likely to be the case. Because the secrecy inherent in covert operations may protect interveners from some of the fallout for botched operations, for instance, they may be willing to undertake action in a riskier set of circumstances. The need to plan in secret also means that operations get less vetting in advance. Finally, covert action requires states to delegate to local actors with their own agendas.

In analyzing the costs and benefits of covert action, Poznansky effectively pushes back against the argument that covert actions are inherently less costly than overt ones. While it may seem obvious that fewer resources are required to covertly back coups or arm rebels than to send in American troops, Poznansky argues that many of the actions the United States takes covertly could be taken overtly as well. Overt action need not mean a full-scale invasion.

Yet this contention is somewhat undercut by the book’s choice of case studies. Both of the overt actions examined in the book were, in fact, large-scale military operations—

1. Operation Power Pack, in the Dominican Republic, involved the deployment of twenty-one thousand troops,

2. while Operation Urgent Fury, in Grenada, involved eight thousand. This method of case selection means it is difficult to rule out the possibility that the decision to use overt action was driven by perceptions that the stakes in these cases were larger.

A fuller accounting of the decision to use overt versus covert action would also consider the potential downsides of overt actions short of invasion. For example, open acknowledgment of US backing could undermine the legitimacy of local actors, and thus the likelihood that their efforts succeed. There is also the risk that more indirect overt action could escalate conflicts in a way that covert actions may not. The book does take care to address as a potential alternative argument the desire to avoid escalation, which has been highlighted in other recent scholarship on covert action. Indeed, Poznanky notes that he selected cases in Latin America in part to reduce the relevance of escalation as a potential explanation for covert action, since the risk of escalation should be lowest in a state’s own sphere of influence.

The book finds scant evidence that leaders in the examined cases were concerned about retaliation from rivals leading to escalatory spirals.

But another possible consideration, unaddressed in the book, is domestic pressure for escalation. It certainly seems plausible that where operations are conducted in public, leaders may face more pressure from their own constituents not to back down—particularly where the resources expended are large or lives have been lost.

Overall, however, the book’s central argument—that US policymakers took seriously the potential reputational costs of violating international prohibitions on intervention in deciding how to pursue regime change in Latin America—is well supported by the archival evidence Poznansky marshals.

The desire to maintain an appearance of legitimate behavior did not prevent American leaders from attempting regime change operations during the Cold War.

What it did appear to do was push them to act in secret, even when their preference would have been not to. As Poznansky concludes, “The liberal international order was constraining, but imperfectly so.” His argument has implications for our own troubled era. To the extent that democratic backsliding, rising great power conflict, or other contemporary challenges serve to chip away at the rules-based system the United States helped put in place in the mid-twentieth century, we may expect to see overt attempts at regime change become less costly again—and, as a result, more common.

Erica De Bruin is an associate professor of government at Hamilton College, where her research focuses on civil-military relations, civil war, and policing, and is the author of How to Prevent Coups d’état: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival (Cornell University Press, 2020).

From <https://mwi.westpoint.edu/covert-operations-fail-more-often-than-not-so-why-do-leaders-order-them/>

Jewish veteran mentions grenada, saudi arabia, etc

https://www.jwv.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Jewish-Veteran-Issue-2-2020.pdf

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Wilson Center Digital Archive - Grenada-related Documents

February 14, 1984

Record of a meeting on February 13, 1984 between Erich Honecker and Fidel Castro

Record of a meeting held in Moscow on 13 February 1984 between Comrade Erich Honecker and Comrade Fidel Castro. Some of the topics include the U.S. invasion of Grenada, Ronald Reagan's policies and improvements in Cuban industries.

September 5, 1985

Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, 'China's Active Diplomacy in Latin America'

The CIA anticipates diplomatic victories for the PRC in Latin America as more countries will switch recognition away from Taiwan.

This version of the report was declassified on June 30, 2011. The CIA had earlier declassified a copy of the same report on October 5, 2010. Each version has different sections that were withheld from public release. Both versions of the report should be consulted by readers.

April 9, 1979

Memorandum of Todor Zhivkov – Fidel Castro Conversation, Havana

Memorandum of a discussion of the future of socialism in Latin America. Castro expects that the social instability of the region will lead to increased socialist influence and revolutionary movements, specifically in Nicaragua and Grenada. He cites two difficulties in his quest to help the Latin American revolutionary forces: his weapons stockpile is running low, and he has agreed to not transfer Soviet weapons to other countries.

September 5, 1985

Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, 'China's Active Diplomacy in Latin America'

The CIA anticipates diplomatic victories for the PRC in Latin America as more countries will switch recognition away from Taiwan.

This version of the report was declassified on October 5, 2010. The CIA declassified the same report again on June 30, 2011. Each version has different sections that were withheld from public release. Both versions of the report should be consulted by readers.

November 30, 1987

Information on the 20th Session of the Committee of the Ministers of Defense of Warsaw Pact Member States

Report on the course and results of the 20th Session of the Committee of Ministers of Defense of Warsaw Pact Member States held in Bucharest on November 24-25, 1987.

From <https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/places/grenada>

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From <https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=site%3Anytimes.com+grenada+invasion>

Analyst John Horton says CIA Director rejected Truth about number of Cuban Nationals in Grenada, and their purposes, post invasion.

CIA Declassified  - Miami Herald

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000201080062-6.pdf

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91-00587R000100590027-0.pdf

Presidential Decisionmaking and Use of Force:

Case Study Grenada

By richard hooker

unclassified

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA527983.pdf

OPERATION URGENT FURY

The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Grenada

12 October - 2 November 1983

Declassified, written 1997

https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/Monographs/Urgent_Fury.pdf

Declassified CIA

Problem with Outsourcing military to private contractors that began in Grenada  balloned in Nicaragua

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000504550022-2.pdf

Louis Rene Beres and Isaac Ben-Israel: The Limits of Deterrence

By Louis Rene Beres and Isaac Ben-Israel

November 25, 2007

Source: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME)

Seized Grenada Documents

National Archives of Grenada (link)

Archival Work, Conservation, Document Restoration, Endangered Archives, Preservation

December 1, 2012

Where are the Original Seized Grenada Documents?

Two interesting new developments related to documents seized by U.S. forces when the invaded  Grenada in 1983 during their “Operation Urgent Fury” – one is a fully declassified National Security Directive newly available online and the second are meeting notes recently obtained via FOIA that indicate that at least some original documents from Grenada remain at the U.S. National Archives.

(1) Reagan’s Fully Declassified National Security Decision Directive No. 112 Now Available Online

The new, fully declassified version of a November 1983 National Security Decision Directive signed by President Ronald Reagan called “Processing and Disposition of Documents Acquired by US Forces in Grenada” that is now available online from the Federation of American Scientists here.

IMAGE:  1983Nov15 Top Secret Memo

An earlier redacted version that has been online for years (available here) already provided an interesting illustration of the breadth of issues for which the US thought captured documents from Grenada would be relevant.  The three paragraphs that were redacted in the earlier version, but which are available now, relate to the following issues:

First, is the issue of U.S. classified documents found among the documents “captured” in Grenada:

IMAGE:  document excerpt

It has been suggested that this may have been redacted because the documents could present special sensitivities as they may be relevant to counterintelligence investigations, including the possibility that someone within the U.S. government had provided access to them.  A related issue came up when the interagency intelligence exploitation team — assembled pursuant to Reagan’s directive — submitted its initial evaluation of the captured documents in December 1983.  In the last paragraph of a cover memo (available here) from Robert Gates (then Chairman of the National Intelligence Council), to Robert MacFarlane (then Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs), Gates noted:

Mr. Roy Godson of your staff informed us that there was great interest in the “American” connection to the documents. We have discussed this with the FBI liaison contact and propose that you task the Attorney General directly with pursuing this issue. We do not think a discussion of the involvement of US citizens in Grenada should be included in any paper prepared by the Intelligence Community.

The initial version of the “Interagency Intelligence Assessment” enclosed with that memo entitled “Grenada: A First Look at Mechanisms of Control and Foreign Involvement” is here and a later updated version from August 1984 is here (both courtesy of the CIA FOIA reading room).

Second, there is a previously redacted paragraph dealing with topic of forensic examination of the “captured” documents including even, of all things, the type of paper and ink used:

IMAGE:  document excerpt

This provides another example of a situation in which copies of captured documents are inadequate substitutes for originals. As discussed in an earlier post, the forensic exploitation of captured documents and media has been made increasingly important over time.  See, as an example, this FBI Laboratory report from 2008 about documents seized from Afghanistan.

Third, the final, previously-redacted paragraph relates to the question of returning the documents:

IMAGE:  document excerpt

The issue of the return of the documents leads to the second development . . .

IMAGE:  TOP SECRET 1983jULY12 document excerpt

(2) Original Seized Grenada Documents Still at U.S. National Archives?

The original documents seized from Grenada were supposedly returned to us here in Grenada long ago.  No less than The Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States expressly states in a note in RG 373: “The original Grenada documents have been returned to the Grenadan government” (microfiche copies are in RG 242).  There has been a bit of a mystery about what happened to them upon their return – see, for example, the Grenada Revolution Online‘s informative page on the documents here which states:

Rumor at one point put the original Grenada documents in Grenada around August 1985 and housed at Police Headquarters. Since that time was the damaging passing over Grenada of Hurricane Ivan, 7 September 2004. The location, condition and accession of the original Grenada Documents remains obscured, to say the least.

Given this, it came as quite a surprise when recently received documents via FOIA included notes from recent meetings involving the National Archives that contained notations such as this:

IMAGE:  document excerpt

and this:

which appear to indicate that there are original Grenada records at Archives II in College Park.  The note “why are the originals here” even suggests some surprise on behalf of the undisclosed notetaker.

To be clear, this is not necessarily inconsistent with the return of most, if not almost all, of the originals to Grenada. The notes above could perhaps be referring to a small number of documents that may have been withheld from the original return — possibly for some of the same reasons the passages in Reagan’s directive had been redacted or based on other “national security” concerns.  There is also a State Department records schedule, N1-353-90-3 (available here), related to a “Grenada Task Force” that identifies “3-4 feet” of captured documents (perhaps original) that were transferred to NARA, which could provide another explanation:

IMAGE:  document excerpt

Despite these possible explanations, the notes nevertheless raise some interesting questions that would profit from clarification. If anyone has additional information about original Grenada documents in the U.S. or the fate of those returned to Grenada, I’d be grateful to hear from you.

IMAGE:  document excerpt

From <https://grenadanationalarchives.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/seized-grenada-documents/>

Documents Show Thatcher-Reagan Rift Over U.S. Decision to Invade Grenada

By Stephen Castle

July 31, 2013

LONDON — Thirty-year-old documents newly released by the British government reveal just how severely America’s decision to invade the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 tested the warm ties between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan

IMAGE: In memoirs, Mrs. Thatcher described how dismayed and let down she felt by the invasion of Grenada.Credit...Paul R. Benoit/Associated Press

LONDON — Thirty-year-old documents newly released by the British government reveal just how severely America’s decision to invade the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 tested the warm ties between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.

While the two leaders had a strong and affectionate personal rapport, the British official papers reveal how little warning Mrs. Thatcher was given about the pending military invasion, a move that left the British irritated, bewildered and disappointed. They also show how Mr. Reagan justified the secrecy as a way to prevent leaks, and how the British later concluded that the invasion had in fact been planned long in advance. At one point during tense written exchanges, both leaders claimed, in defense of their opposing approaches to the unrest in Grenada, that lives were at stake.

The Americans, citing fears of Cuban and Soviet influence, invaded Grenada, a former British colony, after its prime minister, Maurice Bishop, was assassinated on Oct. 19, 1983. When finally consulted, the British counseled against military action, arguing that it would be seen as intervening in the internal affairs of a small nation, “however unattractive its regime,” and pointed out that Mr. Bishop was “himself, of course, a Marxist.”

The British government files are being made public under rules that allow the release of documents after 30 years. The government made some available online Wednesday before their official release on Thursday.

In her memoirs, Mrs. Thatcher, who died in April, described how dismayed and let down she felt by what happened in Grenada, which retained Queen Elizabeth II as head of state when it became independent in 1974. Mrs. Thatcher summarized and even quoted from the documents released this week, but their full publication gives a detailed picture of what she described in her book as an “unhappy time” of discord a year after more serious diplomatic tension with the United States over Britain’s military effort to recover the Falkland Islands after Argentina invaded.

On the evening of Oct. 24, 1983, two messages were sent by Washington, hours after a British minister had told Parliament that there was no indication of an imminent American invasion. The first message said that the United States was considering a request from some Caribbean nations to intervene; the second, sent within four hours, said that it had decided to go ahead. Replying, Mrs. Thatcher said that Mr. Reagan’s decision “causes us the gravest concern” and warned that the queen’s representative on the island, the governor general, had told a British official that if there were an intervention, “he would probably be killed.”

“I cannot conceal that I am deeply disturbed by your latest communication,” she wrote to Mr. Reagan, adding that she hoped “that even at this late stage you will take it into account before events are irrevocable.”

The invasion took place the next day.

In an apologetic, 15-minute phone call on Oct. 26, Mr. Reagan, according to a British diplomatic note, began by saying that “if he was in London he would throw his hat in the door first” — an expression suggesting he would check to see whether or not he was welcome.

“He very much regretted the embarrassment that had been caused,” the document said, giving the president’s account of how “he had been woken at three o’clock in the morning when on a so-called golfing vacation” with a request to intervene, and emphasizing how “lives were at stake” because of the risk of leaks. “The military had only a matter of hours,” he said.

But a later briefing note by Mrs. Thatcher’s foreign policy adviser, Anthony Parsons, concluded that “it is becoming increasingly obvious that” the United States “had been planning the Grenada move for some time” and that “some plain speaking” with the Americans was needed.

One argument was that America’s failure to consult made it harder to defend the contentious deployment of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on British soil. A record of a breakfast meeting in November 1983 with the American deputy secretary of state, Kenneth Dam, noted that Mrs. Thatcher had argued, “to say that all this had put us in difficulty was putting it very mildly.”

Grenada was only one of numerous issues covered in the document release, and a summary highlights several others. The most chilling, in a way, is the disclosure that during a routine servicing of nuclear weapons, a technician discovered that a British key could also turn the lock on American nuclear weapons. All the locks were changed.

The files also contain records of a conversation between Mrs. Thatcher and the German chancellor at the time, Helmut Kohl, in which he described his wish to reduce the number of Turks living in Germany by half, something he said he could not admit publicly. Mr. Kohl is reported as saying that the Turks were from a distinct culture and had not integrated well.

According to a summary of other files covering the years 1979-83, including the purchase by Rupert Murdoch of The Times of London, Mr. Murdoch met Mrs. Thatcher in April 1981. He discussed staff changes and suggested that the prime minister invite the new editor of The Sunday Times, Frank Giles, to her Downing Street office for a drink.

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 1, 2013, Section A, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Documents Show Thatcher-Reagan Rift Over U.S. Decision to Invade Grenada. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/world/europe/documents-show-thatcher-reagan-rift-over-us-grenada-invasion.html>

The Limits of Deterrence

Louis Rene Beres and Isaac Ben-Israel: 

By Louis Rene Beres and Isaac Ben-Israel

November 25, 2007

Source: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME)

From <https://spme.org/boycotts-divestments-sanctions-bds/boycotts-divestments-and-sanctions-bds-news/louis-rene-beres-and-isaac-ben-israel-the-limits-of-deterrence/4207/>

http://washingtontimes.com/article/20071121/EDITORIAL/111210011/1013/EDITORIAL

Five years ago, the special Project Daniel Group first advised Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons. Our final report urged the prime minister to enhance Israel’s deterrence and defense postures, to consider an end to deliberate nuclear ambiguity if Iran becomes nuclear and to refine pertinent pre-emption options. It also concluded that Israel should not expect peaceful coexistence with a nuclear Iran, and that active national defenses should be strengthened.

Israel’s core plan for active defense remains the Arrow. To protect against attack from Iran, however, this system of ballistic missile defense (BMD) must be complemented by improved Israeli deterrence, and by viable options for certain defensive first strikes against appropriate hard targets. Under no circumstances should it be assumed in Jerusalem that a stable “balance of terror” could be created with Tehran. Here, the essential assumption of enemy rationality might not always be warranted. This would not be your father’s Cold War.

Of course, if the Arrow were entirely efficient, even an irrational Iranian adversary armed with nuclear and/or biological weapons could be kept at bay without defensive first strikes, and/or threats of retaliation. But no BMD system can truly be “leak proof.” Moreover, terrorist proxies in ships or trucks – not missiles – could deliver Iranian nuclear attacks upon Israel. In such low-tech but high-consequence assaults, there would be no benefit to any sort of anti-missile defenses.

Israel cannot depend upon its anti-ballistic missiles to fully defend against any future WMD attack from Iran any more than it can rely only on nuclear deterrence. This does not mean that the Arrow fails to play an important protective role as part of a larger security apparatus. It does play such a role.

Every state has a plain right under international law to act pre-emptively when facing an openly genocidal assault. Israel is no exception. The 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice even extends such authority to the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in certain existential circumstances; but – at least for now – Israel could still undertake “anticipatory self-defense” without such weapons.

If for whatever reason Iran should be permitted to proceed to become nuclear, Israel would have to enhance the credibility of its presumed nuclear deterrent, and to deploy a recognizable second-strike force. This optimally robust strategic force – hardened, multiplied and dispersed – would be fashioned to inflict a decisive retaliatory blow against selected enemy cities. Iran should understand, therefore, that the actual costs of any planned aggression against Israel would always exceed any conceivable gains.

One last point warrants mention. The substantial dangers of a nuclear Iran would also impact the United States. While it would still be at least several years before any Iranian missiles could strike American territory, the United States could still be as vulnerable as Israel to nuclear-armed terrorist surrogates. In this connection, President Bush’s intended plan for a “rogue state” anti-ballistic missile shield (a plan that has not gone over very well with Russian President Vladimir Putin) would have the very same inherent limitations as Israel’s Arrow.

Louis Rene Beres, professor of international law at Purdue University, was chairman of Project Daniel. Isaac Ben-Israel, a professor at Tel Aviv University and member of the Knesset’s Foreign Relations and Security Committee, was a member of Project Daniel.

From <https://spme.org/boycotts-divestments-sanctions-bds/boycotts-divestments-and-sanctions-bds-news/louis-rene-beres-and-isaac-ben-israel-the-limits-of-deterrence/4207/>

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Defense secretary affirms US commitment to Israel in visit to Tel Aviv | Morning in America

Defense secretary affirms US commitment to Israel in visit to Tel Aviv | Morning in America

NewsNation

1.14M subscribers

556 views Oct 13, 2023 #IsraelWar #MorningInAmerica #Hamas

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reiterated the U.S. commitment to Israel in a visit to Tel Aviv, condemning Hamas. However, he also delivered a message to Israel to adhere to the laws of war and target Hamas militants, not Palestinian civilians. #Hamas #IsraelWar #Palestine

From <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ffij-9t8A>

Defense secretary affirms US commitment to Israel in visit to Tel Aviv | Morning in America

Israel and the “Samson Option” in an Interconnected World

Louis René Beres | 11.16.18

From <https://mwi.westpoint.edu/israel-samson-option-interconnected-world/>

In any serious strategic calculus, the “Samson Option” refers not just to a last-resort spasm of pure national vengeance, but to a purposeful set of specific operational threats. When examined together with Israel’s still intentionally ambiguous nuclear strategy (a doctrine most commonly referred to as Israel’s “bomb in the basement”), it becomes evident that these carefully fashioned threat postures are designed to enhance Israeli nuclear deterrence. Indeed, any such enhancement would represent this unique doctrine’s most obvious raison d’être. But are there further steps that would enhance the Samson Option’s effectiveness in this context?

There is more. Because strategic crises in other parts of the world could sometime “spill over” into the ever-unpredictable Middle East, dedicated strategic planners in Tel Aviv should already begin their preparations to “think Samson.” This is especially the case wherever the possible “spill” could concern the threat or actual use of nuclear weapons.

To pull these core concepts together (i.e., distant crisis consequences and Israel’s nuclear deterrence), the world must first be understood as a system, as an organic whole wherein vital strategic intersections and interdependencies can be suitably estimated and taken into proper account. Accordingly, Israel must clearly recognize that a nuclear attack or exchange in any one part of the world could sometime meaningfully impact its own nuclear war planning and related obligations.

Among other things, this means meticulously conceptualizing—or perhaps re-conceptualizing—the prospective role of any calculated Samson Option.

Whatever this option’s more precisely nuanced goals, its key objective must always remain exactly the same. That objective is to help keep Israel “alive.” In this duly considered objective, Israeli policy must very conspicuously deviate from the otherwise useful biblical metaphor—Samson, after all, lost his own life when he tore down the temple on his Philistine captors—drawn illustratively here from the book of Judges.

Ultimately, in relevant military nuclear matters, “Samson” must be about how to best manage certain urgent processes of strategic dissuasion. Here, the primary point of Israel’s nuclear forces must always be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. For now, at least, Israel’s presumed nuclear strategy, while not yet articulated in any precise or publicly ascertainable fashion, is likely oriented toward nuclear war avoidance, not nuclear war fighting. From all potentially concerning standpoints, including even the well-being of Israel’s pertinent national adversaries, this is the indisputably correct orientation.

At its conceptual analytic core, the Samson Option references a deterrence doctrine based upon certain implicit threats of overwhelming nuclear retaliation or counter-retaliation—responses for more-or-less expected enemy aggressions. Any such doctrine could reasonably enter into force only where the responsible aggressions had first credibly threatened Israel’s physical existence. In other words, considered as a potentially optimal element of dissuasion, it would do Israel little good to proffer “Samson-based threats” in response to “ordinary” or manifestly less than massive forms of anticipated enemy aggression.

There is also a related matter of intra-crisis communications. As a potentially useful element of any ongoing strategic dialogue, the basic message of any Israeli Samson Option should remain uniform and consistent. Always, it should signal an expressly stated or deliberately unstated promise of a “counter-city” nuclear reprisal—also known as “counter-value” targeting. This approach would threaten non-military sites of aggressors in response to possible threats to Israeli cities. It should also avoid signaling to situational adversaries any intentionally sequential gradations of Israeli nuclear deterrence.

The bottom-line reasoning here is as follows: Exercising a Samson Option is not likely to deter any aggressions short of nuclear and/or massively large-scale conventional or biological first strikes.

All things considered, Samson’s overriding rationale must be to bring the following clear message to all identifiably potential attackers: “Israel may sometime have to accept mega-destructive attacks, but it surely won’t allow itself to ‘die with the Philistines’ or become the combatant country to suffer more dire consequences.” By emphasizing some overtly symmetrical exposure prospects to existential harms—”Israel won’t die alone”—the Samson Option could continuously serve Israel as a distinctly meaningful adjunct to nuclear deterrence and also to certain more-or-less corollary preemption options.

Significantly, the Samson Option could never protect Israel as a fully comprehensive nuclear strategy unto itself. This option must also never be confused with Israel’s more generalized, or “broad spectrum,” nuclear strategy, one which must always seek to maximize national deterrence at recognizably less apocalyptic levels of possible military engagement.

At this point in any ongoing strategic dialectic, certain derivative questions would necessarily arise. How can the Samson Option best serve Israel’s more overarching strategic requirements? Although the primary mission of Israel’s still undisclosed nuclear weapons must always be to preserve the Jewish state—not merely to wreak visceral havoc upon specific bitter foes when all else is seemingly lost—any more obvious preparations for a Samson Option could still improve Israel’s nuclear deterrence and preemption capabilities.

In regard to the latter, such always-conceivable resorts to presumptively conventional defensive first strikes could prove permissible or even law enforcing under authoritative international law. In all such conceivable cases, therefore, the Israeli preemptions would have a jurisprudential counterpart to strategy that is formally identified as “anticipatory self-defense.”

Concerning long-term Israeli nuclear deterrence, recognizable preparations for a Samson Option could help to best convince certain designated enemy states that massive aggressions against Israel would never be gainful. This stance could prove especially compelling if Israeli “Samson” weapons were (1) coupled with some level of nuclear disclosure (thereby effectively ending Israel’s longstanding posture of nuclear ambiguity); (2) to appear sufficiently invulnerable to enemy first strikes; and (3) plainly counter-city/counter-value in their declared mission function. Furthermore, in view of what nuclear strategists sometimes refer to as the “rationality of pretended irrationality,” Samson could more generally enhance Israeli nuclear deterrence by demonstrating an apparently tangible Israeli willingness to take various existential risks.

To a manifestly variable and possibly even bewildering extent, the nuclear deterrence benefits of “pretended irrationality” could sometime depend upon a prior enemy state awareness of Israel’s counter-city or counter-value targeting posture. Worth noting here is that such a posture had been expressly recommended more than fifteen years ago by the private “Project Daniel Group,” in its then confidential report to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. At present, it would appear plausible that this posture is also actual policy.

Overall, in reference to prospectively needed strategies of preemption, Israeli preparations for a Samson Option, explicitly recognizable and not just sotto voce, could sometime help convince Israel’s own leadership that certain defensive first strikes would be net gainful. These Israeli leaders would then expect that such conventional preemptive strikes could be undertaken with reassuringly reduced expectations of any unacceptably destructive enemy retaliations. This optimistic expectation would depend upon (a) assorted prior Israeli decisions on nuclear disclosure; (b) Israeli perceptions of the effects of such disclosure on enemy retaliatory intentions; (c) Israeli judgments about enemy perceptions of Samson weapons vulnerability; and (d) presumed enemy awareness of Samson’s counter-city force posture.

In those cases concerning Samson and Israeli nuclear deterrence, any recognizable last-resort nuclear preparations could enhance Israel’s preemption options by underscoring a singularly bold national willingness to take presumptively existential risks.

But pretended irrationality, as US President Donald Trump might himself soon discover in any still-upcoming nuclear dealings with North Korea or Russia, could become a double-edged sword. Always, Israeli leaders must remain mindful of this possible “rebound effect.” In essence, brandished too “irrationally,” Israeli preparations for a Samson Option, however unwittingly, could sometime encourage enemy preemptions. This serious peril is underscored by expected pressures on each contending state party to achieve “escalation dominance.” Also significant in this unpredictable environment of competitive risk-taking could be either or both side’s visible deployments of active missile defenses.

From <https://mwi.westpoint.edu/israel-samson-option-interconnected-world/>

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and articles dealing with Israeli security matters. His twelfth and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) (2nd ed., 2018). In December 2016, Professor Beres co-authored a widely-circulated monograph with retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, titled Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and America’s National Security, Tel Aviv University. Some of Dr. Beres’ other recent publications on Israeli and US nuclear security matters have appeared in the Harvard National Security Journal, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the National Interest, Israel Defense, BESA Perspectives (Israel), Jurist, Yale Global Online, Parameters, the Strategy Bridge, the War Room, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the Jerusalem Post.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

From <https://mwi.westpoint.edu/israel-samson-option-interconnected-world/>

Nuclear deterrence and conflict: the case of Israel

By Louis René Beres

February 3rd 2018

“Deliberate ambiguity” notwithstanding, Israel’s’ core nuclear posture has remained consistent. It asserts that the tiny country’s presumptive nuclear weapons can succeed only through calculated non-use, or via systematic deterrence. By definition, of course, this unchanging objective is based upon the expected rationality of all pertinent adversaries.

Significantly, from the standpoint of operational deterrence, national enemies of the Jewish State must be considered rational by Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv. This is the case even though such enemies could operate in alliance with other states, and/or as “hybridized” actors working together with specific terror groups. At some point, moreover, Israel’s nuclear enemies might need to also include certain sub-state adversaries that could act alone.

For the country’s nuclear deterrence posture to work long-term, prospective aggressor states will need to be told more rather than less about Israel’s nuclear targeting doctrine. To best prepare for all conceivable nuclear attack scenarios, Israel must plan for the measured replacement of “deliberate ambiguity” with certain apt levels of “disclosure.” In this connection, four principal scenarios should come immediately to mind. When examined properly and comprehensively, these coherent narratives could provide Israel with much-needed theoretical foundations for preventing a nuclear attack or a full-blown nuclear war.

1. Nuclear retaliation

Should an enemy state or alliance of enemy states ever launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel, Jerusalem would respond, assuredly, and to whatever extent possible, with a nuclear retaliatory strike. If enemy first-strikes were to involve other available forms of unconventional weapons, such as chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Israel might then still launch a nuclear reprisal. This grave decision would depend, in large measure, upon Jerusalem’s informed expectations of any follow-on enemy aggression, and on its associated calculations of comparative damage-limitation.

If Israel were to absorb a massive conventional attack, a nuclear retaliation could not automatically be ruled out, especially if: (a) the state aggressors were perceived to hold nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons in reserve; and/or (b) Israel’s leaders were to believe that non-nuclear retaliations could not prevent annihilation of the Jewish State. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out only in those discernible circumstances where enemy state aggressions were clearly conventional, “typical” (that is, consistent with all previous instances of attack, in both degree and intent) and hard-target oriented (that is, directed towards Israeli weapons and related military infrastructures, rather than at its civilian populations).

  Israel must prepare systematically for all conceivable nuclear war scenarios.

2. Nuclear counter retaliation

Should Israel ever feel compelled to preempt enemy state aggression with conventional weapons, the target state(s)’ response would largely determine Jerusalem/Tel Aviv’s next moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, Israel would doubtlessly turn to some available form of nuclear counter retaliation. If this retaliation were to involve other non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, Israel could also feel pressed to take the escalatory initiative. Again, this decision would depend upon Jerusalem/Tel Aviv’s judgments of enemy intent, and upon its corollary calculations of essential damage-limitation.

Should the enemy state response to Israel’s preemption be limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that the Jewish State would then move to any nuclear counter retaliations. If, however, the enemy conventional retaliation was “all-out” and directed toward Israeli civilian populations as well as to Israeli military targets, an Israeli nuclear counter retaliation could not immediately be excluded. Such a counter retaliation could be ruled out only if the enemy state’s conventional retaliation were identifiably proportionate to Israel’s preemption; confined to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by the legal limits of “military necessity;” and accompanied by certain explicit and verifiable assurances of non-escalatory intent.

3. Nuclear preemption

It is highly implausible that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Although circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would be both perfectly rational, and permissible under authoritative international law, it is unlikely that Israel would ever allow itself to reach such irremediably dire circumstances. Moreover, unless the nuclear weapons involved were usable in a fashion still consistent with longstanding laws of war, this most extreme form of preemption could represent an expressly egregious violation of international law.

Even if such consistency were possible, the psychological/political impact on the entire world community would be strongly negative and far-reaching. An Israeli nuclear preemption could be expected only: (a) where Israel’s pertinent state enemies had acquired nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction judged capable of annihilating the Jewish State; (b) where these enemies had made it clear that their intentions paralleled their genocidal capabilities; (c) where these enemies were believed ready to begin an operational “countdown to launch;” and (d) where Jerusalem/Tel Aviv believed that Israeli non-nuclear preemptions could not achieve the needed minimum levels of damage-limitation — that is, levels consistent with physical preservation of the Jewish State.

4. Nuclear war fighting

Should nuclear weapons ever be introduced into any actual conflict between Israel and its many enemies, either by Israel, or by a regional foe, nuclear war fighting, at one level or another, could ensue. This would hold true so long as: (a) enemy first-strikes would not destroy Israel’s second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy the Jewish State’s nuclear counter retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy enemy state second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for conventional first-strikes would not destroy the enemy’s nuclear counter retaliatory capability.

This means that in order to satisfy its most indispensable survival imperatives, Israel must take appropriate steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b) above, and the simultaneous unlikelihood of (c) and (d).

Without hesitation, Israel must prepare systematically for all conceivable nuclear war scenarios. To best ensure national survival, no other preparations could possibly be more important. In this connection, Israel should never forget that its presumptive nuclear weapons are intended for deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.

Featured image credit: Israel flag by Mabatel. Public domain via Pixabay.

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is the author of many books, monographs, and articles dealing with Israeli nuclear strategy. Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, he has lectured on this topic for more than forty years at universities and leading academic centers for strategic studies. His twelfth book, Israel's Nuclear Strategy: Surviving amid Chaos, was published by Rowman and Littlefield, in 2016. In December 2016,  Beres co-authored a special monograph at Tel-Aviv University with General (USA/ret.) Barry McCaffrey, Israel's Nuclear Strategy and American National Security.

From <https://blog.oup.com/2018/02/nuclear-deterrence-conflict-israel/>

https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf

Excerpt from palmbeach barr

https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdfy

POST SCRIPT BY GENERAL BARRY R.McCAFFREY (USA/RET.)

This brilliant essay by Professor Lou Beres examining Israel's nuclear strategy is timely and unsettling. The core strategic problem remains preserving the existence of Israel and the Jewish people – and recognizing their fundamental dependence on a suitable nuclear security strategy for their very survival.

I have spent most of my professional career dealing with the realities of nuclear weapons from early years of involvement in the storage, security, and tactical employment of air and land delivered nukes – to senior responsibilities as a General Officer on the Pentagon JCS staff, charged with planning the strategic employment of nuclear weapons to deter the Warsaw Pact. Fortunately, I was also able to help craft the dramatic reductions of both US and Russian warheads and delivery systems as the senior US JCS negotiator during the President George H.W. Bush Administration, while working for the JCS Chairman, General Colin Powell.

The situation facing Israel is fundamentally different from our nuclear confrontation with the Russians. NATO never really faced a believable threat of being overwhelmed by the Warsaw Pact at the tactical or even the operational level of war. Our hugely powerful NATO military ground forces with dramatic air and sea superiority, and our gigantic western economic power, made it extremely unlikely that we would be forced to use nukes in the absence of an actual threat or use of nuclear weapons by the Russians. The Russians were also rational actors. They were chess players. They were pragmatic. They were realists. Thankfully, deterrence held until the Russian empire fell apart from internal contradictions.

The Israelis have no such safeguards. They are surrounded by a mass of potentially hostile states and populations who have clearly stated a commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state. These state and non-state actors are motivated by rage and religion, not by geostrategic and pragmatic calculations. If these potential enemy states were able in the coming decades to tactically mass their conventional forces, they could without question overwhelm the IDF, and force a nuclear response to an existential threat.  

20 GENERAL BARRY R. MCCAFFREY

There are clearly also real linkages of Israeli nuclear doctrine to US national security that remain unacceptably ambiguous and unexamined. In the coming decade, the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran will prompt a reluctant Israel and its US defense colleagues to make more explicit these complex linkages. Israel simply cannot live with the possibility of an Iranian first strike. It would represent the end of national life. The core strategic challenge for both Israel and the US in the coming decade is to make the possibility of the actual employment of nuclear weapons credible but remote. Within a decade, the Iranians will be a declared nuclear power with the delivery capability for a first strike on Israel and US military regional forces. This recognized capability will have terrible consequences. There will be huge security pressures for nuclear proliferation, and incentives to develop a Sunni Muslim nuclear deterrent to the Shia "Persian" threat.

A new Administration will soon take office in Washington. Hopefully, the incoming US President will remain committed as a core US national security principle to maintaining the freedom of a democratic, law based, and capitalistic Israeli state in the heart of the Middle East. This should be a US national security purpose based on both moral and international legal grounds, as well as on sheer US self-interest in preserving regional peace.

Israel has very little strategic, operational, or tactical room to negotiate. It can never absorb a coordinated conventional first-strike attack. It also simply cannot ever depend on international security guarantees or peace negotiations with its Arab neighbors for national survival. The hatred and public commitment to destroy Israel will not fade until several generations have passed – if ever.

Israel must maintain, as a first priority, a survivable sea-based nuclear deterrent. It must have a very credible air defense system based on missiles and lasers and energy weapons. It must continue to harden nuclear storage sites and land based delivery systems, to ensure the country can credibly survive a surprise attack by cyber, chemical, terrorist, or nuclear threats. Finally and most carefully, Israel must re-examine its currently ambiguous nuclear strategy, to make more explicit certain new principles most likely to achieve deterrence and maintain the peace, especially given the still-looming reality of Iran as a nuclear state.  

POST SCRIPT 21

The US and NATO can help in this process even while maintaining strong political and economic ties to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Gulf States. We must continue to skillfully engage diplomatically, and at a people-to-people level, throughout the region. The US should without question engage in a direct and continuing dialog with Iran. We may also require a more explicit US nuclear guarantee to our regional allies, until Iran legitimately joins the international security calculus as a genuinely peaceful partner. None of this will be easy. However, we stand on the precipice of a possible nuclear disaster in the Middle East if global security actors cannot recognize the requirement to contain nuclear proliferation and deter nuclear blackmail, or even an actual nuclear Armageddon. This new article by Professor Louis René Beres can help show the way. General Barry R McCaffrey (USA/ret.)  

…

Barry R. McCaffrey, General (USA/ret), was this country's most highly decorated serving general. For five years after leaving the military as a four-star, General McCaffrey served as the nation's Cabinet Officer in charge of U.S. drug policy. After leaving government service, he served as the Bradley Distinguished Professor of International Security Studies, and then as Adjunct Professor of International Security Studies at the United States Military Academy, West Point. General McCaffrey is a graduate of West Point; he also earned an MA from American University, and attended Harvard's National Security Program. Significantly, from the standpoint of the subject of this article by Professor Beres, General McCaffrey was awarded the State Department's SuperiorHonor Award in 1992, for the principal negotiation team for the Start II Nuclear Arms Control Treaty. General McCaffrey was twice awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and twice the Silver Star, for valor…

https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf

A nuclear war could "sometimes happen"

An analysis of Israel's doctrinal imperatives. Israel’s objective should always be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.

BY Prof. Louis René Beres

Oct 6, 2023, 8:47 AM (GMT+3)

ReLink to Article - Israel National  From <https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377976>

“The worst does sometimes happen.” - Friedrich Durrenmatt, Swiss playwright

In separate but interdependent parts of the world, a nuclear war is conceivable and more-or-less probable. Nonetheless, ascertaining any precise or usable hierarchy of probabilities would be impossible. In logic and science, such judgments are indeterminable for unique events.

Always.

In the Middle East or anywhere else, a nuclear war would be sui generis, a unique event. By definition, it would lie beyond any reliable judgments of probability. Still, Israel's nuclear weapons and doctrine must remain integral to the country’s survival. This calculation is especially credible today because of growing prospects for a nuclear war involving Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea, Pakistan or Iran. Even if the nuclear war threshold were first crossed elsewhere, the glowing portents of any such unprecedented conflict would be universal.

In the early 1950s, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, understood the need for an "equalizer" to secure his vulnerable country’s safety in a world of traditional anarchy and prospective chaos. Even without an exact science of prediction, Ben Gurion recognized that appropriate nuclear assets could prove indispensable to national survival. Ironically, as the term has evolved in this Middle Eastern geopolitical context, “appropriate” means a nuclear military capacity that is not necessarily too destructive (i.e., not expressly oriented to threats of “massive retaliation”) and that is “deliberately ambiguous.”

There is more. No category of weapons is powerful per se. Rather, all weapons of war, even nuclear ones, must be informed by task-suitable strategies and tactics. How, then, should Israel’s “bomb in the basement” be "used?" Whatever answers might be offered, any such complex task should be viewed by Israeli policy planners and decision-makers as an intellectual one. Whatever its national nuclear doctrine, Israel’s objective should always be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.

In the atomic era’s “good old days,” when Americans and Soviets were busily defining a narrowly bipolar Cold War nuclear strategy ex nihilo, out of nothing, Israel had nowhere to turn for history-based policy guidance. What Jerusalem did understand, from the start, is that nuclear ordnance can succeed only through certain calibrated policies of intentional non-use. This seemingly paradoxical understanding represented a contemporary reaffirmation of classical Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu in the Art of War: "Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."

Sun. Tzu’s ancient observation is just another way of describing military deterrence in general; that is, as a national security posture by which specified adversaries can be reliably discouraged from striking first. Deterrence only works to the extent that prospective aggressors are able to calculate that the expected costs of striking first will exceed expected gains. For the most part, this reasoning relates to all manner of violent conflict.

There are assorted policy prerequisites. Israel’s designated adversaries must always be considered rational and must usually be nation-states. At times, however, these states could operate in tandem with other states (alliance) or terror groups (hybrid). As a foreseeable example, Israel's enemies could include sub-state foes preparing to targeting the Osiraq nuclear reactor with non-nuclear weapons.

For the present time, unless analysts were to consider Pakistan as an authentic national foe, Israel has no already-nuclear enemies. An unstable Islamic state, Pakistan is potentially subject to coup d'état by Jihadist elements and is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia. Non-Arab Iran leads a widening array of heavily armed Shiite proxies and militias. Significantly, Tehran supplies missiles to Yemen's Houthi Ansar al-Allah Shiite army, which previously fired them at Saudi cities.

At one level, Iran's missile strikes against ISIS and post-ISIS targets in eastern Syria represent a search for "escalation dominance" in the regional conflict between radical Shiites and Sunnis. Here, for the first time since the eight-year Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, Damascus used advanced solid fuel ballistic missiles. Over time, such escalations could unexpectedly include nuclear warheads, not against insurgent targets but against a formidable enemy state such as Saudi Arabia or Israel.

In these dialectical calculations, Israel must remain intellectually creative and conceptually well-prepared. For nuclear deterrence to work long-term, would-be aggressor states might need to be told more rather than less about (1) Israel's pertinent nuclear targeting doctrine; and (2) the expected invulnerability and penetration-capability of Israel’s nuclear forces. However counter-intuitive, this means that to best prepare for all plausible attack scenarios, Israel should plan conscientiously and conspicuously for the incremental replacement of "deliberate ambiguity" with certain apt levels of "nuclear disclosure."[1]

Though the only true and continuous purpose of Israel’s nuclear weapons should be deterrence at variously foreseeable levels of military destructiveness, there will still remain residual circumstances under which Israeli nuclear deterrence could fail. How might such circumstances actually arise? Four principal though not mutually exclusive scenarios should come immediately to mind.

(1) Nuclear Retaliation

Should an enemy state or alliance of enemy states ever launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel, Jerusalem would respond, assuredly, and to whatever extent possible, with a nuclear retaliatory strike. If enemy first-strikes were to involve other available forms of unconventional weapons, such as chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Israel might then still launch a nuclear reprisal. This grave decision would depend, in large measure, upon Jerusalem's informed expectations of any follow-on enemy aggression and on its associated calculations of comparative damage-limitation.

If Israel were to absorb a massive conventional attack, a nuclear retaliation could not automatically be ruled out, especially if: (a) the state aggressors were perceived to hold nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons in reserve; and/or (b) Israel's leaders were to believe that non-nuclear retaliations could not prevent annihilation of the state. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out only in those rapidly discernible circumstances where enemy state aggressions were clearly conventional, "typical" (that is, consistent with all previous instances of attack, in both degree and intent) and hard-target oriented (that is, directed towards Israeli weapons and related military infrastructures rather than its civilian populations).

(2) Nuclear Counter retaliation

Should Israel ever feel compelled to preempt enemy state aggression with conventional weapons, the target state(s)' response would largely determine Jerusalem's next moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, Israel would doubtlessly turn to some available form of nuclear counter retaliation. If this retaliation were to involve other non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, Israel could also feel pressed to take the escalatory initiative. Again, this decision would depend upon Jerusalem's judgments of enemy intent, and upon its corollary calculations of essential damage-limitation.

Should the enemy state response to Israel's preemption be limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that decision-makers would then move to any nuclear counter retaliations. If, however, the enemy conventional retaliation was "all-out" and directed toward Israeli civilian populations as well as to Israeli military targets, an Israeli nuclear counter retaliation could not be excluded. Such a counter retaliation could be ruled out only if the enemy state's conventional retaliation were identifiably proportionate to Israel's preemption; confined to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by the legal limits of "military necessity;" and accompanied by explicit and verifiable assurances of non-escalatory intent.

(3) Nuclear Preemption

It is implausible that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Although circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would be both perfectly rational, and permissible under authoritative international law,[2] it is unlikely that Israel would ever allow itself to reach such irremediably dire circumstances. Moreover, unless the nuclear weapons involved were usable in a fashion still consistent with longstanding laws of war, this most extreme form of preemption could represent an expressly egregious violation of international law.

Even if such consistency were possible, the psychological/political impact on the entire world community would be strongly negative and far-reaching. This means that an Israeli nuclear preemption could conceivably be expected only: (a) where Israel's pertinent state enemies had acquired nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction judged capable of annihilating the state; (b) where these enemies had made it clear that their intentions paralleled their genocidal capabilities; (c) where these enemies were believed ready to begin an operational "countdown to launch;" and (d) where Jerusalem believed that Israeli non-nuclear preemptions could not achieve the needed minimum levels of damage-limitation - that is, levels consistent with physical preservation of the state.

(4) Nuclear War fighting

Should nuclear weapons ever be introduced into any actual conflict between Israel and its many enemies, either by Israel, or by a regional foe, nuclear war fighting, at one level or another, could ensue. This would hold true so long as: (a) enemy first-strikes would not destroy Israel's second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy the Jewish State's nuclear counter retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy enemy state second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for conventional first-strikes would not destroy the enemy's nuclear counter retaliatory capability.

This means that in order to satisfy its most fundamentals survival imperatives, Israel must take appropriate steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b) above, and the simultaneous unlikelihood of (c) and (d).

A nuclear war involving Israel is conceivable. Israel’s corresponding responsibility is to prepare prudently and systematically for all corollary contingencies, even when any such express preparation would appear intolerably expensive, operationally daunting and diplomatically disquieting. For Israel, national survival in the nuclear age must always be about what ancient Greeks and Macedonians described as the struggle of "mind over mind," not merely one of "mind over matter."

For Israel, a tiny country without reassuring strategic depth, the most primary and consequential "battlefield" will always be analytical.

Retrospectively, if all goes according to plan, there will have been diligent strategic considerations of enemy rationality as well as tangible shifts from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure. Without meeting such increasingly urgent intellectual prerequisites, a catastrophic conflict, whether nuclear, biological and/or conventional, could become more than conceivable. It could become unavoidable.

“The worst does sometimes happen.”

Louis René Bereswas educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books, monographs, and articles dealing with Israeli nuclear strategy. Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, he has lectured on this topic for almost fifty years at leading universities and academic centers for strategic studies. Dr. Beres' twelfth book, Israel's Nuclear Strategy: Surviving amid Chaos, was published by Rowman and Littlefield, in 2016 (2nd ed., 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy

In December 2016, Professor Beres authored a monograph at Tel-Aviv University (with a special postscript by retired USA General Barry McCaffrey), Israel's Nuclear Strategy and American National Security. https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf During 2003-2004, he was Chair of “Project Daniel” (PM Ariel Sharon). Dr. Louis René Beres was born in Zürich, Switzerland at the end of World War II.

Foonotes:

[1] See, by this author: Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Lexington Books, 1986); and Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018). See also: Louis René Beres, "Changing Direction? Updating Israel's Nuclear Doctrine," INSS Israel, Strategic Assessment, Vol. 17, No.3., October 2014, pp. 93-106; and Louis René Beres, Looking Ahead: Revising Israel's Nuclear Ambiguity in the Middle East, Herzliya Conference Policy Paper, Herzliya Conference, March 11-14, 2013, Herzliya, Israel.

[2] See the 1996 Advisory Opinion on Nuclear Weapons, by the U.N.'s International Court of Justice.

From <https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377976>

 "NATO's Role in Confronting International Terrorism,"

Richard A. Clarke, Barry R. McCaffrey, and C. Richard Nelson, "NATO's Role in Confronting International Terrorism," June 2004: [database on-line]; available from Columbia

International Affairs Online (CIAO); accessed 30 January 2005

 https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA432200.pdf

TITLE: Expanding NATO Membership to Israel and the Middle East

FORMAT: Strategy Research Project

AUTHOR: Lieutenant Colonel Wesley James Jennings

DATE: 18 March 2005 PAGES: 31 CLASSIFICATION: Unclassified

Abstract

This paper proposes a new Middle East initiative to expand permanent North Atlantic treaty Organization (NATO) membership to the States of Israel and Jordan and the establishment of NATO protectorate status for an interim Palestinian government. 

The death of Yasser Arafat provides an opportunity for a completely new approach to address the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is the single biggest source of anti-American moral support for Islamic extremists in the Muslim world and foreign policy discontent among traditional US friends and allies. Reversing the growing anti-Americanism trend is necessary to win the war on terrorism. The US challenge is to orchestrate an end to the conflict between Israel and an interim Palestinian government while at the same time maintaining Israel's long term security needs. 

In much the same way that post-World War II France and Germany and Cold War Greece and Turkey were bound together through NATO membership, Israel, Jordan and potentially Palestine in the future would be bound together through permanent and probationary membership to NATO. Expanding NATO membership to the region would be difficult and require NATO members to commit actual forces to the establishment of an interim Palestinian state and a long term presence in defense of Israel proper. Israeli acceptance of NATO membership would require acceptance of a sovereign Palestinian State, a substantial West Bank withdrawal, and a change to Israel's long standing policy of not relying on others for its internal defense. NATO expansion would be an effective counter to Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferation. This NATO defense umbrella would provide an overwhelming deterrence to region conflict and Iranian nuclear ambitions. The end state would be a stabilized Middle East acquired through NATO co-binding.  

VITAL INTERESTS

To properly frame the issue it is necessary to clearly identify vital and important regional United States interest. Today there are essentially five interests vital to the United States. They are:

1. the war on terrorism,

2. weapons of mass destruction (WMD) nonproliferation,

3. regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan,

4. regional access to oil, and

5. the security of Israel.

While it can be argued that regime change in Afghanistan is but a by-product of the first interest, and regime change in Iraq is linked to both WMD nonproliferation and the war on terrorism, there can be no question that both of these meet the vital interest threshold in terms of national power committed.6 It remains to be seen whether spreading democracy will be elevated to the status of US vital interest. Most recently President George W. Bush's 2005 State of the Union address, calling for political, social, and economic Middle East reforms, may be the start of a policy change, one in which the United States is willing to commit significant time, resources, and power towards achieving. 7 If so, NATO membership and the institutional order, security, and stability it entails becomes especially attractive. 

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA432200.pdf

Louis Rene Beres - Pursue University Professor

Professor Emeritus // Political Science

Emeriti Faculty

Curriculum vitae

Office and Contact

Email: lberes@purdue.edu

From <https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/louis-beres.html>

specialization

International Relations

Louis René Beres lectures and publishes widely on matters of terrorism, strategy and international law. The author of several early books on nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, he is closely involved with Israeli security issues, and was Chair of "Project Daniel," a group advising Israel's Prime Minister on existential nuclear questions. The group's final report, Israel's Strategic Future, had been the subject of several dozen editorial columns in some of the world's leading magazines and newspapers. Professor Beres' most recent articles have appeared in International Security (Harvard); The Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; Parameters; Journal of the U.S Army War College; Oxford University Press; and the Brown Journal of World Affairs. His opinion columns are published regularly in The Jerusalem Post; Ha'aretz (Israel); The New York Times; Los Angeles Times; Chicago Tribune; U.S. News & World Report; The Hill (U.S. Congress); Washington Times; and The Atlantic.

Selected Publications

Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 315 pp.

Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), 161 pp. (2nd ed., 1987).

Security or Armageddon: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1986), 242 pp.

From <https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/louis-beres.html>

Louis René Beres - Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Louis René Beres is emeritus professor of political science and international law at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He was born on August 31, 1945, in Zürich, Switzerland, and earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1971. Beres has written many books and currently also writes editorials for various major newspapers and magazines.

Research

Beres has written twelve books and several hundred scholarly articles and monographs. He also lectures widely on matters of terrorism, strategy and international law, including at such Israeli venues as the Dayan Forum (with Maj. Gen. Avihu Ben-Nun); the National Security College (IDF); the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies; The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (Bar-Ilan University); Likud Chamber; Likud Security Group; and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. As an expert on nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, he is closely involved with Israeli security issues at the highest levels. He was Chair of "Project Daniel," a group advising Israel's Prime Minister on existential nuclear questions. The group's final report, "Israel's Strategic Future",[1] has been discussed in major media.[2][3]

Other affiliations

In the United States, Beres has worked on matters of nuclear terrorism with Department of Defense agencies as the Defense Nuclear Agency and the JFK Special Warfare Center; with Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and with Nuclear Control Institute."[2]

He was a contributing expert to the Ariel Center for Policy Research [he]and is a regular contributor to Israel Defense (Tel Aviv).[4]

Popular writings

Beres' columns have appeared in such newspapers as The New York Times, Washington Times, Indianapolis Star, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Post (Israel), Arutz Sheva (Israel), Haaretz (Israel) and Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland).[2] He also writes for U.S. News & World Report, The National Interest, Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School), Yale Global Online (Yale University), and The Atlantic.

Beres was featured in a widely-reprinted debate with Shlomo Gazit (former Chief of IDF Intelligence Branch) on the "Middle East Peace Process." This debate appeared originally in Midstream magazine. The lead article in the prior month's Midstream was an article by Professor Beres titled: "The Argument for Israeli Nuclear Weapons."[2][3]

Publications

Surviving amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)

Force, Order and Justice: International Law in the Age of Atrocity (Transnational Pub., 1997)

Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), 161 pp. (2nd ed., 1987).

America Outside the World: The Collapse of U.S. Foreign Policy (Lexington, Mass. 1987, Lexington Books), 172 p.

Security or Armageddon: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass. 1986, Lexington Books), 242 pp.

Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass. 1984, Lexington Books), 143 pp.

Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass. 1983, Lexington Books), 142 pp.

Myths and Realities: US Nuclear Strategy (Muscatine, Iowa 1982, Stanley Foundation), 23 pp.

Nuclear Strategy and World Order: The United States Imperative ([New York] 1982, World Order Models Project), 52 pp.

People, States, and World Order (Itasca, Ill. 1981, F.E. Peacock Publishers), 237 pp.

Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago and London 1980, The University of Chicago Press), 315 pp. (2nd ed., 1982).

Planning Alternative World Futures: Values, Methods, and Models edited by Louis René Beres, Harry R. Targ. (New York 1975, Praeger) 312 pp. (2nd ed., 1977).

Transforming World Politics: The National Roots of World Peace (Denver 1975, University of Denver), 51 pp.

The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis (Denver 1973, University of Denver), 93 pp.

Like Two Scorpions in a Bottle: Could Israel and Nuclear Iran coexist in the Middle East . Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, VIII:1, 23-32

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Ren%C3%A9_Beres>

CASEY CIRCUMVENTED THE CIA IN '85 ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

By Haynes Johnson September 26, 1987

washingtonpost.com

While he was director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William J. Casey circumvented normal CIA channels and personally arranged for the Saudi Arabian intelligence service to undertake three covert operations, including a Middle East assassination attempt that went awry, killing 80 innocent people when a car bomb exploded in a Beirut suburb March 8, 1985, according to a book by Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward.

According to the book, the other operations that Casey arranged through Saudi King Fahd and his ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, were actions to help Chad oppose invasion by Libya and to frustrate the electoral ambitions in Italy of the communist party in the May 1985 elections.

DIRTY SPYOPS OUTSOURCED TO ISRAEL & SAUDIA ARABIA

The Saudis put up $15 million to finance these three "off-the-books" covert actions, according to Woodward's book.

The assassination attempt was aimed at Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the leader of the Shiite Moslem faction known as the "Party of God," or Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Fadlallah was believed by U.S. and Saudi intelligence to be connected with three bombings of American facilities in Beirut, Woodward writes in the book, "VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987." Veil was the code name at that time for the covert action "compartment" in the Reagan administration.

BOTCHED ASSASSINATION--BRIBERY

When the assassination attempt went awry, the Saudis -- with Casey's blessing -- persuaded Fadlallah to stop the car bombings of American and other Western targets in Beirut by bribing him with $2 million in food, university scholarships for his followers and other goods, according to the book. Casey was "astounded" that "such a comparatively small amount of money could solve so giant a problem," Woodward reports.

Casey's secret arrangement with the Saudis to go after Fadlallah grew out of his desire to create a preemptive antiterrorist capability for the United States. At first Casey sought to do this inside the CIA, but his deputy at the time, career CIA employe John N. McMahon, opposed the idea on grounds that it brought the agency too close to assassination, which President Reagan by executive order had expressly banned, Woodward reports. (The CIA had come under intense congressional criticism in the mid-1970s for engaging in controversial covert activities including several assassination plots.)

Woodward's 511-page book will be published next week. Two of six excerpts from it will appear in Sunday's Washington Post, one on the front page and one in The Washington Post Magazine; the remaining four excerpts will begin on the front page Monday through Thursday. Woodward is The Post's assistant managing editor for investigations.

According to Woodward, Casey took the CIA directorship in 1981 only after he was passed over for secretary of state and secretary of defense in the new administration, but quickly realized that he could accomplish his foreign policy goals in his role of director of central intelligence with overall responsibility for all U.S. intelligence agencies.

Casey is portrayed as having been motivated by a desire to "win" back at least one country under Soviet domination. He soon became frustrated with the inertia and resistance that he found at the CIA, which Casey saw as demoralized and still reeling from the earlier congressional investigations, the book reports.

The Casey that emerges from the book is a complex figure. Part buccaneer, part loyal friend, part student of history, part ardent anticommunist, Casey was a "common man with uncommon wealth" and someone who "showed a hundred different faces to a hundred different worlds," Woodward writes.

Woodward's book does not resolve many of the questions about Casey's role in the Iran-contra affair, nor add new information on Reagan's involvement; it includes many revelations that help establish a context for the story of secret endeavors that unfolded this summer before the Iran-contra congressional investigating committees and after Casey died of cancer and pneumonia last May 6.

The three covert actions undertaken by the Saudis at Casey's behest, including the assassination attempt against Fadlallah and the subsequent successful effort to bribe him, appear to exemplify the "off-the-shelf, self-sustaining, stand-alone" capability to conduct unaccountable secret operations that Casey discussed with Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, according to the former National Security Council aide's congressional testimony this summer.

In 1985, Woodward and staff writer Charles R. Babcock wrote an article in The Post that described the attempt to assassinate Fadlallah as a "runaway mission" that grew out of a CIA operation to train Lebanese units to conduct "preemptive strikes" against terrorists. At that time, the writers did not know about the Saudi role.

Although Casey had a reputation for being secretive, Woodward discloses that he had more than four dozen interviews and conversations with Casey from 1983 to 1987. Woodward writes that he never understood why Casey talked with him, and at one point quotes Casey as saying, "Everyone always says more than they are supposed to."

Their last conversation took place in Casey's room in the Georgetown University Hospital here, several weeks after Casey had undergone surgery for the brain tumor that led to his death. Woodward asked Casey whether he had known of the diversion of profits from U.S. arms sales to Iran to aid the Nicaraguan contras.

Casey nodded affirmatively.

Woodward then asked Casey "Why?"

"I believed," the gravely ill Casey replied. Then he fell asleep.

The book also describes how the administration became obsessed with terrorism and threats of violence from the first months of Reagan's presidency when Reagan was wounded in a March 1981 assassination attempt by John W. Hinckley Jr.

That attempt on Reagan's life had a greater impact on official attitudes than is generally understood, according to Woodward's account, because Reagan came closer to death, and had a more difficult time recuperating, than the public realized at the time.

While the picture presented to the public by the president and his aides was one of a remarkable recovery, officials at the White House worried that Reagan might not be physically able to retake command.

Woodward portrays Casey as aggressively pushing the CIA into ever-expanding secret and paramilitary worldwide operations, often in the face of strong internal agency dissent and with the clear intent to circumvent congressional oversight even if it meant "cooking the books" and distorting intelligence information. The House and Senate select intelligence committees long suspected Casey of some of these activities; Woodward's book raises many questions about the effectiveness of congressional oversight.

The book also raises new questions about what other secret activities were occurring while Casey ran the CIA and what else might still be operational. Woodward writes that he was only able to learn a fraction of the story of Casey's secret activities.

BUGGING FOREIGN LEADER'S OFFICE

Among the other disclosures in the book:Casey personally planted an electronic "bug" in a foreign leader's office, according to several CIA officials. Although one senior official described the incident as "apocryphal," Woodward writes that he asked Casey about it and that "he glowered dramatically when I mentioned the name of the country and the official and said that that should never, never be repeated or published." The Reagan administration misled Congress about the justification for its support of the Nicaraguan contras who were fighting the government of Nicaragua. Initially, the administration program was designed to interdict arms shipments from the Sandinistas to leftist rebels in El Salvador. But the support continued after the arms shipments ceased and the true purpose of the program emerged: to overthrow the Sandinistas.

iRAN-CONTRA- CIA ROGUE DIRECTOR CASEY CUTS STAFF OUT OF COVERT OPERATIONS

Later, at a time when the administration secretly maintained that its covert support of the contras was intended only to interdict the export of arms from Nicaragua, the CIA had a military plan "to split Nicaragua in half" with invading forces moving north and south and linking up after traversing 200 miles of Nicaraguan territory. Casey's first deputy director of central intelligence, Adm. Bobby R. Inman, an intelligence professional with broad support on Capitol Hill, quit his job early in 1982 because Casey cut him out of the contra operation and refused to answer his questions about it. Casey also hid details of the contra operation from Inman's successor, CIA career officer McMahon, who retired from the agency in 1986.

After he was elected president of Lebanon in 1982, Bashir Gemayel "secretly asked the CIA to provide him covert security and intelligence assistance," and Reagan approved an intelligence "finding" authorizing such support. Woodward states that Gemayel, who was assassinated before taking office, "had been recruited by the CIA when he came to the U.S. in the early 1970s to work for a Washington law firm" and remained for many years on the CIA payroll. CIA records show that "at one point $100,000 had been passed" to the government of Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica, the small Caribbean island that played a key role in the October 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada. Charles joined Reagan in the White House briefing room on the morning after the invasion, staunchly defending the operation after the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, which she headed, requested U.S. intervention in Grenada. Woodward reports that Charles denied to him that she knew of any such payment.

 THEORY T- RUSSIANS ARE BEHIND GLOBAL TERRORISM (new bogeyman required after end of Cold War e.g. "Islamic Terrorism"_

Casey was deeply influenced by a book on terrorism, written by journalist Claire Sterling, which argued that the Soviet Union was behind much of the terrorist activity in the world. Sterling's thesis was discredited by the CIA's internal, secret reports, but the fact that the government had concluded that "the Soviets were not the hidden hand behind international terrorism" was never made public, according to the book. One of the biggest CIA facilities outside the United States is located in Cairo, and the CIA had "the Egyptian government wired electronically and had agents from top to bottom." Woodward writes that Anwar Sadat, the slain Egyptian leader, worked closely with the CIA and at times treated the director of central intelligence "like a case officer." In 1983, the CIA was running about 12 "security and intelligence assistance operations," ranging in cost from $300,000 to more than a $1 million annually, to perserve the governments of such leaders as deposed Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and former Sudan president Jaafar Nimeri. 

CIA DIRECT SPENDS ON DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS

Casey greatly expanded the CIA's covert budget for propaganda operations, providing money secretly to foreign newspapers, think tanks and institutions as well as funding "to keep a few European writers in readiness." He was instrumental in arranging for $25,000 to be secretly funneled through a private U.S. foundation to help the Roman Catholic Church in Nicaragua, a project that was canceled after Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), then vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, learned about it and protested strongly. Three months of intelligence reports in the fall of 1981 citing Libyan threats to assassinate Reagan and other senior U.S. officials created a frenzied atmosphere in the CIA and at the White House, leading the president to order that military contingency plans be developed. The CIA later determined that many of the reports came from sources "whose credibility is open to question" and that the reports "may have been generated because informants are aware that we are seeking this information." 

INTERNAL LEAK RESULTS IN RUSSIANS FINDING NAVY UNDERWATER COMM CABLE & TAPPING IT

The embarrassing revelations of 1985 -- "the year of the spy" -- were all preceded by warnings the government could not or did not heed. In the late 1970s intelligence officers on the staff of Adm. Isaac C. Kidd, then commander of the Atlantic Fleet, wrote a report concluding that Soviet reactions to U.S. fleet exercises showed they were reading the U.S. Navy's classified message traffic, but nothing was done until the John Walker spy ring was discovered in 1985. 

A secret Navy report in 1982 concluded that the Soviets' discovery of a tap on an underwater communications cable had to have been the result of information provided by a human source, but this was ignored until the spying of Ronald W. Pelton at the National Security Agency was discovered in 1985. Similarly, the book reports, the CIA station chief in Moscow cabled Washington in 1984 about alarming Soviet successes against agency operations in the Soviet Union, events that were only understood when the betrayals of former CIA agent Edward Lee Howard, who fled to Moscow, were discovered in 1985. Congress also had counterintelligence problems, according to the book. 

SENATOR GOLDWATER'S OFFICE BUGGED

Two bugs were discovered in the office of then-Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) when he was chairman of the intelligence committee. U.S. security personnel did twice-weekly sweeps of Goldwater's office but were unable to determine who had planted the devices.

The book also describes how Casey became increasingly anxious to go beyond normal channels to carry out operations, often by turning to "friendly" Saudi and Israeli intelligence services.

"We have a chance to establish our own foreign policy," Casey is said to have remarked privately to another official, in a comment that echoes public criticisms made later about him by congressional investigators. "We're on the cutting edge. We are the action agency of the government."

"As much as anybody's, even the president's, Casey's convictions, fierce loyalties and obsessions were behind the contra operation, the Iran initiative and the range of other secret undertakings and clandestine relations," Woodward writes. "His view of the law -- minimum compliance and minimum disclosure -- had permeated the Reagan foreign policy enterprises. His ambition had been to prove that his country could do 'these things,' as he once told me. He meant covert actions conducted in true, permanent secrecy. It was part nostalgia. It was also part demonstration of willfulness."

Woodward's book describes numerous incidents in which members of Congress knew -- or suspected -- many details of secret operations but did nothing about them, either because they thought their hands were tied by pledges of secrecy or lack of interest, or will.

It also describes high-level maneuverings and hard-ball bargaining sessions between administration officials and the press, especially The Washington Post. The incidents describe soul-searching on both sides over the conflicts between "national security" and the responsibility of publishing in the public interest.

Woodward's book leaves many questions unanswered. One has to do with Casey himself. Woodward writes: "We talked at his house, at his office, on plane rides, in corners at parties, or on the phone. At times he spoke freely and outlined his views. At other times he declined. Overall, I was able to obtain his perspective on the major intelligence topics discussed in this book . . . . He rarely was willing to be identified by name or as a source for my newspaper writing. He also knew I was gathering information for this book on his CIA, and on a number of occasions he stipulated that information was not to appear in the next day's newspaper but was for the book."

Why would Casey, who viewed the press as an adversary, if not enemy, do that? Woodward doesn't know, but speculates. Perhaps it was Casey's way of "playing defense" or of "shaping the story." Perhaps he was prompted by considerations of personal curiosity.

In a "Note to Readers," Woodward acknowledges that his account of Casey's tenure might not square with the way Casey saw it.

"Casey thought of himself as a historian," Woodward writes. "In fairness to him, I am sure that if he had lived to write his own account, this is not the way he would tell it. He would disagree vehemently with me, as he often did while he was alive. I, nonetheless, am certain he would recognize all or nearly all of what is assembled here."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/09/26/casey-circumvented-the-cia-in-85-assassination-attempt/9ab3a408-fce1-43e5-8ff1-d498950101ec/