Managing Nuclear Threats: President Biden’s Primary Policy Imperative

“It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.”

Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Spirit and the Poets (1917)

In the final analysis, nuclear war avoidance is always an intellectual problem. It is also a problem that  needs to be confronted together with certain other major global challenges, especially terrorism, inequality, pandemic and climate change. These “other” challenges ought never to be minimized or dismissed out of hand. Significantly, they may sometimes engage synergistically with nuclear security threats, circumstances in which the calculable “whole” of deleterious effects would become substantially greater than the presumptive sum of its disparate “parts.” 

During the rancorous Trump years, a corrosive era of cascading intellectual incoherence, serious suggestions of scientific strategic assessment were routinely brushed aside at the White House. These dismissals, generally uttered by variously ill-suited and obsequious political appointees, were accompanied by demeaning gestures of casual unconcern. During these  years, US national security positions and problems were cast by Trump in narrowly ad hominem terms; always, they were founded upon plainly senseless appeals to passion, coercion or brute force.

From the standpoint of disciplined logic, such crude appeals exhibited, inter alia, a number of formal fallacies. Most conspicuous was the core error in correct reasoning known for centuries as the argumentum ad bacculum. From the very start of his dissembling presidency, Trump willfully compounded this egregious and potentially irremediable logical error.

Relevant examples abound. America’s extant nuclear adversary in North Korea? “No problem,” Americans were reassured by trump’s June 12, 2018 summit meeting with Kim Jung Un. All salient issues had already been settled conveniently and conclusively in just a few hours of “togetherness.”

“We fell in love” had been Trump’s succinct explanation at the Singapore hotel.

The most difficult element to explain about this absurdist presidential response was not the starkly contrived Trumpian reassurance, but the fact that Americans in general did not object to such evident nonsense. What ought to have been expected from a civilized American democracy in such troubling circumstances was not some viscerally deferential approval of presidential fiat, but rather more immediate howls of public incredulity. “How,” Americans should have then queried, “can we reasonably be expected to accept political gibberish as truth?”

What sort response was an American president’s allegation of requited love? We really all ought to have known, right away, that such a bewildering problem as nuclear war avoidance can never be remediable  by improving personal leadership relationships. Where were the plausible American howls of disbelief?

Today, with greater attention to applicable analytic and intellectual factors, we must all look determinedly forward. What happens next, now that the United States has a new and more capable president, one who is apt to replace injurious bravado and stultifying banalities with serious intellectual thought? For the moment, what matters  most are not the variously identifiable and tangible answers given to this question, but rather the simple fact that key questions are at last being raised.

Still, an initial and partial answer can be offered. It is time for Americans to be reminded that the core problems of decisional  uncertainty in world politics are deeply structural and correspondingly psychological. Ipso facto, these are analytic or intellectual problems. They will not submit to a particular president’s preferred political doggerel about “attitude” being better than “preparation.”

From the start, regarding strategic matters concerning North Korea, former US President Donald J. Trump made no discernible intellectual sense. Openly, unambiguously, he sought that worrisome country’s “denuclearization,” an unrealistic objective that made no policy sense at the time and makes even less policy sense today. It follows, among many other things, that Joe Biden will need to identify more credible and achievable goals in this and other prospectively volatile theatres of conflict. More generally, he will need to safeguard our anarchic and already fragile world political system from a rapidly emerging chaos and against ever-growing nuclear perils.

Corollary Obligations of Science and Mathematics

Regarding various indispensable responsibilities of world peace and global stabilization, strategic thinkers will need to remind the current American president of two pertinent and always-interrelated dimensions of danger: probability and disutility. The first mentioned dimension concerns issues of presumed likelihood. The second deals with presumed degree of physical suffering and lingering harms. Dealing with the first dimension must inevitably be sorely problematic by definition. In science and mathematics, true probabilities must always be based upon the discernible frequency of relevant past events. Yet, on the overriding issue of a nuclear war, as already noted above, there have been no relevant past events.

There is more. From the standpoint of Pyongyang, denuclearization would necessarily represent an irrational option.  For Kim Jung Un,  getting rid of his extant atomic arms and infrastructures must remain contrary to North Korea’s most basic security requirements. In June 2020, exactly two years after the Singapore Summit, Kim’s Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon announced that any earlier expressed hopes for accommodation with then President Trump had “shifted into  despair” and that any plausible prior reasons for optimism had “faded away into a dark nightmare.”

North Korea is not Joe Biden’s only adversarial nuclear problem. For the United States, Iran also represents a compellingly pertinent hazard. This assessment obtains, though Iran is not yet nuclear. 

Why?

Iran remains capable of fighting a massive conventional conflict against Israel, America’s principal Middle Eastern ally. Conceivably, Tehran could sometime prod the United States to consider using its nuclear forces on presumed behalf of Israel. At the same time, certain Sunni Arab states increasingly worried about an impending “Persian bomb” could sometime seek to obtain a suitably countervailing nuclear capacity for themselves.  Egypt and Saudi Arabia should most immediately come to mind.

What happens next? What complex intersections or synergies might actually arise involving Iran and Israel? And what might be the concurrent effects of “plague” (Covid19 pandemic) upon some or all of the pertinent “players?” In  essence, however the plausible conflict scenarios might be configured, all of these foreseeable prospects are unprecedented and all portend unprecedented outcomes.

Fully continuous US policy attention should also be directed toward ongoing nuclear developments in Russia and China. As we are arguably in the midst of a second Cold War, a condition of tacit belligerence that was exacerbated by Trump Administration withdrawals from several core nuclear arms control agreements, ongoing and escalating Russian and Chinese developments define a strategic background for encouraging other nuclear  developments in Pyongyang and Tehran.

“Cold War II” represents a comprehensive systemic structure within which virtually all contemporary world politics could be meaningfully categorized and properly assessed. Current “Great Power” dispositions to war, however they might most usefully be ascertained, offer auspicious analytic background for still-wider nuclear interactions.

What next? Planning ahead, what explanatory theories and scenarios could best guide the Biden administration in its multiple and foreseeable interactions with North Korea, Iran, China and Russia? Before answering this many-sided question with conceptual clarity and adequate specificity, a “correct” answer – any correct answer – will depend upon a more considered awareness of intersections and overlaps. Accordingly, some of these intersections and overlaps will be synergistic. By definition therefore, the consequential “whole” of any one particular interaction will be greater than the simple sum of its constituent “parts.”

Going forward, the new American president’s advisors will have to consider one overarching assumption. This is the inherently problematic expectation of adversarial rationality. Depending upon the outcome of such consideration, the judgments they make about this will be decidedly different and more-or-less urgent.

It now follows further that a primary “order of business” for American strategic analysts and planners will be reaching informed judgments about each specified adversary’s determinable ordering of preferences. Unequivocally, only those adversaries who would value national survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences would be acting rationally.

But what about the others?

Further Questions and Answers

For scholars and policy-makers, further basic questions must now be considered. First, what are the operational meanings of relevant terminologies and/or vocabularies? In the formal study of international relations and military strategy, decisional irrationality never means quite the same as madness. Nonetheless, certain residual warnings about madness should still warrant serious US policy consideration. This is because both “ordinary” irrationality and full-scale madness could exert more-or-less comparable effects upon any examined country’s national security decision-making processes.

There is nothing here for the intellectually faint-hearted. This is not about “attitude” (the term Trump used to describe what he had regarded as most important to any negotiation ), but about fully science-based “preparation.”

Sometimes, for the United States, understanding and anticipating these ascertainable effects could display existential importance. In all such prospective considerations, words could matter a great deal. In normal strategic parlance, “irrationality” identifies a decisional foundation wherein national self-preservation is not summa, not the very highest and ultimate preference. This preference ordering would have decidedly significant policy implications.

An irrational decision-maker in Pyongyang, Tehran or elsewhere need not be determinably “mad” to become  troubling for policy analysts in Washington. Such an adversary would need “only” to be more conspicuously concerned about certain discernible preferences or values than about its own collective self-preservation. An example would be those preferences expressed for  feasible outcomes other than national survival.  Normally, any such national behavior would be unexpected and counter-intuitive, but it would still not be unprecedented or inconceivable. Identifying the specific criteria or correlates of any such considered survival imperatives could prove irremediably subjective and/or simply indecipherable.

Whether a particular American adversary were sometime deemed irrational or “mad,” US military planners would still have to input a generally similar calculation. Here, an analytic premise would be that the particular adversary “in play” might not be suitably deterred from launching a military attack by any American threats of retaliatory destruction, even where such threats would be fully credible and presumptively massive. Moreover, any such failure of US military deterrence could include both conventional and nuclear retaliatory threats.

In fashioning America’s nuclear strategy vis-à-vis nuclear and not-yet-nuclear adversaries, US military planners must include a mechanism to determine whether a designated adversary (e.g., North Korea or Iran) will more likely be rational or irrational. Operationally, this means ascertaining whether the identifiably relevant foe will value its collective survival (whether as sovereign state or organized terror group) more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences. Always, this early judgment must be based upon defensibly sound analytic or intellectual principles.

In principle, at least, it should never be affected in any tangible way by what particular analysts might themselves simply “want to believe.”

A further analytic distinction is needed here between inadvertent nuclear war and accidental nuclear war. By definition, an accidental nuclear war would be inadvertent, but reciprocally, an inadvertent nuclear war need not always be accidental. False warnings, for example, which could be spawned by mechanical, electrical or computer malfunction (or by hacking) would not signify the origins of inadvertent nuclear war. Conceptually, they would fit under the more clarifying narratives of accidental nuclear war.

Most worrisome, in such concerns, would be avoiding nuclear war caused by miscalculation. In striving for “escalation dominance,” competitive nuclear powers caught up with multiple bewildering complexities in extremis atomicum could sometime find themselves embroiled in an inadvertent nuclear exchange. Ominously, any such unendurable outcome could arise suddenly and irremediably, though neither side had actually wanted such a war.

Summing up such scenarios, in facing off against each other, even under optimal assumptions of  mutual rationality, both President Biden and President Kim Jung Un would have to concern themselves with all possible miscalculations, errors in information, unauthorized uses of strategic weapons, mechanical or computer malfunctions, and myriad assorted nuances of cyber-defense/cyber-war. In other words, even if both Biden and Kim were abundantly capable, humane and focused – a generous assumption, to be sure – northeast Asia might still descend rapidly toward some form or other of uncontrollable nuclear conflagration. If this dire prospect were not sobering enough, it is also reasonable to expect that the corresponding erasure of a once-universal nuclear taboo would heighten the likelihood of nuclear risk-taking and conflict in other parts of the globe, especially southwest Asia (e.g., Pakistan and India) and the Middle East (e.g., Israel and Iran).

Regarding the Middle East, there is nothing about the Trump-brokered “Abraham Agreements” that could significantly reduce risks of a regional nuclear war. To the contrary, the intended effect of these agreements to weaken Shiite Iran is apt to backfire in many palpable ways. At the same time, Israel never really did need to worry about suffering major war with Bahrain, Morocco or the United Arab Emirates. In essence, for Israel, the Abraham Agreements “put an end” only to nonexistent hazards.

Authentic Rationality and Pretended Irrationality

There is more. A corollary US obligation, depending in large part upon this prior judgment concerning enemy rationality, will expect strategic planners to assess whether a properly nuanced posture of  “pretended irrationality” could effectively enhance America’s nuclear deterrence posture. On several occasions, it should be recalled here, former President Donald Trump had openly praised at least the underlying premises of such an eccentric posture.

Was such presidential praise intellectually warranted and/or properly justified?

Ever?

It depends. US enemies continue to include both state and sub-state foes, whether considered singly or in variously assorted forms of collaboration. Such forms could be “hybridized” in different ways between state and sub-state adversaries. And in dealing with Washington, each recognizable class of enemies could sometime choose to feign irrationality.

In principle, this could represent a potentially clever strategy to “get a jump” on the United States in any expected or already-ongoing competition for “escalation dominance.”  Naturally, any such calculated pretense could also fail, perhaps calamitously. Cautionary strategic behavior based on serious conceptual thinking should always be the presidential “order of the day.”

There is something else. On occasion, these same enemies could “decide,” whether consciously or unwittingly, to actually be irrational.  In any such innately bewildering circumstances, it would then become incumbent upon American strategic planners to capably assess which basic form of irrationality – pretended or authentic – is actually underway. Thereafter, these planners would need to respond with a dialectically orchestrated and optimally counterpoised set of all possible reactions.

Once again, especially in purely intellectual terms, this would represent an uncommonly “tall order.”

In this critical context, the term “dialectically” (drawn originally from ancient Greek thought, especially Plato’s dialogues) must be used with very precise analytic meanings. This is suggested in order to signify a continuous or ongoing question-and-answer format of strategic reasoning. For President Biden and his counselors, nothing less will suffice.

By definition, any instance of enemy irrationality would value certain specific preferences (e.g., presumed religious obligations or personal and/or regime safety) more highly than collective survival. For America, as we have just seen, the grievously threatening prospect of facing some genuinely irrational nuclear adversary is prospectively most worrisome with regard to North Korea and (at least possibly, in a now rapidly closing future) Iran. Apropos of all such more-or-less credible apprehensions, it is unlikely that they could ever be meaningfully reduced solely by way of formal treaties or other law-based agreements.

Here, it would be well worth remembering seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ classic warning in Leviathan:  “Covenants, without the sword, are but words….” If this  traditional problem of global anarchy were not daunting enough for American strategists and decision-makers, it is further complicated by the largely unforeseeable effects of worldwide pandemic and, perhaps correspondingly, the opaque effects of any consequent chaos.

Conceptual clarifications are again in order. Chaos is not the same as anarchy. Chaos is “more than” anarchy. Indeed, we have lived with anarchy or the absence of central government in modern world politics since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, but we have yet to descend into any worldwide chaos.

There is more. Even in the midst of anarchy, there is law. Since the 17th century, international law has functioned according to an often indecipherable  “balance of power.” Furthermore, for an American president conversant with the Constitution, international law is integrally a part of United States law. When former President Trump actively sought to undermine the International Criminal Court, he was acting contrary to both overlapping and intersecting systems of law.

Preemption, Asymmetry and Strategic Dialectic

How should President Biden proceed with managing nuclear risks? At some point, at least in principle, the best option could even seem to be some sort of preemption; that is, a defensive non-nuclear first-strike directed against situationally appropriate North Korean or Iranian hard targets. In actuality, of course, it is already very late for launching any operationally cost-effective preemption against North Korea, and – even if it could somehow be properly defended in law as “anticipatory self-defense” – any such action would come at much-too-substantial human and political costs.

In more specific regard to current and potentially protracted US-Iran enmity, the American side must consider how its nuclear weapons could best be leveraged in any plausible war scenario. A rational answer here could never likely include any actual operational use of such weapons. The only pertinent questions for President Biden’s pertinent planners, therefore, should concern the calculable extent to which an asymmetrical US threat of nuclear escalation could sometime be made sufficiently credible.

By definition, as long as Iran should remain non-nuclear, any US nuclear threat would be asymmetrical.

By applying all available standards of reason and logic (there are, after all, no usable historical points of reference in such unprecedented situations), Biden could most suitably determine that certain nuclear threats against Iran would serve American security interests only when Iranian military capacities, though still non-nuclear, were convincingly overwhelming. Any such daunting scenario, though perhaps difficult to imagine ex nihilo, might nonetheless still be conceivable. This theory-based “strategic dialectic” holds most convincingly if Tehran were willing to escalate (a) to massive direct conventional attacks upon American territories or populations, and/or (b) to significant use of certain biological warfare capabilities.

Nowadays, in literally any matter of prospective biological warfare, it will  be worth noting that our planet is currently in the midst of a naturally-occurring biological “assault,” and that even in the complete absence of any specific adversarial animus or intent, the injurious consequences of plague are already at the outer limits of human tolerance.

  All this should now imply a primary obligation for the United States (c) to focus continuously on various incremental enhancements to its implicit nuclear deterrence posture; and (d) to develop a wide and nuanced range of credible nuclear retaliatory options. The specific rationale of (d) (above), is the counter-intuitive understanding that the credibility of nuclear threats could sometime vary inversely with perceived levels of destructiveness. In certain  foreseeable circumstances, this means that successful nuclear deterrence of Iran or even North Korea could depend upon nuclear weapons that are deemed sufficiently low-yield or “small.”

Sometimes, in fashioning a national nuclear deterrence posture, counter-intuitive strategic insight is duly “on the mark,” and therefore indispensable. This is likely one of these “multi-layered” times. When Donald Trump liked to remind his North Korean counterpart that though both may have a nuclear “button,” but that his is “bigger,” the former president displayed his wholesale unawareness of nuanced nuclear deterrent strategy.

  There is more. President Biden should continue to bear in mind that any US nuclear posture must remain focused on prevention rather than punishment. In any and all identifiable circumstances, using any portion of its available nuclear forces for vengeance rather than deterrence would miss the essential point; that is, to most fully optimize US national security. Any American nuclear weapons use that would be  based on narrowly corrosive notions of revenge, even if only as a residual or default option, would be glaringly irrational.

These are all complex intellectual issues, of course, not simply political ones. America’s many-sided nuclear deterrent must be backed up by recognizably robust systems of active defense (BMD), especially if there should arise any determinable reason to fear an irrational nuclear adversary. Although it is already well-known that no system of active defense can be entirely “leak-proof,” there is still good reason to suppose that certain BMD deployments could help safeguard both US civilian populations (soft targets) and American nuclear retaliatory forces (hard targets). This means that technologically advanced anti-missile systems must remain indefinitely as a steadily-modernizing component of this country’s core nuclear deterrence posture.

More precisely, among other elements of permissible self-defense, this suggests continuously expanding emphases on various laser-based weapon systems.

Deterrence, Defense and Mutual Vulnerability

While it may at  first sound annoyingly obvious, it must still be remembered that in the bewildering nuclear age, even seemingly defensive strategies could sometime be viewed by uneasy adversaries as offensive. This is because the secure foundation of any system of nuclear deterrence must always be some reasonable presumption of mutual vulnerability. “Everything is very simple in war,” says Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is still difficult.”

To progress in its most vital national security obligations in a complicating time of pandemic, President Biden’s military planners must more expressly identify the prioritized goals of this country’s nuclear deterrence posture. Before any rational adversary could be suitably deterred by an American nuclear deterrent, this enemy would first need to believe that Washington had capably maintained both the capacity to launch appropriate nuclear reprisals for relevant forms of aggression (nuclear and biological/non-nuclear) and the will to undertake such uniquely consequential firings.

About the first belief criterion, it would almost certainly lie far beyond any “reasonable doubt.”

The second expectation, however, could sometime prove problematic and thus more-or-less “fatally” undermine US nuclear deterrence. In assorted ways that are not yet clearly understood, the necessary national will could be impacted by pandemic-related or even pandemic-created factors. Significantly, too, there would be certain hard-to-foresee interactions or synergies taking place between US policy decisions and those of pertinent and overlapping American adversaries.

In more perplexing matters involving an expectedly irrational nuclear enemy, successful US deterrence would need to be based upon distinctly credible threats to certain enemy values other than national survival. Here, too, the actual prospect of enemy irrationality could be related to pandemic factors. In the most extreme cases, disease could play a tangible and determinative role in producing a particular enemy’s decisional irrationality.

These would be “uncharted waters.”

More typically, America will need  to demonstrate the continuously substantial invulnerability of its nuclear retaliatory forces to enemy first strike aggressions. It will remain in America’s long-term survival interests to continue to emphasize its variegated submarine-basing nuclear options. Otherwise, as is plainly reasonable to contemplate, America’s land-based strategic nuclear forces could potentially present to a strongly-determined existential enemy (e.g., North Korea) as “too-vulnerable.”

For the moment, this is not a significantly serious concern, though President Biden will want to stay focused on any still-planned deployment of submarines by America’s Israeli ally in the Middle East. The general point of any such secondary focus would be on strengthening Israeli nuclear deterrence, which – in one way or another – would be to the simultaneous strategic benefit of the United States. Israel’s own nuclear deterrence could be affected by assorted pandemic-related variables, including some with very serious reciprocal consequences for the United States.

Deterrence, Rationality and Diminished US Strategic Ambiguity

There is more. Increasingly, America will have to rely on a broadly multi-faceted doctrine of nuclear deterrence. In turn, like its already-nuclear Israeli ally, specific elements of this “simple but difficult” doctrine could sometime need to be rendered less “ambiguous.” This complex and finely nuanced modification will require an even more determined focus on prospectively rational and irrational enemies, including both national and sub-national foes.

To deal most successfully with its presumptively irrational or non-rational enemies, whether or not impacted by pandemic factors, this country will need to compose a continuously-updating strategic “playbook.” Here, it could become necessary for Biden to consider, at least on extraordinary occasion, policies of feigned irrationality. In such analytically-challenging cases, it would be important for the American president not to react in an ad hoc or “seat-of-the-pants” fashion to each and every new strategic development or eruption, but instead to derive or extrapolate all specific policy reactions from a suitably pre-fashioned and comprehensive strategic nuclear doctrine.

Without such a thoughtful doctrine as guide, pretended irrationality could quickly become a “double-edged sword,” effectively bringing more rather than less security harms to the United States. During the patently-unsteady Trump years, this dire prospect was always “in the wings.”

There is one penultimate but still critical observation.  It is improbable, but not inconceivable, that certain of America’s principal enemies would be neither rational nor irrational, but mad. While irrational decision-makers would already pose very special problems for US nuclear deterrence  – by definition, because these decision-makers would not value collective survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences – they might still be rendered susceptible to various alternate forms of deterrence.

Here, resembling  rational decision-makers, they could still maintain a fixed, determinable and “transitive” hierarchy of preferences. This means, at least in principle, that “merely” irrational enemies could still sometimes be successfully deterred.  This is an observation well worth further analytic study, especially at a time when sweeping disease effects remain both palpable and unexamined.

Mad or “crazy” adversaries, on the other hand, would have no such calculable hierarchy of preferences, and would not be subject to any strategy of American  nuclear deterrence. Although it would likely be worse for the United States to have to face a mad nuclear enemy than a “merely” irrational one, Washington would have no foreseeable choice in this sort of emergency. This country, like it or not, will need to maintain, perhaps indefinitely, a “three track” system of nuclear deterrence and defense, one track for each of its still-identifiable adversaries that are presumptively (1) rational (2) irrational  or (3) mad.

Again, this will not be task for narrowly political or intellectually averse US strategic decision-makers. Among other things, it will require a capable assessment of pertinent synergies, some of them distressingly subjective and biological. For the most notably unpredictable third track, special plans will also be needed for undertaking potentially indispensable preemptions, and, simultaneously, for certain corresponding/overlapping efforts at ballistic missile defense.

There is more. There could be no reliable assurances that any one “track” would consistently present exclusively of the others. This means, portentously, that American decision-makers could sometimes have to face deeply intersecting or interpenetrating tracks, and that these always-complicated simultaneities could be synergistic.

There is one final observation to be noted. Even if America’s military planners could reassuringly assume that enemy leaderships were fully rational, this would say nothing about the accuracy of the information used by these foes in making their own particular calculations. Always, it must never be forgotten, rationality refers only to the intention of maximizing certain designated preference or values. It says nothing about whether the information being used is actually correct or incorrect.

In this extraordinary time of global “plague,” any such intention – American or adversarial – could have pandemic-related determinants. At a minimum, this fact should be regarded as sobering to President Joe Biden and America’s national security decision-makers. For these officials, this should be a moment in history to disavow absolutely any wayward inclinations to hubris, that is, to excessive or overweening pride, and to accept, instead, a conspicuous abundance of prudential caution. Among other pertinent settings, one especially perilous place for such caution concerns all matters of a defensive first strike or preemption.

A further distinction is called for here. From the standpoint of international law, it is necessary to distinguish preemptive attacks from “preventive ones.” Preemption is a military strategy of striking first in the expectation that the only foreseeable alternative is to be struck first oneself.  A preemptive attack is launched by a state that believes enemy forces are about to attack.  A preventive attack, on the other hand, is not launched out of any genuine concern about “imminent” hostilities, but for fear of some longer-term deterioration in a pertinent military balance.

In a preemptive attack, the length of time by which the enemy’s action is anticipated is presumptively very short; in a preventive strike, the anticipated interval is considerably longer. A related problem here for the United States is not only the practical difficulty of ever accurately determining “imminence,” but also that delaying a defensive strike until imminence were appropriately ascertained could prove existential. Of course, at least in principle, a United States resort to “anticipatory self-defense” could be nuclear or non-nuclear, and could be directed at either a nuclear or non-nuclear adversary.

Prima facie, any such resort involving nuclear weapons on one or several sides could prove catastrophic.

Disutility, Probability and Miscalculation

America is not automatically made safer by having only rational adversaries. To wit, even fully rational enemy leaderships could sometimes commit serious errors in calculation that would lead them toward a nuclear confrontation and/or to nuclear/biological war. There are also certain related command and control issues that could impel a perfectly rational adversary or combination of rational adversaries (both state and sub-state) to embark upon various risky nuclear behaviors.

It follows that even the most pleasingly “optimistic” assessments of enemy leadership decision-making could never reliably preclude authentically catastrophic outcomes.

For the United States, understanding that no scientifically accurate judgments of probability can ever be made about unique events (again, by definition, any nuclear exchange would be sui generis, or precisely such a unique event), the very best lessons for America’s current president should favor a determined decisional prudence and a deliberate posture of humility. Of special interest, in this connection, is the always erroneous presumption that having greater nuclear military power than an adversary is automatically an assurance of some future bargaining or diplomatic success.

. Why? Among other things, this is because the tangible amount of deliverable nuclear firepower required for deterrence is necessarily much less than what could ever be required for “victory.” For President Joe Biden, this is a time for displaying nuanced and purposeful counter-intuitive wisdom in Washington, and not for clichéd presidential thinking. For the Biden administration, operating in the largely-unpracticed nuclear age, ancient Greek tragedy warnings about excessive leadership pride are not only still relevant, they are also palpably and irrefutably more important than ever before.

For the United States, classical Greek commentaries concerning hubris, left unheeded, could bring forth once unimaginable spasms of “retribution.” The ancient tragedians, after all, were not yet called upon to reason about nuclear decision-making. None of this is meant to build gratuitously upon America’s most manifestly reasonable fears or apprehensions, but only to remind everyone involved that competent national security planning must always remain a complex struggle of “mind over mind.”

To remind, these remain fundamentally intellectual problems, challenges requiring meticulous analytic preparation rather than just a particular presidential “attitude.” Above all, such planning ought never become just another calculable contest of “mind over matter;” that is, never just a vainly reassuring inventory of comparative weaponization or presumptively superior “order of battle.” Unless this rudimentary point is more completely understood by senior US strategic policymakers and by the new president of the United States – and until these same policymakers can begin to see the utterly overriding wisdom of expanded global cooperation and human “oneness” – America can never render itself sufficiently secure from nuclear or biological war.

Never.

Poetry, Policy and Public Chaos

In his 1927 preface to Oxford Poetry, W.H. Auden wrote: “All genuine poetry is in a sense the formation of private spheres out of public chaos….” Looking ahead and with an appropriately avant-garde orientation, American strategists must seek to carve out livable national “spheres” from a steadily expanding global chaos. Ultimately, following Nietzsche,  they must also understand that such chaos lies originally within each individual human being. But – at least for the moments of their present strategic deliberations – they should remain focused upon our collective survival in a persistently Hobbesian “state of nature.”

With the further spread of nuclear weapons to additional states (and also, perhaps, to sub-national terror groups), the historical conditions of nature bequeathed at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) could come to resemble the primordial barbarism of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Long before Golding, Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, warned insightfully in Leviathan (Chapter XIII)  that in any such circumstances of human disorder there must exist “continual fear, and danger of violent death….” Here, inevitably, the “life of Man” must be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

To best plan for America’s long-term strategic future, Joe Biden will first need to understand the inexorable need for appropriate world system transformation; and to accommodate this transformation with more authentically imaginative policy thinking. In such crucial matters, recalling Italian film director Federico Fellini,

“The visionary is the only realist.”

Unlike anarchy, chaos is necessarily an intra-personal condition before it becomes an inter-national one. This means that the core problem of chaos must be “solved” at the behavioral level before it can be remediated in any larger arenas of US nuclear strategy, international relations or international law. On achieving this central understanding, one made substantially more urgent by global pandemic, President Biden faces not only a daunting challenge but also a rare opportunity.

Planetization

There is more. US foreign policy initiatives concerning nuclear war avoidance must ultimately shift from traditional notions of “realism” to the more enduring ideas of “planetization.” Though seemingly utopian, these ideas are actually more realistic than any global continuance of Thomas Hobbes’ endlessly corrosive “state of nature.”

For the time being, of course, pertinent American policies will still have to be founded upon intellectually supportable principles of nuclear deterrence and variously corresponding elements of “preparation,” but such many-sided foundations should never be expected to last indefinitely.

It follows, unassailably, that keeping the United States safely distant from nuclear conflagration will require an American leadership that can suitably navigate all current and foreseeable risks – including some hazards that are plausibly pandemic-related – and that can plan competently for the evolving future. In candor, this will never be a task for the intellectually faint-hearted.

In the end, as illustrated by the more-or-less predictable effects of a nuclear war and also by long-established effects of “plague,” we humans are all creatures of biology and must finally recognize themselves in the “other,” that is, in a ubiquitous and wholly reciprocal commonality. Moreover, this means a genuinely primal commonality, a determinative “oneness” worth adapting to absolutely all of America’s national security policies. Such structural interdependence underscores both our interpenetrating existential vulnerabilities as individual human beings and our leaders’ corollary obligation to place polity above any and all personal interests.

In the still-clarifying imagery of ancient Greek drama, US President Joe Biden should become more conspicuously averse to any “monarchical-style” hubris than was his dissembling predecessor. To assume that the continuously failing system of belligerent nationalism first bestowed at Westphalia in 1648 can reliably prevent a nuclear war in the long-term represents human arrogance and self-delusion at its imaginable worst. For the United States, reducing the still-growing threat of a catastrophic nuclear war can only be based upon principled rejection of “America First” and of any other policy posture derived from comparably false presidential promises. Recalling French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin with the precise sentence I used to conclude my Ph.D. thesis back at Princeton exactly fifty years ago (1971): “Peace waits for us only at that point where we are able to witness a totalisation of the world upon itself, in the unanimous construction of a spirit of the earth.”

For the moment, President Joe  Biden’s most immediate imperative should be more modest, but still clear and tangible. The core task should be to  manage nuclear threats expeditiously and scientifically from wherever they might arise. Rejecting his rancorous predecessor’s seat-of-the-pants approach to even the most genuine threats of nuclear confrontation, Joe Biden’s orientation to national security must consistently be based upon rigorous calculations and durable substance. In essence, this orientation must be based upon refined intellectual foundations.

Increasingly, the management of nuclear threats represents an American president’s most urgent policy imperative.  Inconspicuously, perhaps, but with a fearful momentum never to be minimized or disregarded, the “atomic clock” is not just another quaint artifact of post-World War II history. It is, rather, continuously real. 

Now, even more quickly than before, it ticks relentlessly.

 

LOUIS RENÉ BERES is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University. Educated at Princeton (Ph.D.,1971), he is the author of twelve books and several hundred published articles dealing with both US and Israeli security matters. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel (2003) for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Dr. Beres’ latest book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published in 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield.  http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/surviving-amid-chaos-israels-nuclear-strategy  (2nd ed. 2018)

In December 2016, Dr. Beres co-authored a special monograph (Tel Aviv University) with General (USA/ret.) Barry R. McCaffrey titled Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and America’s National Security  https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf

Some of his related writings concerning nuclear strategy have been published at Special Warfare (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (West Point); Israel Defense; BESA Perspectives (Israel); Herzliya Conference Papers; The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) Strategic Assessment (Israel); Yale Global Online; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard);  World Politics (Princeton); International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Horasis (Switzerland); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; The Atlantic; Oxford University Press; The Strategy Bridge; Infinity Journal; The New York Times and Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon).

Professor Louis René Beres was born in Zürich, Switzerland, at the end of World War II.

 

¹ For early accounts by this author of nuclear war risks and effects, see: Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986). Most recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy

² During his tenure in the White House, entirely too little attention was directed toward Donald J. Trump’s openly-expressed loathing of science and intellect. Ironically, the Founding Fathers of the United States were intellectuals. As explained by American historian Richard Hofstadter: “The Founding Fathers were sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide reading in history, politics and law to solve the exigent problems of their time.” See Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 145.

³ See, by this author, at US News & World Report, Louis René Beres: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-08-17/how-donald-trump-fails-logic-and-presidential-thinking.   Always, “America First,” the gratuitously  belligerent nationalism of Donald Trump, stood in sharp contrast to authoritative legal principles concerning solidarity between states. These jurisprudential standards concern a presumptively common legal struggle against aggression and terrorism. Such a “peremptory” expectation, known formally in law as a jus cogens assumption, had already been mentioned in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis (533 CE); Hugo Grotius, 2 De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, Ch. 20 (Francis W. Kesey., tr, Clarendon Press, 1925)(1690); and Emmerich de Vattel, 1 Le Droit Des Gens, Ch. 19 (1758).

⁴ See, by this author, Louis René Beres: https://horasis.org/getting-beyond-power-politics-narratives-for-a-human-centered-world-order/ (Switzerland).

⁵This condition of anarchy is structural, and dates back specifically to the historic Peace of Westphalia in 1648. See: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119, Together, these two treaties comprise the Peace of Westphalia.

⁶The use of atomic bombs against Japan in August 1945 did not represent a genuine nuclear war, but rather a nuclear event in an otherwise conventional conflict.

⁷ The Devil in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman observes correctly that “Man’s heart is in his weapons….in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself….when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanisms that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies….”

⁸This hazard was substantially enlarged and exacerbated by Donald J. Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA (2015). See: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/JCPOA-at-a-glanceNow, President Joseph Biden will have to calculate how best to re-establish viable diplomatic relations with Tehran. Trump’s core intellectual error in abrogating JCPOA was the fallacious judgment that because the pact was imperfect, the US would necessarily be better off without it.

⁹ For early warnings about Iranian nuclearization from a specifically Israeli perspective, see Louis René Beres (Chair of Project Daniel/PM Sharon), Jerusalem: Israel’s Strategic Future: http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.

See also, by Professor Louis René Beres, at Harvard Law School: https://harvardnsj.org/2014/06/staying-strong-enhancing-israels-essential-strategic-options-2/

¹0 For earlier conceptualizations of this capacity, by this author, see: Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (1983) and Louis René Beres, America Outside the World: The Collapse of U.S. Foreign Policy (1987).

¹1In this connection, there is nothing about the Trump-negotiated “Abraham Accords” that might suggest any impact about such intentions or inclinations.

¹2See special monograph at Tel Aviv University coauthored by Professor Louis René Beres and General (USA/ret.) Barry McCaffrey, https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf

¹3 Identifying “Cold War II” means expecting the world system to become increasingly bipolar. For early writings, by this author, on the global security implications of any such expanding bipolarity, see: Louis René Beres, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Reliability of Alliance Commitments,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 25, No.4., December 1972, pp. 702-710; Louis René Beres, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Tragedy of the Commons,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 26, No.4., December 1973, pp, 649-658; and Louis René Beres, “Guerillas, Terrorists, and Polarity: New Structural Models of World Politics,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 27, No.4., December 1974, pp. 624-636.

¹4The Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin coined a new term to denote the vital sphere of intellect or “mind.” This term is “noosphere;” it builds upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s stance well-known (especially in Zarathustra) that human beings must always challenge themselves, must continuously strive to “overcome” their otherwise meager “herd”-determined  yearnings.

¹5 Says 20th-century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y’Gasset in Man and Crisis: “….science – by which I mean the entire body of knowledge about things, whether corporeal or spiritual – is as much a work of imagination as it is of observation….the latter is not possible without the former.”

¹6 For a recent analysis of deterring not-yet-nuclear adversaries in the case of Israel, see article co-authored by Professor Louis René Beres and (former Israeli Ambassador ) Zalman Shoval at the Modern War Institute, West Point (Pentagon): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/

¹7 Recall here the classic statement of Julius Caesar: “Men as a rule believe what they want to believe.” See: Caesar’s Gallic War, Book III, Chapter 18.

¹8 Reminds Herman Kahn in his On Escalation (1965): “All accidental wars are inadvertent and unintended, but not vice-versa.”

¹9 This prospect now includes the plausible advent of so-called “cyber- mercenaries.”

²0 This “hybrid” concept could also be applied to various pertinent ad hoc bilateral state collaborations against US strategic interests. For example, during June 2019, Russia and China collaborated to block an American initiative aimed at halting fuel deliveries to North Korea. The US-led cap on North Korea’s fuel imports had been intended to sanction any continuing North Korean nuclearization. Prima facie, this narrowly visceral plan was entirely futile.

²1 On “escalation dominance,” see recent article by Professor Louis René Beres at The War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon:  https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making-and-nuclear-war-an-urgent-american-problem/

²2Anticipating 20th century Spanish thinker Jose Ortega y’Gasset (cited above), the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal remarks prophetically in Pensées: “All our dignity consists in thought….It is upon this that we must depend…Let us labor then to think well: this is the foundation of morality.” Similar reasoning characterizes the writings of Baruch Spinoza, Pascal’s 17th-century contemporary. In Book II of his Ethics Spinoza considers the human mind, or the intellectual attributes, and – drawing further upon René Descartes – strives to define an essential theory of learning and knowledge.

²3 In his own work, Sigmund Freud sought to “excavate” certain deeper meanings concerning irrational human behavior. Always, he was a modern-day philosophe, a proud child of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, one who discovered profound analytic and therapeutic advantages in exploring sometimes-arcane literary paths to psychological knowledge. Freud maintained an extensive personal collection of antiquities which suggested various penetrating psychological insights to him. Some of his collection was placed directly on his work desk; reportedly, he would often touch and turn the individual artifacts while deeply engaged in some challenging thought.

²4 See, also by this author, Louis René Beres, at Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School): https://harvardnsj.org/2013/10/lessons-for-israel-from-ancient-chinese-military-thought-facing-iranian-nuclearization-with-sun-tzu/

²5 See, for example, by this author, at Yale:  Louis René Beres, https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/nuclear-treaty-abrogation-imperils-global-security

²6 Regarding “covenants,” US decision-makers should nonetheless be continually attentive to relevant considerations of law as well as strategy. More particularly, under authoritative law, states must judge every use of force twice: once with regard to the underlying right to wage war (jus ad bellum) and once with regard to the means used in conducting an actual war (jus in bello). Following the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) and the United Nations Charter (1945), there remains no defensible legal right to waging an aggressive war. However, the long-standing customary right of post-attack self-defense does remain codified at Article 51 of the UN Charter. Similarly subject to conformance, inter alia, with jus in bello criteria, certain instances of humanitarian intervention and collective security operations may also be consistent with jus ad bellum standards. The law of war, the rules of jus in bello, comprise: (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at the Hague and Geneva Conventions, these rules attempt to bring discrimination, proportionality and military necessity into all (state and sub-state) belligerent calculations.

²7Whether it is described in the Old Testament or other major sources of ancient Western thought, chaos can also be viewed as a source of human betterment. In essence, chaos is that which prepares the world for all things, both sacred and profane. Further, as its conspicuous etymology reveals, chaos represents the yawning gulf or gap wherein nothing is as yet, but where all civilizational opportunity must inevitably originate. Appropriately, the great German poet Friedrich Hölderlin observed: “There is a desert sacred and chaotic which stands at the roots of the things and which prepares all things.” Even in the pagan ancient world, the Greeks thought of such a desert as logos, which indicates to us that it was presumed to be anything but starkly random or without conceivable merit.

²8International law remains a “vigilante” or “Westphalian” system. See: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119, Together, these two treaties comprise the Peace of Westphalia.

²9Though composed in the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan may still offer us a prophetic vision of this prospective condition in modern world politics. During chaos, which is a “time of War,” says the English philosopher in Chapter XIII  (“Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery.”):  “… every man is Enemy to every man… and where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Still, at the actual time of writing Leviathan, Hobbes believed that the condition of “nature” in world politics was less chaotic than that same condition extant among individual human beings. This was because of what he had called the “dreadful equality” of individual men in nature concerning the ability to kill others. Significantly, this once-relevant differentiation has effectively disappeared with the continuing manufacture and spread of nuclear weapons, a dispersion soon apt to be exacerbated by an already-nuclear North Korea, by a not-yet-nuclear Iran and by the largely unpredictable effects of an ongoing disease pandemic.

³0For the authoritative sources of international law, see art. 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice; done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force, Oct. 24, 1945; for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945.  59 Stat. 1031,  T.S. No. 993,  3 Bevans 1153, 1976 Y.B.U.N., 1052.

³1To wit, during his tenure in office, former President Donald J. Trump instructed his Secretary of State and Attorney General to openly denounce the International Criminal Court’s then-planned investigations of alleged US war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. This direction represented a fundamental contradiction of America’s peremptory obligation to both national and international law. In the words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination.  For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.”  See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900).  See also:  The Lola,  175 U.S. 677 (1900);  Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774,  781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 1984)(per curiam)(Edwards, J. concurring)(dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied,  470 U.S. 1003 (1985)(“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.'”).

³2 In legal terms, a preemptive strike might properly constitute the crime of “aggression.”  See: RESOLUTION ON THE DEFINITION OF AGGRESSION, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, reprinted in 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Art. 51.. Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945,  59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans 1153,  1976, Y.B.U.N. 1043.

³3 For a pertinent Israeli example, see, by this author: Louis René Beres,  https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2017-09-06/10-years-later-israels-operation-orchard-offers-lessons-on-north-korea

³4Nonetheless, at least in principle, an American president could still benefit from a preemption against an already nuclear North Korea if refraining from striking first would allow North Korea to implement certain additional protective measures. Designed to guard against preemption, these measures would involve the attachment of “hair trigger” launch mechanisms to nuclear weapon systems and/or the adoption of “launch on warning” policies, possibly coupled with identifiable pre-delegations of launch authority. This means, increasingly, that the US could be incrementally endangered by steps taken by Pyongyang to prevent a preemption. Optimally, this country would do everything possible to prevent such steps, especially because of the expanded risks of accidental or unauthorized attacks against its own or allied armaments and populations. But if such steps were to become a fait accompli, Washington might still calculate correctly that a preemptive strike would be both legal and cost-effective. This is because the expected enemy retaliation, however damaging, could still appear more tolerable than the expected consequences of enemy first-strikes  –  strikes likely occasioned by the failure of “anti-preemption” protocols.

³5In regard to such questions, US strategic thinkers must inquire whether accepting a visible posture of limited nuclear war would merely exacerbate enemy nuclear intentions or whether it could actually enhance this country’s overall nuclear deterrence. Such questions have been raised by this author for many years, but usually in more explicit reference to broadly theoretical or generic nuclear threats. See, for example, Louis René Beres, The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis (1972); Louis René Beres, Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (1979; second edition, 1987); Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (1984); Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (1986); and Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (2016).

³6“Theory is a net,” 20th century philosopher Karl Popper learned from the German poet Novalis, “only those who cast, can catch.” See epigraph to Popper’s classic The Logic of Scientific  Discovery (1959).

³7 On the prospective shortcomings of Israeli BMD systems, from which certain authoritative extrapolations could be made about US systems, see: Louis René Beres and (Major-General/IDF/ret.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,” Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Louis René Beres and M-G Isaac Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,” Washington Times, June 10, 2007; and Professor Louis René Beres and M-G Isaac Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009.

³8 The modern philosophy origins of the term “will” lie in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer,  especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew freely upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Nietzsche drew just as freely and perhaps even more importantly upon Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas (1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for Die Neue Rundschau of Berlin on the occasion of the centenary of Goethe’s death. It is reprinted in Ortega’s anthology, The Dehumanization of Art (1948), and is available from Princeton University Press (1968).

³9 A prospectively positive impact, however, could center on improved opportunities for world-wide cooperation. See, on this hopeful point, by this author,. Louis René Beres, https://www.21global.ucsb.edu/global-e/march-2020/virulent-pathogens-and-global-solidarity-unseen-benefits-covid-19

⁴0 See, on deterring a prospectively irrational nuclear Iran, Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely deter a Nuclear Iran? The Atlantic, August 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Israel; and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. Though dealing with Israeli rather than American nuclear deterrence, these articles authoritatively clarify the common conceptual elements. General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).

⁴1 On the Israeli sea-basing issue, see Louis René Beres and Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney, “Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: A Larger Role for Submarine-Basing,” The Jerusalem Post, August 17, 2014; and Professor Louis René Beres and Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney, “A Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent for Israel,” Washington Times, September 5, 2014. Admiral Edney was NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic (SACLANT).

⁴2 See, in this connection, by Professor Louis René Beres and General (USA/ret.) Barry R. McCaffrey, Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and America’s National Security;  https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf

⁴3 On the primary importance of doctrine, by this author, see Louis René Beres,  https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/01/louis-beres-seeking-plausible-strategic-goals-iran/  See also, concerning US ally Israel: https://strategicassessment.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/antq/fe-676949421.pdf

⁴4 See, by this author (who was Chair of Project Daniel for Israeli PM Ariel Sharon):  http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.htm  See also: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-nuclear-ambiguity/ and  https://www.idc.ac.il/he/research/ips/Documents/2013/%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA/LouisReneBeres.pdf

⁴5The prospect of sub-national nuclear foes brings to attention the threat of nuclear terrorism. See, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://search.yahoo.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1410&context=gjicl

⁴6 This brings to mind the closing query of Agamemnon in The Oresteia by Aeschylus: “Where will it end? When will it all be lulled back into sleep, and cease, the bloody hatreds, the destruction”?

⁴7 See, for example, by this author, at Harvard National Security Journal:  https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

⁴8Before the nuclear age, Swiss scholar Emmerich de Vattel took a position in strong favor of anticipatory self-defense. Vattel concludes The Law of Nations (1758) as follows: “The safest plan is to prevent evil, where that is possible. A nation has the right to resist the injury another seeks to inflict upon it, and to use force and every other just means of resistance against the aggressor.” (See Vattel, “The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations,” reprinted in 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust 1916 (1758). Vattel, in the conspicuously earlier fashion of Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius, (The Law of War and Peace, 1625) drew widely upon ancient Hebrew Scripture and Jewish law.

⁴9In law, preemption is normally expressed as “anticipatory self defense.” The Caroline concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally been sufficient in law to justify certain appropriate militarily defensive actions. In a formal exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then US Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for national self defense that did not require antecedent attack. Accordingly, the authoritative jurisprudential framework now permitted a military response to threat as long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.”

⁵0 In this connection, expressions of decisional error (including mistakes by the United States)  could take different and overlapping forms. These forms include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and internal dissonance generated by any authoritative structure of collective decision-making (e.g., the US National Security Council).

⁵1 See, by this author, Louis René Beres, at Oxford University Press: https://blog.oup.com/2011/10/war-winning/

⁵2 For much earlier similar warnings, by this author, see his October 1981 article at World Politics (Princeton):  https://www.jstor.org/stable/2010149?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

⁵3 Clausewitzian friction refers to the unpredictable effects of errors in knowledge and information concerning strategic uncertainties; on presidential under-estimations or over-estimations of US relative power position; and on the unalterably vast and largely irremediable differences between theories of deterrence and enemy intent “as it actually is.” See: Carl von Clausewitz, “Uber das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst,” Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, 1 (1832); cited in Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, McNair Paper No. 52, October, 1996, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Washington, D.C. p. 9.

⁵4 Or “thorough study,” in the language of Sun-Tzu.

⁵5 The meaningless bifurcation of “attitude” and “preparation” was expressly invoked by Donald Trump before going off to his June 2018 “Singapore Summit” meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. In that curious distinction, the former US President favored the former.

⁵6 This vital reminder is also drawn from the strategic calculations of ancient Greece. See, for example, F.E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (University of California, 1962).

⁵7 Accordingly, we may learn from ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “”You are a citizen of the universe.” A broader idea of such “oneness” followed the death of Alexander in 322 BCE; with it came a coinciding doctrine of “universality.” By the Middle Ages, this political and social doctrine had fused with the notion of a Respublica Christiana, a worldwide Christian commonwealth, and Thomas, John of Salisbury and Dante were looking at Europe as a single and unified Christian community. Below the level of God and his heavenly host, all the realm of humanity was to be considered as one. This is because all the world had been created for the same single and incontestable purpose; that is, to provide  background for the necessary drama of human salvation. Only in its relationship to the universe itself was the world correctly considered as a part rather than a whole. Said Dante in De Monarchia: “The whole human race is a whole with reference to certain parts, and, with reference to another whole, it is a part. For it is a whole with reference to particular kingdoms and nations, as we have shown; and it is a part with reference to the whole universe, which is evident without argument.” Today, of course, the idea of human oneness can be fully justified and explained in more purely secular terms of analytic understanding.

⁵8 In this connection, says Thomas Hobbes in Chapter XXI of Leviathan, “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.”

⁵9See, by this author, Louis René Beres (Israel),   https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/improving-israeli-military-strategy-through-avant-garde-analysis/

⁶0Says the philosopher in Zarathustra: “I tell you, ye have still chaos in you.”

⁶1See, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1410&context=gjicl; and also   https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1274&context=hastings_international_comparative_law_review

⁶2 Similar sentiments can be found in the German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s remark: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is  made, nothing entirely straight can be built.” This is my own translation from the original German: “Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert warden.” See: Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, xi (Henry Handy, ed., 1991) quoting Immanuel Kant’s Idee Zu Einer Allgemeinen Geschichte In Weltburgerlicher Absicht (1784).

⁶3 These ideas have been most closely associated with the French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, especially his modern classic The Phenomenon of Man (1955).

⁶4 Among some of the early books dealing with these effects ion a serious and informed way, see: Franklyn Griffiths and John C . Polanyi, editors, The Dangers of Nuclear War (1979); Arthur M. Katz, Life After Nuclear War (1982); and by this author, Louis René Beres: Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (1980).

⁶5 See Sophocles, Antigone, Speech of Creon, King of Thebes: “I hold despicable and always have….anyone who puts his own popularity before his country.” Furthermore, criminal responsibility of leaders under international law is not limited to direct personal action nor is it limited by official position.  On the principle of command responsibility, or respondeat superior, see:  In re Yamashita,  327 U.S. 1 (1945);  The High Command Case (The Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb),  12 Law Reports Of Trials Of War Criminals 1 (United Nations War Crimes Commission Comp., 1949);  see Parks, Command Responsibility For War Crimes,  62 MIL.L. REV. 1 (1973);  O’Brien, The Law Of War, Command Responsibility And Vietnam,  60 GEO. L.J.  605 (1972);   U.S. Dept Of The Army, Army Subject Schedule No. 27 – 1 (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Hague Convention No. IV of 1907),  10 (1970).  The direct individual responsibility of leaders is also unambiguous in view of the London Agreement, which denies defendants the protection of the act of state defense.  See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS,  Aug. 8, 1945,  59 Stat.  1544,  E.A.S.  No. 472,  82 U.N.T.S.  279,  art. 7.

⁶6 See Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959).

⁶7Per epigraph above, see: French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Spirit and the Poets (1917). Such lethal conquest did in fact characterize the grimly corrosive years of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, especially in terms of needless Covid19 fatalities occasioned by Trump’s anti-science posture.

⁶8This brings to mind, of course,  the “Doomsday  Clock” at the Bulletin  of the Atomic Scientists, now set to 100 seconds before midnight:  https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/ See, by this writer, at the Bulletin: Louis René Beres,  https://thebulletin.org/2016/08/what-if-you-dont-trust-the-judgment-of-the-president-whose-finger-is-over-the-nuclear-button/ See earlier by Professor Beres in the Bulletin:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1981.11458822  This February 1981 article was a Rabinowitch Essay Award Essay: “Steps Toward a New Planetary Identity”  (Vol. 37, No.2., pp. 43-47).