Louis René Beres

Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s.

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On Assassination, Preemption, and Counterterrorism: The View from International Law

The United States and a few of its more-or-less reluctant allies are presently engaged in an inconclusive ‘‘war’’ with terrorism. By definition, war requires killing as remediation. Yet, while virtually all societies and civilizations accept the permissibility of warfare involving vast armies and powerful armaments in particular circumstances (to wit, the long tradition of a just war doctrine in philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence), most would nonetheless deny the legality and ethical correctness of targeted killings, such as assassinations. These denials sometimes accompany even fully incontestable expressions of anticipatory self-defense. A similarly farreaching rejection of preemptive strikes that involve larger-scale military force also prevails. For more than a quarter-century I have argued openly, in various lectures and numerous law journals, for the limited legality and pragmatic reasonableness of assassination as an element of counterterrorism. The core of my argument has always been a utilitarian calculation in preserving innocent human lives. Specifically, I have maintained that the preemptive elimination of terrorists who plan large-scale, or even unconventional,

Defending Israel against Iranian Nuclear Aggression: War, Genocide, and International Law

Under authoritative international law, aggressive war and genocide need not be mutually exclusive. On the contrary, war can intentionally create the conditions that would make genocide possible; it can also be the more direct or immediate instrument of closely related crimes against humanity. It follows then, as Iran comes ever closer to achieving a viable nuclear weapons capability, that Israel has an especially good reason to fear future conflicts with such an aggressionprone Islamic republic.

Israel, the “peace process,” and nuclear terrorism: Recognizing the linkages

Assessments of the Oslo accords on Israels security normally focus on the risks of war and conventional terrorism. Yet there are compelling reasons to believe that the so‐called Peace Process might also enlarge the risk of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) terrorism, including nuclear weapons. With this in mind, this article, cast in the form of a Memorandum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, explores a number of pertinent variables and hypotheses. Exploring both the strategic and the jurisprudential aspects of the Oslo accords, the article examines underlying Palestinian orientations to the Peace Process, the Palestinian concept of sacrifice, and the various forms that nuclear terrorism might take. The concluding section, based on comprehensive consideration of Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestine Authority documents and speeches, identifies the Peace Process as part of a strategy of jihad that could enlarge the risk of nuclear terror against Israel.

Assassination and the law: A policy memorandum

Normally, assassination is a crime under international law. Yet there are rare, residual circumstances where it may be not only permissible but law enforcing. Insofar as international law is part of United States law, assassination might—in these very extraordinary circumstances—not be unlawful. Drawing on the explicit expectations of international law and the natural law foundations of U.S. municipal law, this article acknowledges that assassination must always be impermissible as an instrument of Realpolitik, but that in a world that continues to confront innocent populations with terrible harms (terrorism, war, genocide) assassination does have a proper place. Throughout this examination, philosophical and jurisprudential perspectives are fused with both pertinent tactical considerations and utilitarian calculations.

The meaning of terrorism for the military commander

Although terrorism has certainly become a problem of considerable urgency, its precise meaning remains markedly unclear. For the military commander, such ironic ambiguity may make it difficult to identify and carry out particular counterterrorism operations. This article suggests that greater attention must now be directed to conceptual clarification of terrorism and to associated rejection of geopolitical definitions. With such attention, military commanders would be better able to allocate precious resources in a rational manner and with expanded opportunities for success on the ground. It follows that such increased attention to the meaning of terrorism would offer distinctly pragmatic operational benefits as well as generally enhanced respect for justice and law.

Israel, Palestine and Regional Nuclear War

examine the precise forms such an expanded reliance might take. A number of possibilities come immediately to mind. First, it is likely that Israel, feeling more threatened by its loss of buffer territory, would feel increasingly compelled to bring its bomb out of the ‘basement’.’ 2 Here, fearing that its expanded need for a credible deterrent might be no longer served by the nuclear posture of ’deliberate ambiguity’, Israel would probably move to some form of explicit declaration of nuclear capability. Such disclosure could be full or partial and could be carried out with or without

Facing Iran's Ongoing Nuclearization: A Retrospective on Project Daniel

As in all complex strategic affairs, the urgent matter of Iranian nuclearization is now closely interwoven with multilayered issues of intelligence and counterintelligence. This is especially the case for Israel, a microstate that remains fixedly in the annihilatory crosshairs of the Islamic Republic in Tehran. What follows, therefore, is a comprehensive and informed six-year retrospective and reassessment of Project Daniel that includes, for the very first time, certain timely and pertinent intelligence concerns. While these important concerns were assuredly implicit in our initial and original formulations, I have attempted here to bring them (selectively, of course) out into the open. My hope, in this connection, is to present a determined fusion of strategy and intelligence that is purposeful and productive, both generically and theoretically, with particular reference to the unique peril from Iran facing Israel. Iran is proceeding toward nuclear weapon status largely unencumbered. What precisely does this mean for Israel? Has Israel already run out of time?

Correspondence: Israel and the Bomb

Israeli strategist Zeev Maoz’s controversial article, “The Mixed Blessing of Israel’s Nuclear Policy,” calls for Israel to disband its nuclear weapons program and join with Arab states in the region to create a “nuclear weapons–free zone.”1 The article, however, ignores the history of Israeli-Arab relations, especially the unending Arab call for Israel’s annihilation and the indisputable record of Arab and Iranian noncompliance with international legal obligations. Most ominously, this record includes Iran’s recently revealed pursuit of nuclear weapons while party to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. How little has been learned in some academic quarters. Should Israeli leaders take seriously Maoz’s call to renounce nuclear weapons, they might as well agree to commit national suicide. Deprived of its nuclear deterrent, Israel would be at the mercy of governments that unambiguously profess genocide against a country half the size of Lake Michigan. Admittedly, it is difacult to imagine nuclear weapons as anything other than inherently evil implements of destruction. Yet there are circumstances wherein possession of such weapons will be all that protects a state from catastrophic war. Moreover, because nuclear weapons may deter international aggression, their possession could also protect neighboring states (friends and foes alike) from war-related or even nuclearinoicted harm. It follows that not all members of the “nuclear club” need be a menace; rather, some may provide a distinct and indispensable beneat to world peace and security. An obvious case is the State of Israel. If deprived of its nuclear forces because of misconceived hopes for regional cooperation, the Jewish state could become vulnerable to overwhelming attacks. Indeed, even if pertinent Arab states were to abide by the expectations of a nuclear weapons–free zone—a presumption unsupported by the region’s history—their combined conventional, chemical, and biological capabilities could eventually overwhelm the Israeli state. Although Israeli existential vulnerability might be prevented in principle by instituting parallel forms of conventional/chemical/biological weapons disarmament among enemy Arab states and Iran, such parallel steps would never occur. As history shows,

Genocide and Power Politics The Individual and the State

1. Power politics in world affairs Genocide, in any of its manifestations, is a crime under international law. Codified at the Genocide Convention, which entered into force on January 12, 1951, it means any of a series of stipulated acts ’committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group assuch....’.’ It is a crime, therefore, that has a definite jurisprudential meaning, one that is distinct from other sorts of wartime killing (killing long since prohibited by the laws of war of international law) and from other sorts of non-wartime political repression. Although ’crimes against humanity’ (crimes forming one of the indictments at Nuremberg) are linked exclusively to wartime actions, the crime of genocide can be committed in peacetime or in war. But the problem of genocide cannot be dealt with jurisprudentially. Even though the United States is now a full party to the Genocide Convention, there is little reason to believe that anti-genocide norms will be