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Proliferation: The Middle East and the Pacific

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The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy

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Abstract

American responses to nuclear proliferation varied considerably—tolerating a friendly country’s actual capability so long as it was not over-advertised (Israel), persuading a country with an undeveloped programme to abandon it in return for removing sanctions (Libya), negotiating with an antagonistic country with an advanced programme to curtail its ambitions, without quite resolving the issue (Iran), and coming to terms with an antagonistic opponent with an actual capability by exploring the possibility of improved political relations but with the nuclear question still left unresolved (North Korea).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Avner Cohen, ‘Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel’s Nuclear Project (1948–1954)’, Israel Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 112–39. Cohen’s Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) is the fullest account of Israel’s bomb programme. Michael Karpin, The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel went Nuclear and what that means for the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

  2. 2.

    Yair Evron, Israel’s Nuclear Dilemma (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 5–7; Uri Bar-Joseph, ‘The hidden debate: The formation of nuclear doctrines in the Middle East’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 5: 2, 1982, pp. 205–27; Shlomo Aronson, The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East: Opacity, Theory and Reality, 1960–1991: An Israeli Perspective (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992).

  3. 3.

    Evron, p. 9.

  4. 4.

    Avner Cohen, ‘The 1967 Six-Day War: New Israeli Perspective, 50 Years Later’, Wilson Center, June 3, 2017; Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003). Oren notes: ‘Israel’s fear for the reactor—rather than Egypt’s of it—was the greater catalyst for war’. (p. 76) Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War and the Year that Transformed the Middle East (London: Abacus, 2007), pp. 317–8.

  5. 5.

    Bar-Joseph, p. 217; Robert Slater, Warrior Statesman: The Life of Moshe Dayan (London: Robson Books Ltd., 1992), pp. 387–8.

  6. 6.

    Avner Cohen and William Burr, ‘Israel crosses the threshold’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 62: 3, 2006, pp. 23–30.

  7. 7.

    Avner Cohen and Marvin Miller, ‘Bringing Israel’s Bomb Out of the Basement: Has Nuclear Ambiguity Outlived Its Shelf Life?’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 5 (September/October 2010), pp. 30–44; Ofer Israeli, ‘Israel’s Nuclear Amimut Policy and Its Consequences’, Israel Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 4, 2015, pp. 541–58.

  8. 8.

    Zeev Maoz, “The Mixed Blessing of Israel’s Nuclear Policy,” International Security, Vol. 28, no. 2 (Fall 2003), pp. 44–77; Elbridge Colby, Avner Cohen, William McCants, Bradley Morris and William Rosenau, The Israeli “Nuclear Alert” of 1973: Deterrence and Signalling in Crisis, DRM-2013-U-004480-Final, Center for Naval Analyses, April 2013, pp. 10–11, 50–1; See also: Avner Cohen, How Nuclear Was It? New Testimony on the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Arms Control Wonk Blog, October 21, 2013. Can be accessed at: http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/206909/israel-nuclear-weapons-and-the-1973-yom-kippur-war/.

  9. 9.

    Avi Shilon, Translated by Danielle Zilberberg and Yoram Sharett, Menachem Begin: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 339–43; Shlomo Brom, ‘Is the Begin Doctrine Still a Viable Option for Israel’ in Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson, Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute), pp. 133–58. See pp. 136–7 for discussion of Israel’s lack of military action against non-nuclear WMD.

  10. 10.

    Transcript of Press Conference with Prime Minister Begin, IDF Chief of Staff Eitan, IAF Commander Ivri and Director of Military Intelligence Saguy, June 9, 1981. Available at: http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/MFADocuments/Yearbook5/Pages/28%20Press%20Conference%20with%20Prime%20Minister%20Begin-%20IDF.aspx.

  11. 11.

    Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, “Revisiting Osirak: Preventive Attack and Nuclear Proliferation Risk,” International Security, 36/1 (Summer 2011), pp. 133–66.

  12. 12.

    At least one study argued that Israel had the technical capabilities to carry off a successful strike against Iranian nuclear infrastructure. See: Whitney Raas and Austin Long, ‘Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities’, International Security, Vol. 31, no. 4, April 2007, pp. 7–33.

  13. 13.

    Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (Random House, 2018).

  14. 14.

    David Makovsky, ‘The Silent Strike: How Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear installation and kept it secret’. The New Yorker, 17 September 2012; Amos Harel and Aluf Benn, ‘No Longer a Secret: How Israel Destroyed Syria’s Nuclear Reactor’, Haaretz, March 23, 2018.

  15. 15.

    Joseph Cirincione with Jon Wolfstahl and Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002).

  16. 16.

    IAEA Board of Governors, Report by the Director General, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” (February 2004).

  17. 17.

    ‘President Bush: Libya Pledges to Dismantle WMD Programs,’ Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, 19 December 2003.

  18. 18.

    Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016).

  19. 19.

    Gil Merom, ‘Israeli Perceptions of the Nuclear Threat’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 132, No. 1, 2017, pp. 87–118.

  20. 20.

    Thérèse Delpech, Iran and the Bomb: The Abdication of International Responsibility, translated by Ros Schwartz (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

  21. 21.

    For an early analysis see Shahram Chubin, Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006).

  22. 22.

    Wyn Bowen, Matthew Moran, and Dina Esfandiary, Living on the Edge: Iran and the Practice of Nuclear Hedging (London: Palgrave, 2016); David Patrikarakos, Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State (London; Tauris, 2012).

  23. 23.

    Eyed Hossein Mousavian, ‘Globalising Iran’s Fatwa Against Nuclear Weapons’, Survival, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2013, pp. 147–62; Mohammad Hossein Sabouri, ‘Iran’s Nuclear Fatwa: Analysis of a Debate’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 227–45.

  24. 24.

    The latter possibility received a great deal of attention. See for instance, Whitney Raas and Austin Long, ‘Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities’, International Security, Vol. 31, No. 4, Spring 2007, pp. 7–33.

  25. 25.

    Robert J. Einhorn, ‘Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran: Requirements for a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement’, Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Series, Paper 10, March 2014; Bryan R. Gibson, ‘The Long Road to Tehran: The Iran Nuclear Deal in Perspective’, Strategic Update, Vol. 15, No. 6, December 2015.

  26. 26.

    Norman Cigar, Saudi Arabia and Nuclear Weapons: How Do Countries Think About the Bomb? (London: Routledge, 2016).

  27. 27.

    Jonathan D. Pollack, Special issue: No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security, Adelphi Series, Vol. 50, Issue 418–9, 2010; Alexandre Y. Mansourov, The Origins, Evolution, and Current Politics of the North Korean Nuclear Program, The Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1995, pp. 25–38.

  28. 28.

    See for instance: Central Intelligence Agency, ‘North Korean Strategy and Tactics: An Appraisal,’ Research Paper RP 78–10, 127, April 1978.

  29. 29.

    Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, ‘Back to the Brink’, Washington Post, October 20, 2002.

  30. 30.

    Agreed Framework Between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Washington DC: State Department, 21 October 1994).

  31. 31.

    Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008).

  32. 32.

    Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, ‘North Korean Nuclear Capabilities, 2018’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 74, No. 1, 2018, pp. 41–51.

  33. 33.

    Bruce W. Bennett, Uncertainties in the North Korean Nuclear Threat, Documented Briefing, RAND, 2010; Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., North Korea’s Development of a Nuclear Weapons Strategy, US-Korea Institute at SAIS, August 2015; Andrew Scobell and John M. Sanford, North Korea’s Military Threat: Pyongyang’s Conventional Forces, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles, Strategic Studies Institute, April 2007; Tak Sung Han and Jeon Kyung Joo, ‘Can North Korea Catch Two Rabbits at Once: Nuke and Economy? One Year of the Byungjin Line in North Korea and Its Future’, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 26, No. 2, June 2014, pp. 133–53; Alexandre Mansourov, “Kim Jong-un’s Nuclear Doctrine and Strategy: What Everyone Needs to Know”, NAPSNet Special Reports, December 16, 2014.

  34. 34.

    David Albright and Corey Gay, ‘Taiwan: Nuclear nightmare averted’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 54:1 (1 January 1998), pp. 54–60; Mark Fitzpatrick, Asia’s Latent Nuclear Powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2016).

  35. 35.

    A complication with Taiwan is that it ratified the NPT before its position was taken in the UN by the People’s Republic of China and so in principle its prior ratification does not count. It signed a protocol with the US and the IAEA in 1971 saying that it would continue to abide by the terms of the Treaty.

  36. 36.

    Glenn D. Hook, ‘The Nuclearization of Language: Nuclear Allergy as Political Metaphor,’ Journal of Peace Research 21: 3 (1984): pp. 259–75.

  37. 37.

    Japan had its own nuclear programme during the Second World War. After 1945 there were claims that it had tested a weapon, but these were decisively refuted. Walter E. Grunden, ‘Hungnam and the Japanese atomic bomb: Recent historiography of a postwar Myth’, Intelligence and National Security, 13:2 (1998), pp. 32–60.

  38. 38.

    Kusunoki Ayako, ‘The Satō Cabinet and the Making of Japan’s Non-Nuclear Policy’, The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, Vol. 15 (2008), pp. 25–50.

  39. 39.

    ‘Why does Japan have so much plutonium?’ The Economist, 25 July 2018.

  40. 40.

    Richard J., Samuels and James L. Schoff. ‘Japan’s Nuclear Hedge: Beyond “Allergy” and Breakout’, in Ashley Tellis, Abraham M. Denmark, and Travis Tanner, eds., Strategic Asia 2013–14: Asia in the Second Nuclear Age (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2013).

  41. 41.

    Yoichi Funabashi, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons, Japan’s Bind’, New York Times, 13 September 2017.

  42. 42.

    See William Burr, ed., The United States and South Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program, 1974–1976, Part II (National Security Archive, 22 March 2017), https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2017-03-22/stopping-korea-going-nuclear-part-i.

  43. 43.

    Dafna Linzer and Joohee Cho ‘S. Korea Acknowledges Secret Nuclear Experiments: IAEA Announces Probe of Activities’, Washington Post, 3 September 2004.

  44. 44.

    David E. Sanger, Choe Sang-Hun and Motoko Rich, ‘North Korea Rouses Neighbors to Reconsider Nuclear Weapons’, New York Times, 28 October 2017.

  45. 45.

    Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun, ‘Trump Threatens ‘Fire and Fury” Against North Korea If It Endangers U.S., New York Times, 8 August 2017.

  46. 46.

    Jason Le Miere, ‘North Korea War Would Be “Catastrophic,” and “Worst in Most People’s Lifetimes,” US Defense Secretary Mattis Warns’, Newsweek. 28 May 2017.

  47. 47.

    See: Robert Kuttner, ‘Steve Bannon, Unrepentant’, The American Prospect, August 16, 2017.

  48. 48.

    Peter Baker and Michael Tackett, ‘Trump Says His ‘Nuclear Button’ is ‘Much Bigger’ than North Korea’s’, New York Times, 2 January 2018.

  49. 49.

    Mark Mcdonald, ‘North Korea Suggests Libya Should Have Kept Nuclear Program’, New York Times, 24 March 2011. Megan Specia and David E. Sanger, ‘How the ‘Libya Model’ Became a Sticking Point in North Korea Nuclear Talks’, New York Times, 16 May 2018.

  50. 50.

    David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, ‘Hidden Bases in North Korea Suggest Deceit’, New York Times, 12 November 2018.

  51. 51.

    Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission: Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2018).

  52. 52.

    A contrast between types of proliferation in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, noting the importance of integration into the international economy to potential Asian proliferators, is found in Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

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  1. Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Lawrence Freedman

  2. Department of Defence Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Jeffrey Michaels

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Correspondence to Lawrence Freedman .

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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). Proliferation: The Middle East and the Pacific. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_41

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