This book has explored the use of military force to prevent nuclear proliferation in the international system. The investigation asks, When do states use preventive military force as a counterproliferation strategy against adversarial proliferants? To answer this important question, I have argued that leaders’ beliefs are critical in explaining the empirical variation: states sometimes use force to prevent proliferation, other times consider the use of force but do not intervene, and in yet other instances never explore the military option. I have shown that leaders have divergent beliefs about two key issues central to debates over the spread of nuclear weapons—whether additional proliferation is broadly stabilizing or destabilizing for international politics, and how easy or difficult it is to deter specific states once they are armed with nuclear weapons. It is variation in these two critical beliefs that shapes variation in the decision to consider preventive intervention. If leaders are proliferation pessimists and not confident in the ability to deter a future nuclear-armed adversary, they should be more likely to consider the preventive option. Subsequently, following a feasibility assessment expecting a high likelihood of success, leaders with those beliefs should be more likely to order the use of military force.
Exploring archival documents and other key historical and biographical sources, I have demonstrated that leaders form these nuclear beliefs early—well before entering executive office. These beliefs are then carried through to national leadership and help shape how leaders think about and confront individual nuclear challenges. Examining the case of Chinese nuclear weapons in the early part of the Cold War, I have shown that John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson held radically different beliefs concerning nuclear matters generally and regarding Chinese nuclear weapons specifically. Kennedy, a strong nuclear pessimist, was deeply concerned about nuclear proliferation in the international system and in the hands of the Chinese communists, viewing Chinese nuclear development as the most dangerous challenge looming in the early 1960s. He seriously considered a preventive military attack to avert this possibility and might have ordered it, had an assassin’s bullet not intervened. By contrast, despite inheriting the identical situation Kennedy previously faced, Johnson, a nuclear optimist, felt confident in the US nuclear deterrent generally and vis-à-vis China in particular. He felt no such need to consider an attack against the growing Chinese capability.
Similar variation exists across the North Korean and Iraqi cases, which are also explained by the leader-centric model. George H. W. Bush was a nuclear optimist, concerned about international stability but not particularly attuned to the dangers of nuclear proliferation. He therefore gave no consideration to attacking the North Korean nuclear program between 1989 and 1992. Likewise, his intervention in Iraq was not motivated by counterproliferation concerns, although the Gulf War is often considered a case of the use of preventive military force to forestall nuclear proliferation. Bush’s actions in Iraq were taken to protect critical international norms; the nuclear aspects of the Gulf War were at best secondary. Conversely, Bill Clinton demonstrated fairly consistent proliferation pessimism as a candidate and early in his executive tenure. He seriously considered a preventive attack against North Korea in 1994; but for the Agreed Framework, he would likely have proceeded. Similarly, Clinton was motivated to consider (and use) military force against Iraq in 1998, given concerns about the spread of nuclear weapons to a dangerous and undeterrable Saddam Hussein.
The leader-centric argument also generalizes beyond the United States. Israeli leaders similarly exhibit important variation in their views of nuclear proliferation and its consequences. These divergent views, when paired with similarly divergent perspectives on the deterrability of particular states, encourage leaders to vary in their proclivity to use preventive military force. Whereas Yitzhak Rabin appears to have had some nuclear optimist tendencies and never considered forceful approaches to counterproliferation, his successor, Menachem Begin, did so repeatedly, attacking Iraq in 1981 and entertaining the possibility of a preventive attack against Pakistan from the late 1970s to early 1980s. As the brief discussion of the recent counterproliferation case of Syria shows, such nuclear pessimism and lack of confidence in deterrence appears to persist in the contemporary period and continues to influence decision making: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert destroyed the secret nuclear reactor hiding in the Syrian desert, concerned about the dangers of a Syrian dictatorship armed with nuclear weapons and hostile to Israel’s very existence. As more information comes to light on these leaders and episodes, more firm conclusions should result.
The argument and evidence presented challenge conventional wisdom from structural, domestic political, and bureaucratic logics by shining a spotlight on the critical importance of individual national executives in preventive war decision making. All too often, leaders have been overlooked within the nuclear realm, a space historically dominated by structural and state-centric explanations. By demonstrating the central role leaders play in explaining the state’s use of preventive military force to forestall or destroy adversarial nuclear acquisition attempts, All Options on the Table highlights that both scholarship and policy making must pay attention to these important actors to improve our understanding of crucially important dynamics in international politics.
Two recent developments within the counterproliferation portfolio warrant discussion for their intrinsic interest and because they demonstrate the continued applicability of the leader-centric argument. First, tensions flared between the United States and North Korea from 2017 to 2019, returning preventive war to the forefront of discussion. In addition, the international community is currently grappling with how to handle the ongoing progress of the Iranian nuclear program. The following describes relevant details from both situations and the pertinent leaders’ roles.
Because of the contemporary nature of the Trump presidency and because of Trump’s lack of relevant prepresidential political experience, elsewhere I preliminarily describe Trump as a proliferation pessimist.1 This characterization stems from an early and consistent focus on the dangers of WMD terrorism as a consequence of nuclear proliferation. Notably, since his inauguration in 2016, a dramatic escalation of rhetoric, hostility, and the risk of war has characterized the US-DPRK relationship. Nearly simultaneously to the North’s expanding intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capabilities, the Trump administration expanded its belligerence against the Kim Jong Un regime. What began in 2017 as a policy of “maximum pressure” and engagement evolved into “fire and fury” and explicit, open discussion of military options, including giving North Korea “a bloody nose.”2 Such developments could indicate a growing concern over the North’s lack of deterrability, though this possibility remains conjecture. The North responded with bluster regarding its growing ability to strike the US mainland and threats of preemptive attack and escalation to all-out war.3
Though international fears rose, the aggressive rhetoric led not to war in 2018, but instead to two historic meetings. President Trump and Leader Kim met initially in June 2018, in the first-ever meeting of the two countries’ sitting leaders. This Singapore Summit yielded a pledge to improve bilateral relations, build a peaceful and stable Korean peninsula, and recover remains of missing Korean War soldiers. North Korea agreed to work toward denuclearization, though the precise meaning of and process for achieving this goal was left unspecified. Trump and Kim also appeared to get along swimmingly in terms of their interpersonal relationship.
Unfortunately, the bliss was short-lived. A follow-up meeting in Hanoi in February 2019 ended prematurely, with no agreement secured. Allegedly, Trump demanded that the North surrender all of its nuclear weapons. The North required an end to all sanctions squeezing the regime.4 Both sides refused to budge from their demands, and the meeting concluded without resolution. Since this meeting, tensions have again escalated: intelligence revealed new missile development within North Korea, and the North indicated that the United States will face “undesired” outcomes if it fails to offer a new position on the nuclear issue.5
Not enough time has passed to know definitively what, if any, military action received serious consideration within the Trump administration. Coupled with the advancing size and range of the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal, however, there are sizable risks that such rhetoric could ignite a conflagration. That said, contemporaneous accounts from the Trump administration indicate that military intervention was likely under discussion. However, one critical distinction separates this period from the early 1990s, when Clinton considered the use of force: North Korea is now armed with nuclear weapons and has been since at least 2006, and perhaps even as far back as 2003. This distinction is noteworthy for multiple reasons. First, a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons is, according to the coding scheme deployed throughout this book, not a target for the consideration of preventive military force as a counterproliferation strategy. As I have used this term throughout this book, “preventive force” is a strategy for trying to prevent a state from acquiring nuclear weapons or to destroy a very nascent capability. For North Korea, or any nuclear state with advanced capabilities, that cat is now out of the bag. At present, when commentators include “preventive war” in their lists of current policy considerations, in reality they are describing a counterforce operation, in which the United States would seek to disarm an already nuclear power. While appropriate terminologically to think of another type of preventive war as intended to forestall an adversary’s augmentation of power relative to one’s own, such a use of force is not preventive counterproliferation as described in this book.
This is not the first time the United States has contemplated a preventive war to disarm an already nuclear adversary. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower contemplated instigating a war against the Soviet Union while its nuclear arsenal was still nascent. Following the first Soviet atomic test in 1949, the preventive logic grew prevalent within Truman’s State and Defense Departments, as well as in elements of the military establishment, though Truman himself favored attack only in response to Soviet aggression.6 As the Soviet nuclear capability advanced, Eisenhower looked more seriously at prevention, convening Project Solarium, a national strategy exercise to evaluate US policy vis-à-vis an increasingly nuclear-capable USSR.7 After significant personal deliberation, Eisenhower decided that the aftermath of waging war against the Soviets imperiled the very democracy he sought to protect.8 The costs of winning a nuclear war against a totalitarian regime were too high if US democracy would not survive the necessary occupation and reconstruction.
Second, this nuance is more than semantic; the implications of the North’s acquisition are significant. In 1994, the Clinton administration was already concerned with the costs of military engagement with North Korea. Today, any mission must account for the fact that the DPRK can respond with nuclear weapons against Seoul; US personnel in the region; and, after the North’s 2016 and 2017 ICBM tests, the mainland United States. Moreover, the lack of intelligence about the precise location of each nuclear weapon the North has produced since 2006 remains unknown, making any US mission likely to be nuclear instead of conventional.9 Much has been written recently on the merits of such an operation; it is not the time to revisit this discussion here.10
Although there were initial reasons to be concerned that President Trump’s nuclear beliefs might have made him likely to consider a military intervention, no such intervention occurred. Regardless, one discomforting implication of the foregoing analysis of US interaction with the North Korean nuclear program is that it may be better to attack early, when a nuclear program is just in formation, rather than wait until later, when the enemy is now a fully nuclear-armed state. While difficult to contemplate the associated risks, this is the central notion at the heart of the preventive logic; it is therefore a question leaders are likely to face if and when additional states pursue nuclear weapons of their own. If the ability to deter the state once armed with nuclear weapons is in doubt, or the consequences for the preventer state’s regional or global policy are severe, then a preventive intervention to forestall a nuclear program may be the least negative option available.
The Iran case presents a distinct analytical challenge for those interested in the international counterproliferation picture. This is a multiparty situation in operation. Not only are there two dyads to explore—the United States–Iran and Israel-Iran—but there is also a triangle to analyze as the United States and Israel are working in parallel and in concert to confront the Iranian nuclear program.11 Given the number of actors and their various interactions, exploration of the decision making is more complicated.
Tomes have been written on the Iranian nuclear program.12 This literature includes both US and Israeli efforts to forestall Iran’s program.13 Existing material also explores specific strategies that might be or have been deployed to try to prevent the Iranian program from successfully yielding nuclear weapons.14 Instead, I focus on events following the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or Iran deal) in 2017. I highlight what the leader-centric argument offers in analyzing the situation.
In May 2018, President Trump fulfilled an early campaign pledge to withdraw the United States from the “worst deal ever.”15 The JCPOA was signed during the Obama administration and aimed to limit the Iranian nuclear capability and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Since the JCPOA did not remove 100 percent of the Iranian capacity and knowledge for building nuclear weapons (something theoretically and practically impossible), Trump pledged to do better by removing US participation from the deal. Since then, as in the North Korean case, tensions have risen between the US and Iran and between Iran and its regional rivals, including Israel.
Following US withdrawal, the remaining participants—the permanent five members of the UN Security Council and Germany—vowed to uphold the agreement and its terms from 2015. In exchange for maintaining peaceful uses of its nuclear program, by limiting sensitive uranium enrichment capabilities and destroying plutonium production ability (the two pathways Iran could use to produce the fissile material fuel necessary for nuclear weapons), Iran would receive economic and political integration with the world community.16
Over time, however, tensions have begun to fray. Subsequent to its withdrawal, the United States imposed a variety of sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program and other nefarious behavior in the Middle East.17 In April 2018, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dramatically showcased new intelligence purporting to highlight Iranian duplicity and continued efforts to build nuclear weapons.18 In the summer of 2019, there were two attacks on US assets in the region, for which the United States blames Iran. The attacks targeted two tankers navigating the Strait of Hormuz carrying materials related to the oil and energy markets and a drone conducting reconnaissance in international waters.19 In June, President Trump ordered and then recalled an attack on radar and missile batteries. Also in June, the international community learned that Iran would likely exceed materials quotas designed to limit the amount of fissile material Iran maintained inside the country.20 Consequently, concern grew that the Trump administration was marching to war, either because that was its goal or because the administration might stumble into war inadvertently.21
At the time of writing, this situation is ongoing. As such, it is impossible to know how the current interactions or the broader challenges will conclude. Deliberations regarding how to proceed are currently shrouded in secrecy. We do know, however, that Israel and the United States have worked in concert before to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, for example with the Stuxnet computer virus designed to cause Iranian centrifuges to malfunction. We also know that President Obama pushed for the nuclear deal in part to keep Israel from attacking Iran militarily.22 It stands to reason, therefore, that if the situation continues to worsen, considerations of the use of force should return to the forefront.
Internally, Israeli domestic politics are more complicated than usual. New elections in April 2019 returned Netanyahu to the prime minister’s office for a record fifth term. Netanyahu appears to be a proliferation pessimist, deeply concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons. He is especially attuned to the dangers of proliferation by Israel’s enemies in the Middle East. Since the 2000s, he has been vocal about the dangers Iran poses both to Israel and the world, because of Iran’s theocratic and fundamentalist religious tenets that suggest a lack of deterrability. Netanyahu has repeatedly compared Iran to Nazi Germany and drawn parallels to the Holocaust, this time with nuclear weapons.23 He has historically supported the use of force to prevent Iranian proliferation, including in 2012, when he undertook very serious consideration of the preventive attack strategy.24 A preliminary assessment of Netanyahu thus suggests he would be very likely to consider military force as a counterproliferation strategy against Iran, though it remains unclear how long he will remain in office. New elections, the fourth in two years, have been called for spring 2021.
Back in the United States, the possibility of the use of preventive military force against Iran has not entirely disappeared. Upon entering office, the new presidential administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. committed to returning to nuclear and other negotiations with Iran. However, returning to negotiations is no small task given tensions among all JCPOA participants following the US withdrawal and changing circumstances on the ground since 2018.25 Further, President Biden has historically, publicly, and repeatedly supported the use of force to forestall an Iranian nuclear weapon should negotiations fail.26 If these public and preliminary statements reflect Biden’s prepresidential and privately held beliefs, then they suggest that he is like Trump and Netanyahu, a proliferation pessimist who is deeply concerned about an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. Consequently, if negotiations resume between Iran and the US and subsequently fail, or fail to get off the ground in the first place, the use of force may return to consideration.
With Biden or otherwise, if any future American and Israeli leaders are both inclined toward the military option, they would make a potent combination. Two proliferation pessimists and two leaders who view a nuclear-armed Iran as undeterrable, could make for a volatile situation, especially if Iranian regional escalation continues. If potential costs from an intervention can be managed by both the US and Israel, then force may be especially likely to result. And, if the remaining members of the JCPOA move to support military action, hostilities become even more likely to emerge. Additionally, if the United States continues to draw down its regional presence, removing potential Iranian targets for retaliation, a future American president may be more likely to green-light or support an independent Israeli strike. Especially if Netanyahu or the next Israeli leader feels he or she has the domestic political and military support to carry out their preferences, this combination of factors could yield a powerful push for military action.
The Iranian nuclear situation is changing rapidly and domestic political events in both the United States and Israel continue to shift. What can we say with certainty in light of this book’s findings, is that we must observe and analyze the prior nuclear beliefs of those in executive office in both the United States and in Israel. Regardless of who they might be, two proliferation pessimists who view Iran as unlikely to be deterred would be very likely to consider and, if circumstances allow, use military force. Potential costs and dangers—escalation to a wider war, uncertainty over the ability to destroy 100 percent of the relevant military targets, and so on—may be insufficient to prevent a military undertaking.
All Options on the Table has argued that leaders have prior nuclear beliefs about the broad dangers of nuclear proliferation and the consequences of particular states armed with nuclear weapons. These beliefs shape how leaders view specific nuclear challenges once they are ensconced in executive office and can help analysts and scholars predict how likely leaders are to consider the use of preventive military force as a counterproliferation strategy. This argument has implications for theory, empirical knowledge, and the practice of policy.
Theoretically, this book sheds light on a critical international relations debate about the consequences of nuclear proliferation. Rather than definitively demonstrating that either the nuclear optimists or the nuclear pessimists are “correct,” this book shows that nuclear beliefs are subjectively held and will vary depending on the individual in question. In other words, this central debate will remain somewhat unsettled, as people can reasonably disagree despite having access to the identical information. Furthermore, the leader-centric argument offers a useful addition to the scholarship on nuclear weapons by extending the focus of the broader international relations literature on the role of leaders into the nuclear weapons and counterproliferation environments. We now know that beliefs matter for strategy decisions even in the nuclear realm.
Empirically, this book demonstrates that the leader-centric argument offers traction both historically and contemporaneously. It usefully explains Cold War nuclear developments, post–Cold War instances of proliferation, and events occurring in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. While primarily focusing on US decision making, the book also considers the Israeli context and thus begins to chip away at the limitations of extant scholarship’s US-centric perspective. In addition, this book sheds light on ongoing contemporary situations with Iran and North Korea and offers a road map for analyzing these situations as they develop, as well as the new situations that will undoubtedly emerge. Scholars and analysts can therefore look at history to understand how current and future leaders will approach nuclear challenges as they occur.
From a policy perspective, this analysis reveals that citizens should pay attention to candidates’ preoffice period for clues about how leaders are likely to behave later once in office. In other words, people’s early lives and prior government positions offer clues for how they may act in future situations, and voters can glean useful information that can assist them in deciding how to cast ballots. This attention is especially important for candidates for the highest office in the land. Likewise, policy professionals should investigate the views and actions of leaders when they were candidates and junior officials to anticipate how they may be likely to act in the future when nuclear proliferation challenges emerge. Preventive military force, like most military action, can be especially destabilizing in environments that are already volatile or unstable. Policy makers can get out ahead of these situations and make better policy decisions with more relevant information on how national leaders may be inclined to behave. In this way, campaigns may offer more useful information than otherwise assumed.
A variety of additional areas of research emerge to be explored in light of the present analysis. First, the current investigation has not asked why different leaders pursue different types or scales of interventions. Certain episodes exhibit a limited or pinprick preventive attack, others showcase a full intervention to target the proliferator, and still others involve an intervention aiming for regime change. There may well be patterns to this behavior—related to leader beliefs or otherwise—and future research can usefully explore this issue. Second, much more remains to learn about the efficacy of preventive military force as a counterproliferation strategy. Presently, there exist competing conclusions from individual proliferation episodes, and a more general assessment of the strategy’s efficacy is warranted.27 Third, lurking behind this manuscript is a question about why some states consider and use preventive military force as a counterproliferation strategy more than others. While the United States and Israel are the subject of this analysis for myriad reasons previously described, this choice is at least in part a result of the variation and frequency of consideration and use of preventive force in these two states. It remains unclear why other states turn to preventive military force less often or, as in the case of China, never do, as far as the available historical record suggests.
Scholars have argued that there is an existing norm against the use of preventive war to counter proliferation and for other purposes. My analysis demonstrates that if true, this norm is of marginal consequence in US and Israeli decision making for the cases explored. Scholars should therefore investigate to what extent such a norm has ever existed and to what extent the norm is imperiled now. It is possible that earlier cases, like that of US decision making vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, might offer more resonance.28 Shimon Peres referenced international legal ramifications as part of his opposition to the Osiraq bombing, as did the chief of operations of the Indian Air Force when he advised Indira Gandhi against attacking Pakistan. But these appear as the exceptions to the rule. Over time, to the extent that the norm even exists, the past few decades appear to have undermined the norm’s influence, if not negated it entirely. As the frequency of preventive military force as a counterproliferation strategy appears to be on the rise, future research should explore this purported norm’s alleged origins, influence, and continued existence.