University of Florida International Review

Transcription

1 University of Florida International Review Fall

2 Faculty Advisor and Supervisor Dr. Jeffrey Samuel Barkin Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Florida Advisory Board Dr. David Colbum Provost Emeritus, Senior Vice President, University of Florida Director, Reubin O D. Askew Institute Professor of History UF International Review is a founding member of the The Network of Global Affairs Journals is a consortium of student journals of global affairs. Participating Universities include Rutgers University, Global Affairs E-Journal University of Florida, International Review New York University, Journal of Human Rights New York University, Journal of Global Affairs University of Michigan, Michigan Journal of Political Science Duke University, Eruditio Columbia University, Undergraduate Journal of Politics and Society San Francisco State University, IR Journal Wellesley College, IR Council Journal 2

3 Staff may be reached at: Ian Charles Proctor, Editor-in-Chief Mr. Proctor is a senior majoring in Politcal Science and History, with a minor in Business Administration and a certificate in International Relations. After graduation in May 2010, Ian plans to enter the international development field before pursuing his Master's Degree. He is the Vice President of UF s Model United Nations and his academic interests include Security Policy and Conflict Studies. His outside interests include Reading, Soccer and Movies. Mel Rose Burat, Associate Editor Melissa Burat is a third year Political Science and Anthropology major who is also pursuing minors in European Union Studies and East-Central Europe Studies with a certificate in International Studies. Aside from the International Review, she also is an active member of UF's Model United Nations and serves on the Executive Board for Gator Model United Nations, a conference put on for high schoolers from across the state of Florida. Melissa plans on going to law school and eventually hopes to work for the United Nations. Ross Mittiga, Associate Editor Mr. Mittiga is an honors student majoring in Political Science at the University of Florida. His research interests include critical and continental political theory, international institutions, state development, and international political economy. He is currently the President of The Dynamo, UF s first student-led think-tank, a Senior Fellow with the Economic Development Center of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, a national think-tank and policy research group, and an Associate Editor for the University of Florida International Review, a journal that features undergraduate research in international relations. Ross interests include political philosophy, public policy, cooking, music, movies, and running. Ross intends to pursue graduate education and doctoral research in the field of Political Science, with the hopes of eventually becoming a successful professor and author. Gayane Margaryan, Associate Editor Ms. Margaryan is a senior majoring in public relations and political science. She is a part of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service and Journalism College Ambassadors, and she is also a Campus Representative for Victoria's Secret PINK. Upon graduation in May, Gayane hopes to enter the nonprofit world and work in development/fundraising. Yevgen Sautin, Associate Editor Mr. Sautin is a junior history, economics and political science triple major. His primary research interests are security studies and the history of diplomacy. In addition to his interest in politics, he is an avid basketball player. 3

4 Table of Contents Questioning the Nuclear Taboo: Revisiting Israel s Nuclear Option During the 1973 Yom-Kippur War Kevin Weng 5 Terrorists or Terrorized? Granting Refugee Status to Iraqi Civilians Pre and Post Operation New Dawn Brittany Fox 29 Assistant Editor Highlight: Opinion- Editorial U.S. Foreign Policy at a Crossroads Yevgen Sautin 52 The War of the Acholi: The Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda Danny Ramos 57 4

5 Questioning the Nuclear Taboo: Revisiting Israel s Nuclear Option During the 1973 Yom-Kippur War Kevin Weng As a nuclear-armed power, Israel in 1973 was a paradoxical anomaly. While the country s status as a nuclear state was more-or-less common knowledge to global policymakers at the time, Israel s stubborn opacity regarding its own nuclear posture (along with its implicit denial of possessing nuclear weapons of any sort whatsoever) appeared to undermine the very logic of nuclear deterrence that would otherwise legitimize the need for atomic armaments in the first place. In principle, the stance of nuclear ambiguity was not an unusual occurrence amongst inchoate nuclear states. The Soviet Union and China, for example, upon attaining warheads of their own, refrained from announcing an explicit nuclear doctrine that outlined the conditions of utilizing atomic weapons. But both countries would eventually shed their reticence in later years, in keeping with the unofficial precedent set down by the United States that entailed some form of candidness as a prerequisite for maturation as a nuclear power. Israel is unique, however, in its transformation from a stance of nuclear ambiguity to one of nuclear opacity, as demonstrated by its steadfast refusal to acknowledge even the existence of its nuclear deterrent much less imply a hypothetical Israeli nuclear response, regardless of the fact that the country s geopolitical concerns supposedly lend themselves to arguments in favor of an active nuclear stance. As Yair Evron explicitly notes in his 1994 work, Israel s Nuclear Dilemma: No important Israeli decision-maker has ever, let alone before 1973, made a statement such as: Israel does not have nuclear bombs. But if she did have them, she would use them only if say Arab armies were to reach the outskirts of Tel-Aviv, 5

6 or only if Arab armies were to penetrate Israel (within the pre-1967 borders) and Israeli forces were badly licked in the process, and so forth. 1 Rivaling Area 51 in notoriety as one of the worst kept government secrets in the world, Israel s nuclear posture appears to encapsulate every tenet of how not to utilize atomic warheads for political leverage or even general security purposes. These tenets include: avoiding threatening nuclear retaliation, avoiding threatening the arming of atomic warheads, and avoiding proliferating official information about Israeli nuclear potential. At no other point in time did this stance of nuclear opacity seem more inimical to Israel s national security than during the 1973 October War, also known as the Yom Kippur War. On October 6, in what was supposedly a blunt dismissal of Israel s status as a nuclear power, Egyptian and Syrian armed forces launched a two-pronged attack against Israeli military units stationed in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, catching both the American Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli Mossad completely off-guard. Thus began a conflict that has the rare distinction of being one of the few in which a non-nuclear armed power actively initiated hostilities with a nuclear-armed country. Of all such cases, only the intervention of Communist Chinese troops in the 1950 Korean War can hold up to the Yom Kippur conflict in terms of sheer military scale. 2 In terms of scholarship regarding nuclear diplomacy during the Yom Kippur War, a significant portion of academic curiosity is occupied with the topic of U.S.-Soviet nuclear postures and their respective implications on the viability of détente. 3 Framing the events of 1 Evron, Yair. Israel's Nuclear Dilemma. Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pg Another such incident, albeit of a smaller magnitude, is the 1982 Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina. Constructivist scholars, Nina Tannenwald and Richard Price, also cite North Vietnamese aggression against U.S. troops during the Vietnam War along with Iraqi aggression directed towards Israel and U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War as relevant cases. 3 See, for instance: Blechman, Barry M. & Hart, Douglas M. "The Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: The 1973 Middle East Crisis." International Security Vol. 7, no. 1 (Summer, 1982): pp ; Kissinger, Henry. 6

7 October in the stark outline of Cold War great power rivalries does have its own merits; after all, the United States did initiate a nuclear-wide alert of DEFCON III in response to perceived implications of unilateral Soviet action in the midst of Arab-Israeli hostilities. Yet, more so than any other conflict in the region, the October Crisis was a crucial test of Israel s ability to act responsibly as a nuclear armed power. 4 With the Israeli nuclear deterrent apparently failing to play the role of ameliorating Egyptian-Syrian aggression, there remained the potential danger that Israel would attempt to seek more straightforward means of gaining utility from its atomic arsenal. Indeed, the Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, was reportedly in support of using nuclear weapons to stave off defeat. As events would have it, however, the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, dismissed the proposed policies of her Defense Minister and the world avoided another nuclear crisis. A number of IR scholars, such as Nina Tannenwald and Thazha V. Paul, note that, since Israel did not actually convert its nuclear deterrent into an offensive weapon against Egyptian-Syrian forces, such an act of restraint indicated the influence of a moral or political opprobrium that was attached to the usage of atomic warheads. 5 While neither Tannenwald nor Paul dismiss realist or strategic considerations entirely, both scholars do emphasize that such concerns worked in close conjunction with normative considerations to produce the desired result of nuclear non-use; and in many cases, normative concerns were far more influential. 6 I claim, however, that such an argument overlooks the importance of Israel s opaque nuclear doctrine. This is not to say that the prevailing influence of a nuclear taboo Years of Upheaval. 1 ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp ; Lebow, Richard N. & Stein, Janice G. We All Lost the Cold War. 1 ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp ; Sagan, Scott D. "Lessons of the Yom Kippur Alert." Foreign Policy, no. 36 (Autumn, 1979): pp This is not to imply that the United States and the Soviet Union were already responsible nuclear powers, but both countries had previously engaged in polices of brinkmanship during the 1962 Missile Crisis and managed to more or less avoid over-escalation. Israel, up to 1973, had never faced such a test of its restraint. 5 Paul, T.V. The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons. 1 ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp ; Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons. 1 ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, pg Paul, for one, places a larger emphasis on political and normative considerations while Tannenwald focuses on the importance of moral opprobrium. Nonetheless, both scholars still agree that the nuclear taboo was critical towards influencing Israeli restraint during the October conflict. 7

8 did not exist in the minds of Israeli decision-makers such as Golda Meir or Moshe Dayan, but rather to suggest that material and strategic considerations were more salient in preventing Israel s hand from pressing down on the nuclear button. To ascertain whether this argument is true, however, requires a more in-depth historical analysis of Israel s own nuclear stance along with the strategic outlooks of its major policymakers. Golda Meir and the Entrenchment of Israeli Nuclear Opacity In February of 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died of a heart attack, leaving former Foreign Minister Golda Meir as his successor. Hard of personality and stubborn to a fault, the new Prime Minister emanated an aura of brusque no-nonsense which, while undoubtedly a testament to her unwavering loyalty to Israel, was occasionally perceived as a sort of banal presumptuousness by those unfamiliar with her character. That preposterous woman, as U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once described her, 7 nonetheless harbored no illusions as to the tenuousness of her country s existence even as she pushed 71 years of age. Meir s distaste for circumspection, however, made it difficult for her to comprehend the rationale behind Israel s ambiguous nuclear stance, particularly in regards to the U.S.- Israeli partnership. To deny the existence of Israel s nuclear program, Meir reasoned, meant that it cannot be used as a source for bargaining because you cannot bargain over something that does not exist. 8 Yet such sentiments did not necessarily preclude Meir from agreeing with her advisors on the impossibility of declaring an open nuclear posture to the rest of the world; rather, they signaled a willingness to steer the U.S.-Israeli nuclear understanding away from that of nuclear ambiguity. 7 Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger: A Biography. 1 ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg Cited in Cohen, Avner. Israel and the Bomb. New York: Columbia University Press, pg

9 Previously, Eshkol had fended off pressure from U.S. Presidents Kennedy and later Johnson to have Israel sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT) even while American visits to Israel s Dimona Reactor (which Eshkol repeatedly claimed was not capable of producing nuclear weapons) were in progress. 9 Meir, finding herself ensconced in the same situation as her predecessor, only this time with U.S. President Richard Nixon, quickly realized that the future of Israel s nuclear program rested on her shoulders. Three policy choices were available to the Israeli Prime Minister. The first option was a continuation of the tactics of prevarication that Eshkol (and David Ben-Gurion before him) had perfected; neither confirming nor denying the Israeli possession of nuclear weapons while allowing American visits to Dimona to continue. At the same time, the policy entailed neither accepting nor rejecting Israeli participation in the NPT. Such a stance, according to Avner Cohen, possessed a number of advantages and disadvantages: [Nuclear ambiguity] allowed [Israel] to develop a nuclear weapons capability for desperate, last-resort situations; it prevented a confrontation with the United States; it provided the United States with an incentive to supply Israel with conventional armaments; and it limited the Arab incentives to pursue nuclear weapons. [...] However, [nuclear ambiguity] did not allow Israel to translate its investment in nuclear weapons into an open deterrent posture; it forced Israel to deceive the United States; it left the nuclear project lacking in conceptual coherence and organizational clarity. 10 A second option entailed a complete obfuscation of Israel s nuclear weapons program; officially denying the existence of an Israeli nuclear deterrent and (most importantly) rejecting the NPT outright while ending all American access to the Dimona reactor. Such a stance of nuclear opacity achieved all the advantages of nuclear ambiguity with the added 9 American inspections of the Dimona reactor began in 1962 and were generally thought to have had little use, due in no small part to Israel s bluff of non-nuclear weapon status and U.S. unwillingness to call out its ally for possessing nuclear arms. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pp ; Hersh, Seymour M. The Sampson Option: Israel s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. 1 ed. New York: Random House, pg Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pg

10 benefit of giving the Nixon administration (which had more or less tacitly acknowledged the presence of a nuclear-armed Israel) an official reason to turn the other cheek, thereby allowing Israel to finally set concrete standards for its nuclear weapons program without American interference. 11 The stance of complete nuclear opacity, however, suffered from the same critical disadvantage of one of nuclear ambiguity in that it had a minimal deterring effect on conventional aggression and continued the tradition of mendacity in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, although the latter consideration did not seem to invoke much pause from Meir or her ministers. The final option presented to Meir was to shift Israel s nuclear stance into an open deterrent posture. Doing so would send a clear-cut message to Arab states that Israel was a permanent political fixture whilst maximizing the deterrent value of Israel s nuclear arsenal. 12 The advantages of an explicit nuclear stance, however, were overwhelmed by the scale of several negative externalities. First off, an outright Israeli nuclear doctrine would justify, in the eyes of Arab states, the need for Israel s enemies to obtain nuclear weapons of their own in order to obtain a form of parity; Egypt, which under Nasser had previously threatened military action against Israel s nuclear reactors, was of prime concern in this case. 13 Beyond potentially triggering a general 11 The Nixon administration, at this point in time, already knew that a nuclear Israel was a fait accompli, and its attitude towards nuclear proliferation was distinctly less ambivalent than that of the Johnson and Kennedy administrations anyways. As Seymour Hersh notes, Israel had gone nuclear, and there was nothing that the United States could or wanted to do about it. Cohen. Israel and the Bomb, pg. 283, 324; Hersh. The Sampson Option, pp ; Shalom, Zaki. Israel s Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy Between Dimona and Washington. 1 ed. Portland: Sussex Academic Press, pg One additional advantage of the declaratory nuclear posture that has been forwarded by some scholars is the interpretation that such a stance could deter Soviet aggression (alongside Arab aggression), a viewpoint which Seymour Hersh gives some credence to. I have excised it from my overall analysis due to a number of pertinent issues brought up by Alan Dowty, one of which being the realization that Soviet aggression would be a secondary calculation since the more immediate danger is not Soviet intervention, but Soviet-supplied Arab armies. Also, Dowty writes that it is not clear that Israel could plausibly threaten Soviet targets, even on a minimal scale and after considerable expenditure. Dowty, Alan. Nuclear Proliferation: The Israeli Case. International Studies Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 1 (1978): pp ; Hersh. The Sampson Option, pp Although Egypt after 1967 was in no financial shape to fund its own nuclear program, the fear of triggering a general nuclear arms race in the Middle East was still a cause for concern to Meir and her cabinet. And with hindsight, Iraq and Iran s attempts to possess nuclear weapons of their own could be perceived as a form of 10

11 nuclear arms race in the Middle East, an open Israeli nuclear posture could potentially threaten the critical U.S. arms supplies that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) relied upon for maintaining conventional superiority relative to its Arab counterparts. 14 Additionally, a candid Israeli nuclear doctrine would draw the unwanted attention of the Soviet Union, which in turn would likely act to bolster the military programs of its Arab allies. 15 Most importantly, there remained the dilemma of how expansive an open Israeli nuclear posture should actually be. If Israel announced a broad doctrine that threatened nuclear retaliation for lesser incidents of hostility, then Arab states could easily call Israel s bluff by engaging in brief skirmishes with the IDF and daring a nuclear response. 16 A subsequent failure by Israel to act appropriately would render its nuclear stance to be of little use. Yet a more limited doctrine that threatened a nuclear response only in cases of dire circumstances suffered from the flaw of providing Israel s enemies with a convenient stopping point from which to formulate any future acts of aggression. So long as Israel s enemies did not cross a specific threshold, they could proceed to systematically dismember Israel through death by a thousand cuts without actually causing enough of a provocation to warrant the use of Israel s nuclear arsenal. In measuring the validities of the options set before her, Meir swiftly dismissed the path that led to a declaratory nuclear posture. Consensus among the members of her Kitchen justification for this worry. Dowty, Nuclear Proliferation: The Israeli Case. pg. 94; Shalom. Israel s Nuclear Option, pp Dowty, Nuclear Proliferation: The Israeli Case. pp Shikaki, Khalil. The Nuclearization Debates: The Cases of Israel and Egypt. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 14, no. 4 (1985): pp Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pg. 237; Dowty, Nuclear Proliferation: The Israeli Case. pp ; Shalom. Israel s Nuclear Option, pp. 170,

12 Cabinet 17 regarding the remaining two choices, however, was divided. The Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon concurred with the views of the Minister Without Portfolio Yisrael Galili in calling for the continuation of nuclear ambiguity as practiced by Eshkol and Ben- Gurion; the Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan called for a more aggressive expansion of Israel s nuclear program which could only be brought about by a stance that negated American inspections (i.e. one of nuclear opacity). 18 Meir herself eventually chose to adhere to the advice of Dayan, and by July of 1969, U.S. visits to the Dimona reactor ceased altogether. 19 Moshe Dayan and the Role of Israel s Nuclear Option The differences in opinion between Allon, Galili, and Dayan had roots stretching back to the administration under David Ben-Gurion. The perennial disagreement and level of enmity between Dayan and Allon, in particular, was to such an extent that Meir wryly described the relationship between her two disputatious ministers as a potential flashpoint for a war of the Jews. 20 Yet while both Yigal Allon and Yisrael Galili generally kept their sentiments in line with the overall consensus of the Prime Minister s own Kitchen Cabinet, Moshe Dayan tended to distinguish himself from his colleagues through his ardent conviction that Israel s nuclear arsenal needed to play a more active role in national security. Unlike Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan had been closely linked with Israel s nascent nuclear program ever since its uncertain beginnings under the Ben-Gurion administration. Being a member of Ben-Gurion s inner circle, 21 Dayan uniformly embraced his mentor s 17 So-called the kitchen cabinet because of Meir s famed tendency to meet her ministers in her own kitchen while serving them pastries. Regular members included: Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon, Yisrael Galili, Abba Eban, and Yisrael Lior. 18 Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pp Ibid, pp Meir, Golda. My Life. 1 ed. New York: G.P. Putnam s Sons, pg Other members of Ben-Gurion s coven of intimates included Shimon Peres and Giora Yoseftal. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pp ; Evron, Israel s Nuclear Dilemma. pg

13 belief in the necessity of a nuclear program that could permanently secure Israel s existence. 22 Israel could not, in Dayan s mind, hope to win in a prolonged conventional arms race with its enemies. A national defense strategy oriented around a nuclear option, however, could give Israel a decisive military advantage that would reduce the need to spend slavishly on importing modern conventional armaments. 23 Even if all the arms markets were open to Israel, Dayan noted in his memoirs, [Israel] would have to determine with great care the limits of the burden she could bear. How many tanks, planes, and regular troops could we afford to maintain without collapsing under the economic weight of procuring and supporting them? 24 In true adherence to his country s policy of nuclear opacity, Dayan never directly referenced the nuclear option as a viable solution to Israel s conventional military woes, but nevertheless got his point across in an elliptical fashion: I believe that the extent of Israel s military strength has virtually reached its quantitative limits. It will be difficult for her to go on and on enlarging her army [ ] Therefore, the way in which Israel must secure a balance of forces against the Arab world, which grows in strength with extraordinary speed, lies in improving the quality of her weapons, a quality which should ensure that any Arab attempt to destroy Israel will involve the destruction of the attackers. [Emphasis added] 25 Dayan s views, in conjunction with those of Shimon Peres, came to dominate a faction of the Ben-Gurion government that advocated an Israeli nuclear doctrine capable of deterring Arab aggression. Opposing them was a group led by Allon and Galili, which supported a doctrine of conventional deterrence that relied upon the continued maintenance of the IDF s military superiority relative to its Arab counterparts. In 1962, when the future fate of the Dimona reactor was still up for question, both factions had taken part in a heated (but 22 Shimon Peres shared the same view as Dayan and Ben-Gurion. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pg. 148; Evron, Israel s Nuclear Dilemma. pg Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pp ; Shikaki, The Nuclearization Debates. pg Dayan, Moshe. Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life. 1 ed. New York: William Morrow and Company, pg Ibid, pp

14 closeted) discussion over the potential paths laid out for Israel s national security. 26 Ben- Gurion, despite his close ties with Peres and Dayan, eventually agreed with the arguments of Allon and Galili, thereby delegating Israel s national defense to the auspices of the IDF. 27 Dayan, however, remained convinced of the impracticalities surrounding an Israeli emphasis on conventional superiority, a view which he continued to perceive as justified in light of the military conflicts that followed. The War of Atonement: Meir, Dayan, and the Use of Nuclear Weapons Although Allon and Galili had successfully persuaded Ben-Gurion to place the IDF at the crux of Israel s military doctrine, the increased emphasis on conventional arms superiority did little to prepare the Meir cabinet (and Israel as a whole) for the sudden shock of the Egyptian-Syrian offensive on October 6, the day of Yom Kippur, the most holy of Jewish holidays. In the first three days of what would ultimately prove to be a sixteen-day conflict, the IDF struggled to fight off two determined adversaries on two separate fronts. It would not be until the fifth day of the war that worries amongst Israel s policymakers would ease somewhat (although they would not dissipate). 28 Heavy losses in terms of planes, armor, and intrepid Israeli soldiers sorely tested Israel s ability to fight a conflict that seemed intent on turning into a more devastating version of the War of Attrition. It was under these initial conditions, characterized by the constant fear that defeat was potentially only a day away, that Israel appeared most likely to try and resort to nuclear weapons in an effort to turn the tide of the battle (or, at the very least, end the fighting). Why such a scenario did not actually occur falls on two strategic considerations: first, whether Israel truly thought that it was in mortal danger of being wiped off of the map, and second, whether the military benefits 26 Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pp ; Evron, Israel s Nuclear Dilemma. pp. 5-9; Shalom, Israel s Nuclear Option. pp ; Shikaki, The Nuclearization Debates. pp Yair Evron notes that Galili and Allon were not adamantly opposed to the image of a nuclear Israel. Rather, both men were opposed to the attempt to base overall Israeli military strategy on a nuclear doctrine. Evron, Israel s Nuclear Dilemma. pg Dayan, Story of My Life. pg

15 of using nuclear weapons actually outweighed the strategic costs of employing them offensively. 29 To elaborate on the first consideration, while Israel s military position during the first three days of the Yom Kippur War was undoubtedly tenuous, whether it was precarious enough to the extent that the country s political leadership would have actually considered utilizing nuclear weapons on the battlefield is less certain. Golda Meir, for all of her apparent insecurities during the early stages of the war, nonetheless thought fit to record in her memoirs that throughout the entire ordeal she possessed an unchallengeable foreknowledge regarding Israel s ultimate victory: Even on the worst of those early days, when we already knew what losses we were sustaining, I had complete faith in our soldiers and officers, in the spirit of the Israel Defense Forces and their ability to face any challenge, and I never lost faith in our ultimate victory. I knew we would win sooner or later. 30 It is very easy, at this point, to claim that Meir, in looking back at Israel s eventual military success, simply mistook hindsight to be indicative of her own prescience. 31 Yet while the selfprofessed perspicacity of Meir herself may not be a reliable indicator of Israel s security 29 It should be noted that conventional scholarship on the Yom-Kippur War asserts that Egyptian and Syrian aims were limited to the breaking of the political deadlock that had surrounded peace negotiations (as a result of Israeli malaise regarding Arab military impotence ) rather than any complete destruction of Israel itself. In addition, Avner Cohen notes that Israel s nuclear arsenal, while not successful in deterring Arab aggression, may have possibly limited Egyptian/Syrian war aims. Taking this factor into account, it is convenient to claim that the first strategic consideration (whether Israel truly thought that it was in mortal danger of being wiped off of the map) is rendered moot as a result. However, such an assessment has a critical flaw in its analysis of Israeli perceptions. Yair Evron, for instance, notes that the only way the Egyptians could have hoped to communicate their limited war objectives to Israel was through the developments in the field. [ ] While possible, this method is prone to dangerous potential eventualities. Golda Meir herself was apparently unconvinced that Egyptian/Syrian war aims were limited in any fashion when she stated to the Knesset on October 16, 1973 that The Arab rulers pretend that their objective is limited to reaching the lines of June 4, 1967, but we know that their true objective: the total subjugation of the State of Israel. See: Aker, October pg. 19; Allen, The Yom Kippur War. pp ; Cohen, Israel and the Bomb. pg. 342; Evron, Israel s Nuclear Dilemma. pp ; Herzog, The War of Atonement. pp ; Lebow, We All Lost the Cold War. pp ; Meir, My Life. pp ; Sadat, Anwar. In Search of Identity: An Autobiography. 2 ed. New York: Harper & Row, pp Meir, My Life. pg One can also argue that Meir hinged the prospect of an Israeli victory on whether the United States would deign to resupply the Israeli military; I elaborate more on this aspect of the U.S.-Israeli relationship later. 15

16 status during the Yom Kippur War, it can serve as a means of measuring how Israel s leadership perceived its country s chances of survival during the conflict. If Meir held any reservations, she apparently did not show them outwardly to her advisors. 32 While Meir s ministers had toyed with the option of exaggerating Israel s military situation to U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in an attempt to gain the sympathy of the Nixon administration, Meir herself brusquely rejected such a tactic. 33 I want to give [Kissinger] the real picture Meir stated during an October 7 meeting, I m not under the impression the situation is doomed We should tell it to him convincingly. Tonight was a bad night. 34 One individual who apparently did not share Meir s assurance was Moshe Dayan. Of all of Meir s ministers, it was her once confident Defense Minister who was the most affected by the progression of events, and who had the bleakest outlook regarding Israel s chances of survival. It was only back in July that Dayan himself had stated to Time magazine that no large war was likely to break out in the next ten years. 35 By war s initiation, however, that judgment had been brutally rendered moot. In judging the severity of the military situation facing Israel, Dayan possessed a distinctly clear-eyed view of the challenges which the IDF had to overcome: We faced three difficult factors. The first, I said, was the very size of the enemy forces, lavishly equipped with weaponry accumulated during the previous six years. [ ] Second was the enemy s anti-aircraft missile system, with the addition of the SAM-6s. [ ] Third was our need to hold our frontier lines with small forces since we neither wished nor were able to keep our population mobilized all the time Cited in Ashkenazi, Eli. "'Golda and Dado did not lose confidence' Top aide says context needed to understand Yom Kippur War papers." Ha'aretz (October 6, 2010) 33 Cited in Lis, Jonathan. "Newly released documents: Division and disarray on eve of Yom Kippur War." Ha'aretz (October 6, 2010) 34 Ibid 35 Cited in Creveld, The Sword and the Olive. pg Dayan, Story of My Life. pg

17 Historian Abraham Rabinovitch notes, however, that The breadth of Dayan s strategic vision had become the depth of his despair. 37 As a result, many of the Defense Secretary s proscriptions proved to be geared towards the overly pessimistic assumption that, at any moment, Israel could be wiped off the face of the earth. We had to tell our nation the truth, Dayan recounts, We would be short of men. We would need to mobilize older age groups, which we had forgone in the past, and to investigate the possibilities of calling up seventeenyear-olds for preparatory training. 38 Dayan s panic was to such an extent that he reportedly spouted off the histrionic phrase of this is the end of the Third Temple ; 39 The Third Temple being a metaphor for modern Israel and a reference towards the activation of Israel s nuclear weapons, which apparently bore the code name of Temple weapons. 40 On October 8, the third day of the war, Meir and her ministers, at Dayan s urging, allegedly gave the green light for the arming of Israel s nuclear arsenal, thereby reflecting the tenuousness of Israel s military security. 41 Other accounts of the meeting report that Dayan tentatively suggested utilizing Israel s nuclear arsenal before being vehemently opposed by Allon and Galili, with Meir ultimately opting for the continuation of the war through conventional means. 42 In retrospect, Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan embodied two parts of a dichotomy that characterized Israel s perception of its military situation. On the one side, Meir, ever confident in the strength of her country s resolve, held firm in her belief that the tide would 37 Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War. pg Dayan, Story of My Life. pg The first temple, built by Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The second temple, built by Herod, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. Hersh, The Sampson Option. pg. 223; Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War. pg Sheffer, Gabriel. From Crisis to Change: The Israeli Political Elites and the 1973 War. Found in: Revisiting the Yom Kippur War. 1 ed. P.R. Kumaraswamy. Portland: Frank Cass Publishers, pg. 168; Hersh, The Samson Option. pg "How Israel Got the Bomb." Time, April 12, 1976; Hersh, The Sampson Option. pg Evron, Israel s Nuclear Dilemma. pp

18 soon turn in Israel s favor and therefore cautiously avoided the question of nuclear use. On the other side of the spectrum, Dayan, whose propensity for cynicism was never particularly subtle, remained ever convinced of the necessity in implementing his increasingly bleak policy proscriptions, which included the potential activation of Israel s nuclear option. Of these two perspectives, it was Meir s less-apocalyptic vision that became representative of the Israeli leadership s own sentiments. While one can argue that a systemic norm of nuclear nonuse turned Golda Meir and the Israeli political leadership against Dayan, such an explanation ignores the fact that disagreements over Israel s nuclear arsenal played a very small role in contributing to Dayan s disconnect with his peers. Why the political establishment and the Israeli public did not turn to Dayan s outlook falls down to three factors. First off, a spatial detachment between the tactical considerations of the IDF and the strategic considerations of Israeli political leaders contributed to the disparity in policy recommendations between Dayan and his dissenters. 43 While Meir remained ensconced in her office with only the occasional outing for a routine exhortation to the Knesset, Dayan made repeated trips to the front lines and would often return with his already low spirits sunken down to even more despondent depths. 44 To Dayan, these visits nevertheless proved to be invaluable: The best method for becoming absolutely au courant with what was happening was to get to the divisional commanders spend several hours with them, hear their orders in the midst of action, and talk with them and with their staff officers. Only in this way, and only at these places, could I learn the true situation and understand this 1973 form of war [ ] And, above all, only on the battlefield can one know about a battle. No report can match first-hand, on-the-spot observation from a nearby hilltop or a patrol along the forward lines Schiff, Zeev. October Earthquake: Yom Kippur ed. Louis Williams. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, pp Herzog, The War of Atonement. pp ; Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War. pp Dayan, Story of My Life. pp

19 As justified as these remarks are, Dayan s preoccupation with battlefield experiences of a tactical scale colored his perception of the war into a resoundingly disconsolate one. 46 Soldiers and divisional commanders fighting against a determined enemy on the frontlines are unlikely to take into consideration the larger picture of national survival, regardless of how the balance of power might have shifted on a more strategic scale; the battlefield remains a grim environment to both victor and loser. To his credit, Dayan later acknowledged his preference for focusing his attention on the participants of small-unit actions: The fault may have been with me, but up to the very last day of the war I preferred to skip the command headquarters and meet directly with the fighting forces. 47 The second factor that turned Dayan into a ministerial pariah was his over-pessimism in light of Israel s past history of overcoming astronomical odds. Whether Meir s predilection for optimistic battle-reports was reflective of reality or not, it was nevertheless far more in line with the sentiments of the Israeli public than Dayan s overbearing gloominess. 48 After all, had not Israel fought through 1948 and 1967 and won against the combined might of its many enemies? 49 What patriotic Israeli citizen would be willing to entertain the possibility that 1973 would suddenly be the end of their dauntless nation? Golda Meir, understanding that the most inspirational stories are about the victorious underdogs, directly channeled the beliefs of her country s citizenry when she proclaimed in her public statement on the opening day of the war: We are in no doubt that we shall prevail. 50 Where the charismatic Minister of Defense 46 Bar-Joseph, Uri. The Watchmen Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources. 1 ed. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp Dayan, Story of My Life. pg Schiff, October Earthquake. pp was the date of the Arab-Israeli War was the date of the Six Day War. 50 Meir, My Life. pg

20 should have been Israel s image of stalwart courageousness, it was Meir who stepped in to pick up the ball after Dayan had dropped it. 51 The final factor that prevented Israel from declining into the doldrums of despondency (and the possible use of nuclear weapons) was Golda Meir s sheer force of personality. While the Prime Minister lacked the military knowledge of other battle-hardened ministers such as David Elazar and Moshe Dayan, she nevertheless involved herself in martial matters with particular aplomb. 52 Making decisions about issues of which one has limited knowledge would be an act of utmost pretentiousness for most individuals; to Meir, such action was a quality of her leadership. The fact that the Israeli Prime Minister was also able to maintain her composure while nevertheless remaining aware of the seriousness of Israel s position under abnormally taxing conditions is representative of a formidable personal character. And all the while, Meir was able to overshadow Dayan s pessimism. 53 As history would have it, by October 9, the IDF successfully blunted the momentum of the Syrian attack 54, and by October 10, even Dayan began to reduce his fretting over Israel s ability to stave off defeat. 55 Had Israeli forces been unable to turn the tide on the Golan Heights (and later, the Sinai Peninsula), Dayan s opinions regarding the usage of Israel s nuclear arsenal would have likely gained ground amongst the Kitchen Cabinet. Yet the fact remains that Golda Meir, at least for the period of time concerning this analysis, did not perceive her country s military position to have reached the dire extremity that would 51 Dayan actively tried to emanate a more optimistic attitude while in the public eye, but his uncensored dispiritedness during ministerial meetings only helped contribute to the popular image amongst other cabinet members (and later historians) that something had snapped in the Defense Minister. See: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval. pg. 564; Meir, My Life. pg Meir reportedly once told her military aide, Yisrael Lior, that she had no idea what a division was. In addition, Creveld suggests that it was Meir s own lack of military experience that led to her retaining Dayan as Defense Minister. Creveld, The Sword and the Olive. pg. 204; Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War. pg Paul, The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons. pg Creveld writes that Israel s rattling [of] its nuclear saber possibly explained the Syrian retreat. Sources backing up this assessment, however, are lacking. Creveld, The Sword and the Olive. pg Dayan, Story of My Life. pp ,

21 have otherwise pushed Israel over the brink towards actively launching atomic weapons into the equation. Underlying the decisions which prompted Israeli restraint was a second strategic consideration that was distinctly separate, although not unrelated, to the events on the battlefield. As stated before previously, the U.S.-Israeli relationship had roots stretching back to the beginning of Israel s nuclear program. If Israel were ever to use atomic warheads as an active weapon on the battlefield, the benefits of doing so would have to outweigh any strategic costs that might decrease U.S.-Israeli intimacy. Both Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, being blessed with the ability to perceive regional conflicts in the larger context of global geopolitics, were ever conscious of the unwanted potential for self-interested Israeli actions to come off as slights to the United States. While there was no immediate danger of the Nixon administration abandoning Israel in its time of crisis, previous U.S. presidents had shown a certain proclivity for restraining American involvement in Israeli affairs during periods when Israel seemed to need foreign assistance the most. Dayan, in particular, was ever-conscious of the limitations to the U.S.-Israeli partnership: Could we complain about the Nixon administration? It was far better to us than the government of Eisenhower had been during the Sinai Campaign, 56 and better, too, than the administrations of Kennedy and Truman. President Truman was without a doubt a sincere friend and supporter of the State of Israel, but he had been unwilling to help us with arms in 1948, even during our grimmest hours when we were fighting for our independence and our very survival. [ ] During one of my talks with Dr. Kissinger, though I happened to remark that the United States was the only country that was 56 Dayan is referencing the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which Israeli, French, and British forces invaded the Sinai Peninsula in response to Egyptian president Nasser s nationalization of the Suez Canal back in July 26, While the tripartite forces were able to achieve their military objections, strong pressure from the Eisenhower administration forced Israel, France, and Egypt to withdraw their claims to the canal. As a result of the crisis outcome, Nasser s popularity skyrocketed amongst Arab nations. Israel (and Dayan) viewed the incident to be a sobering reminder of the United States potential for engaging in ill-timed chicanery; a view which did not dissipate during the Yom Kippur War and the ensuing delay surrounding U.S. arms supplies to Israel. 21

22 ready to stand by us, my silent reflection was that the United States would really rather support the Arabs. 57 With that sentiment in mind, Dayan set about cautioning, paradoxically enough, for Israeli conventional restraint in the days preceding the Yom Kippur War. 58 Meir, to her credit, was willing to acknowledge Israel s status as junior partner to its American ally and concurred with Dayan s assessment. If we strike first we won t get help from anybody, Meir stated during an October 6 meeting, If war does break out, better to be in proper shape to deal with it, even if the world gets angry with us. 59 As a result, Meir made the fateful decision on October 6 not to order an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Egyptian and Syrian forces, a decision which likely led to a greater loss of Israeli lives but arguably kept the door open for an eventual U.S. resupply of the IDF. Meir and Dayan s caution proved to be well-founded in light of the fact that U.S. policymakers were initially of the opinion that Israeli actions had somehow induced Egypt- Syrian hostility. 60 Although that misunderstanding was later resolved, a second issue quickly arose to frustrate Meir and Dayan s plans: most U.S. officials believed that it would only be a matter of time before Israel would hit back hard and end the war. 61 As such, despite Meir s repeated calls for a U.S. airlift of military armaments to Israel, American policymakers were willing to wait for a while until the strategic picture was more pronounced in their own eyes. 62 In light of U.S. policymakers vacillation and the potential Egyptian-Syrian penetration of Israel s pre-1967 borders, Israel s nuclear option appeared to be an enticing 57 Dayan, Story of My Life. pp Bar-Joseph, The Watchmen Fell Asleep. pp ; Meir, My Life. pg Cited in Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War. pg Kalb, Marvin & Kalb, Bernard. Kissinger. 1 ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pg. 461; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval. pp , 458; Kissinger, Henry M. Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises. 1 ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg. 18, 26, Isaacson, Kissinger. pg. 513; Kalb, Kissinger. pg. 464; Kissinger, Crisis. pg Nixon, Richard M. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. 1 ed. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, pg

23 consideration. Utilizing atomic weapons against Arab forces, however, would definitively destroy Israel s carefully constructed stance of nuclear opacity, of which Ben-Gurion, Eshkol, and Meir had all worked so hard to nurture. Launching an atomic warhead against Egyptian- Syrian forces would be a most unsubtle way of declaring Israel s nuclear capability, and one that accrued all the negative implications of a declaratory nuclear posture with the added disadvantage of practically guaranteeing the severing of military arms supplies from the United States. 63 Whatever Israel s actual intentions, an Israeli nuclear strike against Egypt or Syria (with Israeli-made nuclear weapons) could only be perceived by the United States as an outright declaration of Israel s willingness to go at it alone without outside assistance. Without U.S. military supplies, the IDF would be forced to fall back ever more so on its nuclear arm (a scenario which Allon and Galili explicitly wished to avoid) with the added implication that, since Egyptian and Syrian troops/cities/civilians were now viable nuclear targets, Israeli troops/cities/civilians were also acceptable targets for a possible (Soviet) nuclear attack. Such a radical change in escalation carried larger risks of a global conflagration that Israel could not afford to initiate. One popular view presented by historian Seymour Hersh alleges that Israeli policymakers would have had a distinctly Machiavellian motive for arming Israel s nuclear arsenal: such a drastic step would force the United States to begin an immediate and massive resupply of the Israeli military. 64 Nuclear blackmail, then, appears to have been a possible goal for the Israeli leadership. The 1976 Time magazine article, How Israel Got the Bomb, backs this assessment by detailing how a U.S. spy plane detected the shipment of Israeli atomic warheads during a reconnaissance sweep before transmitting its findings back to base. 65 By threatening to go at it alone, Israel s political leadership would effectively be 63 For a reading of all the disadvantages of an open nuclear posture, see notes Hersh, The Sampson Option, pg How Israel Got the Bomb. Time 23