Deterrence beyond the state: The Israeli experience

Contemporary Security Policy

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 124-147

  Rid, Thomas ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84859931066     PISSN: 13523260     EISSN: 17438764     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2012.659593     Document Type: Article

References (133)

1. The most-quoted pioneer was Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1764/1995), followed by Jeremy Bentham, The Rationale of Punishment (London: Robert Heward, 1830). Both were influenced by Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1651/1996).
2. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 15.
3. Robert Jervis, 'Deterrence Theory Revisited', World Politics, Vol. 31, No. 2 (January 1979), pp. 289-324, at p. 290.
4. Jervis identified 'three waves' of thought on deterrence.
5. Remarks by George W. Bush at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, 1 June 2002. For a more detailed discussion.
6. Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), p. 24
7. Lawrence Freedman, 'Deterrence: A Reply', Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 28, No. 5 (October 2005), pp. 789-801.
8. The so-called 'fourth wave' of deterrence research is often grappling with Bush's fundamental question, whether deterrence is relevant any longer.
9. Jeffrey W. Knopf, 'The Fourth Wave in Deterrence Research', Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2010), pp. 1-33, at p. 24.
10. Amir Lupovici, 'The Emerging Fourth Wave of Deterrence Theory', International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 3 (2010), pp. 705-732.
11. 'The history of wars', pointed out Colin Gray, an authority of strategic history and theory, 'is a history of deterrence failure'.
12. Colin S Gray, 'Deterrence and the Nature of Stategy', in Max G. Manwarning (ed.), Deterrence in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 19-28, at p. 19.
13. George Quester, Deterrence before Hiroshima. The Airpower Background of Modern Strategy (New York: Wiley, 1966).
14. R.J. Overy, 'Air Power and the Origins of Deterrence Theory before 1939', Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March 1992), pp. 73-101.
15. A discussion between leading scholars in the field in the Journal of Strategy Studies in 2005 was largely focused on states, although it briefly touched on terrorism, 'the most difficult case'. See Freedman, 'Deterrence: A Reply' (note 4), p. 800.
16. Patrick M. Morgan, 'Taking the Long View of Deterrence', Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 28, No. 5 (October 2005), pp. 751-763.
17. Richard Ned Lebow, 'Deterrence: Then and Now', Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 28, No. 5 (October 2005), pp. 765-73.
18. Political violence and terrorism, the focus of fourth wave scholarship on deterrence, is transcending the state and focusing on small groups ofmilitants, even on single individual offenders. It is therefore surprising that the two debates on deterrence, one in security studies and one in criminology, are almost entirely isolated from each other. Perhaps the only exception is a few pages in Freedman, Deterrence (note 4).
19. The literature on deterring terrorism has often focused on mass-casualty terrorism, and therefore largely remained in a binary framework - attack or non-attack.
20. Paul K. Davis and Brian M. Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence in Counterterrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2002).
21. Wyn Bowen, 'Deterrence and Asymmetry: Non-State Actors and Mass Casualty Terrorism', Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2004), pp. 54-70.
22. Robert Trager and Dessislava Zagorcheva, 'Deterring Terrorism: It Can Be Done', International Security, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2005), pp. 87-123.
23. 'Although deterrence might be used to nudge [actors] toward internalizing certain norms, that is something that has been, at best, an afterthought, a secondary consideration or an unanticipated outcome' (Morgan, 'Taking the Long View of Deterrence' (note 8), p. 752). A recent review article alsopoints out that it is 'rare' to find attempts to combine deterrence and norms in international relations literature.
24. Lupovici, 'The Emerging Fourth Wave' (note 5), p. 711.
25. This definition is a simplified version of Gibbs', who defines specific deterrence as 'the omission or curtailment of some type of criminal activity by an individual throughout a period because in whole or in part he or she has been accused of a crime for which someone was punished, and he or she is therefore unwilling to risk someone being punished again' (Jack P. Gibbs, Crime, Punishment, and Deterrence (New York: Elsevier, 1975), p. 34).
26. Mark C. Stafford and Mark Warr, 'A Reconceptualization of General and Specific Deterrence', Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May 1993), pp. 123-135.
27. Patrick Morgan, a theorist of deterrence in the international arena, has introduced the distinction between 'general' and 'immediate' deterrence, although without linking it to the criminological literature where the notion of general deterrence has been well established for four decades.
28. Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 80-15.
29. This definition is adapted from Gibbs, who defined absolute deterrence in criminology as cases in which 'a potential offender has contemplated a crime at least once and has been deterred totally in each instance'.
30. Jack P. Gibbs, 'Deterrence Theory and Research', in Gary Melton, Laura Nader and Richard A. Dienstbier (eds), Law as a Behavioral Instrument (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. 89).
31. The definition is adopted from Gibbs, Crime, Punishment, and Deterrence (note 12), pp. 32-34.
32. The definition is adopted from Gibbs, Crime, Punishment, and Deterrence (note 12), p. 13.
33. The Cold War concept of 'escalation control' or the notion of 'damage limiting', it is true, have parallels to the criminological concept of restrictive deterrence. The key difference, however, is a simple empirical fact: it never happened. Nuclear escalation was never 'controlled' and the damage done by atomic weapons was never 'limited' because the weapons were never used.
34. Deterrence theory derived from the Cold War situation is therefore of very limited practical relevance on any accumulated and collective level, be it criminal justice or political violence. For Cold War strategists of deterrence it was, for instance, impossible to recognize, let alone to test, that the actual practice of punishment (as opposed to its theoretical or threatened possibility) may strengthen the norm it enforces, an effect known as normative validation in the sociology of law. The actual use of nuclear weapons may have resulted in Armageddon, not reinforced stability.
35. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments (note 1), pp. 44, 75-76.
36. Joel Feinberg, 'The Expressive Function of Punishment', The Monist, Vol. 49, pp. 397-423.
37. John Austin, The Province of JurisprudenceDetermined (Plaistow: Curwen Press, 1832/1954), p. 21.
38. Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law, 2nd edn (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p. 34.
39. Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law, 2nd edn (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p. 46.
40. A major challenge for political theory was how to maintain the coercive order's institutional and procedural legitimacy.
41. This principle is sometimes described as ex factis jus oritur in international law; the competing principle is ex injuria jus non oritur. In highly centralized and effective legal systems, the latter principle predominates. However, in international law, the absence of judicial, executive and legislative centralization and a lower degree of effectiveness leads 'to a corresponding restriction of the principal ex injuria jus non oritur'.
42. Robert W. Tucker, The Law of War and Neutrality at Sea (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2006), pp. 7-8.
43. In August 2000, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington discussed the distinction in State of Washington v. Thaddius X. Anderson (67826-0).
44. 'Criminal offenses can be broken down into two general categories-malum in se and malum prohibitum. The distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses is best characterized as follows: a malum in se offense is "naturally evil as adjudged by the sense of a civilized community," whereas a malum prohibitum offense is wrong only because a statute makes it so' (quoting State v. Horton, 139 N.C. 588, 51 S.E. 945, 946 (1905)).
45. Jack P. Gibbs, 'The Sociology of Law and Normative Phenomena', American Sociological Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (June 1966), pp. 315-325.
46. Matthew Silberman, 'Toward a Theory of Criminal Deterrence', American Sociological Review, Vol. 41 (1976), pp. 442-461, at p. 454.
47. Kirk R. Williams and Richard Hawkins, 'Perceptual Research on General Deterrence: A Critical Review', Law & Society Review, Vol. 20, No. 4 (1986), pp. 545-572, at p. 564.
48. The author presented an earlier version of this paper at the Dado Center, the IDF's internal think tank in Ramat Aviv, on 3 August 2010. Several senior officers highlighted the similarity of their thought to the concepts of the theory of law presented in the theoretical first section of this article.
49. Jacob Amidror, 'Israel's Strategy for Combating Palestinian Terror', Joint Forces Quarterly (Autumn 2002), pp. 117-123, at p. 118.
50. Avi Kober, 'What Happened to Israeli Military Thought?', Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 43, No. 5 (October 2011), pp. 707-732.
51. Dayan's speech from 1955.
52. Moshe Dayan, 'Why Israel Strikes Back', in Donald Robinson (ed.), Under Fire: Israel's Twenty Year Struggle for Survival (New York: Norton, 1968), pp. 122-129.
53. Shimon Peres, Hashlav Haba [The Next Phase] (Tel Aviv:?Am HaSefer, 1965), pp. 9-15.
54. Sergio Catignani, 'The Strategic Impasse in Low-Intensity Conflicts', Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (February 2005), pp. 57-75, at p. 59.
55. Zeev Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army (New York: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 1-4.
56. Jacob Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925-1948 (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 254.
57. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, 'The Iron Wall [1923]', The Jewish Herald, 6 November 1937, p. 3.
58. Benny Morris, One State, Two States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 98-101.
59. Efraim Inbar and Shmuel Sandler, 'Israel's Deterrence Strategy Revisited', Security Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1993), pp. 330-358, at p. 346.
60. Shai Feldman (1997) Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 113-114.
61. A note of caution is in order: this article explores the evolution of Israeli strategic thought on deterring political violence; it is therefore written predominantly from an Israeli perspective. Some readers may find this problematic. But given the article's conceptual and empirical focus, this limitation is a necessary methodological requirement. It should not be interpreted as a political statement.
62. Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 185.
63. Benny Morris, Israel's Border War 1948 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
64. Dana Adams Schmidt, 'The Little War of the Borders', The New York Times Magazine, 14 June 1953.
65. Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 54.
66. Jonathan Shimshoni, Israel and Conventional Deterrence: Border Warfare from 1953 to 1970 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 36-37.
67. Ze'ev Drory, Israel's Reprisal Policy, 1953-1956. The Dynamics of Military Retaliation (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 189.
68. Shimshoni, Israel and Conventional Deterrence (note 44).
69. Moshe Dayan, 'Israel's Border Problem', Foreign Affairs, Vol. 33, No. 1 (1954), pp. 250-267, at p. 250.
70. David Ben-Gurion, Yechud ve-Ye'ud [Rebirth and Destiny], Tel Aviv, 1972, pp. 232-233.
71. Shimshoni, Israel and Conventional Deterrence (note 44), p. 37.
72. Dayan, 'Why Israel Strikes Back' (note 33), pp. 122-123.
73. Dayan, 'Why Israel Strikes Back' (note 33), p. 121.
74. Dayan, 'Why Israel Strikes Back' (note 33), p. 122.
75. Drory, Israel's Reprisal Policy (note 45), p. 184.
76. In the philosophy of law, these three classic characteristics of punishment are usually traced back to Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments (note 1), p. 77, and later Bentham, who also used Beccaria as a source (Bentham, The Rationale of Punishment [note 1]).
77. Dayan, 'Why Israel Strikes Back' (note 33), p. 122.
78. Drory, Israel's Reprisal Policy (note 45), p. 45.
79. Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), pp. 203-205.
80. Morris, Israel's Border Wars (note 41), pp. 185-186.
81. Morris, Israel's Border Wars (note 41), p. 196.
82. Dayan, Avnei Derekh,
83. Morris, Israel's Border Wars (note 41), p. 196.
84. Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp. 236-237.
85. The infiltrations and counter-raids on the Egyptian border followed an entirely different dynamic than those on the Jordanian border, mainly because Egypt had an interest in escalation.
86. Mordechai Bar-On, 'Small Wars, Big Wars: Security Debates During Israel's First Decade', Israel Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall 2000), pp. 107-127, at p. 121.
87. Bar-Josef, for instance, lists the raid as a successful example of deterrence.
88. Uri Bar-Joseph, 'Variations on a Theme: The Conceptualization of Deterrence in Israeli Strategic Thinking', Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1998), pp. 145-181, at p. 159.
89. Bar-On, 'Small Wars, Big Wars' (note 60), pp. 119-120.
90. For an analysis of the deterrent effect of the raid.
91. Shimshoni, Israel and Conventional Deterrence (note 44), pp. 48-68.
92. For a detailed discussion of this lack of significant doctrinal change.
93. Efraim Inbar, 'Israeli National Security, 1973-96', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, No. 555 (January 1998), pp. 62-81.
94. Avi Kober, 'The Intellectual and Modern Focus in Israeli Military Thinking as Reflected in Ma'arachot Articles, 1948-2000′, Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Fall 2003), pp. 141-160, p. 155.
95. Avi Kober, 'Israeli War Objectives into an Era of Negativism', Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2001), pp. 176-201, at p. 185.
96. The First Intifada was marked by a relatively low level of violence, mostly stone-throwing, rioting and roadblocks. Only a very small percentage of all incidents involved firearms. Suicide terrorism was minimal.
97. Efraim Inbar, 'Israel's Small War: The Military Response to the Intifada', Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1991), pp. 29-50, at p. 30.
98. Uri Saguy, Lights in the Fog (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronot Books (Hebrew), 1998), p. 293.
99. Ron Tira, 'Shifting Tectonic Plates', Strategic Assessment, Vol. 12, No. 1 (June 2009), p. 4.
100. Efraim Inbar, Rabin and Israel's National Security (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999), p. 136.
101. For a concise historical description and a comparison of the first and second intifadas.
102. Anat N. Kurz, The Palestinian Uprisings: War with Israel, War at Home (Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, 2009).
103. Saguy, Lights in the Fog (note 68), p. 174.
104. Inbar, 'Israeli National Security, 1973-96' (note 64), p. 70.
105. Author interview with senior official, Jerusalem, 9 August 2010.
106. Author interview with senior air force officer, Tel Aviv, April 2010.
107. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 53.
108. Daniel L. Byman, A High Price (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 223.
109. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 'Ceasefire Understanding', 26 April 1996, http://bitly.com/pBZ9jI+
110. Byman, A High Price (note 76), pp. 222-239.
111. Daniel Sobelman, New Rules of the Game. Israel and Hezbollah after the Withdrawal from Lebanon (Tel Aviv: INSS, 2004).
112. Author interviews with several senior Israeli officials, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, summer 2010. One official said: 'We have an interest in Hamas being not too strong but not too weak'.
113. Author interview with former a chief of staff, Jerusalem, April 2008.
114. Byman, A High Price (note 76), p. 362. emphasis original.
115. Gabi Siboni, 'Disproportionate Force: Israel's Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War', INSS Insight, No. 74 (2 October 2008).
116. Gadi Eisenkot, 'A Changed Threat? The Response on the Northern Arena', Military and Strategic Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 1 (June 2010), pp. 29-40, at p. 37.
117. Doron Almog's notion that deterrence happens on a macro level, where it seeks to create the image of overwhelming military supremacy, and on a micro level it incorporates responses to specific offences. The image of supremacy, occasionally demonstrated in short intense wars, would 'produce increasingly moderate behavior on the part of the adversary and a shift in his strategic, operational, and tactical goals until there is a near-absence of direct conflict'.
118. Doron Almog, 'Cumulative Deterrence and the War on Terrorism', Parameters, No. 34 (Winter 2004), pp. 4-19, at p. 9).
119. Yosef Kuperwasser, 'Is it Possible to Deter Armed Groups?', in Jeffrey H. Norwitz (ed.), Armed Groups, (Newport, RI: US Naval War College, 2008), pp. 127-134 (at p. 132).
120. Author interview with senior air force planner, Tel Aviv, 3 August 2010.
121. Author interview with Yosef Kuperwasser, Jerusalem, 19 July 2010.
122. Author interview with senior official, undisclosed location, summer 2010.
123. Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 'Rocket Fire in Northern Israel', 13 September 2009, http://bitly.com/uhsqq9+
124. Hassan Nasrallah, 'If I Had Known...', Associated Press, 6 April 2009.
125. Interview with Itai Brun, Ramat Aviv, 24 August 2010.
126. Thanks to Ron Tira for highlighting this point.
127. Almog, 'Cumulative Deterrence' (note 83).
128. Bar-Joseph, 'Variations on a Theme' (note 61), p. 157.
129. Avi Kober, 'Deterrence, Early Warning and Strategic Decision: The Israeli Security Conception in the Wake of the Gulf War', Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1994), pp. 228-50.
130. In the domestic arena, the ongoing debate about capital punishment - empirically well-covered terrain - may illustrate this dead end.
131. John J. Donohue and Justin Wolfers, 'Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate', Stanford Law Review, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2006), pp. 791-846.
132. Interview with Itai Brun, Ramat Aviv, 24 August 2010.
133. Various interviews with senior military and intelligence officials, summer 2010.