“The Greatest Affair of State”: Managing Risks of Nuclear Warfare

“Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the way to survival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed.”– Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

If “warfare is the greatest affair of state,” nuclear warfare is “greatest of the greatest.” Though such a distinction may first seem exaggerated or gratuitous, Sun–Tzu’s oft-quoted message is anything but out of date. Long after his sobering observation, the ancient Chinese strategist’s insight remains more urgent than ever.

None of this is hyperbole. There are many tangible particulars. In a recently-released film, an unidentifiable nuclear missile is seen heading for the United States.[1] For the American president and his operational chain-of-command, there is no way of determining if the incoming weapon was launched intentionally, if it was ordered by legitimate government authority or if its firing was the result of accident or inadvertence. While the movie lacks substantive analytic content, its underlying warning is altogether on-point: In a global military universe of staggering complexity, something irremediable will eventually go wrong.

 Promptly. one overarching question should emerge: What ought to be done by the United States and other states, both nuclear and non-nuclear, to prevent a nuclear war? To grapple with this question, it will first be necessary to understand that the risks of an intentional nuclear war are not the same as the risks of an unintentional or accidental nuclear war.

 Should the American president and his senior advisors take false comfort from more-or-less plausible assumptions of enemy rationality, they would be ignoring something indispensable:

Even perfectly rational adversaries could commit consequential errors in calculation and/or fail to prevent a miscalculated or accidental firing.

Even a presumptively flawless system of missile defense (e.g., Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome”) could never be 100% effective.

When dealing with nuclear weapons, anything less than a perfect “reliability of intercept” could prove catastrophic

There are significant nuances and details. For the United States, the accelerating threat of a nuclear war ought never to be dealt with as a “one-off” peril. Instead, this threat should always be assessed as part of a comprehensive generic problem; that is, ensuring national survival in a worldwide “state of nature.”[2] Impacted by the structural limitations of global anarchy – limitations highlighted by the continuous absence of any centralized world authority[3]  – no state belligerent should reasonably be expected to prioritize considerations of international law.[4] Nowhere should this warning be more obvious than in the case of Donald J. Trump’s United States, a state where the incumbent president does not even pretend to abide by international law. This assertion is not a narrowly ad hominem or partisan judgment, but only a conspicuous and unchallengeable fact.

What is there to learn about nuclear war avoidance? What can be discovered by science? To begin, because a nuclear war has never been fought, gainful national security policies will need to be based on variously abstract deductions.[5]  This limitation does not signify any absence of scientific inquiry, but it renders impossible any logic-based appraisal of nuclear war probabilities.

 Expectations of “Escalation Dominance”

In the inherently ungovernable “state of nature,” international crises and belligerent confrontations are inevitable. Ipso facto, the historically “correct” way for powerful states like the United States to remain powerful is by demonstrating the capacity and willingness to dominate high-value crisis escalations. To best ensure perceived capacity and willingness, this country will at various times need to take exceptional risks, but simultaneously to avoid nuclear warfare.

It will be a delicate balancing act. Decisional errors could be unforgiving and irreversible. Above all, such potentially existential errors will need to be unraveled intellectually before they are managed politically.

There is more. In world politics, nothing is more practical than good theory. To figure out what is actually happening or about to happen between the United States and prospective adversaries, both non-nuclear and nuclear, it will be necessary to situate crises within broad theoretical frameworks. But what should be the correct intellectual starting point?

Whoever the specific adversaries, American strategists seeking to protect the United States from deliberate nuclear attack (unintentional nuclear attacks risks will pose different risks and remedies) will have to accept facilitating assumptions of adversarial rationality.[6] In essence, without such assumptions, there could be no meaningful theory of nuclear strategy and nuclear warfare.[7] At the same time, these reassuring assumptions have no recurring basis in world history and might not hold up in certain still-contemplated confrontations.

There is a fundamental dilemma. Going forward, critical dangers will be created by enemy hacking operations, unrelated computer malfunctions and/or decision-making miscalculations[8] In each pertinent scenario, damaging synergies could arise that would prove difficult or impossible to reverse.

 Historical Context and Expanding Threats

         In these expectedly bewildering matters, history will deserve a recognizable pride of place. Since 1945, the global balance of power has been transformed, in considerable measure, to a “balance of terror.”[9] In crisis circumstances where at least one adversarial state party is already-nuclear, an uncontrolled search for “escalation dominance” would enlarge the risks of unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. Though widely overlooked and underestimated, these risks would include nuclear war by accident or decisional-miscalculation (there are not the same problem) and could be incurred in several parts of the world. As a clarifying point of terminology, in those cases where only one state party was already-nuclear, these risks would define an “asymmetrical nuclear war.”

The “solution” to now-proliferating nuclear crisis risks is not to wish-away any adversarial search for “escalation dominance” (inter alia, such a wish would be contrary to the internal “logic” of anarchic or chaotic world politics[10]), but to manage all prospectively nuclear confrontations at their lowest possible level of destructiveness. Wherever feasible, therefore, it would be best to avoid such confrontations altogether and to maintain “circuit breakers” against both strategic hacking and technical malfunction.[11]

Looking ahead, much of US survival planning should concern revived Iranian plans for nuclear status. Inter alia, the credible approach of a nuclear Iran[12] would likely encourage counter-vailing nuclearization by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and/or Turkey. In this connection, non-Arab Pakistan[13] would likely become a more direct adversary of the United States and Israel.[14]  In early November 2025, Israel signed a new mutual defense pact with India and US President Trump was threatening to re-start nuclear weapons testing.

 Pakistan is an already-nuclear Islamic state with close ties to China. Like Israel, Pakistan is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Nuclear China has never renounced its presumed right to “recover” Taiwan by military force.

More from Clausewitz

“Everything is very simple in war,” says Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is very difficult.” With America “in the loop,” Israel will consider more closely those circumstances wherein issuing nuclear threats against its still pre-nuclear adversary in Tehran could seem gainful. In part, at least, Israeli conclusions would depend on the small state’s prior transformations of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (the “bomb in the basement”[15]) into variants of “selective nuclear disclosure.”[16] Though such considerations would concern matters that are sui generis or without historical precedent, Israel could have no rational alternative.

International relations have reached a point where country-strategists must become more theoretical and more specific. What is the analytic difference between a deliberate or intentional nuclear war and one that would be unintentional or inadvertent? Without considering this vital distinction, little of calculable policy use could be said about the likelihood of nuclear conflict. Still, because there has never been an authentic nuclear war(Hiroshima and Nagasaki don’t “count”),[17] scientifically determining relevant probabilities will remain technically impossible.

               Now in the “final innings” of an incomparably important competition, capable American analysts will have to identify optimal strategies for anticipating and averting nuclear warfare. Among other things, this task will vary according to (1) presumed enemy intentions; (2) presumed plausibility of accident or enemy hacking intrusions; and/or (3) presumed plausibility of decisional-miscalculation. Considered together as cumulative categories of nuclear threat, these component risks of a nuclear war should always be described as “high-urgency.”

               There will need to be associated linguistic clarifications. Any particular instance of accidental nuclear war would be inadvertent, but not every case of an inadvertent nuclear war would be the result of accident. Most worrisome could be damage-limiting strikes that leave the target state unsure about launching follow-on strikes. Here, in order to protect itself against such more-or-less plausible escalations, the target state could launch a massive or all-out retaliation.

A Double-Edged Sword

               Recalling Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, certain fundamental issues still need to be “pondered and analyzed” in Washington. Such existential matters should never be approached by American national security policy-makers as just a political or tactical problem. Rather, informed by in-depth historical understandings and refined analytic capacities, these military decision-makers should prepare to deal with a large variety of overlapping threat-system hazards. At times, the analyzed intersections will prove “synergistic”[18] or force-multiplying.

               For the United States and also Israel after the 2025 war with Iran and Hamas, there will be concerning “geographies” involved in any resumption of active conflict. The North Korean threat as Iranian nuclear proxy should come immediately to mind.  And unless synergistic interactions were figured in,[19]  American decision-makers could underestimate the total impact of belligerent engagements with the Islamic Republic. The flesh and blood consequences of such underestimations would defy both analytic imaginations and post-war justifications.

Staying on a Collision Course

In the global “state of nature,” unprecedented dynamics of nuclear risk-taking and nuclear deterrence will not fade away on their own. Operating rationally in our centuries-old world system of belligerent nationalism, the US president and Israeli prime minister would likely face a rational Iranian leader, but still remain subject to accidents, ambiguities and miscalculations. If for any reason the Iranian adversary were not similarly rational, (1) the traditional logic of deterrence would be undermined; and (2) Washington and Jerusalem would need to re-define traditionally accepted criteria of “escalation dominance.” To use a nautical metaphor, this result would mean sailing in uncharted waters. Recalling portentous designations on medieval maps, this outcome would signify “dragons.”[20]

Over time, no matter how carefully, responsibly and rationally America’s military survival preparations are carried out, an international order based on an unmanageable “state of nature” will fail. For the moment, certain foreseeable risks of catastrophic failure would concern an unintentional nuclear war with a North Korean[21] or Pakistani state surrogate of Iran. Conflict with a pre-nuclear Iran could at some point become an “asymmetrical nuclear war” (because Israel and its US ally would see no other way to achieving “escalation dominance), but a one-sided advantage for Israel and/or the United States would not preclude extensive harms to already-nuclear belligerents.

Recalling Sun-Tzu’s timeless wisdom, it follows that attendant nuclear warfare risks “must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed.” At its core, this task underscores an intellectual responsibility[22] for disciplined thinkers and strategic theorists.[23] The only role for national political leaders should be focused on explanation, clarification and policy-implementation.

It’s time for a summing up. In choosing between “survival and extinction,” America’s intellectual responsibility will be to (1) identify analytic distinctions between intentional and unintentional nuclear warfare; and (2) assess all corollary risks separately and in their plausible forms of intersection. Unless this primary responsibility is fully understood, no American president’s promise of “peace through strength” could ever be anything more than a grammar school cliché.

[1] A House of Dynamite (2025).

[2] Seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes notes that although the “state of nations” is in the anarchic “state of nature,” it is still more tolerable than the condition of individuals coexisting in nature. With individual human beings, Hobbes instructs, “…the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” But with the continuing advent of nuclear weapons, there is no persuasive reason to believe that the state of nations remains more tolerable. Now, nuclear weapons are bringing the state of nations closer to the true Hobbesian state of nature. See, in this connection, David P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 207. As with Hobbes, philosopher Samuel Pufendorf argues that the state of nations is not quite as intolerable as the state of nature between individuals. The state of nations, reasons the German jurist, “lacks those inconveniences which are attendant upon a pure state of nature….” In a similar vein, Baruch Spinoza suggests “that a commonwealth can guard itself against being subjugated by another, as a man in the state of nature cannot do.”

[3] Traditionally, visions of an improved world system were based on replacing the “balance of power” with some promising form of world government authority. In this connection, notes Sigmund Freud: “Wars will only be prevented with certainty if mankind unites in setting up a central authority to which the right of giving judgment upon all shall be handed over. There are clearly two separate requirements involved in this: the creation of a supreme agency and its endowment with the necessary power. One without the other would be useless.” (See: Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, cited in Louis René Beres, The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis, University of Denver, Monograph Series in World Affairs, Vol. 10 (1973-73), p, 27.) Albert Einstein held similar views. See, for example: Otto Nathan et al. eds., Einstein on Peace (New York, 1960).

[4] Nonetheless, international law is part of US domestic law. In the precise words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana,“International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination.  For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.”  See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900).  See also:  The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900); Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774, 781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (per curiam) (Edwards, J. concurring) (dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1003 (1985) (“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.’”).

[5] In the clarifying words of mathematical strategist Anatol Rapaport, “Formal decision-theory does not depend on data…. The task of theory is confined to the construction of a deductive apparatus, to be used in deriving logically necessary conclusions from given assumptions.” (Strategy and Conscience; 1964).

[6] Expressions of enemy irrationality could take different and/or overlapping forms. These include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and internal dissonance generated by any structure of collective decision-making; i.e., assemblies of pertinent individuals who lack identical value systems or whose organizational arrangements impact their otherwise willing capacity to act as a single (unitary) national decision maker.

[7] “Theory is a net,” says philosopher of science Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934): “Only those who cast, can catch.”  Interestingly, Popper drew this metaphor from the German poet, Novalis.

[8] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:https://thebulletin.org/biography/louis-rene-beres/

[9] This term was originally popularized by distinguished political scientist Albert Wohlstetter in his classic article “The Delicate Balance of Terror” (1959): Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jan., 1959), pp. 211-234 (Council on Foreign Relations).

[10] See by this author, Louis René Beres, at JURIST, 2022: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2022/01/louis-beres-international-law-state-of-nature/

[11] Under international law, the question of whether or not a “state of war” obtains between states is different but also ambiguous. Traditionally, it was held that a formal declaration of war was necessary before a true state of war could be said to exist. Hugo Grotius divided wars into declared wars, which were legal, and undeclared wars, which were not. (See Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, Chaps. III, IV, and XI.) By the start of the twentieth century, the position that war obtains only after a conclusive declaration of war by one of the parties was codified by Hague Convention III. This treaty stipulated that hostilities must never commence without a “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. (See Hague Convention III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, 1907, 3 NRGT, 3 series, 437, article 1.) Currently, declarations of war may be tantamount to admissions of international criminality, because of the express criminalization of aggression by authoritative international law, and it could therefore represent a clear jurisprudential absurdity to tie any true state of war to formal and prior declarations of belligerency. It follows that a state of war may now exist without any formal declarations, but only if there exists an actual armed conflict between two or more states, and/or at least one of these affected states considers itself “at war.”

[12] On deterring a potentially nuclear Iran, see, earlier: Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, August 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. General Chain (USAF/deceased) had served as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).

[13] Pakistan has reaffirmed its right to “fist-use” of nuclear weapons, and has been deploying nuclear warfighting weapons for the past several years. https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2025/04/pakistans-first-use-nuclear-policy-in-conflicts-with-india/ In this connection, conspicuous preparations for nuclear war fighting could be conceived not as provocative alternatives to nuclear deterrence, but rather as essential and integral components of nuclear deterrence.  Some years ago, Colin Gray, reasoning about U.S.-Soviet nuclear relations, argued that a vital connection exists between “likely net prowess in war and the quality of pre-war deterrent effect.”  (See:  Colin Gray, National Style in Strategy: The American Example,” INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, 6, No. 2, fall 1981, p. 35.)  Elsewhere, in a published debate with this writer, Gray said essentially the same thing:  “Fortunately, there is every reason to believe that probable high proficiency in war-waging yields optimum deterrent effect.”  (See Gray, “Presidential Directive 59: Flawed but Useful,” PARAMETERS, 11, No. 1, March 1981, p. 34.  Gray was responding directly to Louis René Beres, “Presidential Directive 59: A Critical Assessment,” PARAMETERS, March 1981, pp. 19 – 28.).

[14]See by this writer, Louis René Beres, https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/09/12/can-israeli-nuclear-threats-protect-against-non-nuclear-attacks/#_ftn

[15] See, by this writer, Louis René  Beres, at Strategic Assessment (Israel): 2014: https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/systemfiles/adkan17_3ENG%20(3)_Beres.pdf

[16] The security benefits to Israel of any explicit reductions in nuclear secrecy would remain dependent, more or less, upon Clausewitzian “friction.” This refers to the inherently unpredictable effects of errors in knowledge and information concerning intra-Israel (IDF/MOD) strategic uncertainties; on Israeli and Iranian under-estimations or over-estimations of relative power position; and on the unalterably vast and largely irremediable differences between theories of deterrence and enemy intent. See: Carl von Clausewitz, “Uber das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst,” Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, 1 (1832); cited in Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, McNair Paper No. 52, October, 1996, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Washington, D.C. p. 9.

[17] The atomic attacks on Japan in August 1945 represent nuclear weapons use in an otherwise conventional war.

[18] By definition, the “whole” of any synergistic effect would be greater than the sum of its “parts.” Accordingly, focused attention on pertinent synergies should become a primary national security objective for the United States.

[19] See by this author, at Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School): Louis René Beres, https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

[20] Hic Sunt Dracones, “Here be dragons,” was the precise cartographic inscription.

[21] Earlier, North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor, the same facility that was destroyed by Israel in its Operation Orchard, on September 6, 2007. Following Operation Opera against Iraqon June 7, 1981, this defensive attack by Israel in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria was a second major expression of the “Begin Doctrine.”

[22] It must not be forgotten,” writes French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in “The New Spirit and the Poets” (1917), “that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.”

[23] Rabbi Eleazar quoted Rabbi Hanina, who said: “Scholars build the structure of peace in the world.” See: The Babylonian Talmud, Order Zera’im, Tractate Berakoth, IX.