SELF-DEFENSE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE ISRAELI RAID ON THE IRAQI NUCLEAR REACTOR by Timothy McCormack. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1996; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. 339 pp. ISBN 0-312-16279-0.

Reviewed by David Kowalewski, Department of Political Science, Alfred University. E-mail: fkowalewski@alfred.edu.
 

Timothy McCormack, formerly a faculty member at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that the Israeli air strike against Iraq's nuclear facility in 1981 might be justified, albeit perhaps belatedly, in terms of international law. Most observers outside of Israel would probably consider that proving such a thesis is an uphill struggle. In this reviewer's opinion, the author not only fails to reach the summit, he does not even get out of base camp.

The sources the author uses raise questions of fairness. The bibliography is comparatively thin on regional, especially indigenous, Middle Eastern sources. For example, only a few articles from Middle Eastern journals are cited, and these are English-language ones. Most disturbingly, several American and Israeli government sources are used, but not a single Iraqi one. Is there something wrong with this picture? It perhaps explains, for starters, why the book contains a mountain of material on Israel's response to IRAQ'S acquisition of nuclear-related EQUIPMENT, but nothing on Iraq's response to ISRAEL'S own nuclear WEAPONS. It perhaps explains the volume's failure to emphasize Israel's own flaunting of international nonproliferation norms. It also perhaps explains the volume's inattention to the timing of the Israeli strike, which realist observers would immediately call a cynical and opportunistic attack on a weak Iraq bogged down at the time in a bloody war with Iran.

The book's central argument is that the Israeli strike can be justified in terms of the apparently legal right to anticipatory self-defense. Of course, to prove this thesis the author has to demonstrate several things, among them that (1) Iraq was indeed building nuclear weapons prior to the strike, (2) it intended to use them against Israel, and (3) Israel had no other alternative. None of these cases is convincingly made. As for (1), McCormack claims that the recent discovery of secret Iraqi weapons-facilities has "confirmed" the 1981 Israeli suspicion (p. 18). Hardly. The author simply ignores the possibility that Iraq started a weapons program only AFTER the Israeli strike as a deterrent to Israel's own nuclear weapons (a program which of course had to be secret given the proven Israeli willingness to attack).

The author scarcely touches on (2), Iraq's intent to attack Israel with nuclear weapons. Assuming Iraq was making the weapons, maybe it simply wanted them as a deterrent against an Israeli attack. Maybe it wanted them to deter, or attack, its rival Iran, which presumably had nuclear ambitions. Maybe it wanted them to deter an attack from the United States, Israel's military ally. There are simply too many maybes that are too difficult to disprove.

The author devotes more space to (3), Israel's lack of alternatives to an air strike, but only gets entangled in a morass of contradiction. For instance, he claims that the Cold War had "paralyzed" the UN Security Council from undertaking effective measures for the maintenance of international (read: Israeli) peace and security (p. 21). Paralyzed?

The author admits in the next breath that after the Israeli strike the Security Council adopted Resolution 487, which unanimously condemned the strike. (The International Atomic Energy Agency also condemned the strike as an attack on nonproliferation safeguards themselves.)

More broadly, the United Nations played at least some role in the Cold War's "long peace," i.e., the complete absence of war among the major powers for over half a century. Paralyzed? I think not.

In short, the book raises questions of objectivity and fails to make its case that Israel was simply exercising its apparent right to preemptive self-defense. It comes dangerously close to suggesting that any country can inflict its suspicions on the world with impunity. Worse still, it makes Saddam Hussein look good.