Self-Defense in International Law: The Israeli Raid on the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor (review)

Book Reviews 127 account fails to illustrate the deadly blend of arrogance,.,ignorance, and incompetence that took the lives of the 241 American Marines who died in a suicide truck-bombing while they were asleep. The Reagan administration seemed unable to believe that great American power and wealth might fail to solve the Lebanese conundrum within the limits of what was politically acceptable to the American Congress and American voters. In addition to Hudson's book, among the works indispensable to an understanding of the tragedy in Lebanon are Adeed Dawisha, Syria and the Lebanese Crisis (New York, 1980); The Beirut Massacre: The Complete Kahan Commission Report, foreword by Abba Eban (Princeton, NJ, 1983); Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role ofa Lifetime (New York, 1991); William Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967 (Washington, 1993); Hamar Rabinovich, The War for Lebanon, 1970-1985, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY, 1985); Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Israel's Lebanon War (New York, 1984); and Jonathan C. Randall, Going All the Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, and the War in Lebanon (New York, 1983). P. Edward Haley Claremont McKenna College and Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies Self-Defense in International Law: The Israeli Raid on the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor, by Timothy L. H. McCormack. New York: S1. Martin's Press, 1997.339 pp. $49.95. International Law is not a suicide pact! Recognizing this, Timothy L. H. McCormack has used the case study of the Israeli bombing of Osiraq to examine the limits of selfdefense under international law. Rejecting the restrictive view that, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, self-defense must follow an armed attack, the author accepts the long-standing customary idea of anticipatory self-defense in certain circumstances. With this in mind, he concludes that Israel's preemptive attack was an altogether permissible use of force, indeed, one that was mandated by the peremptory expectations of national self-preservation. What, exactly, were the facts ofthis case? On June 7, 1981, Israeli fighter-bombers destroyed the reactor shortly before it would go "on line." At the time, the general global community reaction was overwhelmingly hostile. Even the UN Security Council, in Resolution 487 ofJune 19, 1981, indicated that it "strongly condemns" the attack and that "Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered." Looking back at this event, the author understands Israel's defensive action in a 128 SHOFAR Fall 1997 Vol. 16, No. I very different light. As he is aware, Saddarn Hussein's plans to build a French-supplied reactor at his nuclear research center in Tuwaitha, about 20 kilometers from Baghdad, were designed to produce militarily significant amounts of plutonium. The ultimate objective was to manufacture nuclear weapons that could provide Saddam with regional hegemony-a position that could be expressed by an attack on the Jewish State. Significantly, an Iraqi dictatorship with nuclear weapons would have had far-reaching global implications, affecting not only the "infidel" State of Israel, but also the security of those other states requiring Middle Eastern oil and/or those states that came to be engaged in the 1991 Gulf War. Did Israel act illegally at Osiraq? Recalling that every state is entitled, within pertinent constraints, to strike fust when the danger posed is "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation,"1 McCormack weaves a complex and competent jurisprudential argument in support of Israel's resort to anticipatory self-defense. Further, he underscores, quite correctly, that this right is especially compelling in the modem world, when-in an age of mass-destruction weaponry-failing to preempt could bring about annihilation. Did Israel commit aggression at Osiraq? The author points out: "Since the creation ofthe State ofIsrael in 1948, Iraq has refused to recognize Israel's legitimacy as a state and has consistently and openly declared that its very existence is an aggression against 'the Arab nation."'Jurisprudentially, this means that, upon Iraqi insistence, a state of war has always existed between the two countries. It follows that since aggression cannot be committed against a state with which a country is already at war, Israel...