The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb [Hardcover]

Avner Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0231136986 | ISBN-13: 978-0231136983

Israel has made a unique contribution to the nuclear age. It has created a special "bargain" with the bomb. Israel is the only nuclear-armed state that does not acknowledge its possession of the bomb, even though its existence is a common knowledge throughout the world. It only says that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.

The bomb is Israel's collective ineffable—the nation's last great taboo. This bargain has a name: in Hebrew, it is called amimut, or opacity. By adhering to the bargain, which was born in a secret deal between Richard Nixon and Golda Meir, Israel has created a code of nuclear conduct that encompasses both governmental policy and societal behavior. The bargain has deemphasized the salience of nuclear weapons, yet it is incompatible with the norms and values of a liberal democracy. It relies on secrecy, violates the public right to know, and undermines the norm of public accountability and oversight, among other offenses. It is also incompatible with emerging international nuclear norms.

Author of the critically acclaimed Israel and the Bomb, Avner Cohen offers a bold and original study of this politically explosive subject. Along with a fair appraisal of the bargain's strategic merits, Cohen critiques its undemocratic flaws. Arguing that the bargain has become increasingly anachronistic, he calls for a reform in line with domestic democratic values as well as current international nuclear norms. Most ironic, he believes Iran is imitating Israeli amimut. Cohen concludes with fresh perspectives on Iran, Israel, and the effort toward global disarmament.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Cohen's second outstanding book on Israel's nuclear project, and the veil of ambiguity that has swathed it from inception, provides a richly detailed account of its history and a provocative analysis of its future. Cohen shows how Israel's beleaguered national existence and persistent Holocaust memories led to the taboo on any acknowledgment of its nuclear weapons program, which cannot, in his view, any longer serve Israel's interests. This is a splendid work of historical research as well as a thought-provoking challenge for both current and future Israeli and American policymakers.

(Samuel Lewis, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, 1977-1985 )

This important book should be read by anyone interested in understanding the changes that Israel will need to make in its nuclear program as the world reduces reliance on nuclear weapons. Cohen makes a compelling case for why it is in Israeli's interest to confirm its nuclear weapons program and participate in efforts to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons.

(Morton H. Halperin, senior advisor, Open Society Institute )

Avner Cohen has written the most informed history of Israel's secret drive to get the bomb, and now he has gone further. In The Worst-Kept Secret, he describes and explains Israel's insistence that all talk or writing about its nuclear arsenal be exorcised from public discourse. The nuclear "taboo," as Cohen depicts it, continues unabated today, undermining Israeli democracy at home and its credibility abroad.

(Seymour M. Hersh, author of The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy )

Cohen's persistent research and numerous books and articles have set the standard in the field and serve as an unrivaled source for anyone interested in Israel's biggest taboo. The Worst-Kept Secret provides a firm factual basis upon which our knowledge about Israel's nuclear program, with its richness of historic detail and personal anecdotes, rests. Moreover, it lays out a wide-ranging theoretical framework for discussing the pros and cons of Israel's amimut policy and its prolonged effect on the country's democracy and governance and its possible future revision. This book will undoubtedly serve as the new benchmark for studying and debating its topic.

(Aluf Benn, editor-at-large, Haaretz )

[Cohen's] exploration of the issues is thoughtful, measured and deep, and very much worthy of wide consideration.

(Ethan Bronner New York Times 10/14/2010)

A brave, provocative, and very important book.

(Bruce Riedel Haaretz 11/5/10)

(Vanity Fair 4/1/11)

Review

Cohen reveals himself once again to be the reigning authority on the history of the Israeli bomb. Brilliant, compelling, and definitive

(Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (October 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231136986
• ISBN-13: 978-0231136983
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 6.3 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,027,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Prior to that appointment I was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2009-10). Since 2000 I have been also affiliated with the Center for International and Security Studies (CISSM) at the University of Maryland. I am on J-street Advisory Board and a board member of Daisy Alliance, an NGO based in Atlanta GA.

After undergraduate study at Tel Aviv University in Philosophy and History (1975), I earned his M.A. in Philosophy at York University (1977) and Ph.D. from the Committee on History of Culture of the University of Chicago (1981). I was a member of the philosophy department at Tel Aviv University from 1983 to 1991 and have held various visiting academic positions at a number of American universities. In 2005 I was the Forchheimer Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University. I am now an adjunct professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies which has become in 2010 the graduate school of Middlebury College,

I was awarded twice the research and writing award of the MacArthur Foundation (1990, 2004). In 2007-08 and 1997-98 I was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). I was was co-director of the Project on Nuclear Arms Control in the Middle East at the Security Studies Program at MIT for five years (1990-95).

I am the co-editor (with Stephen Lee) of Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity (Rowman & Allanheld, 1986), The Institution of Philosophy (Open Court, 1989), and the author of The Nuclear Age as Moral History (in Hebrew, 1989. My most recognized book, Israel and the Bomb, was published in 1998 in its English version and in 2000 in its Hebrew version. The Worst Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb, which came out this month by Columbia University Press is my most recent book

I have published dozens of articles and chapters in academic journals and books, as well as over a hundred of op-ed pieces in major newspapers in the United States and Israel.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An Often Fascinating Account of a Subject Willfully Shrouded in Secrecy June 30, 2012

By Peter Ramming

Format:Paperback

This book by Avner Cohen is as good an account of Israel's nuclear arsenal as is likely to be written for a good while, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Israel's development of nuclear weapons and in its official policy of "nuclear opacity" ("amimut" in Hebrew), by which Israel neither confirms nor denies that it possesses nuclear weapons. Cohen, who has researched Israeli nuclear issues for over 25 years, is probably more knowledgeable about this subject than any person outside the circle of state actors, scientists, and bureaucrats who have had firsthand roles in Israel's nuclear program from its inception under David Ben-Gurion to its contemporary stewards such as Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Cohen has interviewed many of the principal actors (several of whom have died in the meantime) over the years, as well as pursuing as much documentary evidence as is available from Israeli or foreign sources. The problem is that Israeli authorities have been remarkably effective over the last sixty years in keeping most aspects of their nuclear weapons program secret, so that Cohen has to couch his assertions of "facts" in language that makes clear he is often speculating, however highly informed these speculations may be. Nevertheless, Cohen is able to narrate the historical progression of Israel's nuclear program from Ben-Gurion's decision in the mid-1950s to develop an Israeli bomb and the vital French assistance in nuclear and ballistic missile technology in these early years, through Israel's assembly of a crude atomic device in 1966/67, Golda Meir's meeting with Richard Nixon in September of 1969 in which she (most likely) acknowledged the Israeli bomb and Nixon agreed to the mutual benefit to both nations of Israeli nuclear opacity, to today's reality of an Israel with 200-400 nuclear weapons, ICBMs with ranges up to 8,000 miles, and a fleet of four German-made submarines which theoretically provide Israel a "second-strike" capability in the event of a surprise nuclear attack upon the Jewish state.
However, Cohen's purpose in this book is not only to map the historical development of the Israeli bomb. He also contemplates the consequences for Israel's democratic society of a nuclear weapons program which is neither officially acknowledged nor denied; about which any factual published statements by Israeli citizens are forbidden on pain of imprisonment and actively censored; whose key official decisions are hidden; and whose political and military chain-of-command is nebulous at best. To me it was remarkable to read that in a democracy as vibrant as Israel's, its citizens do not have real freedom of speech regarding their nuclear weapons program, and that this prohibition is assiduously policed by three domestic intelligence/government agencies. In this regard Cohen makes clear that the majority of Israel's citizen's consider Ben-Gurion's decision to establish an Israeli nuclear weapons program the greatest achievement of this founding father of the Jewish state; that Israel's nuclear weapons are a vital insurance policy to a small nation that has been surrounded by ardent enemies since its inception; and that this continuing reality justifies an Israeli attitude of the "sanctity of security" ("kdushat habitachon" in Hebrew) that has served the Jewish state well since its founding. That the efforts of the Censora (Israel's government censorship agency) are increasingly vain in the era of the Internet is an irony not lost on Cohen. And while Cohen agrees with the necessity of Israel's nuclear deterrent, he suggests some scenarios in which Israel could lift its domestic nuclear censorship, and possibly even acknowledge its nuclear arsenal and become an official member of the international "nuclear club." To me, these sections on the social and democratic consequences of Israel's nuclear opacity and official censorship are less consistently interesting than the sections narrating the development of the Israeli bomb and could have been pared down.
David Ben-Gurion and his successors established Israel's nuclear weapons program under the guise of a nuclear energy research effort and actively and effectively duped U.S. inspections of the Dimona reactor in the Negev desert. Today Iran has taken a page from the Israeli playbook by asserting that its nuclear infrastructure is also solely for the development of a nuclear energy capacity; a right it is accorded as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Whether Iranian officials are being truthful is, at this point, impossible to be sure of, as their nuclear efforts are also shrouded in secrecy despite an extensive regime of international inspections.

9 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book November 19, 2010

By Lecteur

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Avner Cohen has excellently researched the subject and exposes it clearly and interestingly.
The book contains various chapters and insights and is a must read for those interested in the Middle East.

0 of 27 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible Product Description March 2, 2012

By A. Fornos

Format:Paperback

The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb
This promises to be a fascinating book but for the first time ever, I must protest a product description. Who wrote the product description for this book? Iranian Ayatollahs perhaps? The description is unacceptable and must be changed. Criticisms about Israel, its national choices and political priorities should be limited to contents of REVIEWS, where they can be safely ignored. Product description of a book should be limited to its CONTENTS, and avoid condescension towards prospective readers, as to what they should think.