February 10, 2007
Deterrence Posted by Fredric Smoler at 12:15 PM EST This posting went up yesterday in fragmentary form because of a transcribing error. Here is the full post. One of the most common historical analogies now being deployed in defense of a proposed policy is the alleged success of deterrence. On this theory, no one should worry too much about an Iranian nuclear weapon because Iran will be deterred by the threat of nuclear retaliation, just as the Soviet Union was deterred. The assumption that everyone thinks the way the Soviets thought is troubling. For example, Pakistan was so little deterred by the Indian nuclear arsenal that Kashmiri terrorists armed, trained, and controlled by Pakistan tried to assassinate the Indian legislature. Leaving aside the Soviets, how well did strategic deterrents in fact deter? Admiral Tirpitz built the German battle fleet to keep Britain out of what became World War I; one excellent book on his thinking has the morbidly witty title Yesterday’s Deterrent. A few decades later Great Britain built its strategic bombing force to deter Germany from starting what became World War II. The American nuclear deterrent didn’t keep North Korea out of South Korea, or keep China neutral during the subsequent Korean War, or deter North Vietnam. Israeli nuclear weapons failed to deter her adversaries in the 1973 October War. A recent example of peculiar optimism about deterrence can be found in last Sunday’s op-ed piece in the Washington Post “What to Ask Before the Next War,” by Paul Pillar, a former U.S. intelligence officer who now teaches at Georgetown University. Pillar first asks “why would deterrence, which has kept nuclear peace with other adversaries, not work with Iran?” and the implication seems to be that deterrence will work just fine. Oddly, Pillar then asserts that Iran’s response to any attack on the facilities it is apparently using to build a nuclear weapon might well include terrorism against the United States, additional attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, and a wider war in the Persian Gulf. This concedes that Iran will not necessarily be deterred from attacks on the United States and its allies while it itself has no nuclear weapons and we have thousands. So far, after all, our deterrent has failed to stop the Iranians from sponsoring the kidnapping, murder, and torture of American officials, soldiers, and civilians and the murder of Argentine (and other) civilians. Under the circumstances, the odds seem good that a nuclear Iran will be even bolder than Iran has been to date. A deterrent, after all, can be a shield behind which one more aggressively wields a sword.
|
