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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: JohnM who wrote (53188)10/19/2002 1:03:45 PM
From: Nadine Carroll  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
. As I was reading Pollack's dismissal of deterrence as a viable strategy, I could not help reflecting that in 1947 a stronger case than his could have been made that the least risky course for dealing with Stalin following World War II would have been to invade the Soviet Union and depose the tyrant before he could acquire nuclear weapons. Yet deterrence worked, even though the danger to the United States from a nuclear-armed Soviet Union was incomparably greater than the one that could be posed by a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein.

A good many people did make this case, if I remember my history (and according to my late father's description of the time). Of course, looking back with 20/20 hindsight and breezily saying "deterrence worked" is not much a foreign policy guide -- deterrence came damn close to not working several times, and we ceded half the world to Stalin and fought the Cold War (a very hot war if you were in one of the proxy fights) for forty years because of it. Hardly a policy without costs! In itself not a good recommendation to go down the same path in Iraq, even if you think that Saddam may be deterrable. For one thing, Saddam is already 65 and I have heard few people call his eldest son Uday (whom he just named as his heir, if you didn't notice) deterrable. There are few rules for the son of the tyrant in Iraq; he can kill whom he likes almost without question, but even in Iraq it was crossing the line when Uday clubbed his father's trusted foodtaster to death at a diplomatic party because Uday blamed the foodtaster for introducing Saddam to the woman who became his second wife. Can you say, "Caligula with nukes"?
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