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"?
I've been reading Alan Furst's novel Dark Star and, because I've enjoyed it, i just bought an earlier one, Night Soldiers. The first is set in Eastern Europe, with a few trips to Paris, in the 1936-40 period, focusing on a fictional character who is a Russian journalist, spymaster. Because of that, I'm reminded of the Stalin stories. He certainly qualifies. But the comparison doesn't get one very far.
As for your observation that deterrence didn't work in that case because it had costs. It certainly did. But the proper contrast is not between no costs and costs, but between the costs of invasion and the costs of deterrence. While they are, obviously, unknown and in a very serious sense, unknowable, at any given point, the costs of invading the Soviet Union in the late 40s was astronomical. It simply could not be considered.
The cost of invading Iraq, now would not be in that league. But it should be factored into any conversation about deterrence. That the Bush folk never do that in their public statements is yet one more reason to have misgivings. |
