Friday, April 18, 2008


Charles Krauthammer argues that, with pre-emption off the table, deterrence is the only option agains regimes like North Korea and Iran:
There are four ways to deal with rogue states going nuclear: pre-emption, deterrence, missile defense and regime change.

Pre-emption works but, as a remedy, it is spent....

But the cost of pre-emption is simply too high. No one is going to renew the Korean War with an attack on Pyongyang. And the prospects of an attack on Iran's facilities are now vanishingly small. What to do?

Deterrence. It worked in the two-player Cold War. Will it work against multiple rogues? It seems quite suitable for North Korea, whose regime, far from being suicidal, is obsessed with survival.

Iran is a different proposition. With its current millenarian leadership, deterrence is indeed a feeble gamble, as I wrote in 2006 in making the case for considering pre-emption. But if pre-emption is off the table, deterrence is all you've got. Our task is to make deterrence in this context less feeble.

Two ways: Begin by making the retaliatory threat in response to Iranian nuclear aggression so unmistakable and so overwhelming that the non-millenarians in leadership would stay the hand or even remove those taking their country to the point of extinction.

Krauthammer goes on to add that missle defense must also be used as an adjunct to deterrence; and you should read the entire article

I believe he is generally correct about deterrence working with North Korea and the specific lunatic who is in charge there. But I have serious doubts about any strategy that depends on mutually assured self-destruction working with a regime like Iran--home of the suicide bomber squads and center of Shiite apocalyptic vision.

Add to that the clinically paranoid world view of its leader and you have a recipe for deterrence disaster.

Paranoia does not wax and wane. It must continually expand and try to incorporate and explain more and more data. Rhetoric and behavior must escalate to ward off reality.














Take the patient who was convinced that the reason he could not successfuly have intimate relationships with others was because he had some microscopic flea-like creatures on his skin that would jump from him to any person he was with and take them over. He could tell this was happening because people, when "infected" by the creatures would begin to scratch themselves--and then they would not be friendly with him anymore; and would stop wanting to socialize with him.

What made this case so fascinating was the fact that the person in question was a Ph.D. microbiologist! In fact, his credentials were extremely impressive and he was highly regarded for his work. He was in his 40's, never married, and with no children or even close friends.

Dr. "Smith" earnestly told me that he had tried to study these creatures; and had even gone to the extreme of taking skin samples from himself and looking under the electron microscope for them--without any luck, of course. But his conclusion from his failure to see them with the most powerful microscope available, was not that they didn't exist; but that the electron microscope must have been altered by the creatures so that they could avoid detection and make him look foolish if he tried to explain to anyone what was going on. The creatures' obvious ability to avoid detection by the microscope had then led him to the further deduction that they must be a species of creature completely alien to this planet and very intelligent.

I naiively asked him why the creatures had selected him to be their focal point on the planet. And I remember his look of complete disgust at my obvious ignorance. "They are taunting me!" he exclaimed. "They know I am all that stands between them and taking over the earth." His look clearly said that I was an idiot if I couldn't appreciate that simple fact.

Unselfconsciously, while thinking about how to deal with the situation, I scratched my head. "See!" he shouted triumphantly, instantly noticing what I had done. "See! I had hoped that an intelligent person like you would be able to understand. But they have also infected you and so now you will not believe anything I say!"

Game, set, and match to the paranoid microbiologist.








Note several things:

Later, in discussing the interview, Wallace said of Ahmadinejad:



The complete interview can be found here.

Remember, the delusion and the complicated conspiracy serve a purpose. In order to find out the purpose, you must identify the basic premises of the paranoid. The basic premise of the Microbiologist was that there must be somthing that was preventing him from having normal relationships with people; and, whatever that something was, it was external to him and had nothing whatsoever to do with his own thoughts, feelings or behavior.

In describing that "something" Dr. Smith created an intelligent, alien species that was deliberately mocking him as it used him to take over the world. Notice how this goes beyond mere projection into psychotic (i.e., completely out of touch with reality) delusion. This delusion also had the benefit of highlighting what a special and important person he was--after all, this alien species has selected him for their nefarious plot and he was all that stood between the earth and their diabolical (and rather vague) plans for humanity.








Ahmadinejad and Dr. Smith both come across as fascinating, intelligent, impressive and rational. They are also perfect examples of the paranoid style in action.


Game. Set. Match....

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