Global Security Newswire recently reported that "a British expert is calling on the international community to more effectively discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons by punishing any and all breaches of agreed safeguards, without first trying to determine intent" (Elaine M. Grossman, "Proliferation Analyst Discourages Focus on Intent," 10 April 2008, http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2008_4_10.html#174E9315). James Acton, of King's College in London, says that "international sanctions—whether enacted through the IAEA Board of Governors or the [U.N.] Security Council—should be based on what a noncompliant state has done, not on why it acted."
Punishing states based on demonstrated violations rather than intent would have some advantages. For one thing, it would greatly simplify the enforcement of nonproliferation standards. The early stages of a nuclear weapons development program almost always appear identical to the early stages of a civilian nuclear energy development program: either the extraction, processing, and enrichment of uranium or (more rarely) the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from a civilian reactor in order to recover plutonium. Because of the "dual use" nature of these activities, it is often unclear whether states' nuclear efforts are meant for civilian or military purposes.
However, there are reasons for which judicial systems all over the world consider intent when rendering verdicts and imposing sentences. First, demonstration of intent is often necessary to prohibit undesirable activities. For example, if two people are out hunting and one shoots at the other, trying to kill him, then it would be very hard for a prosecutor to get a conviction without demonstrating intent. If the shooter were trying to hit a deer, then he was hunting; if he were trying to hit his friend, then he was committing attempted murder.
This has direct application for nuclear nonproliferation. The famous "loophole" of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allows countries to develop various aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, becoming what some call "virtual nuclear weapons states," able to develop nuclear weapons on relatively short notice. (There is a debate over the extent to which the NPT allows or even requires access to the full nuclear fuel cycle; however, since Japan engages in both uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, there seems to be little disagreement that non-nuclear weapon states are at least in general allowed to engage in all aspects of the cycle.) If we ignore intent, then these "virtual nuclear weapons states" may develop uranium enrichment and plutonium recovery technology only to withdraw from the NPT and then complete the relatively easy remaining steps to develop nuclear weapons. In fact, that is almost exactly what North Korea did before detonating its first nuclear device in 2006.
Second, judicial systems consider intent in order to determine sentences. Clearly the person who speeds because his wife needs to get to the hospital in order to give birth should not be given the same sentence as the person who speeds because he is drag-racing. (I actually believe that some legal codes waive speeding penalties in case of medical emergency, but you get the point.) Acton says that "if I was a state that was out developing nuclear weapons at the moment, I would take away from all of this is that if I ever get caught by the IAEA, what I should do is I should play the motives card. The best way of . . . avoiding sanctions will be to say . . . 'I didn’t break the rules because I'm building a nuclear weapon. I broke the rules because I'm worried that if I declared my enrichment program, then I would get bombed by some other state.'" (That, of course, was basically Iran's argument when its clandestine nuclear program was discovered.) However, I doubt that such an argument would convince a reasonable jury to reduce the defendant's sentence significantly. A truly objective jury might not even buy the story at all, depending on the specific circumstances.
Third, judicial systems consider intent in order to avoid punishing parties who violated laws through no fault of their own. For example, if driver A rear-ends driver B, causing driver B to rear-end driver C, then clearly driver B should not be held legally at fault. Similar things happen with international nonproliferation treaties. For example, Albania signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, and the treaty came into force in 1997. Several years later (sources variously give 2002, 2003, or 2004) the government discovered a cache of chemical weapons acquired by a previous government, probably in the mid-1970s (although no documentation was found to indicate exactly how it was acquired). The government immediately reported the discovery to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and destroyed the entire stockpile by 2007. Although the country was technically in violation of its treaty requirements from 1997 until at least 2002, no reasonable person would suggest that the government should be faulted for this incident. Similar concerns exist with the NPT. For example, if the North Korean government collapsed and the country were unified under the Republic of Korea's (ROK's) government, what would happen to the North's nuclear arsenal? If it remained on Korean soil, even temporarily, then the ROK (now exercising sovereignty over the entire peninsula) might be considered in violation of its NPT obligation not to possess nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, few reasonable people would want to punish Seoul for such a technical, unintentional violation of the treaty. (In fact, many people would probably be happy for Seoul to take possession of and secure the "loose nukes," at least until they could be disposed of in an appropriate manner.)
Acton does make a couple of interesting arguments against considering intent. First, he points out that under the current system, influential countries can get charges against their friends dismissed. He is right in claiming that South Korea "conducted undeclared reprocessing experiments that were, in both the letter and the spirit, contrary to the safeguards agreement with the IAEA. It should have been found in noncompliance with its safeguards agreement and it should have been punished appropriately." However, the appropriate solution for such problems is to convince states that applying nonproliferation standards impartially is in their long-term interest, not to reform the enforcement process to disregard intent.
Second, Acton believes that discussion of intent obscures clearly demonstrable violations of international legal prohibitions. According to the article, "Acton suggested that such discussions divert critical attention away from Tehran's actual conduct in violation of international law." Had the United States, Britain, and France "stopped talking about intent so much in the Board of Governors and the IAEA, it would have been much harder for China and Russia, for instance, to jump on the intent bandwagon," Acton said. "If our argument had been Iran should have sanctions enacted on it because it's violated its safeguards agreement, the argument would have been a much stronger one over the long run."
It is true that Iran violated its safeguards agreement, but the United Nations already imposed (relatively weak) sanctions on Tehran for that infraction. Acton is missing the point of why intent forms such an integral part of the Bush administration's case against Iran: demonstrating violation of a safeguards agreement generates a slap on the wrist, while demonstrating intent to develop nuclear weapons is what could potentially generate support in the Security Council for real measures against Iran. That is why the Bush administration is, for example, making a big deal out of Iran's development of long-range missiles; although their development violates no legal prohibition, it provides evidence of Iran's intention to develop nuclear weapons (since conventional explosives make a poor choice of warhead for them).
I do not mean to claim that the current system is perfect; far from it. However, other fixes, similar to certain measures used in the U.S. legal system, are more appropriate. For example, Congress provides sentencing guidelines for federal courts. The United Nations Security Council could do something similar for violations of the NPT, suggesting appropriate ranges of sanctions for certain infractions.
Similarly, Congress delegates some lawmaking authority to the executive branch; for example, the Food and Drug Administration is allowed to impose certain requirements on food producers and drug manufacturers. The Security Council could delegate some enforcement capability to the IAEA, rather than requiring it to refer violations to the council for action. The IAEA could, then, impose minor penalties for relatively minor violations on its own; more significant violations, requiring larger penalties, would still be referred to the council.
Such reforms could greatly improve enforcement of the NPT. Simply ignoring intent would be a mistake.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Deterring the Undeterrable (Part Two or Three)
Well, Charles Krauthammer has revisited his earlier op-ed ("Deterring the Undeterrable," Washington Post, 18 April 2008, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/17/AR2008041703165.html). (See my previous post on the subject.) And, yes, I am thinking of suing him for appropriating my title.
In his new piece, Krauthammer clarifies his position on whether Iran is deterrable or not. He now states that "with its current millenarian leadership, deterrence is indeed a feeble gamble, as I wrote in 2006 in making the case for considering preemption. [I referred to this Washington Post piece in my previous post.] But if preemption is off the table, deterrence is all you've got. Our task is to make deterrence in this context less feeble." So the conclusion seems to be that the Iranian leadership is largely but not completely irrational; that deterrence, therefore, has a slim chance of working; and that because we have so few other options, our best bet is to maximize the chances that it would work. Finally, Krauthammer's calculus seems rational to me. I don't agree with it, but at least now I understand his argument.
I don't agree with Krauthammer because I don't buy his premise that "there are four ways to deal with rogue states going nuclear: preemption, deterrence, missile defense and regime change." For example, when Belarus inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, other countries succeeded in persuading it to give up these weapons. Was that an example of preemption, deterrence, missile defense, or regime change? Clearly none of the above. (Regime change certainly played a role, although foreign pressure was still necessary.)
I prefer to focus instead on "the five D's": denial, dissuasion (including deterrence), defeat, and defense. Krauthammer believes that Iran can not be stopped from developing nuclear weapons and that deterrence and missile defense are the only methods to prevent it from striking at the United States (or Israel, which was the focus of the first op-ed but is almost entirely absent from this one). I still have hope that denial, other forms of dissuasion (besides deterrence), defeat, and other forms of defense (besides missile defense) may be effective in countering Iran's nuclear weapons effort and may even prevent it from acquiring such weapons in the first place.
Denial may still be effective in at least delaying Iran's nuclear weapons program. The country seems to be facing significant difficulty in enriching uranium; its P-1 centrifuges are operating far below capacity, and it has only recently begun to experiment with P-2 and IR-2 centrifuges. (Reports are not entirely clear, but it appears that Iran has recently begun to operate some of the more advanced types of centrifuge only on a pilot, not production, scale.) Furthermore, Iran has not yet succeeded in developing long-range missiles capable of striking the United States or miniaturizing nuclear warheads to fit on these missiles. (Iran could try other means of delivery, such as smuggling nuclear weapons into the United States, but it would probably prefer a long-range delivery capability.) Therefore, although Iran could probably eventually succeed in these endeavors on its own, denying it technical expertise and access to key items could at least delay its efforts.
Second, the United States still might be able to dissuade Iran from going nuclear. Many Iranians oppose the development of nuclear weapons, for various reasons. Ayatollah Khomenei declared nuclear weapons to be un-Islamic, creating a powerful moral argument against them. Their development would require (and has required) a significant investment, diverting resources from other pressing needs, creating a strong economic argument against them. Furthermore, acquiring nuclear weapons might actually put Iran in a more precarious security situation, weakening ties with countries such as Russia (which greatly fears the transfer of such weapons to Islamic terrorists) and possibly spurring other Middle Eastern states (such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey) to acquire their own nuclear arsenals, creating a strong security argument against them. Therefore, the United States and others still have an opportunity to dissuade Iran from going nuclear.
Third, although Krauthammer claims that "preemption works but, as a remedy, it is spent," defeat of the Iranian threat is still an option. It is true that the results of the U.S. invasion of Iraq (failure to find evidence of active unconventional weapons programs and the subsequent insurgency) and the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program greatly reduced U.S. options for launching a preemptive attack on Iran. However, if it poses a significant threat to U.S. security, then the next president must continue to consider such a strike as an option. An attack on Iranian nuclear weapons development facilities would probably not prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon but could set the program back by a decade. (This scenario would probably fall into the "denial," not "defeat," category.) If Iran did acquire a limited number of nuclear weapons and the United States had credible intelligence about their location, a strike could eliminate the threat and would have much greater support than the invasion of Iraq did. (In fact, support would probably be plentiful from the Arab world, which has little interest in seeing an Iranian nuclear arsenal.)
Finally, although I do not believe that defensive measures are likely to prevent Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, they may limit the consequences of any attack. As Krauthammer notes, active defenses, such as missile defenses (if they work), may be effective in limiting the number of weapons that reach U.S. or allied soil and may even convince Iran not to attack in the first place (thus acting as a form of dissuasion). However, passive defenses, including collective defenses (such as bomb shelters) and individual defense (such as MOP suits), can also help to protect U.S. forces abroad and populations of states at high risk of Iranian attack (such as Israel). In addition, the United States has done woefully little to prepare for the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. The government must devote greater resources into managing the consequences of any such attack, either at home or abroad.
With Krauthammer's new op-ed piece, I sort of get where he's coming from. Now I understand his argument about the need to deter Iran from launching an attack against the United States. However, I believe that we can still prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place and that we have more tools at our disposal than only deterrence and missile defense.
In his new piece, Krauthammer clarifies his position on whether Iran is deterrable or not. He now states that "with its current millenarian leadership, deterrence is indeed a feeble gamble, as I wrote in 2006 in making the case for considering preemption. [I referred to this Washington Post piece in my previous post.] But if preemption is off the table, deterrence is all you've got. Our task is to make deterrence in this context less feeble." So the conclusion seems to be that the Iranian leadership is largely but not completely irrational; that deterrence, therefore, has a slim chance of working; and that because we have so few other options, our best bet is to maximize the chances that it would work. Finally, Krauthammer's calculus seems rational to me. I don't agree with it, but at least now I understand his argument.
I don't agree with Krauthammer because I don't buy his premise that "there are four ways to deal with rogue states going nuclear: preemption, deterrence, missile defense and regime change." For example, when Belarus inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, other countries succeeded in persuading it to give up these weapons. Was that an example of preemption, deterrence, missile defense, or regime change? Clearly none of the above. (Regime change certainly played a role, although foreign pressure was still necessary.)
I prefer to focus instead on "the five D's": denial, dissuasion (including deterrence), defeat, and defense. Krauthammer believes that Iran can not be stopped from developing nuclear weapons and that deterrence and missile defense are the only methods to prevent it from striking at the United States (or Israel, which was the focus of the first op-ed but is almost entirely absent from this one). I still have hope that denial, other forms of dissuasion (besides deterrence), defeat, and other forms of defense (besides missile defense) may be effective in countering Iran's nuclear weapons effort and may even prevent it from acquiring such weapons in the first place.
Denial may still be effective in at least delaying Iran's nuclear weapons program. The country seems to be facing significant difficulty in enriching uranium; its P-1 centrifuges are operating far below capacity, and it has only recently begun to experiment with P-2 and IR-2 centrifuges. (Reports are not entirely clear, but it appears that Iran has recently begun to operate some of the more advanced types of centrifuge only on a pilot, not production, scale.) Furthermore, Iran has not yet succeeded in developing long-range missiles capable of striking the United States or miniaturizing nuclear warheads to fit on these missiles. (Iran could try other means of delivery, such as smuggling nuclear weapons into the United States, but it would probably prefer a long-range delivery capability.) Therefore, although Iran could probably eventually succeed in these endeavors on its own, denying it technical expertise and access to key items could at least delay its efforts.
Second, the United States still might be able to dissuade Iran from going nuclear. Many Iranians oppose the development of nuclear weapons, for various reasons. Ayatollah Khomenei declared nuclear weapons to be un-Islamic, creating a powerful moral argument against them. Their development would require (and has required) a significant investment, diverting resources from other pressing needs, creating a strong economic argument against them. Furthermore, acquiring nuclear weapons might actually put Iran in a more precarious security situation, weakening ties with countries such as Russia (which greatly fears the transfer of such weapons to Islamic terrorists) and possibly spurring other Middle Eastern states (such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey) to acquire their own nuclear arsenals, creating a strong security argument against them. Therefore, the United States and others still have an opportunity to dissuade Iran from going nuclear.
Third, although Krauthammer claims that "preemption works but, as a remedy, it is spent," defeat of the Iranian threat is still an option. It is true that the results of the U.S. invasion of Iraq (failure to find evidence of active unconventional weapons programs and the subsequent insurgency) and the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program greatly reduced U.S. options for launching a preemptive attack on Iran. However, if it poses a significant threat to U.S. security, then the next president must continue to consider such a strike as an option. An attack on Iranian nuclear weapons development facilities would probably not prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon but could set the program back by a decade. (This scenario would probably fall into the "denial," not "defeat," category.) If Iran did acquire a limited number of nuclear weapons and the United States had credible intelligence about their location, a strike could eliminate the threat and would have much greater support than the invasion of Iraq did. (In fact, support would probably be plentiful from the Arab world, which has little interest in seeing an Iranian nuclear arsenal.)
Finally, although I do not believe that defensive measures are likely to prevent Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, they may limit the consequences of any attack. As Krauthammer notes, active defenses, such as missile defenses (if they work), may be effective in limiting the number of weapons that reach U.S. or allied soil and may even convince Iran not to attack in the first place (thus acting as a form of dissuasion). However, passive defenses, including collective defenses (such as bomb shelters) and individual defense (such as MOP suits), can also help to protect U.S. forces abroad and populations of states at high risk of Iranian attack (such as Israel). In addition, the United States has done woefully little to prepare for the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. The government must devote greater resources into managing the consequences of any such attack, either at home or abroad.
With Krauthammer's new op-ed piece, I sort of get where he's coming from. Now I understand his argument about the need to deter Iran from launching an attack against the United States. However, I believe that we can still prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place and that we have more tools at our disposal than only deterrence and missile defense.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Deterring the Undeterrable?
Charles Krauthammer recently wrote a Washington Post op-ed piece ("The Holocaust Declaration," 11 April 2008, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041003271.html) in which he argued that the United States should declare that it would retaliate against Iran if it launched a nuclear attack against Israel. Krauthammer hopes that such a declaration would deter Iran but that acknowledges that "this will be even more difficult than during the Cold War, when we were dealing with rational actors." Yet the last time I checked, effective deterrence requires rational actors. The target of deterrence must value something (e.g., his security) and then be able to comprehend that if he took some action, then some kind of punishment would be inflicted upon him (e.g., that he would be attacked). Based on this analysis, he must decide that taking such action would not be worth the consequences. That is rational behavior.
It would probably be quite difficult to deter an irrational actor. For example, some people claim that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has spoken with messianic zeal about hastening the return of the 9th-century "hidden imam" (or Mahdi), is not entirely rational and might instigate war in order to effect the return of the Mahdi, even if doing so brought about severe retaliation against Iran. (Although one could claim that this kind of behavior was rational if Ahmadinejad valued the Mahdi's return above the well-being of the Iranian people, this kind of rationality is probably not what Krauthammer was talking about and certainly would not be useful for implementing a policy of deterrence.)
So does Krauthammer believe that Iran's leadership is irrational, which would call into question whether the United States can implement a policy of deterrence, or does he believe that it is rational, in which case implementing such a policy ought to be as easy as during the Cold War? (In fact, as Krauthammer himself notes, it should be even easier, since the United States would face relatively little threat of Iranian retaliation and therefore feel less constrained in attacking Iran.)
He tries to deal with this contradiction in the third-to-last paragraph of the piece. He acknowledges that "it is, of course, hardly certain that deterrence would work on the likes of Ahmadinejad and other jihadists," apparently claiming that Ahmadinejad is an irrational actor. He therefore tries to reconcile this issue by suggesting that "deterrence would concentrate the minds of rational Iranian actors, of whom there are many, to restrain or even depose leaders such as Ahmadinejad."
However, Krauthammer's simplistic argument fails to address several gaps. When might rational elements within Iranian society (or rather, presumably, the Iranian government) get around to restraining or deposing their president? Even if they wanted to, would they have the capability to do so? What happens in the meantime? Do we just sit around hoping that deterrence works on Ahmadinejad? And what about Ayatollah Khamenei, the ultimate authority within Iran? Does Krauthammer consider him to be rational? What would happen if we managed to deter one faction within the Iranian government but not another?
Don't get me wrong; I actually believe that Iran's leadership in general is quite rational and deterrable. However, there are many more factors in play than Krauthammer considers. For one thing, several elements of the Iranian government are involved in military decisionmaking, including the supreme leader, the president, and the supreme national security council. Furthermore, it is unclear how the decision to employ nuclear weapons would be made. Iran almost certainly has not developed any doctrine for their employment and does not seem to have ever used chemical or biological weapons. (There are some questions about whether Iran used chemical weapons during the war with Iraq in the 1980s, but this has never been proven.) It should also be noted that the extent of Ahmadinejad's authority over Iranian forces that might employ such weapons, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, is unclear.
Therefore, while I agree that it might be possible to deter Iran, any policy to do so would require a much more thorough analysis than Krauthammer has provided. (I guess the Washington Post only gives you so much room for an op-ed, though.) I also think that Krauthammer gives up a bit too early on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place. If we are able to make progress in this area soon, then perhaps we wouldn't have to worry about deterring Iran after all.
Update: On 15 September 2006 Krauthammer wrote ("The Tehran Calculus," Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401413_pf.html) that Iran currently "is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. . . . Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?" Kudos to "The Plank" at the New Republic (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/04/11/so-iran-is-deterrable-after-all.aspx") for digging this up.
It would probably be quite difficult to deter an irrational actor. For example, some people claim that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has spoken with messianic zeal about hastening the return of the 9th-century "hidden imam" (or Mahdi), is not entirely rational and might instigate war in order to effect the return of the Mahdi, even if doing so brought about severe retaliation against Iran. (Although one could claim that this kind of behavior was rational if Ahmadinejad valued the Mahdi's return above the well-being of the Iranian people, this kind of rationality is probably not what Krauthammer was talking about and certainly would not be useful for implementing a policy of deterrence.)
So does Krauthammer believe that Iran's leadership is irrational, which would call into question whether the United States can implement a policy of deterrence, or does he believe that it is rational, in which case implementing such a policy ought to be as easy as during the Cold War? (In fact, as Krauthammer himself notes, it should be even easier, since the United States would face relatively little threat of Iranian retaliation and therefore feel less constrained in attacking Iran.)
He tries to deal with this contradiction in the third-to-last paragraph of the piece. He acknowledges that "it is, of course, hardly certain that deterrence would work on the likes of Ahmadinejad and other jihadists," apparently claiming that Ahmadinejad is an irrational actor. He therefore tries to reconcile this issue by suggesting that "deterrence would concentrate the minds of rational Iranian actors, of whom there are many, to restrain or even depose leaders such as Ahmadinejad."
However, Krauthammer's simplistic argument fails to address several gaps. When might rational elements within Iranian society (or rather, presumably, the Iranian government) get around to restraining or deposing their president? Even if they wanted to, would they have the capability to do so? What happens in the meantime? Do we just sit around hoping that deterrence works on Ahmadinejad? And what about Ayatollah Khamenei, the ultimate authority within Iran? Does Krauthammer consider him to be rational? What would happen if we managed to deter one faction within the Iranian government but not another?
Don't get me wrong; I actually believe that Iran's leadership in general is quite rational and deterrable. However, there are many more factors in play than Krauthammer considers. For one thing, several elements of the Iranian government are involved in military decisionmaking, including the supreme leader, the president, and the supreme national security council. Furthermore, it is unclear how the decision to employ nuclear weapons would be made. Iran almost certainly has not developed any doctrine for their employment and does not seem to have ever used chemical or biological weapons. (There are some questions about whether Iran used chemical weapons during the war with Iraq in the 1980s, but this has never been proven.) It should also be noted that the extent of Ahmadinejad's authority over Iranian forces that might employ such weapons, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, is unclear.
Therefore, while I agree that it might be possible to deter Iran, any policy to do so would require a much more thorough analysis than Krauthammer has provided. (I guess the Washington Post only gives you so much room for an op-ed, though.) I also think that Krauthammer gives up a bit too early on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place. If we are able to make progress in this area soon, then perhaps we wouldn't have to worry about deterring Iran after all.
Update: On 15 September 2006 Krauthammer wrote ("The Tehran Calculus," Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401413_pf.html) that Iran currently "is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. . . . Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?" Kudos to "The Plank" at the New Republic (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/04/11/so-iran-is-deterrable-after-all.aspx") for digging this up.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Why Do Americans from the Smallest States Die at a Higher Rate in Iraq?
In a recent piece in USA Today ("Why Smallest States Suffer Most In Iraq," 28 March 2008, at http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/03/why-smallest-st.html), Al Neuharth claims that a disproportionate number of deaths in the Iraq war come from states with the smallest populations and that two reasons explain this phenomenon: first, Americans from the smallest states earn less, and second, they are more patriotic. As a result of these two factors, Americans from the smallest states are, presumably, more likely to join the military and therefore to be killed in Iraq.
Neuharth provides numbers demonstrating a huge disparity between the "death rates" of the largest and smallest states. I have no way of independently analyzing these numbers, so I'll accept that they are correct. However, I don't buy the two supposed reasons for the disparity.
First, Neuharth claims that Americans from the smallest states earn less than those from the biggest. However, according to the Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income06/statemhi2.html), the median household incomes of the union's five smallest states:
compare quite well with those of the five biggest states:
Second, Neuharth claims that residents of the smallest states are more patriotic than those from the biggest, but he provides no evidence for this statement. Perhaps he is basing it on intuition? I suppose that there are many ways to measure patriotism—the number of Americans who fly U.S. flags on their homes or who have memorized the pledge of allegiance, perhaps—but doubt that there is any single method that most people would agree on. In any case, I—based on intuition—doubt that residents of the union's smallest states are demonstrably more patriotic than those from the biggest.
Yet even if we accepted both of Neuharth's premises, his argument would still be flawed. He appears to suggest that the disparities in income and patriotism lead more Americans from the smallest states to join the military, resulting in a greater number of deaths in Iraq. However, while a greater proportion of Americans from the smallest states do, in fact, appear to join the military, this moderate difference does not seem to account for the much greater death rate disparity.
The Department of Defense's "Population Representation in the Military Services (2002)" (http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2002/chapter2/c2_geography.htm) provided "representation ratios" (fractions of 18-to-24 year olds who enlisted in the military, normalized so that a value of "1" represented the average state) for all 50 states. We find that only three of the five small states had above average representation ratios:
while two of the five big states also had above average representation ratios:
Although the 2005 version of that document did not provide representation ratios, we can estimate those by dividing the number of active component enlisted accessions (which the report did provide, at http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2005/appendixb/b_10a.html) by each state's population. I then multiplied these fractions by 1000, simply to avoid working with very small numbers. (Two caveats. First, I could not easily find 2005 population figures, so I used the Census Department's 2007 figures, available at http://www.census.gov/. I assume that states' populations did not change much between 2005 and 2007. Second, these numbers are different than the 2002 representation ratios, since they are not normalized and represent fractions of states' entire populations rather than of their 18-to-24-year-old populations.) Here are the results for the smallest states:
and for the largest states:
Again, while residents of the smallest states do seem to join the military in greater proportions than those of the largest states, the difference does not seem to be big enough to account for the much greater disparity in the death rates that Neuharth cites.
I do not know why the percentage of Americans from the nation's smallest states who die in Iraq is so much a greater than the percentage from the biggest states. However, what I do know is that Neuharth's analysis does not seem to explain this phenomenon.
Neuharth provides numbers demonstrating a huge disparity between the "death rates" of the largest and smallest states. I have no way of independently analyzing these numbers, so I'll accept that they are correct. However, I don't buy the two supposed reasons for the disparity.
First, Neuharth claims that Americans from the smallest states earn less than those from the biggest. However, according to the Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income06/statemhi2.html), the median household incomes of the union's five smallest states:
compare quite well with those of the five biggest states:
Second, Neuharth claims that residents of the smallest states are more patriotic than those from the biggest, but he provides no evidence for this statement. Perhaps he is basing it on intuition? I suppose that there are many ways to measure patriotism—the number of Americans who fly U.S. flags on their homes or who have memorized the pledge of allegiance, perhaps—but doubt that there is any single method that most people would agree on. In any case, I—based on intuition—doubt that residents of the union's smallest states are demonstrably more patriotic than those from the biggest.
Yet even if we accepted both of Neuharth's premises, his argument would still be flawed. He appears to suggest that the disparities in income and patriotism lead more Americans from the smallest states to join the military, resulting in a greater number of deaths in Iraq. However, while a greater proportion of Americans from the smallest states do, in fact, appear to join the military, this moderate difference does not seem to account for the much greater death rate disparity.
The Department of Defense's "Population Representation in the Military Services (2002)" (http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2002/chapter2/c2_geography.htm) provided "representation ratios" (fractions of 18-to-24 year olds who enlisted in the military, normalized so that a value of "1" represented the average state) for all 50 states. We find that only three of the five small states had above average representation ratios:
while two of the five big states also had above average representation ratios:
Although the 2005 version of that document did not provide representation ratios, we can estimate those by dividing the number of active component enlisted accessions (which the report did provide, at http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2005/appendixb/b_10a.html) by each state's population. I then multiplied these fractions by 1000, simply to avoid working with very small numbers. (Two caveats. First, I could not easily find 2005 population figures, so I used the Census Department's 2007 figures, available at http://www.census.gov/. I assume that states' populations did not change much between 2005 and 2007. Second, these numbers are different than the 2002 representation ratios, since they are not normalized and represent fractions of states' entire populations rather than of their 18-to-24-year-old populations.) Here are the results for the smallest states:
and for the largest states:
Again, while residents of the smallest states do seem to join the military in greater proportions than those of the largest states, the difference does not seem to be big enough to account for the much greater disparity in the death rates that Neuharth cites.
I do not know why the percentage of Americans from the nation's smallest states who die in Iraq is so much a greater than the percentage from the biggest states. However, what I do know is that Neuharth's analysis does not seem to explain this phenomenon.
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