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.