Ronnie D. Lipschutz

In a recent column in The New York Times, political pundit Thomas Friedman tried to explain the logic behind President Bush’s identification of the “axis of evil.”  While he was not crazy about the countries selected, wrote Friedman, he thought that it was good to “be as crazy as some of our enemies” in order to keep them off balance. He criticized our European allies, and many Americans, for misunderstanding the intentions behind Bush’s denunciation.  The President, Friedman argued, was not preparing the world for an attack on one or all three of the target countries but, rather, trying to “restore deterrence” by acting crazy.  This, he claimed, would make rogues and terrorists think twice about launching future attacks on American interests.

Friedman reasoned as follows.  During the 1980s and 1990s, he claimed, the United States had lost its anti-terrorist deterrent capability.  This happened because it never retaliated against, or brought to justice, those who had attacked Americans in Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other places.  As a result, terrorists came to believe they could strike against the United States with impunity and without fear of retaliation.  The “axis of evil” concept, along with the campaign in Afghanistan, should disabuse them of this belief.  More to the point, by talking “crazy,” terrorists and their supporters can never be certain that retaliation will not occur.  To protect themselves, therefore, they will be reluctant to engaged is such actions. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Let us ignore, for a moment, Friedman’s gross distortion of the actual record regarding retaliation and pursuit, and focus, instead, on his concept of “deterrence.”  During the Cold War, deterrence was linked primarily to “nuclear” to denote a strategic posture that, in effect, threatened to destroy the Soviet Union should it choose to attack us with nuclear forces.  This posture came to be called named “Mutual Assured Destruction” (or MAD) by then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in recognition that any nuclear exchange would, in all probability, result in the annihilation of both the United State and the Soviet Union (with considerable collateral damage all around).

The philosophical and psychological problems with MAD, as many pointed out, were that a threat to commit national suicide was not believable and, therefore not a credible deterrent—it was crazy.  A deterrent threat works only if your opponent believes you will carry through on it, and even Americans had their doubts. Therefore, it became necessary to find ways of establishing credibility that would demonstrate our commitment to retaliate.  The best way to do this would be to find ways of expressing our willingness, even eagerness, to engage in nuclear war in order to defend ourselves.

Ballistic missile defense, civil defense, limited nuclear options and first strikes were among the strategems devised to show that we would not be cowed by the possibility of escalation or national destruction.  Given that we were so willing to discuss national suicide, and prepared to commit it, we must really mean it, right?  Because no rational country would contemplate such a thing, we must really be crazy and unpredictable to do so.  And that meant we could not be trusted to not commit suicide.  Finally, because the Soviets would not contemplate a similar end—not being crazy themselves—they could never be sure that the United States might not actually launch the weapons that would, in all probability, doom it as a viable civilization.  Craziness enhances deterrence!

The contradiction is, perhaps, apparent.  Successful deterrence requires that your opponent rationally calculate costs and benefits of an attack, and conclude that losses from both defense and retaliation would far exceed benefits from such an action.  So far, so good.  But, what if your opponent does not believe that you would retaliate?  Then, he has no good reason not to attack.  In order to make your opponent believe that you would retaliate, you have to raise the stakes ever higher to demonstrate that your threat is a believable one.  If you begin to act crazy, your opponent might think, “Hmm.  I don’t know what this madman might do to me; I’d better not try anything.”

But deterrence presumes rational calculation, which is not possible if you are crazy.  Hence, if you are crazy, you might attack without considering costs and benefits.  Therefore, your opponent might decide it is better to strike first.  It is unlikely, however, that a country as rich and intellectually-endowed as ours would not engage in such a calculation, even while trying to give an impression of unpredictable craziness.  Hence, a knowledgeable opponent would think, “Hmm.  This crazy stuff is just an act meant to throw me off balance.  I’ll ignore it.”

Now, let us return to Friedman’s arguments.  Acting crazy, according to his calculus, will prevent the governments of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea from trying anything funny or contrary to U.S. interests (actually, the very existence of those governments seems to be contrary to U.S. interests, if one is to believe all the rhetoric).  But what if those governments are crazy?  Then nothing we can say or do, however crazy it might seem, is going to affect them.  If those governments are crazy, they will launch their missiles and bombs without a second thought—or, perhaps, in retaliation for a U.S. attack on them (deterrence, remember?).

Are those governments crazy?  After all, Saddam Hussein is not acting rationally in terms of his people’s interests, although he might be acting rationally in terms of his own interests defined as power.  Nevertheless, he has defied the UN and the United States repeatedly over the past 10 years, and has done nothing to trigger a massive attack on Iraq.  The Bush Administration has suggested it will seek an opportunity to provoke a crisis in order to justify an attack.  In the event, if Hussein backs down, he is not crazy, but he is still in power.  If he does resist, the United States might launch an attack, but the costs and benefits are none too clear for us.  Certainly, it is unlikely that our allies and clients will sit by quietly as we go in.

And would an attack on Iraq have any effect on transnational terrorism?  It is not clear that any evidence of links between Baghdad and Al Qaeda has surfaced.  For that matter, links between any governments and Al Qaeda have been difficult to find.  We are unlikely to see such terrorism disappear as a result of a new government in Iraq. And we know that terrorists will commit suicide to fulfill their missions; is that craziness or rational calculation?  Why should they be deterred by anything we do?

Note, finally, that there has been considerable discussion, by Administration officials, in Congressional hearings and in the media, of various strategies for “dealing” with Iraq.  If there is an idea floating around for taking him out, Saddam Hussein can read about it in The New York Times. Then, he can rationally calculate how he will respond to each scenario.

So, who’s crazy now?

Ronnie D. Lipschutz is an associate professor of politics at UC-Santa Cruz.  He can be insulted at rlipsch@cats.ucsc.edu.