No Replacement For Displacement

The Nature of Deterrence

This might cause a minor storm, but I was thinking today about deterrence. Most everyone who could be considered a warblogger, the President, and the entire national security apparatus believe that deterrence has failed. The few somewhat rational members of the anti-war crowd say that we should give deterrence another chance. The reality is that both are wrong. Deterrence has not been credibly tried in the Middle East, at least not by the United States, anyway(Israel is a different matter).

First, a bit of history of deterrence. In the final days of Nazi Germany, the Soviet armies invaded Germany, they were kind of shocked at what they saw. Every major city they had approached had been already been turned to rubble by British and American air power. This had an impressive effect on the Soviets in general, if not Stalin himself . They saw the aftermath of what American air power could do, and they didn't want to be subject to it themselves, and the institutional memory of bombed out German cities proved the concept of a "decadent" West was a fiction. The A-bomb simply reinforced that viewpoint.

Nonetheless, deterrence was tested, and repeatedly. First the Berlin airlift, then Korea. The fact that we were willing to sacrifice thousands of American lives in Korea, and that we had bled the Chinese in the process helped keep the concept of deterrence alive. Vietnam may have been a defeat for us in war, but that we were willing to endure riots and sacrifice 50,000 people half way around the globe simply so the Russians couldn't get their hands on it impressed both the Russians and our allies. When push came to shove, we would fight, and we would make an enemy pay a horrible price for doing so. The Soviets knew that if we were willing to sacrifice so much for a slice of bug-infested jungle in Southeast Asia, sacrificing Kansas City to prevent them from reaching the Rhine wasn't much of a stretch. While the Soviets might have used the "decadent west" as a propaganda tool, they never believed it themselves, and that is why deterrence worked.

Now let's look at our record over the past 12 years or so. We let Saddam live after invading Kuwait. We kissed the butt of Aidid after he killed 18 Americans, when we should have dispatched a Mechanized battalion to rip him apart. When Saddam attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush, we launched a token, worthless retaliation. We allowed a mob to bully an American expedition off of Haiti. The World Trade Center was bombed--nothing happened. Khobar towers bombed--nothing. After the embassy bombings, we launched the "ten million dollar missile to hit a ten dollar tent and hit a camel in the butt." If you were Saddam or Bin Laden, would you expect us to hunt you down and kill you after what we did during the post Cold War era, or more precisely didn't do at all?

What we are engaged in now is not an abandonment of deterrence in favor of preemption, but a restoration of deterrence. Deterrence is a useless concept unless your enemies are convinced you are willing to fight a war. Say what you like about the Soviets, they knew we would fight, because they knew it, deterrence worked, so we never had to fight a war.

We went into Afghanistan to evict al Qaeda and the Taliban, and prevent them from killing more Americans. However, that wasn't the only reason. We went into Afghanistan to shock the muslim world into reform, true, but that is only part of it. We are going into Iraq to disarm the country, give Saddam a dirt nap, and eliminate it as a base of terrorism, and hopefully create a prosperous and democratic Arab country. However, even though these are stated and unstated goals, they are still not the only reasons why we need to fight and win this war.

The unstated, and unpondered reason why we need to fight, and win decisively, is to bring back deterrence. Winning the war against the islamofascists will make us safer, yes. It will eliminate the cesspools of Middle East tyranny, certainly. But it is also an unspoken warning shot to potential adversaries that no, the United States is not as decadent as they think, and yes, if they attack the United States, this vast war machine will show up on their doorstep, and do to them what we did to the Taliban, and what we will do to Saddam we will do to them, whoever "they" might be. Winning the war will restore our ability to deter potential unforeseen enemies(China?) for the next generation, and probably the next two generations.

Noone appears to have considered this, but the beneficial effects of an American victory echo far beyond the Middle East. It will mean that threatening the United States becomes a vastly higher risk activity than it was just over a year ago. And that will mean that we can engage in deterrence far more effectively than we could have before. I'm not saying that we won't have to engage in preemption again, but speaking softly and carrying a big stick will be credible again. And that is a good thing.