Deterrence Lessons From Iraq
Rationality Is Not the Only Key to Containment
Article Summary and Author Biography
Debates about the possibility of containing a nuclear Iran often hinge on judgments of whether the regime there is rational. But as a wealth of recently released Iraqi documents about Saddam Hussein’s tumultuous reign in Iraq show, even an arguably rational leader can be unreasonable -- and very hard to deter.
AMATZIA BARAM is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa.
Snapshot
Last month, tens of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets to protest the government's poor treatment of Sunnis and, for the first time, to call for the overthrow of Prime Minister Maliki. Unless Baghdad starts making concessions, and soon, Sunni leaders could demand an independent region, spelling the end of a unified Iraq.
Essay
A special, double-length article presenting key excerpts from the declassified book-length report of the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.
What, me worry? Saddam Hussein, July 1983 (Francois Lochon / Gamma-Rapho Via Getty Images)
As Iran continues its pursuit of a nuclear capability, outside observers have debated just how worried the world should be. Optimists argue that since nuclear war would be suicidal, no government would ever risk it, and they think the Islamic Republic would be no exception. Pessimists argue that Iran's radical and unstable regime might behave in unpredictable ways and cannot be trusted. Both camps seem to agree that rationality is the key to deterrence; they disagree over whether a nuclear Iran would be rational.
Unfortunately, things aren't that simple. The link between rationality and deterrence is less direct than people think, and what constitutes rational behavior for the leaders of a particular country can be hard to read. Deterrence, in short, is a more complex issue than generally assumed.
These points are brought home forcefully by a careful look at attempts to keep Saddam Hussein in check, something that the recent release of a massive amount of captured Iraqi records finally makes possible. As a result of the Iraq war, the United States gained possession of a priceless cache of documents, records of interviews, and even tape recordings of many meetings that shed invaluable light on Saddam's behavior -- material that is now accessible to researchers at the Conflict Records Research Center, in Washington, D.C. Taken together with previously available information, what these records show is a leader who was extremely hard, occasionally even impossible, to deter, but for reasons that have little to do with irrationality.
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