A reader writes:
In your post, "What did Ahmadinejad Mean," to demonstrate his malign and undeterrable nature you quote Rafsanjani saying:
"If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world."
It is worth noting that this is almost exactly the same line that China took during the Cold War: That it did not need to worry about nuclear retaliation because the US and its allies had more concentrated targets, whereas China’s vast hinterlands would allow it to resist nuclear attack with manpower left to burn. "As long as there are green mountains, who needs to worry about firewood?" asked Mao with characteristic directness; "It is the United States that should be afraid of using nuclear bombs against us, because its densely concentrated industries are more vulnerable." But China in spite of its professed indifference to nuclear retaliation was and remains deterrable.
While you are a great fan of taking murderous dictators at their word, I think that you apply the principle too broadly. No national leader speaks truthfully when pursuing a strategy of deterrance — the whole point of a deterrance strategy is to appear more crazy and undeterrable than your rival. You postulate an odd sort of dictator who is rational enough to tell the truth but too crazy to know how to lie when it manifestly suits his interests.
Any approach to strategy that does not take account of deterrability, and make a serious effort to estimate it, is going to lead to all manner of grandiose invade-the-world schemes. Yet oddly enough one does not see a great deal of such analysis coming from the White House these days, or from its pundit and blog subsidiaries. The phrase "fundamentally unserious," though overused, might well apply here.
The problem with deterrence and Iran’s current regime, I think, lies in its fundamentalist religious orientation. When you live in the imminent expectation of a much-wanted Apocalypse, then deterrence may not work against you. We are dealing with a religious movement in which suicide bombing is a virtue. How do we deter suicide bombers? We cannot. How do we know that Iran’s leaders do not have the same psychology on a far greater scale? We do not. The Soviets, in comparison, were rational. Religious fanatics, especially those eager for eschatological oblivion, are not. There’s the rub.
The Dish 