NOT MAD
the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, or "mad" was the unseen hand of stability during the arms race with the soviet union. the doctrine held that if each superpower had more nuclear weapons than could be destroyed in a first strike then neither would be tempted to launch first, thus avoiding nuclear war. it has been proposed by one observer, col. david hackworth of the website millitary.com, that the mad doctrine be applied to the conflict with islam. he would announce to the countries of "lebanon, libya, iran, iraq, pakistan, saudi arabia, syria and north korea" that if we get hit with a weapon of mass destruction we would retaliate in kind. he does not say if he means we would retaliate against all or just against the country/ies of origin of the bombers.
first, let's get rid of this north korea nonsense once and for all. goofy as they are, they are not going to hit the united states with a wmd. second, they are in no way affiliated with the islamic threat. their inclusion in the president's "axis of evil" was nothing more than political correctness to veil the truth that we are at war with islam. and so third, hackworth can not mean that if we get hit with a wmd from north korea that he would retaliate against, inter alia, riyadh.
also egypt must be added to hackworth's list. the military.com website lists a dozen or so of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world and a couple are headquartered in egypt, and as we know some of the sept 11 hijackers were from egypt. so we take out north korea and add egypt.
to properly assess hackworth's proposal we need to examine the mad doctrine. mad was premised on an important assumption, that the leaders of the united states and the soviet union were in the end rational, that despite their ideological differences neither wanted his country destroyed.
already one can see the problem here. our enemy is not rational. martyrdom is encouraged. now hackworth knows this. at the end of his article he says things like "if we're lucky" mad will work, and "hopefully...even these misguided monsters will get the word." but let's follow his proposal through.
let's say we communicate the new mad doctrine to that list of governments. what would be the likely responses? iraq is already building wmd despite having had a war with us so there would be no effect there. pakistan has nuclear weapons but the present government would not use them against us. and when the musharraf government is taken over by islamic radicals they will not be deterred by the mad doctrine. iran may or may not have wmd, and although they are implaccable foes of the u.s., the government is not going to hit us with a wmd. col. qudaffi is crazy enough to do anything but there is no evidence he has or is trying to acquire wmd. the saudi and egyptian governments are our "friends" in the war on terrorism so we have nothing to fear from them. syria's government is not going to attack us directly even though, like saudi arabia and egypt, they harbor terrorist groups.
so it appears reasonably clear that none of the governments would be changed from their present course by an announcement of the adoption of the mad doctrine and consequently mad would not work. but obviously that does not mean that there is no threat of the u.s. being hit with a wmd. and that is because the present conflict presents an entirely different face than any previous enemy has. it is not so much the governments that are the threat it is the PEOPLE. and it is not so much the governments that are not susceptible to a rational cost-benefit analysis it is the people.
could mad work to get these governments to crack down on their people. well, first consider the nature of hackworth's proposal. he is saying we will retaliate with wmd if we get hit with one. but there is no evidence that any of the terrorist groups has wmd so does that mean these governments can go on supporting and giving safe harbor to terrorists as long as they don't hit us with wmd? hackworth doesn't have a proposal to deal with another conventional attack, far the more likely of the two, so his proposal actualy amounts to saying, for example, to a child who gets into fights at school, "listen do NOT take a high-powered rifle and go to the top of a building and start shooting people." it almost ENCOURAGES behavior short of that.
but the other problem with the proposal is it's credibility. mad worked during the cold war because each side knew the other would retaliate with nuclear weapons if struck first. if one crazed egyptian national with a dirty bomb in his brief case explodes it in manhattan, does hackworth really intend that all of the countries on his list be atttacked with nuclear weapons or even that just egypt be? i intend that and i say so explicitly but i really doubt that hackworth does so the threat is not credible.
thus as demonstrated above mad would have no effect on the governments if it was limited to requiring them to root out terrorist groups that may have wmd capability. although hackworth doesn't deal with it, would the governments be able to crack down on groups that just had conventional capability? this is one of the paradoxes of our relationships with the arab countries. governments like egypt and saudi arabia are supportive of us but they maintain their hold on power by giving vent to the most radical segments of their population so that the anger is not directed at them. so it is no surprise that egypt and saudi arabia had a large majority of the sept 11 hijackers and that nationals of those countries continue to be prominent in al queda and other of the most dangerous groups. i tuly believe that both these governments would want to crack down on dangerous groups in their countries but to do so would threaten their regimes. once again, unfortunately, it is the people of islam that we are at war with, not just the governments.
which brings us to another "friend," pakistan. since al queda is currently based in western pakistan that is the most likely source for the next attack. if anyone has shown courage in this war it is general musharaff but it is clear that his government has neither the means nor willingness to control the estimated 500,000 fighters in it's lawless western region. we would be asking a gov't to do what we know it cannot do. so again, mad would be meaningless as applied here.
now in the more expansive version of hackworth's proposal, an attack from one of these countries would be considered an attack by all and i think that is the proper way of looking at it since in my view we are at war with islam, and so when the next attack comes, which everyone seems to agree on, and if it is with a wmd then properly in my view the expansive version calls for retaliation on all. i think such a doctrine would have wide support in the administration and in the country and to that extent is preferable to mine, for which there is no support.
but popularity aside, and this is not to diminish the importance of popularity, what the hackworth proposal in either it's expansive or limited version amounts to is, " we do not have the political will at the present time to strike those who we know we must strike. we will wait until they strike us a second time." that, to me, is just unacceptable. we have already been struck once and it doesn't matter to me that it was not with a wmd, nor would it to me in another strike. we must end this threat and win this war and the hackworth mad doctrine will not do it.
-benjamin harris
