The cops came at dawn with an arrest warrant. They have you at the precinct where, for want of hard evidence and going on a hunch, they’re piling on the pressure over the bank job you pulled yesterday. Two doors along the corridor they’re doing the same with your partner in crime.
“Your buddy just fessed but says you’re the master mind. He’ll walk on a plea deal. You’ll be going down for ten years! Best come clean now pal!”
If you both keep silent, you both walk. If you both talk, you both go down for an unpleasant yet bearable two years. But if you keep silent while he talks, the cops are right. With no mitigating confession, you’ll spend the next decade in jail.
Shouldn’t you stick it to him before he sticks it to you?
This is the prisoner’s dilemma; the basis of game theory, on which countless tomes have been inked, rain forests the size of Greenland cut down. Replace the bank job duo with two nuclear adversaries, factor in calculations of history and trust – the permutations get head-spinningly mathematical – and you see why armies of psychologists spent entire careers teasing out the cold war variables as to whether and at what point the most rational course of action would be a pre-emptive strike.
Shouldn’t the West stick it to Russia before Russia sticks it to the West?
Of course, things are now more complicated still as the nuclear club has not only expanded but includes regional rivals India and Pakistan. Elsewhere Israel has for decades adopted a stance of ‘strategic ambiguity’ – is it or isn’t it a nuclear power and, if it is, could it use a nuke without ensuring its own annihilation? – while the February 28 murder of Ali Khamenei, who had ruled out nukes on religious grounds, leaves Iran too in a state of ambiguity.
More complicated too in that the MAD doctrine of the cold war no longer holds unchallenged sway. Back then the few who questioned it were confined to the lunatic fringe. Now there are voices frighteningly close to the levers of power saying a tactical nuclear war can be won. This in a US empire on the wane, making some sections of its corporate oligarchy reckless.
Six days ago former CIA intelligence analyst Larry Johnson opined that while Iran holds an ace in its command of the Hormuz Strait, the card itself is so globally wild that it will rapidly morph into a liability. His conclusion? The most rational course of action for Iran is to go hell for leather to secure nuclear deterrence while it can.
I agree with this conclusion, 1 though not with all its premises. 2 But that’s for another day. Right now I recommend giving Larry’s argument the close attention it merits.
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- Saying it would be rational for Iran to go nuclear isn’t to say that’s a desirable outcome. I think we all know why the DPRK hasn’t been attacked, and that 168 schoolgirls in Minab would still be alive had Iran been a nuclear power. In a world run by the criminally insane, rational accommodations may lead to chilling conclusions.
- Also on March 13, reader Jams O’Donnell quoted as follows below my post that day:
From an interview with Professor Andrey Baklanov, former Russian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
I cite the opinion of a true expert, Professor Mark Khrustalev, former military officer and my instructor in military translation. He was one of the few foreign experts ever allowed into some of Israel’s nuclear facilities as part of a UN mission.
Khrustalev believed Israel has the technology to start producing nuclear weapons, but does not have the weapons themselves. This is due to the great risks associated with possessing them. Even storing such weapons is potentially dangerous. In his opinion, which I share, Israel pursues a policy of creating uncertainty in the international community to exert psychological pressure on opponent ….
… In the Middle East, nuclear weapons cannot be used; the operational space is too small
I replied:
Interesting and plausible. But sanity demands that we make worst case assumptions that (a) the terrorist regime has nukes and (b) given their record of subordinating the interests of Israeli citizens to their messianic vision of a Greater Israel, the fanatics in charge will in extremis use them regardless of the consequences.