The mother of all deceptions
Ken Adelman:
Ken Adelman:
Throughout history, world leaders have hidden their treaty violations and lied about it. No surprise there. But Saddam Hussein broke new ground in the world of strategic gamesmanship when he hid treaty compliance and lied about it.
It may sound weird, but the Duelfer Report documents that the weird was true. Since the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein actually complied with the U.N. resolutions that prohibited him from producing weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, he brazenly acted as if he were violating those resolutions.
It was the mother of all deceptions, and he succeeded nicely (until the moment he was overthrown, that is). We never, for a moment, suspected he was a clandestine complier.
Such behavior may seem inexplicable. Persuading the world's only superpower that you are not only a psychopath but that you are armed with the most dangerous weapons imaginable (when in fact you're not) seems, at the very least, counterintuitive.
But not so fast.
Instead of clinical psychologists, perhaps Hussein would be better analyzed by nuclear strategists. Because he may have created a stunning, new nuclear strategy.
After all, if a Third World country cannot be a nuclear power, there might be some value to being a nuclear bluffer. This might work almost as well — and without the cost of buying all those centrifuges and aluminum tubes clandestinely, and without the mess of dealing with dangerous uranium and plutonium.
Like a nascent nuclear power, a nuclear bluffer (or a nation that bluffs about having chemical and biological weapons) can frighten its neighbors, thereby deterring any aggression on their part (which is, after all, a key objective of nuclear strategy). It can reap gobs of attention on the world stage. It can encourage the richer countries to offer aid, nonaggression pacts and increased trade — if only the errant country would forgo the nuclear option (which, in fact, it isn't really pursuing).
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