Customer Reviews

Deterring America: Rogue States and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

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The American military showed the world what they could do during Gulf War I and during the combat phase of Gulf War II. The big lessons was clear:

The American way of war had improved so much that fighting them was not unlike the days of the British rifles and machine guns against native spears.

American stealth aircraft couldn't be shot down. The radars, command and control systems, anti-aircraft weapons simply didn't work against them.

The American command and control systems were so much better than those of the Iraqi Army that the quality of equipment like tanks didn't have to be better.

And the tanks were better. I was visiting the Winchester military ammunition booth at a trade show when an officer just back from Gulf I came by and told the Winchester salesman 'Thank You. Your ammunition goes through the armor of any tank the Iraqi army had, and their ammunition bounced off of our tanks.'

The conclusion is really quite simple. If you want to fight against the Americans you either have to out wait them while they kill lots of your people (the North Vietnam approach), or you have to have weapons of Mass Destruction (Iran, North Korea).

This book talks about what the rogue states are doing, and how the ideas about deterring the United States are being formulated in the rest of the world. It's clear that the 'mutual assured desctuction' or MAD doctrine doesn't work the same way it did with the Soviet Union. It's points are interesting. Unfortunately we will have to wait several years to see how it all turns out.

Smith tells us that the world is no longer a standoff of the titans; rather, it's now one superpower and several major powers. Conflict is now much more likely between mismatched nations vs. the U.S., and assured destruction is no longer mutual in the same way.

New "rogue" states (eg. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) and terrorists no longer offer the simple "MAD" (mutually assured destruction) of prior decades. Crazies, hypersensitivity regarding honor, and potential foreign-states' delegation of "button-pushing" power down the military chain of command have created a new environment. And then there's the terrorist nightmare - smuggling a nuclear weapon into the United States, possibly supplied by a rogue state.

Reality is that it is impossible to defend the U.S. against all threats. We need to reduce the motivation for others to want to harm us - eg. our prior interventions in Iran and Iraq, stationing troops (including females) in Saudi Arabia, and lopsided support for Israel have created enormous and dangerous hatred for the U.S. (This is simply a recognition of the new reality, and DOES NOT EXCUSE 9/11!) The U.S. spends about as much on defense as the rest of the world combined - yet, we are quite insecure, and "Deterring America" helps explain why. Obviously, something is wrong with our thinking.