WORLDVIEWS AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE<\/b><\/p>\n
Adam Garfinkle<\/strong> writing at FPRI<\/a>.<\/strong> argues that the worldviews created by different cultural precepts than our own can fatally undermine the logic on which our nuclear deterrence doctrine is based<\/a>:<\/p>\n “…U.S. and Soviet caution in strategic relations stemmed from a fact we still tend to take for granted: Both leaderships actually cared about the well-being of those they ruled, even if in the Soviet case the population\u2019s production capability rather than human value was uppermost. But we saw repeated demonstrations of mass murder inside Iraq by the Sunni ruling elite against Kurds and the majority Shiite population during Baath rule, without regard for the injury done the state, and it is not unreasonable to wonder whether the fragility of the civil bond between rulers and ruled in multiethnic and highly stratified Middle Eastern societies weakens significantly the fundamental social basis of deterrence.”<\/span><\/strong> ADDENDUM:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Dave Schuler<\/strong> at The Glittering Eye<\/strong> <\/a>has related post – “Why is Iran pursuing an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle?<\/a>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WORLDVIEWS AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE Adam Garfinkle writing at FPRI. argues that the worldviews created by different cultural precepts than our own can fatally undermine the logic on which our nuclear deterrence doctrine is based: “…U.S. and Soviet caution in strategic relations stemmed from a fact we still tend to take for granted: Both leaderships actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Worldviews<\/a> are exceptionally powerful filters for perception and the integration of information. Much of the debate about problems in the intelligence community in the run-up to Iraq revolved around questions of “groupthink” and ” stovepiping” and that was an intra<\/em><\/strong>-societal question where everyone held the same overarching worldview as Americans, if not the exact same worldview as individuals. Inter<\/em><\/strong>-societal questions are far<\/em><\/strong> more problematic than the former kind. <\/span>
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The Russians may have been ( to quote a former Soviet MoD official active at the time) “shitting in their pants” during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that did not mean that Soviet leaders entertained the same concepts regarding nuclear deterrence as did Robert McNamara<\/a><\/strong>. The subsequent, “heavy” throw-weight ICBM nuclear build-up that was maniacally pursued by Brezhnev, indicates the USSR did not. “They” or ” the other” does not think like you do, nor could they reasonably be expected to do so, even if “they” are receiving perfectly accurate and timely information about our moves from unbiased sources. Which, of course, “they” are not (and neither are we, for that matter. An important point that frequently gets forgotten).<\/span>
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Which, to put it mildly, undermines some of the deterrence assumptions drawn from decision models like game theory<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n