Deterrence is a strategy of dissuading an adversary from taking an undesired action by credibly promising undesirable repercussions if that action is taken. The key is to find what your adversary values most and threatening it. For instance, deterrence is not unlike parenting a toddler, as a professor once told me. “Stop hitting your sister,” will likely be obeyed when followed by “or no dessert,” but will not be as effective if followed by “or no Brussels sprouts” except in abnormal cases. If the target is not rational, then it doesn’t care if hitting their sister will result in no dessert or even their indefinite grounding.

Krauthammer is attempting to have his cake and eat it too; he wants the Iranian government to be both irrational – so his “37 words” are imperative, and at the same time rational – so his “Holocaust Declaration” is effective. If Iran’s government is “messianic” and “irrational”, they will fear nothing in attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, because they are incapable of conducting a cost-benefit analysis of such an action. If Iran’s government is rational, then it already understands the consequences of such an action in terms of an Israeli, American or international response.

Redundancy is OK to Krauthammer, who states that Israel’s forces cannot withstand a first strike and therefore need to be buttressed by a U.S. security guarantee. Considering that almost three-quarters of Israel’s population is centered in just three cities, its unlikely that Israel itself can withstand a first strike. If Iran is “messianic”, it surely understands this and savors the opportunity. If Iran is rational, it will have considered the benefits of destroying an entire state with the costs of a general but not genocidal war. Under no circumstance will the United States, who cannot currently stomach the deaths of 4,000 plus troops in Iraq, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians in an attack similar to the two on Japan just to avenge an already destroyed Israel. After all, Iranians are good people wanting for democracy who are merely held hostage by a tyrannous regime, right? Why should they suffer for their government’s crimes?

Krauthammer waits until the thirteenth paragraph to let on to why he’s writing such an ill-conceived and polarizing article. He hopes Bush will establish a “firm benchmark that would outlive this administration,” and later eludes to forcing the Presidential candidates to decide whether they would defend Israel or let it be bombed, which apparently are the only two options. His language, calling the U.S. a “beacon of tolerance” and continually referencing the Bible and the coming second Holocaust, is meant to distract the reader with nationalism and religion-fueled guilt from reasoned analysis. Only “those who see no moral principle in American foreign policy” can deny the need for such a declaration. Positions, such as Obama’s plan to (gasp) negotiate with Iran, are tantamount to anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. Whereas McCain’s now-famous take on Barbara Ann is music to Lady Liberty’s ears.

The idea that bombing or threatening to bomb are the only ways to deal with Iran is irresponsible and counterproductive. As a “beacon of tolerance”, the United States should be open to new ideas. Announcing a “Holocaust Declaration” essentially seals the fate of the Middle East. To Iran, rational or irrational, negotiations and political concessions would become unattainable. Retreat, which Krauthammer is trying to induce, is also impossible in an authoritarian system where failure would likely result in coup. The declaration Krauthammer proposes forces Iran into a very tight box, one in where they either bomb Israel or wait to be extinguished. Rational or irrational, the only real option is nuclear war, which appears to be the fate he’s most willing to accept for Iran and the Middle East (“37 words = 37 million dead,” a friend of mine opined). I sure hope the actual analyses being done in the White House are based less on Biblical references covering up flawed assumptions and theories and more on actual rational cost-benefit considerations.