Why is Saddam different from the Soviets during the Cold War? I think this is a good question and essentially it is what Hesiod is asking here.
The argument is that deterrence worked during the Cold War, why won’t it work now. In some sense this is a good analogy, but it fails to grasp a key difference between Saddam’s rule and that of the Soviet Union.
First though, Hesiod is absolutely correct about the invasion of Kuwait. It was a perfectly rational act based on the information he had. The mistake was the US sounded like it would appease him. Our mistake and the signal was vital to his decision-making.
The difference is great between the two countries and how they are governed. The Soviet Union was a bureaucratically run country after Stalin. This meant, while it was totalitarian, that power was dispersed widely. No single leader was in control and the aims of furthering the regime were held by more than a small group of leaders with one cult of personality at the top. Towards the end of the Soviet Union, political science really caught up with this and started to model the bureaucratic decision-making process and these models continue to be used in China.
Iraq is a very different case though. Saddam, though originally a part of a party apparatus, has shed that baggage by killing off any competitors. The Baathist Party in Iraq is Saddam and his family. In the Soviet Union there were norms to follow and diffuse power that kept any single person after Stalin from becoming a cult of personality. That is an important check.
More importantly, Mark Bowden points out what Saddam’s ultimate goal is. He wants to be a Nassarite figure that stands for and unites Arabs in a nationalist state. In this regard he is like Hitler, though the military comparisons are silly. As long as he or his sons can survive, deterrence will work. However, if he is threatened by a neighbor, the US or most likely a domestic competitor, what is his calculus?
If his goal is to further his legacy, the use of a nuclear weapon is not irrational in attempting to achieve his goal of a Nassar like legacy. His goal isn’t the survival of a state as a bureaucratic organization would see it, it is the survival of his legacy.
Perhaps this is too much psychobabble, but I think his view of his place in the world is well documented. And at that point, one must decide how the institutional differences between the Iraqi state of 2002 and the Soviets during the Cold War are similar or different. I take them as very different creatures and those difference provide a criticial difference in how successful deterrence would be.
As President Clinton pointed out the other night, this creates a huge problem for an attack. How do we ensure that Saddam doesn’t unleash his stockpile of biological agents on the world?
Interestingly, this also provides some insights on who else we may or may not take on in the future, ahem “war on nouns.” Syria, which is a highly relevant threat isn’t run by a cult of personality. It isn’t that Assad isn’t the most powerful member of the Syrian Baathist Party, but the Party is a bureaucratic body that is more than one person. North Korea’s position is debatable, but I would see Kim Jong-Il as a cult of personality–one looking to cut a deal as today’s story concerning the abductions of Japenese Nationals seems to indicate.