Daniel Larison picks up on a curious criticism directed at President Obama's nuclear policy:
After having spent decades dismissing the possibility of deterring "rogue" regimes, Krauthammer and his colleagues cannot stop talking about deterrence all of a sudden, but they aren't willing to acknowledge that vast conventional military superiority is also a deterrent against attack.
Just so. We've spent the last nine years specifically listening to analysts and pundits mount attack after attack on the concept of deterrence. Back when America was safe and secure under President Bush's nuclear policy, the threat from Saddam Hussein was so urgent, the dictator so unpredictable and undeterrable, that only a war would suffice. Now the same people who had no faith in deterrence with respect to Iraq (and now, Iran) would have us believe that President Obama is nonetheless undermining America's deterrent capability.
