Demosophia

I think it's possible to pat ourselves too much on the back for this development.

You have a convincing explanation above for why people like Qaddafi have a clear incentive to reach out for that "good housekeeping seal". That "seal" need not necessarily conform to reality, however. The proof is in the pudding. It's possible to imagine cases where a regime decides to try to develop WMD and obtain the "seal" through deception, at the same time, so that they fly under our radar. (Is this not what Saddam was attempting, with mobile labs, WMDs from innocent-looking precursors, etc?) And there's little reason (though perhaps not in the case of Qaddafi..) to necessarily believe that "having the "seal" and "having no WMDs" are the same thing.

To be sure, there can be immense interdiction value in having inspectors in there, even if they don't wipe out all WMDs/programs completely. On the other hand, there could in theory be an opposite effect; just as killing bacteria with antibiotics can result in ultra-resistant strains, inducing rogue states (through carrots & sticks) to "allow inspectors" etc. could (if they so desire) only help train them to develop better secret/portable/undetectable/etc WMDs. (Though, again, not necessarily in the case of Qaddafi.)

Blixa:

You have a convincing explanation above for why people like Qaddafi have a clear incentive to reach out for that "good housekeeping seal". That "seal" need not necessarily conform to reality, however. The proof is in the pudding. It's possible to imagine cases where a regime decides to try to develop WMD and obtain the "seal" through deception, at the same time, so that they fly under our radar. (Is this not what Saddam was attempting, with mobile labs, WMDs from innocent-looking precursors, etc?) And there's little reason (though perhaps not in the case of Qaddafi..) to necessarily believe that "having the "seal" and "having no WMDs" are the same thing.

I'm not quite sure which, of two possible points, you're making. If you're saying that the possibility of deception renders the "good housekeeping seal" null and void, you might have a point. That depends on how good we are at inspection, and whether or not the cooperating regime is truly cooperating. I assume we'd know, by insisting on interviews in safe harbor with critical people, etc. But you might have a point.

If, however, you're arguing that there's an incentive to "get away with WMD" I have to say that deception does not change the end point calculus at all. The response is still genocide, which makes the original attack not worth very much. Den Beste makes a decent argument that terrorist surrogates can raise the threshold for a state actor, so that we would probably not respond genocidally with the first attack... but with several successive attacks, or any attack that seriously crippled us, the response probably would be genocidal. And it's also critical that the threshold is not known by the enemy, which places the onus of risk on them. They do not know at which point we will have had enough, which makes the cost of even the first strike extremely high.

The only motivation I can see that would overcome this strategic dilemma is if the enemy believes we are engaged in a strategy of genocide. So the whole strategic calculus depends on our being able to convince such an enemy that we have no such intent. And in the case of a paranoid movement or leader that may be a tall order.

The "calculus" will not work for an opponent who is irrationally terrified. That's why all this conspiracy nutter stuff that infects not only the Middle East but the western left, is so dangerous. It renders people blind to the real danger, and they can then make mistakes that lead inevitably to a game theory "dominant solution," in which it becomes impossible to avoid genocide.

For the record, I'm not sure what point I was making either, but something closer to the first thing you mentioned than the second thing.

In particular, to be clear I did not mean to imply that this development provided any *additional* incentive to "get away with WMD". Just that, in cases of rogue states where that desire is *already there*, this desire and attendant capability could be masked by an overreliance on the "good housekeeping seal".

Perhaps something like "trust, but verify" captures what I'm trying to say....

P.S. And of course you're right that the deterrence calculus does not change; for the sake of argument we have been discussing hypothetical scenarios in which a rogue state is aware of the calculus but wants to "get away with" something *anyway*.... Their only hope is to distance themselves from any attacks they can, and the more distance the better (obviously)... the "seal" could be appealing to such people as just another layer of distance...