Is Punishment Ever a Deterrent?

The US Congress -- and, indeed, the nation as a whole -- is currently debating whether or not to endorse President Obama's bid to punish the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad for its alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war.

Obama's stated reason is that Assad needs to be punished for violating international norms against the use of chemical weapons (so that the use of such weapons is not repeated). In the words of Samantha Power, the US envoy to the UN, a failure to punish Assad would "give a green light to outrages that will threaten our security and haunt our conscience." A group of US rabbis and Jewish leaders have issued a petition that declares, "We fear that if this attack [by Assad] passes without a decisive response, we might open our newspapers to more images of mass graves from Syria -- and elsewhere -- in the near future." The idea is clear: punishment must be meted out because it would deter bad behavior.

Now, although the fat lady has definitely not sung, as I write this blog post, the tide of public opinion in the US seems to be turning against Obama. Critics have argued that

1. in the absence of UN support, the US cannot anoint itself the world's cop
2. UN inspectors have not yet submitted a report of the findings of their investigations in Syria
3. violence is not an appropriate response to the alleged crimes of Assad
4. even a limited initial attack could lead to deeper involvement
5. the US needs a respite from armed conflicts in the Islamic world
6. any military involvement in Syria would distract attention from vital domestic priorities
7. the Syrian civil war does not pose a threat to the US
8. Syria and its allies could retaliate against Americans
9. any limited, "no boots on the ground," attack would not resolve the bigger issue of ending the Syrian civil war
10. Assad's opponents -- should they wrest power from an Assad weakened by US attacks -- may behave in ways worse than Assad's; etc.

Here, I will ignore all the above issues and simply examine the internal logic of Obama's main idea: punishment of a crime deters the repetition of the crime. The idea sounds eminently logical, but let's put it under a microscope anyway.

To repeat, Obama says he wants to punish Assad because, if Assad is punished, he (Assad) would cease using chemical weapons (hereafter, CW). But why, you might ask, would Assad, once punished, never use CW again? Obama would say, if Assad's first use of CW is punished, he would expect any second use of CW to be punished also. As a result, Assad would not dare use CW a second time.

But why, you might ask, would Assad expect a second use of CW to be punished? After all, any second use of CW would disprove any claim that the punishment of the first use of CW would deter a second use of CW. Therefore, no longer able to claim that punishment is a deterrent, Obama would have no way to justify punishing a second use of CW by Assad. Therefore, if Assad considers Obama to be rational, he (Assad) would not assume that a second transgression would be punished even if the first transgression was.

Now, we can work backwards to unravel Obama's whole argument. As Assad will not fear a second punishment for a second use of CW, Obama will have no reason to punish the first use of CW either. Don't forget that the justification for punishing Assad's first use of CW was that the punishment would convince Assad that a second use of CW would invite a second round of punishment. But we just saw that a second use of CW would not be punished. Therefore, there would be no justification for any punishment for Assad's first use of CW either.

The only way the idea that "punishment is a deterrent" can survive is if the punisher is irrational enough to keep believing that punishment is a deterrent in the face of repeated disproof of the very idea. If Obama is so irrational as to punish one use of CW after another all the while saying that the punishment is necessary to deter any future use of CW in spite of the fact that all previous instances of CW use are disproof of the idea that punishment is a deterrent, then and only then would Assad be deterred. Facing such an irrational punisher, Assad would have no reason to use CW and would be a very, very good boy.

So, Mr. President, please don't attack Syria. You are not the infinitely irrational person described in the previous paragraph who keeps saying "Punishment will deter the next use of CW" again and again even though each use of CW disproves his claim. Please recognize that there is an n such that after n episodes of CW use -- followed in each case by punishment -- you will finally see the light, give in to reason and admit that you can no longer claim with a straight face that punishment is deterrent and that you will therefore stop punishing any future use of CW. And if you will certainly abandon the "punishment is a deterrent" idea after n episodes, there really is no rational reason to not abandon the idea after n - 1 episodes, and so on and on.

In the end, the point is that it really would not be rational to attack Syria thinking that punishing Assad would deter future use of CW. You could, of course, attack Syria on other grounds. For example, you could attack Syria in order to find and destroy Syria's CW stockpiles. This justification would not be as logically indefensible as the "punishment is a deterrent" justification. However, finding all of Assad's hidden CW stockpiles may not be easy, and it would certainly require American "boots on the ground." Moreover, even if you get all of Assad's CW stockpiles, you will not be able to stay in Syria forever; you will have to bring the troops home at some point. And what would stop Assad from rebuilding his CW stockpiles at that point? After all, he would still have his CW recipes, right?

So, in the end, Mr. President, you don't have too many options. Just calm down and take a deep breath.