Das Madmanprinzip - jetzt wird einiges klar :-)

In the meantime, however, the viability of American unilateralism requires a demonstration that it can keep world order and pre-empt disorder. Indeed, whether Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, has connections with Al-Qaeda, or presents a danger to global security comparable to Nazi Germany is almost beside the point. The national interest rests on America's ability to maintain order through demonstrations of hegemony, and not on the existence or absence of material evidence of a threat.

Many people think an invasion of Iraq would be an irrational act, given the associated uncertainties and the possibility of massive American casualties. Yet, there is a long history of U.S. brinksmanship, the "threat that leaves something to chance" as game theorist and economist Thomas Schelling once put it. Schelling described the game of "chicken" as one example of this strategy: make credible threats and do not hesitate to act in such a way as to put fear into your opponent.

Richard Nixon was one of the great practitioners of this approach to foreign affairs. During the Paris peace negotiations in the early 1970s, Henry Kissinger was reputed to have warned the North Vietnamese delegation that  Nixon was, basically, a "madman." One could not depend on the president to not do something crazy, said the Secretary of State, so the Vietnamese should come to an agreement before the president did something irrational. (Ironically, perhaps, the "madman theory of deterrence" appears to have been the work of Daniel Ellsberg.) No one really believed that Nixon was crazy, but who was willing to take the risk, however small? It did nothing to reassure people when the evidence later emerged that Nixon might be somewhat unstable.