How to Avoid Unnecessary Wars – Use Your Intelligence! JASON D. SÖDERBLOM G iven the failure to find weapons of mass destruction( wmd s) in Iraq, it is appropriate to revisit the logic of those strategists who correctly argued prior to the invasion of Iraq that a war or invasion was»unneces­sary«. Based on Open Source Intelligence( osi ) and deterrence logic, the position that the war was unnecessary flows from the theory that Saddam Hussein was sane and would not use wmd s against a nuclear state; and that even if Saddam Hussein was insane, he had no wmd s and so was no threat. International relations scholars such as John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt used these logical parameters to conclude that the war was unnecessary; or at least that the reasons stated by the us provided no justification. Deterrence logic would have served the George W. Bush administra­tion far better than its shallow strategy of abandoning realist logic, dis­missing its deterrence-theory components and pursuing the war on Iraq anyway. This is the logic that should have been employed by the»Coali­tion of the Willing«: these governments and certain sections of the intel­ligence community seem poorly trained in the security logic of realism and its core component-notion of deterrence. In light of recent failures, the intelligence community must remedy this. Claims Supporting the Iraq War Deterrence is premised on a psychological tactic whereby a nation state makes credible threats to use massive force in order to deter an attack from another nation state. 1 During the Cold War many international re­lations realists considered the»balance of power« to be the key to main­1. John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (London: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 23. 14 Söderblom, Unnecessary Wars ipg 3/2004