"Putting yourself in the other person's shoes"

This is a highly over-rated bit of advice and Robert Wright inadvertantly proves it:

[Ron] Paul is making one contribution to the foreign policy debate that could have enduring value. It doesn't lie in the substance of his foreign policy views (which I'm largely but not wholly in sympathy with) but in the way he explains them. Paul routinely performs a simple thought experiment: He tries to imagine how the world looks to people other than Americans.

This is such a radical departure from the prevailing American mindset that some of Paul's critics see it as more evidence of his weirdness. A video montage meant to discredit him shows him taking the perspective of Iran. After observing that Israel and America and China have nukes, he asks about Iranians, "Why wouldn't it be natural that they'd want a weapon? Internationally they'd be given more respect."

Can somebody explain to me why this is such a crazy conjecture about Iranian motivation? Wouldn't it be reasonable for Iranian leaders, having seen what happened to nukeless Saddam Hussein and nukeless Muammar Qaddafi, to conclude that maybe having a nuclear weapon would get them more respectful treatment?

Well yeah. But the key thing here is that you can only make this move if you begin by unconsciously assuming that the other person's or nation's perspective is legitimate. As in, "Why shouldn't criminals want guns when they can see that the police already have them?"

This argument has often been used to justify terrorism. "Well, of course the Palestinians resort to terrorism because they keep losing otherwise." And built into that is an assumption—whether the person making the argument realizes it or not—that the Palestinians are supposed to win.

Here's a different thought experiment. Imagine that the United States and Israel didn't have nuclear weapons. Do you think that Iran would be trying to develop them then? Of course they would and probably with even greater determination knowing that this would allow them to strike harder than anyone could strike back against them.