At Hormuz: Coercive Diplomacy Meets the Madman Theory

Hold on tight! By bombing Iran for the umpteenth consecutive night, the United States would allegedly have been doing nothing more than trying to communicate with Tehran. Each strike on a military or civilian target — every radar destroyed, every launch pad taken out, every oil refinery hit — would count only as a message to the adversary.

It would merely be a signal to resume or continue talks under certain conditions! Or so Thomas Schelling, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics, would have argued. In his view, it is precisely when cannons roar and fire rains from the sky that belligerents exchange messages and communicate with one another — war being nothing more than a form of negotiation carried out by other means.

The American swerve

In his work The Strategy of Conflict, the American essayist draws a distinction between the strategy of deterrence (deterrence) and that of compellence (compellence) and pushes it to its furthest limits. Accordingly, the situation remained in the realm of deterrence as long as US aircraft carriers were parading through warm-water seas but refraining from pulling the trigger. Then came an escalation, followed by a ceasefire. Pakistani mediation would go on to define the contours of the now-famous MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) on June 17th.

By general consensus, the skill and resilience of Iranian diplomacy had muddied the waters, forcing Trump to scale back his expectations: he would no longer demand regime change for the mullahs, but settle instead for free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. In the eyes of the world, the Americans had shown a lack of credibility and resolve in moving from deterrence to compellence, and then to negotiation.

Yet Trump had not said his last word. Incensed by the maneuvering of the Persian negotiators and by their skewed reading of Article 5 of the MOU in question, he seized on the pretext of a minor provocation to put war back on the table. And so the Persian Gulf was once again subjected to relentless American firepower (1).

The Vietnamese precedent

Much has been made of the American president's erratic behavior, his shifting strategy, and the disjointed way he conducted operations — as though his objectives were never clearly defined! But was that not jumping too quickly to conclusions in order to pile on an unconventional president? Certainly, and unless cornered, the occupant of the White House has no appetite for armed force; he is no warmonger like Netanyahu, nor a hardliner like the Pasdaran.

That said, he adapts to circumstances and can, like other political actors, turn a confrontation to his advantage — war being, by its very nature, a shape-shifting phenomenon. And if he sometimes appears to be pulling back, it is only to come back on the offensive when least expected.

Besides, American history has given us at least one example of negotiations conducted under intense military pressure. Under Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States had become mired in the former French Indochina.

In keeping with the theory of "containment" of the communist threat, American military involvement escalated from counterinsurgency to a war of attrition. Elected president, Richard Nixon had one overriding concern: bringing the boys home without losing too much face. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger took charge of winding down that bloody legacy. In Paris, negotiations began between the parties involved, including the Americans and the North Vietnamese. But since the latter showed no sign of yielding to his arguments, "dear Henry" combined, with consummate skill, intensive negotiations with a fierce military escalation, "following the principle of coercive diplomacy (coercive diplomacy) and the madman theory (madman theory) already outlined by Richard Nixon" (2). The Paris Peace Accords were subsequently signed in January 1973.

Hormuz and the Jabal Amel

An identical pattern is now playing out around Hormuz, now that Trump has realized that deterrence alone is not enough to resolve the issue and that he cannot afford a war of attrition — the Iranian adversary having proven far tougher than he anticipated.

Seasoned observers can take some comfort; from here on, it will be the logic of "compellence" that sets the tempo. The brute force the Americans have deployed over more than twelve consecutive nights is not aimed at destroying the Iranian armed forces, but at compelling Tehran to change its behavior. It is by making "the political, military, and economic cost of war sufficiently high" that the United States will pressure the land of the mullahs into showing reason at the negotiating table — negotiations that have not truly been suspended, despite all the declarations and bluster. In short, the airstrikes would serve as a diplomatic lever.

The moral of the story

In light of this framework, let us consider what lies ahead in southern Lebanon: Israel will continue its war of coercion for as long as Hezbollah has not capitulated. The scorched-earth policy and systematic destruction — a diplomatic lever like no other — will continue to unfold before our eyes. Faced with the inevitable, Arafat did withdraw from Beirut, arms and all — that was in 1982. At the request of Sunni notables, he chose not to turn our capital into another Stalingrad.

Credit where credit is due!

That said, can we hope for the same level of understanding from Tehran? That defiant capital, that laboratory of Khomeinist subversion, has other plans in mind: it intends to fight to the last Shiite.

Lebanese, this is how the world works! And history will record that the Iranian showed none of the same empathy as the Palestinian!

1- As evidence of the relevance of the exchange theory, consider that US aircraft have been striking Iranian installations since July 7th, while Tehran has only retaliated by hitting Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Jordan, on the pretext that these countries host US bases. It is indeed striking to see exclusively American targets — such as aircraft carriers — spared so far.

2- The madman theory refers to a foreign policy approach conceived by President Richard Nixon. It was designed to suggest to adversaries that they were dealing with a leader whose behavior was unpredictable and who possessed an enormous capacity for destruction.