Compiled by Sarah Willrich.
Articles
Fighting While Talking: The Iran War Enters Its Bargaining Phase
Julia Curlee and Ariane Tabatabai explained that the war with Iran has entered a bargaining phase where the parties use military force and diplomacy in tandem to seek a favorable negotiated settlement. Curlee and Tabatabai argued that clarity on control of the Strait of Hormuz, the ability of each side’s leadership to sell a deal at home, and potential for allies to act as spoilers combine to determine whether a durable end to the war is possible—and that a deal must address all three issues to hold.
Washington holds the stronger hand on paper: It is a nuclear-weapon state with the world’s most sophisticated conventional military and installations around the world, including in Iran’s backyard. It also has the power to cripple Iran’s disastrous economy further or offer it a lifeline. It can reimpose the naval blockade the memorandum lifted, restore the sanctions it eased, fund reconstruction, and—as the 90-target night showed—inflict damage Iran cannot answer blow for blow. But even U.S. firepower has limits, and the early-August pause in strikes came amid Pentagon warnings about depleted munitions stockpiles.
What the U.S. truly lacks is patience. Its public opposed the war from the start and is increasingly frustrated with the state of the economy just months before midterm elections that could end the president’s ability to meaningfully advance his agenda in the last two years of his term.
The Risks of Getting Russian and Chinese Nuclear Strategy Wrong
In the latest edition of Lawfare‘s Foreign Policy Essay series, Fiona Cunningham and Kristin Ven Bruusgaard discussed the conditions under which the three nuclear great powers (the U.S., Russia, and China) might consider first use and why each country’s approach to it is prone to misinterpretation. Cunningham and Ven Bruusgaard argued that preventing nuclear escalation relies on the U.S. understanding its adversaries’ posture and considering how its own might be misread.
Second, a common expectation that an adversary will use nuclear weapons first to achieve limited conflict objectives could lead a state to take deterrent steps that its adversary misreads as transforming a limited conflict into an existential one. This risk might come to pass if, for example, the United States were to use conventional strikes to deter Russian limited nuclear first use. Large-scale conventional strikes against a range of Russian first-strike capabilities or other key nodes for conventional military power could trigger a Russian fear that a larger Western assault was beginning against Russia proper, leading to Russian nuclear employment.
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