Mike Doran’s Depiction of Trump’s Third Way

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Mike Doran of the Hudson Institute. Screengrab via Youtube.

Mike Doran of the Hudson Institute recently penned an important article in Tablet Magazine, Trump’s Third Way, which bears careful consideration.

In this article, Doran rejects any argument which portrays Trump’s willingness to negotiate with Tehran, or his now-defunct June memorandum with Iran, as demonstrating that he has abandoned his earlier objectives in dealing with Iran in preference of a model more similar to that of Obama. The memorandum collapsed as a consequence of the ceaseless Iranian attacks on shipping, following which the administration came to treat the memorandum as irrelevant. More importantly, Doran argues that Trump’s actions should be understood to be a better gage to follow than is his rhetoric, and that those actions fail to resemble the policy of purchasing Iranian restraint as was practiced by Obama.

Instead, Doran argues that Trump is attempting to avoid being caught in a scenario similar to Iraq.

Notably, Trump came to power while explicitly having opposed the Iraq War, nation-building and regime-change wars. He explains that this political commitment represents a major constraint on Trump’s ability to escalate against Iran. The consequence of this restraint prohibits a policy choice between fighting harder or appeasing Iran.  Instead, Doran concludes that Trump is actually attempting to achieve American objectives in its war with Iran while not being drawn into a war of conquest or regime change.

He also suggests that the policy approach of ‘hurt Iran until it surrenders’ strategy faces a fundamental problem. Doran recalls that the approach championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham was based around an assumption that enough military punishment would lead to Iran’s defeat. Yet, Doran argues that following an extended period of warfare, a missing variable came into view, namely how much punishment would be required to reach Iran’s breaking point, and whether the US was willing to pay the price needed to fully test this hypothesis.

In this, Doran comes to remark on an important distinction which exists between devastating Iran and actually compelling the Iranian regime into accepting defeat. While the US can certainly destroy enormous amounts of Iranian military and economic infrastructure, Iran’s dispersed missiles, drones, underground facilities along with its inexpensive weapons make it extremely difficult to eliminate Iran’s ability to retaliate, and the consequence to grasping all of this is that American military superiority fails to easily translate into coercive power.

Hence, Iran has achieved a form of “overmatch” despite it being the far weaker party in this war.  The Strait of Hormuz illustrates this distinction.  Iran needs not to control the Strait militarily, as a relatively small number of mines, drones or missile attacks can render commercial shipping prohibitively costly. Soaring insurance rates and collapsing shipping are the inevitable consequence of even a small number of mines and attacks, and that was the point. The obvious corollary to this is that the United States cannot simply “seize” the Strait while declaring victory as the commercial operators and insurers must be convinced that the waterway is actually secured for safe passage through it.

Meanwhile, Iran’s greatest strength lies in its cheap offensive weapons which contrasts with US defensive systems which come at a sizeable and unfavorable economic cost.  The consequence of this is that Iran has the potential of replenishing its offensive weapons faster and easier than the US and its allies can replenish their costly and sophisticated defensive systems. Doran describes this imbroglio as an “offense-dominant balance.”

Hence, escalating against Iran could lead to a dangerous series of escalations.  In such a gambit, Doran notes that, once again, Iran would not need to destroy everything.  It would merely need to demonstrate that it maintains the ability to repeatedly cause enough disruption among critical infrastructure across the region to render the Gulf’s economic situation untenable.

Beyond this, Doran reminds the reader that US military resources are finite, and this becomes all the more troublesome because of China.  Consequently, military constraints are not simply based on the calculus of whether America holds enough military hardware to strangle Iran, as the US needs to be capable of preserving US military capacity for a potential conflict with China in the Pacific, particularly in regards to facing off over Taiwan.

Doran reflects upon the effect which this military concern has on the US political sphere.  He notes that aspects of the political environment are simultaneously reinforcing the military constraints.  He emphasizes that Trump’s political coalition was built in part around the opposition to Iraq-style wars, and that the war has the capacity to grow dramatically larger if the regional countries were to inevitably become involved.

Based on all of this, Doran posits that Trump’s restraint is not necessarily evidence of a lack of resolve, as it can instead be understood to reflect an assessment of how best to pursue the intended objectives while dealing with the constraints thus far described.

Instead, Doran describes Trump’s current strategy as a form of siege of Iran, which acts as an alternative to the the arguments which limits the available choices to choosing between policies of bombing vs that of appeasement.

Hence, Trump has refused to pursue regime change, but he has also refused to pursue an Obama-like policy of purchasing Iranian quiet. Instead, Doran concludes that Trump is combining military pressure, maritime pressure with that of economic/financial warfare. Operation Economic Outcast is presented as evidence of this model, where Washington is attempting to cut Iran’s economic lifelines by punishing entities which help Tehran evade sanctions.

Will it be enough to break the regime.  Perhaps in time, but the timeline of Iran breaking lies in competition with Trump’s own timeline regarding the upcoming US midterms.  The consequence of the current economic war will be significant, but is it reasonable that it will bear a consequence in the halls of power without any kinetic escalation from Washington.  Will the Iranian people return to the streets in protest, even as the past protesters are still being victimized and murdered on a daily basis with no reprisal of promised of support from Washington?   Time will tell.