‘Prudent Yet Restrained’ Is No Way to Fight a War : A Superior, Not Moderate, Show of Force Is Needed to Make Iran Abandon Its Attacks and Its Objectives

Here we go again. In response to the Iranian Silkworm missile attack on Kuwaiti ships flying the American flag, we’ve taken out an Iranian oil-drilling rig in the Persian Gulf. President Reagan called that response “prudent yet restrained.” But what it really represents is a return to the very same military strategy that caused us so much grief in the Vietnam War.

Devised by lawyers rather than by military experts, this strategy of gradualism was nicknamed the “slow squeeze” by its creator, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, a former Harvard law professor. It proved to be as successful in deterring North Vietnamese military aggression as other Harvard Law School notions have been at curbing criminal aggression.

Remember the warning in the old black-and-white movies from the 1930s when a cornered mobster pulled out his gun? “If you pull that trigger, Lefty, it’ll be the chair for sure. Shoot me and you’ll fry for it!” Frightened by that very real possibility, Lefty then would lay down his gun. Now, with the emphasis on reform rather than on retribution, the warning would be, “Shoot me and it’ll be at least 90 days in the slammer before you’ll be eligible for parole!” And the likely answer is “Bang!”

Military deterrence has followed this same pattern. At one time the essence of deterrence was “an overwhelming response to an insignificant action.” The objective was to make the cost of aggression disproportionate to any conceivable gain. But in the Vietnam War all that changed. As with the criminal-justice system, the emphasis shifted from retribution to reform. In defending the strategy of gradual response, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor once said that the United States was not trying to defeat the North Vietnamese, but only “to cause them to mend their ways.”

Now we’re trying to do the same thing with Iran. And it’s not likely to work any better in the Persian Gulf than it worked in Vietnam. A century and a half ago Clausewitz explained the fundamental error in such notions: “If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make.”

That is precisely what the United States did not do in the Vietnam War, and that is precisely what has not been done in the Persian Gulf. Today the United States is calling on Iran to sacrifice its goal of winning the war through attacks on Iraqi oil lines. But so far we have done nothing even remotely so unpleasant as to cause Iran to sacrifice that goal.

Instead, it is the “slow squeeze” all over again. The Iranians mined international waters. We captured and sank an Iranian mine layer. The Iranians responded last Friday by firing a Silkworm missile at the U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker Sea Isle City. Rather than a disproportionately devastating response to demonstrate that such flagrant aggression does not pay, the American response was weak-kneed at best. After due warnings to evacuate the facility, four U.S. destroyers fired 1,000 five-inch shells to destroy an Iranian oil rig being used as a base for Iranian attacks on gulf shipping.

The United States now blusters that “we will be prepared to meet any escalation of military actions by Iran with stronger countermeasures.”

Brave words, but so far our actions have not kept pace. It is Iran, not the United States, that has taken the military initiative. It is Iran that understands that war is, as Clausewitz put it, “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” It is Iran that understands that “if one side uses force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the other side refrains, the first will gain the upper hand.”

Iran’s strategy is evidently being dictated by warriors. It would appear that American strategy (recall that the notion of “graduated response” began as a lawyer’s brief) is being dictated by those who know nothing of the dynamics of war.

“The facts of war are often in total opposition to the facts of peace,” Mark Watson wrote in his history of decision-making during World War II. “The efficient commander does not seek to use just enough means, but an excess of means. A military force that is just strong enough to take a position will suffer heavy casualties in doing so; a force vastly superior to the enemy’s will do the job without serious loss of men.”

That is true at the battlefield level, and it is true at the strategic level as well. Those who know nothing about war were reassured by Reagan’s comments that the U.S. response was “prudent yet restrained.” Those who understand what war is all about shuddered at what those words may well portend.