The most dangerous moment for a dominant power comes when it considers continuing a war necessary to vindicate the decision to begin it. At that point, every inadequate outcome can become an argument for a larger attack. Past costs raise the demand for victory, even as the conditions for achieving it grow more difficult. America is approaching such a point in its confrontation with Iran: a war intended to demonstrate its capacity to exercise power has become a test of that power’s credibility.

The Atlantic’s report of 22 October offers a clear account of this calculation. Drawing on conversations with officials and people familiar with the discussions, it describes a belief in US President Donald Trump’s circle that economic pressure has brought Iran to the brink and that another round of strikes could make regime change possible. The same report stresses that no final decision to resume attacks has been taken. What has returned is the expectation that one additional application of pressure will deliver a decisive result.

That expectation is a new expression of an old error: the assumption that an enemy’s vulnerability guarantees that its behaviour can be managed. Iran can suffer damage without accepting the political outcome its attacker seeks. The distance between these two possibilities is where military action becomes a hegemonic gamble.

Understanding this gamble requires attention to the function of a “manageable enemy”. In this calculation, the presence of a familiar adversary helps organise alliances, justify a military presence and establish the need for protection. Such an enemy’s value to the dominant power depends on the expectation that the scale of the threat, the costs of confrontation and the terms on which it ends can be controlled. In this picture, Iran is important enough for a confrontation with it to carry regional significance, yet is imagined to be sufficiently vulnerable that it cannot alter the rules of engagement.

The account of protection and obedience offered by Carl Schmitt, the German jurist and political theorist, helps clarify this relationship. In his analysis, the protecting power plays a role in determining the enemy and shaping political allegiance. Extending this argument to America’s regional order suggests that a claim to security leadership rests on the expectation that the leader can provide protection and contain danger. “Manageable enemy” is this essay’s own formulation; what it draws from Schmitt is the relationship between the promise of protection and political authority.

The difficulty begins when confronting the enemy makes the promised security more costly. Allies that rely on American protection also become exposed to the consequences of American policy. If military operations produce prolonged insecurity, economic disruption and the prospect of retaliation, the capacity to destroy remains intact, but the claim to control the crisis’s outcome comes into question.........

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