This is the latest episode in The Escalation Trap, an ongoing series with Robert Pape of the University of Chicago tracking the war with Iran in real time.
Pape argues that the conflict has now entered the true danger zone. The negotiation track, he says, may be effectively dead for weeks or months — not because talks are impossible, but because the core issues at stake are zero-sum.
Unlike a real estate deal, international politics has no court that can enforce an agreement. When the issues involve nuclear weapons, sovereignty, and control of the Strait of Hormuz, every concession can make a state more vulnerable in the next round.
- Why the Iran conflict may have entered its most dangerous phase
- Why negotiations over sovereignty and nuclear weapons are so difficult to sustain
- Why international courts and institutions cannot enforce great-power bargains
- Why China and Russia may see U.S. weakness as an opportunity
- Whether Europe can balance Russia without the United States
- How nuclear proliferation could either stabilize or destabilize a multipolar world
- Why the current conflict may accelerate a more dangerous global order
- How new media formats are widening access to serious national security analysis
The danger is not just that negotiations fail.
The danger is that each failed negotiation makes escalation look more like the only remaining option.
New episodes released weekly as the conflict evolves.
At the Water’s Edge delivers practitioner-level insight into national security and geopolitics — bridging academic theory with how conflicts actually unfold in the real world.
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