Answering the Question Without Answering the Question

In his Washington Post column about the Iranians seizing a British tanker, David Ignatius seems determined to answer the question “What should the American response be?” without answering it:

The latest evidence of the United States’ seeming “rope-a-dope” strategy toward a flailing Iran came Friday, when the Iranians seized a British-flagged tanker and boarded and then released a second British-owned tanker. The United States has not taken any visible retaliatory action, in what seemed a calculated nonresponse.

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the U.S. Central Command commander, gave a clear explanation of this measured U.S. approach in an early-morning interview here Saturday in Kabul, the latest stop on his tour of the region. McKenzie had closely monitored Friday’s events from his mobile command post and directed U.S. military actions.

“We need to be the calm and steady part of the equation,” McKenzie told CBS News’s David Martin and me, the two journalists who are traveling with him. “We don’t need to overreact to what the Iranians do.”

“Clearly this [Iranian] action is irresponsible,” McKenzie continued. “But merely because they’re being irresponsible, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of some form of overreaction. So our response is going to be very calm, taken in concert with the international community.”

McKenzie said that, about three hours after Iran seized the British ship, Centcom had affirmed freedom of navigation in the gulf by sending a U.S.-flagged cargo ship, the Maersk Chicago, through the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. drones and fighter jets flew above the freighter to protect it in case the Iranians tried to interfere, but the Iranians stayed away.

The next step is a collective maritime-security plan. Two U.S. destroyers are now positioned at the ends of the Strait of Hormuz, in what McKenzie calls a “sentinel” operation, coordinating U.S. surveillance of the strait. The United States expects that soon, nations whose ships transit the strait into the gulf will begin escorting them with their own warships, aided by U.S. surveillance and other intelligence and military support.

Sometimes U.S. military advice conflicts with President Trump’s impulses. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in the confrontation with Iran. Trump is conducting an economic war against Iran, through his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions to cripple Iranian oil exports. But Trump clearly wants to avoid a shooting war, especially as he heads into an election year.

A “collective maritime-security plan” is blithe but it does evoke the obvious follow-up question: to what end? Is there any Iranian escalation or provocation to which the United States should respond forcefully?

My own view is that while we’re working out the details of that collective maritime-security the British should be defending vessels that fly their flag. The primary U. S. role should be one of negative reciprocity with respect to the greater powers, i.e. Russia and China. By that I mean we should not intervene so long as neither Russia nor China intervene.

If the British are not willing or able to defend their own assets, that would be something worth knowing.