Shashi Tharoor writes: In Iran and beyond, force has its limits – and vulnerability can become leverage

When punishment is pursued without a parallel effort to manage risk and provide pathways to de‑escalation, it hardens resistance rather than softening it

As the “phoney peace” in Iran drags on, I am reminded of an old lesson: In the annals of strategic thought, few insights have proved as enduring as Thomas Schelling’s in his 1960 book The Strategy of Conflict: Coercive bargaining is not about the blunt application of force, but about the manipulation of shared risk. In conflicts where neither side can afford outright defeat, Schelling showed that the real contest lies in shaping the environment of danger — raising the costs of escalation, narrowing the exits, and forcing adversaries to calculate how much risk they can bear before they must compromise.

The Trump administration’s approach to Iran seemed to rest on the assumption that sufficiently severe bombardment by its overwhelmingly superior military force would compel capitulation. Yet history suggested otherwise. Severe punishment, when it fails to break an opponent’s will, does not produce submission; it produces a bargaining environment in which both sides become desperate to find a way out that does not humiliate them fatally. In such an environment, the weaker party has every incentive to make the exit as costly and as visible as possible, ensuring that the stronger adversary pays a reputational and strategic price for its miscalculation.

Iran’s position in this confrontation reflects Schelling’s logic. Strategically weaker than the US in conventional terms, it nonetheless possesses asymmetric leverage. The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a shipping lane; it is, in Schelling’s terms, a hostage whose value rises as American desperation increases. By causing disruption of global energy flows, Iran can manipulate the shared risk that binds both sides, forcing Washington to reckon with the costs of escalation not just in military terms but in economic and diplomatic fallout. The more the US insists on punishment without offering a credible off-ramp, the more valuable that hostage becomes.

This dynamic underscores a broader truth about coercive diplomacy. Force alone rarely secures compliance. What matters is the structure of risk, the perception of danger, and the credibility of exit strategies. When punishment is pursued without a parallel effort to manage risk and provide pathways to de-escalation, it hardens resistance rather than softening it. Iran’s tactics — calibrated disruption, visible defiance, and the threatened exploitation of chokepoints — are designed precisely to exploit this gap, turning vulnerability into leverage.

History offers ample illustrations. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was not resolved by America’s overwhelming military superiority alone. It was resolved by the manipulation of shared risk: Both Washington and Moscow understood that escalation could lead to nuclear war, a catastrophe neither could risk. The crisis ended when both sides found a way out that preserved dignity — removing missiles from Cuba in exchange for a quiet withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey. The lesson was clear: Coercion succeeds not when one side overwhelms the other, but when both sides perceive that the risks of continued confrontation outweigh the costs of compromise.

Closer to home, the Kargil conflict of 1999 demonstrated a similar dynamic. Pakistan’s incursion into Indian territory was militarily unsustainable, but Islamabad sought to leverage asymmetric risk by internationalising the conflict and threatening escalation. India’s calibrated response — limited military action combined with diplomatic pressure — was designed to manage risk while preserving credibility. The eventual withdrawal of Pakistani forces was not simply a product of battlefield losses, but of the recognition that the risks of escalation, including the nuclear option, were intolerable. That shaped the outcome: India won.

The Gulf War of 1990-91 also illustrates the paradox of coercion. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait was met with overwhelming American military power, but the coalition’s success lay in using force to create a bargaining environment where Iraq’s risks mounted daily. The destruction of infrastructure, the isolation of Iraq diplomatically, and the threat of further escalation created a situation in which Saddam’s position became untenable. Yet even then, that war ended with Saddam still in power, a reminder that coercion rarely produces total capitulation. The absence of a credible exit strategy left the conflict unresolved, sowing the seeds for future confrontation a decade later.

These examples highlight the enduring relevance of Schelling’s insight. Coercion is not a mechanical process of applying force until the adversary breaks. It is a psychological and political process of shaping perceptions of risk, creating incentives for compromise, and managing the pathways to de-escalation. When punishment is pursued without attention to these dynamics, it produces resistance, escalation, and unintended consequences.

The Strait of Hormuz thus stands as a symbol of the paradox of coercion. It is a narrow waterway, but in strategic terms it is vast — a “hostage” whose fate shapes the calculations of nations far beyond the immediate conflict. It is not a mere shipping lane, but the embodiment of shared risk, a reminder that in the strategy of conflict, the manipulation of danger is often more decisive than the application of force.

For policymakers, the lesson is sobering. Military superiority does not guarantee compliance. Punishment without pathways to compromise creates bargaining environments where adversaries exploit risk to their advantage. The challenge is to integrate force into a strategy that recognises the psychology of risk, the importance of dignity, and the necessity of credible exits. Without this, coercion becomes a trap, locking adversaries into cycles of escalation that neither can afford to sustain.

In this case, both Iran and the United States must recognise that the manipulation of risk is the essence of the contest. Severe bombing may demonstrate power and resolve, but without a credible off-ramp, it only increases the value of the other side’s capacity to cripple the world economy. The Strait of Hormuz will remain a lever of asymmetric power, and Iran will continue to exploit it until Washington offers a pathway to compromise that preserves dignity on both sides. Schelling’s insight, six decades old, remains the key to understanding why mere coercion fails, and why shared risk is the true currency of bargaining in international conflict.

The writer is a fourth-term Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) for Thiruvananthapuram and chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs