Grand Fenwick
There is a book written in the mid-1950’s called The Mouse that Roared. It was required reading in my nuclear strategies class of the 1970’s, as we students at Denison University weighed the issues of thermonuclear mass destruction. The premise was simple. A mythical country located in the Alps between France and Switzerland, was called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Fenwick remained a medieval nation, with their proud military armed with bows and arrows. The one product that Fenwick produced was a single wine, the Pinot Grand Fenwick.
But a California vineyard produced a “knock-off” variety of Pinot Grand Fenwick, and the country was threatened with bankruptcy. Their only chance of continued existence: declare war on the United States, lose, and then depend on American largess (like the post War World II Marshall Plan) to reinvigorate their economy. A declaration of war was sent to the United States. But the note got misplaced in the State Department.
The Duchy is ignored, and realized that they must actually invade the United States. So they send a “force” to attack New York City. Led by a “Field Marshal”. It consists of him, three “men-at-arms” (think medieval knights), and twenty bowmen. They land in the City at a time that the entire town is below ground for a civil defense drill, and march (unintentionally) through the empty streets to a top secret laboratory. There they capture the ultimate weapon, the “Q” Bomb, accidently making the Duchy of Grand Fenwick the most powerful nation in the world.
The Field Marshal takes the “Q Bomb” back to Fenwick, and leverages the world to control all nuclear weapons. It’s a great story, and film with Peter Sellers (the Pink Panther) in the lead role.
Iran’s Q Bomb
The United States is the most powerful military in the world. But, we discovered in Vietnam and Afghanistan, that power still has limits. Those limitations are; what we are willing to do, and, what is the opposing nation willing to take. It seems we have found those limits once again in Iran.
Sure we still have nuclear weapons. When the President threatens to end “Persian Civilization”, there is the implicit message that we would use them. Writer Tom Nichols in the Atlantic suggests that Trump seriously considered it. But realistically, the United States would be a world pariah if we used our nuclear weapons for anything but the ultimate National defense. In his article, Nichols demanded that the military resist any attempt. Nichols wrote, “… They should lay their stars on his desk,” rather than launch a nuclear strike.
So, assuming that we aren’t “thinking the unthinkable”, it seems that Iran is able to absorb the worst the United States can do, and still remain standing. On the other hand, Iran’s ability to deny the world use of the Strait of Hormuz (or Vermouth, as Treasury Secretary Bessent calls it) is the ultimate non-nuclear “Trump” card. The Strait is their “Q Bomb”, placing a militarily weak nation in control of the world. Twenty percent of the world’s oil will do that.
Weak Side
The ultimate failure of the Trump Administration is that they “missed” this possibility. Perhaps it was hubris from the “shock and awe” of the Venezuela kidnapping operation, or perhaps it was the amazing sales ability of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu in the White House situation room (NYT). Either way, the “decapitation campaign” at the beginning of the war, killed off the leadership, but failed to account for their replacements being even more extreme. The “regime change” of an uprising by the Iranian intellectual class failed, because they were forced to choose between the leaders they hated, and two nations waging total warfare against them.
And then there is that twenty-four mile wide “aorta” of the world’s economy. It’s not the Iranian Navy (unless speedboats count). It’s mines, it’s shoulder launched missiles, it’s mobile drones, it’s even targeted missiles. None of them were accurately accounted for in the “battle plans”. It’s the Iranian “Q Bomb”.
So now, the United States is the “side” that needs to negotiate a peace. With all of the military inequities, Iran holds the upper hand at the table in Pakistan. Americans “need” them to show up. And Iran is willing to “pay the price” if they chose not to. The United States is sending the man who holds the second most powerful office in the Nation. He’s to negotiate with the third and fourth level guys who are the ones left alive to talk.
Iran’s “Q Bomb” puts them in control. And it makes Trump look weak, in the eyes of the world, and the American people. Peter Sellers would be the one to play him in the new, modern version of the Mouse that Roared. Only he could make the absurdity of this American White House make sense.
Too bad he died in 1980.
