The latest escalation in the Middle East is in many ways the inevitable culmination of a long-simmering rivalry. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability and Israel’s determination to stop that from happening meant that such an outcome was always in the cards.
But it also provides an example of what scholars of international relations like me refer to as the “commitment trap.” Put simply, the concept is that states and governments feel compelled to continue with a promised course of action, even if doing so might be to their own disadvantage. Think, “if country X doesn’t do Y, we will do Z in response.”
The idea was popularized by political scientist Scott Sagan in a much-referenced 2000 academic paper looking at the U.S.’s apparent threat to use nuclear weapons should an adversary use biological or chemical weapons.
But the concept applies to a range of situations, from unilateral acts of aggression or preemptive strikes to promises of support to an ally.
Commitment traps are a feature of conflicts that go back, at least, to Ancient Greece. The Peloponnesian War was, in part, the story of how commitments made by Athens and Sparta to their respective allies turned local disputes into continent-wide cataclysms; World War I began much the same way – an assassination in Sarajevo triggered a cascade of alliance reactions that no one could stop.