Travel in Life

The challenger pays the first price of definition in order to make the incumbent pay the second.

That is the wager.

A challenger running for president lays out a plan for Iran. Not simply a preference for negotiations, pressure, deterrence, or withdrawal. A plan has edges. It says what the United States is trying to accomplish, what Iran would have to do, what the United States would do in response, and what would count as enough.

The challenger can now be contradicted.

That is the first price.

Every part of the plan becomes available to opponents. Its assumptions can be questioned. Its timetable can look unrealistic. Its concessions can be called weakness; its demands, fantasy. Events can make yesterday’s confident sentence look foolish tomorrow.

The incumbent does not have to answer.

There are good political reasons not to.

Answering a challenger can confer standing on the challenger. It can turn one proposal among many into the proposal against which incumbent policy is measured. Even rejecting it may enlarge it. An incumbent may be better served by continuing to act while allowing someone else’s plan to remain someone else’s plan.

Or the incumbent can answer without giving much away.

The challenger proposes an endpoint. The incumbent calls it dangerous.

The challenger proposes conditions. The incumbent calls them naïve.

The challenger proposes negotiations. The incumbent says Iran cannot be trusted.

Those are responses. They are not necessarily coordinates.

An incumbent may oppose a proposal because of what it says about Iran. The incumbent may oppose it because of who proposed it. The incumbent may do both at once.

So a plan does not require the incumbent to locate a policy relative to it.

The plan still supplies a location of its own.

That matters because the incumbent possesses something the challenger does not.

Events.

A ship can be moved. A sanction can be imposed. A message can be sent through an intermediary. An operation can be authorized or withheld. A proposal can be accepted or rejected.

Each can occur without a fully stated endpoint.

More pressure can be followed by negotiations. Negotiations can be followed by more pressure. A pause can be called prudent. An escalation can be called necessary. A concession by Iran can be evidence that the policy is working. A refusal by Iran can be evidence that it must continue.

None of this requires bad faith.

Policy needs room to move. Circumstances change. Information changes. Other governments act. A government that specifies every future move in advance would surrender some of the flexibility required to conduct foreign policy at all.

But flexibility and non-definition are not the same thing.

A flexible policy can change its means while retaining an identifiable objective.

An undefined endpoint is harder to test.

To say that a strategy failed, we need to know what it was supposed to accomplish.

To say that enough has been achieved, we need to know what enough means.

To say that the course has changed, we need some idea of the course.

Without that, events can accumulate while the endpoint remains where it was before: somewhere ahead.

The challenger cannot produce those events.

The challenger can produce a plan.

And once the plan exists, subsequent events can be viewed from somewhere other than the incumbent’s account of them.

That does not mean they will be.

A reporter may ask whether the administration would accept the same conditions.

An ally may ask what would be required before American policy changes.

A legislator may ask what another six months is intended to accomplish.

An official defending the policy may be asked what success would look like.

None has to endorse the challenger’s plan. None has to use it at all.

But the comparison is available.

That is what the plan changes.

Before it existed, the incumbent could act and explain the action in relation to circumstances as they developed. A ship moved because conditions required it. A sanction remained because conditions had not changed. Pressure increased because pressure had not yet produced enough.

The explanations can continue.

The incumbent has not lost them.

What has changed is that they are no longer the only available frame.

The incumbent can reject the alternative entirely. The incumbent can call it dangerous, naïve, or premature. The incumbent can refuse to say what would replace it.

The alternative remains available for comparison.

A marker does more than locate the person who placed it. It gives other people something from which to measure.

The incumbent can refuse the measurement.

The incumbent cannot make the marker cease to exist.

The challenger gives up ambiguity first.

The incumbent keeps it, along with the machinery of government and the ability to act.

But the next event no longer arrives in a field containing only the incumbent’s account of what the event means.

A ship moved where?

A sanction imposed until when?

Pressure applied toward what?

Negotiations for what end?

WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.