When force strikes a garrison, the law of nations speaks first

CNBC reports that Iran's army has claimed responsibility for attacks on what it describes as strategic U.S. military assets and bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Whatever the full accounting of casualties and damage — details not yet in this dossier — the act of striking another nation's installations on sovereign allied territory is not a private quarrel. It is an event that touches every compact and convention the United States has entered with the Gulf states, with its treaty partners more broadly, and with the international frameworks governing the use of force.

The first question a careful mind must ask is not how hard shall we strike back but what do our obligations actually require. Kuwait and Bahrain are not merely friendly nations in the colloquial sense; they are hosts to U.S. forces under formal status-of-forces agreements — legal instruments, each with its own language of obligation and consultation. When those garrisons are struck, the host nations are struck. The treaty relationship does not permit the United States to treat that as a bilateral matter between Washington and Tehran alone.

I confess I cannot speak to the precise articles of those modern agreements — they postdate any era I could have known — and I mark that plainly as the limit of my knowledge. But the shape of the obligation is familiar across centuries: when a nation stations its forces under another nation's protection, an attack on those forces is an attack on the compact itself. The parties must consult before they act, and the response must be proportionate to the injury and consistent with the law of nations, not merely satisfying to popular passion in the moment of outrage.

The lesson I drew from negotiating the Treaty of Paris, and again from the Jay Treaty with Britain, is that the hardest discipline in diplomacy is the refusal to let urgency override precision. A hasty response that violates the sovereignty of a third state, or that fractures the coalition of allies, does more lasting damage than the initial provocation. Iran, it may be inferred, understands this calculation and may be inviting an intemperate reply. The statesman's task is to deny that invitation.

There is also the matter of international maritime freedom in the Persian Gulf — one of the world's critical passages for commerce. Any escalation that closes or threatens those waters injures parties far beyond the immediate combatants. Free navigation is not sentiment; it is an interest underwritten by treaty and by the accumulated practice of nations. A response calibrated to de-escalate while preserving that passage is worth more than a striking display that seals it.

What should be done, then? The executive should consult formally with Kuwait and Bahrain before any military reply, honoring the letter and spirit of the agreements that place U.S. forces on their soil. The Congress, which under our Constitution holds the power to declare war, should be brought into the deliberation — not merely notified after the fact. And the United States should press its case through every available international channel simultaneously, so that when force is ultimately warranted, the public faith of the nation stands behind it rather than running ahead of it. Measured speech, measured action, and the primacy of the law — these are not timid counsels. They are the only counsels that survive the morning after.