According to my morning newspaper, Joe Biden "is walking the fine line between deterrence and escalation" in our conflict with the Houthis. But there "is no science to the calculation." Several people on TV referred to Biden's attack on the Houthi as "tit for tat."
In fact, Biden's retaliation escalated the conflict. It was tit for TAAAAAAAAT.
There is a famous method for avoiding escalation that goes back to the Old Testament, the Torah and the Code of Hammurabi.
This is how it would work. The Houthi might fire five missiles at random passing ships and miss. In retaliation, we would fire five missiles back at the Houthi and miss on purpose. In short, we try to duplicate exactly what they did.
The Houthis might next fire ten missiles and hit something. We would do the same.
The lunacy of this chain of automatic responses might become obvious even to leaders living in the Bronze Age, when Hammurabi's Code limited retaliation to a tooth for a tooth.
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