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Rapoport’s Waves and the Question of Agency
In 2004, terrorism scholar David C. Rapoport introduced his influential “Four Waves of Modern Terrorism” framework. He argued that modern political violence unfolds in roughly forty-year cycles, each animated by a distinct ideological current and global context.
The first wave—the Anarchist Wave (1880s–1920s)—was driven by revolutionary anti-monarchist ideology and the belief that targeted violence could destabilize imperial systems.
The second—the Anti-Colonial Wave (1920s–1960s)—emerged from nationalist movements seeking self-determination after World War I and accelerated after World War II.
The third—the New Left Wave (1960s–1990s)—drew energy from Marxist revolutionary theory, anti-Vietnam War activism, and anti-imperialist struggle.
The fourth—the Religious Wave (beginning in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan)—fused theological legitimacy with transnational violence.
Each wave lasted roughly a generation—about forty years—sustained by ideological momentum, geopolitical catalysts, and imitation effects. Eventually, however, the energy dissipated. Movements either hardened into state structures, lost popular resonance, or exhausted themselves through internal contradictions.
Rapoport’s generational cycle does not mean that regimes born from these waves collapse on schedule. Some, like the Soviet Union or today’s People’s Republic of China, institutionalized revolutionary energy into durable state structures that long outlived the original ideological fervor. The wave may dissipate, but the state it produces can endure through adaptation, repression, or economic transformation.
Rapoport’s framework, however, carries a strategic warning. If adversarial movements are treated as products of historical inevitability—as structural tides to be endured—policymakers risk becoming managers of decline rather than shapers of outcomes.
For decades, U.S. strategy toward rogue regimes oscillated between containment and regime replacement. The threats were to be neutralized; regime change remained an implicit or explicit option. The assumption was that hostile systems were either to be rolled back or ultimately removed.
The current approach suggests something different.
Rather than treating authoritarian regimes as immutable adversaries destined for collapse or overthrow, the United States increasingly appears to treat them as incentive structures with identifiable centers of gravity that can be influenced, constrained, and coerced without necessarily dismantling them. The objective shifts from replacement to behavioral management—from destruction to calibrated shaping. Both the Obama administration’s engagement with Iran through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the Trump administration’s subsequent withdrawal and renewed pressure illustrate different tactical expressions of this broader logic: efforts to constrain regime behavior without triggering systemic collapse.
This emerging approach also reflects the operational realities of what many analysts describe as Fifth-Generation Warfare—conflict conducted below the threshold of declared war, where economic leverage, migration flows, proxy networks, information operations, and legal maneuvering substitute for conventional battlefield engagements.
In such an environment, centers of gravity are rarely territorial; they are institutional, psychological, and narrative. Stability-first coercion is not simply a policy preference—it is an adaptation to a battlespace where implosion often generates uncontrollable secondary effects rather than decisive victory.
This shift is unfolding not sequentially, but almost simultaneously—in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Ukraine, the Arctic, and in high-level negotiations with China. Confronting multiple adversarial theaters at once may prove to be strategic brilliance—compressing adversarial bandwidth and reasserting leverage—or it may risk overextension that challenges political endurance and operational capacity.
Conceptually, this emerging approach mirrors classical strategic logic. Carl von Clausewitz directs attention to the adversary’s center of gravity—the true source of cohesion and power. Thomas Schelling reminds us that coercion is a bargaining process requiring both credible pain and credible relief.
Together, they provide a framework for understanding how policy can exert influence across multiple theaters without triggering uncontrolled collapse — or catastrophic escalation.
The question is whether this “stability gamble” can redirect structural waves—or whether it risks becoming one more current within them.
Venezuela: Center of Gravity, Schelling’s Leverage, and Fragmentation Risk
Clausewitz defined the center of gravity as the source of an adversary’s strength and cohesion. In hybrid authoritarian systems, it rarely resides in a single leader but in the institutional networks—military leadership, security elites, economic gatekeepers—that sustain regime stability.
The January 2026 operation to remove Nicolás Maduro tested this assumption. Subsequent U.S. engagement suggested policymakers judged Venezuela’s center of gravity as structural rather than personal. Rather than pursue regime collapse, U.S. policy focused on reshaping institutional behaviors to reduce threats to U.S. interests without catalyzing systemic implosion.
Here Schelling’s logic is central: coercion is not annihilation but inducement. It requires not only pain but the credible promise of relief. In Venezuela, calibrated pressure was applied below collapse thresholds to constrain behavior without triggering further displacement.
Migration remains the key boundary condition. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have already fled, reshaping regional politics and influencing U.S. domestic debate. If further destabilization risks renewed displacement, then coercion must be calibrated to avoid triggering a collapse that accelerates migration rather than compelling behavioral change.
A critical blind spot, however, is succession fragility. Institutions shaped by decades of patronage and coercion are not necessarily resilient. Removing a central figure like Maduro without ensuring the loyalty of lower-level commanders or emergent factions risks fragmentation rather than managed continuity—a localized civil conflict that could undermine the very stability policymakers seek.
This possibility underscores the importance of coupling coercive pressure with credible, orderly transition frameworks. In Schelling’s terms, coercion functions most effectively when pressure is paired with identifiable “relief”—tangible off-ramps such as phased sanctions relief, security assurances for regime insiders, or international economic stabilization packages that reduce the incentives for factions to fight rather than bargain.
Iran: Escalation Discipline, Credibility of Relief, and Regional Dynamics
Iran represents the most challenging test of the emerging model.
Unlike Cuba or Venezuela, Iran is a regional power whose center of gravity lies in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the broader security architecture it commands. Through the IRGC, Tehran maintains domestic regime control while simultaneously directing an extended proxy network across the Middle East—including Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen.
These proxies function as external instruments of deterrence and influence, extending Iranian coercive capacity beyond its borders while reinforcing the regime’s internal survival by raising the regional costs of confrontation. In this sense, the IRGC and the proxy network represent two operational expressions of the same strategic center of gravity: the regime’s ability to maintain internal control while projecting asymmetric power outward.
Recent developments underscore rising tensions. The U.S. has undertaken its largest military buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq War, deploying multiple carrier strike groups and advanced fighter assets as leverage in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional activities.
On February 28, the United States and Israel commenced massive strikes against Iranian regime targets, including military infrastructure, leadership nodes, and the domestic repression apparatus, marking the transition from threatened coercion to active hostilities, even as indirect talks continue amid heightened military posturing.
Iran’s willingness to use lethal force internally and the strategic placement of its proxy forces complicate external leverage. Tehran’s leaders have publicly warned of severe retaliation to any attack and have developed a hybrid defensive doctrine designed to operate in decentralized conditions.
Often described as a “defense in mosaic,” this approach distributes command functions, operational units, and proxy capabilities across a networked structure intended to preserve regime survivability even under sustained kinetic shock. The ongoing strikes therefore, provide a real-time test of whether this decentralized architecture can maintain operational continuity or instead channel the conflict into wider proxy escalation across the region.
In Schelling’s terms, coercion must embed not only pain but the expectation of credible relief. If Iranian leadership believes that no sequence of concessions will yield normalization rather than continued strangulation, they have little incentive to comply and may instead choose escalation as a form of deterrence or defiance.
Here, the credibility of any off-ramp—a negotiated containment that preserves regime survival while curtailing its threatening activities — is as central as the coercive pressure itself. The military strikes illustrate how such coercive bargaining can escalate into controlled kinetic action while still attempting to preserve bargaining space rather than pursue total systemic collapse.
Complicating this calculus is alliance synchronization. Israeli leaders view Iran’s proxy network as an existential threat and may push for sustained pressure far beyond what the United States considers necessary or politically sustainable. Europe, Gulf states, and other regional actors also have diverging risk thresholds, creating friction that undermines a unified front. Without cohesion in managing escalation and relief credibility, coercive management may instead harden resolves and entrench adversarial networks.
Europe, Ukraine, Russia, and NATO’s Cohesion
In Europe, the doctrine’s resonance extends into the frozen front in Ukraine and NATO’s collective defense posture.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine exposed a contended security order. The United States and NATO responded with calibrated military support to Kyiv and targeted economic pressure on Moscow. Here, Clausewitz clarifies the adversary’s center of gravity: Russia’s military capability, energy revenues, elite cohesion, and domestic control. Schelling frames Western measures as both coercion—imposing costs on aggression—and deterrence—signaling limits to escalation.
However, this approach generates significant alliance friction. Eastern European states, particularly Poland and the Baltic nations, view any “frozen conflict” as a dangerous compromise that leaves Russian coercive capacity intact. They see the Russian influence wave as existential, not an amenable structural challenge.
This divergence between U.S. transactional containment preferences and Eastern Europe’s desire for decisive degradation risks fraying NATO’s center of gravity—its unified political and military will.
Greenland and Arctic security illustrate these dynamics further. The Arctic has become a strategic pivot—a gateway for naval and air approaches, major shipping routes, and resource access as climate change opens new passages.
Greenland, as part of the Kingdom of Denmark and a NATO member through that link, has seen renewed emphasis from Western allies on deterrence infrastructure in the region by Western Allies. Efforts such as Operation Arctic Endurance—a NATO presence aimed at deterring aggression—reflect recognition that the Arctic is not peripheral but central to transatlantic security.
European proposals to expand NATO roles in Greenland show that Europe is not merely a free-rider but keen to assert shared defense responsibilities, especially against Russian and Chinese activities in the Arctic. Yet debates over U.S. rhetoric about control or influence in Greenland underscore the tension between alliance credibility and national sovereignty.
Because NATO’s center of gravity lies in its unified political and military will, even rhetorical disputes among allies can generate strategic friction. The Greenland episode briefly illustrated this vulnerability: European allies signaled deterrent readiness in the region, not against an external adversary but in response to uncertainty about U.S. intentions. In Schelling’s terms, the episode was ultimately defused through credible relief—the reaffirmation that intra-alliance conflict would not occur—but it demonstrated how quickly alliance cohesion can become a bargaining variable in great-power competition.
China: Strategic Observation and Arctic Contestation
China watches these doctrinal experiments intently.
Beijing has expanded its global strategic posture through economic, technological, and governance influence, including around the Arctic— combining overt and covert means to normalize presence and reshape regional governance structures.
If coercive management appears strategically effective in diverse theaters—from the Western Hemisphere to Europe and the Middle East— China must reckon with how similar strategies might apply to its interests in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait.
The upcoming Trump visit to Beijing becomes a key interpretive moment. For Beijing, the question is whether calibrated coercion is a regionally bounded technique or a global doctrine applicable to great-power competition. Terms of arms control, economic interdependence, and global security architectures will likely be central to those discussions.
Ambiguity—if credible and consistent—can be a deterrent. If perceived as ad hoc or opportunistic, it invites calculation rather than caution.
The Human Dimension: Stability Without Liberation?
Across these theaters, populations live within the strategic calculus.
Coercive management may produce incremental stability without democratic transformation. In Ukraine, that may mean prolonged attrition rather than decisive victory. In Cuba or Venezuela, constrained authoritarian equilibrium rather than rapid reform. In Iran, containment without regime change.
Yet the rapid escalation following the February 28 strikes demonstrates the human stakes of this strategic balancing act. The secondary effects long associated with regime destabilization are no longer abstract risks but active concerns: the potential for proxy mobilization across regional networks, mounting humanitarian pressures as large civilian populations under sustained operations require food, water, electricity, and medical access, and the possibility of cascading instability should kinetic operations continue or expand.
The alternative—complete systemic collapse—carries its own human costs: fragmentation, displacement, insurgency, and prolonged instability.
This doctrine is not liberation-first. It is stability-first. Whether stability ultimately creates conditions for reform or merely entrenches persistence remains uncertain.
From Grand Strategy to Tactical Posture
For practitioners—operators, planners, diplomats—this doctrinal shift has concrete implications.
Instead of missions focused on decisive kinetic outcomes, strategy emphasizes sustained shaping: escalation control, calibrated presence, credible relief offers, migration threshold monitoring, and alliance synchronization across multiple theaters simultaneously.
The objective becomes influence without catastrophic implosion.
For policymakers, this approach implies several practical priorities. Escalation control requires maintaining calibrated military presence that signals deterrence without triggering regime collapse or uncontrolled escalation. Credible relief mechanisms—such as phased sanctions adjustments tied to verifiable behavioral change—must accompany coercive pressure to preserve bargaining space.
Migration thresholds should be treated as strategic indicators, monitored closely to ensure that pressure campaigns do not trigger destabilizing humanitarian spillovers. Finally, alliance synchronization remains essential: the United States must coordinate economic pressure, diplomatic signaling, and military posture across NATO and regional partners to preserve the political cohesion that functions as the West’s own center of gravity.
Conclusion: Structure Constrains, Strategy Directs
Rapoport warned that history may generate powerful currents, but it never eliminates human agency or strategic choice.
Clausewitz identifies where power resides.
Schelling teaches that coercion must pair pain with credible relief.
Rapoport reminds us that waves dissipate when their sustaining energy is redirected, not merely endured.
History shapes the terrain.
Strategy determines whether that terrain fractures, stagnates, or slowly evolves.
The escalation in Iran illustrates this dynamic vividly: when structural waves collide with deliberate strategic pressure, policymakers are forced to decide whether coercion will redirect those currents—or accelerate the very instability they seek to manage.
The stability gamble is whether influence without implosion can redirect structural currents—or merely prolong them.