The strategic hole at the center of ‘Dune’

The strategic hole at the center of ‘Dune’

I enjoy almost everything about “Dune.” Except this one thing.

By Daniel W. Drezner

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything.Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Over the past year Ana Marie Cox and I have been running a podcast called Space the Nation, centered on science fiction and international relations — sci-fi and poli sci, as it were. This has led, ineluctably, to recording multiple episodes about Frank Herbert’s “Dune.”

I had neither read Herbert’s novel nor seen any filmed version of it until this year. But over the past six months we have talked about the novel, then the misbegotten tragedy that was David Lynch’s attempt to film it, and now Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the first half of the book.

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As sci-fi books go, Herbert’s “Dune” is legitimately impressive in its treatment of international relations. The interstellar jockeying for power between the Emperor, Landsraad, Spacing Guild, Bene Gesserit, and Houses Harkonnen and Atreides is compelling. The lead characters have varying but believable degrees of strategic acumen, with feints inside of feints. Herbert is attuned to the role that religion and the environment can play in international politics. His discussion of “desert power” is more sophisticated than 95 percent of the instances a pundit mentions “geopolitics” in an op-ed.

The thing is, there is a key plot element in every iteration of this narrative that continues to make zero sense to me. The plot starts in motion when Emperor Shaddam IV decides to take the spice mining commission on Arrakis from House Harkonnen and transfers it to the Harkonnen’s long-standing rival, Duke Leto Atreides. This spice is pretty important — it’s necessary for interstellar travel.

Sounds like a win for House Atreides! But everyone thinks it is a trap, including the duke himself. And it is a trap! The Emperor fears the growing power of House Atreides and promotes the duke to set him up for failure. Soon the Harkonnen and Imperial troops take the planet again and kill the duke.

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I get the idea of promoting a rival to a position where they find themselves in greater political peril. This happens in both democracies and military dictatorships. In juntas, sometimes military rulers will promote possible rivals to battle commands with the expectation that they will either flounder or be killed. In the United States, the Obama administration’s appointment of Jon Huntsman to be U.S. ambassador to China could have been viewed as a way to neutralize a potential general election appointment.

Here we get to the flaw in the plot. Promoting a rival to put them in danger is one thing. Promoting a rival so that they control the single-most important raw material in the galaxy makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone who knows anything about the concept of weaponized interdependence knows that giving House Atreides even temporary sovereignty over Arrakis gives them control over the most important chokepoint in the galactic political economy. It is way too big a risk to take just to dispatch a possible rival. Just because the surprise attack worked does not mean it was a good idea.

There are additional problems with this strategy. If the Emperor is trying to eliminate House Atreides without getting his hands dirty, why commit crack imperial Sardaukar troops to the operation? Even if they are in disguise, the chances of them being identified — like, say, Vladimir Putin’s “little green men” — would be pretty high, thereby getting the Emperor’s hands pretty dirty.

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Most importantly, a violent recapturing of Arrakis turns a troubled occupation into an even riskier enterprise. As Emily Meierding demonstrated in “The Oil Wars Myth,” it is difficult for an occupying force to extract resources — and spice harvesting on Arrakis seems way more difficult than drilling for oil in the Middle East. To paraphrase a former president, the notion that the Emperor can withdraw Harkonnen forces, then reinvade and simple “take the spice” does not hold up.

Villeneuve’s adaptation is interesting, and I am glad to see a sequel has been greenlit. There is a lot of interesting politics in the novels and in Villeneuve’s film. But the strategy that kick-starts everything is silly.