Ultimatum (pronounced uhl-tuh-mey-tuhm or uhl-tuh-mah-tuhm)
(1) A
final, uncompromising demand or set of terms issued by a party to a dispute
(used especially of governments and WAGs (wives & girlfriends)), the
rejection of which may lead to a severance of relations, the imposition of
sanctions, the use of force etc.
(2) A final
proposal or statement of conditions; any final or peremptory demand, offer or
proposal.
1731: From the
New Latin, a specialized use of the Medieval Latin ultimatum (a final statement), noun use of neuter of Latin
adjective ultimātus (last possible,
final; ended, finished), past participle of ultimāre
(to come to an end), from ultimus
(extreme, last, furthest, farthest, final).
The Latin plural ultimata was
used by the Romans as a noun in the sense of “what is farthest or most remote;
the last, the end”. In mid-1920s slang
ultimatum described also “the buttocks” (a use which deserves to be revived). In English, the plural form had an
interesting trajectory. Although the Anglo-Irish
satirist & Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) used “ultimatums”,
that didn’t until the twentieth century convince the OED (Oxford English
Dictionary) to displace ultimata as the recommended form. In diplomacy (a world of “gray areas”), the comparative
is “more ultimative”, the superlative “most ultimative”. Ultimatum is a noun, ultimating &
ultimated are verbs and ultimative is an adjective; the noun plural is
ultimatums or ultimata.
The first
ultimatum would have been issued in prehistoric times and there have been many
since. History suggests a great many
have been bluffs which can be a successful tactic if perceived as plausible but
often the “bluff was called” and the
ultimatum proved a hollow threat, thus the language of diplomacy including also
the (sometimes darkly) satirical or humorous (1) penultimatum (plural
penultimatums or penultimata) which describes a statement of terms or
conditions made by one party to another, commonly expressed as an ultimatum in
the hopes of compelling immediate compliance with demands, but that then is
superseded by more negotiation instead of actual dire consequences and (2) antepenultimatum
(plural antepenultimatums or antepenultimata) which describes a statement of
terms or conditions made by one party to another, essentially a penultimatum,
but even more tentative and more repeatedly abandoned in favour of subsequent
ignominious compromises. The trouble
with unfulfilled ultimatums is that while rapidly they can lose their
persuasive power (in a manner analogous with Aesop's Fable The boy who cried wolf),
at some point a party issuing unenforced ultimatums may one day make good on
their threats, the high stakes gambler Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader)
and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and the
rather dim-witted Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister
1938-1945) both in September 1939 genuinely surprised when the Anglo-French ultimatum
guaranteeing the sovereignty of Poland was honoured, the previous back-downs no
longer a guide. Of course, six year
later, Polish sovereignty was sacrificed to political necessity but a war which
began with the RAF (Royal Air Force dropping leaflets politely asking the Germans
to stop what they were doing and ended with the USAAF (US Army Air Force) dropping
A-bombs of Japanese cities had many unintended consequences.
For centuries, the word “ultimatum” seems to have been avoided by poets, librettists and lyricists. Ultimatum is a Latinate “formal” word so perhaps not well-suited to love songs but beyond the register and tone, those studying structural linguistics note the prosody: It’s a four-syllable word with a stress pattern (ul-TIM-a-tum) difficult to “fit into” common meters and melodic phrasing. That said, while there’s a semantic narrowness, the idea of the ultimatum (a final demand backed by consequences) is hardly rare in opera and poetry but it tends to be described or implied rather than labelled with the specific word. However, one niche was found in the definitely modern genre of rap, hip-hop and such and that’s attributed to the material putting a premium on conflict, violence and the technique of rhyming on the final syllable. Undaunted however was Kara DioGuardi (b 1970) who included “ultimatum” in the opening verse of the Lindsay Lohan song Stay (2008). Its inclusion is a genuine rarity.
Verse 1 of Stay (2008) Kara DioGuardi, sung by by Lindsay Lohan.
Baby, take
your coat off and your shoes and just relax
Let your
body sink into these arms, that's where it's at
I'll open
up a bottle and slip into something else
I hope
tonight's the night that all these walls are gonna melt
'Cause when
we're out, you're sending me mixed signals all the time
You want
me, but you don't just wanna lay it on the line
So baby, here's
your ultimatum, are you in or out?
All you
have to do is wanna turn this all around, and...
If it was
for poets a challenge to splice “ultimatum” into the body of a work, without
any discordance it could be used as a title and Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
choose it for his first published poem which appeared in The Listener on 28 November,
1940:
Ultimatum (1940) by Philip Larkin.
But we must
build our walls, for what we are
Necessitates
it, and we must construct
The ship to
navigate behind them, there.
Hopeless to
ignore, helpless instruct
For any
term of time beyond the years
That warn
us of the need for emigration:
Exploded
the ancient saying: Life is yours.
For on our
island is no railway station,
There are
no tickets for the Vale of Peace,
No docks
where trading ships and seagulls pass.
Remember
stories you read when a boy
- The
shipwrecked sailor gaining safety by
His knife,
treetrunk, and lianas - for now
You must
escape, or perish saying no.
Unknown previously, “ultimatum”
did occasionally appear in twentieth century poetry, a product probably of the
big, multi-theatre wars and the use in modern and experimental poetry of
language which borrowed from abstract or formal vocabularies. While the terrible first half of the twentieth
century gave poets plenty of scope to explore the concept (it was an age of
ultimatums), in print, it was done almost without mention of the word.
The issuing
of ultimatums has shaped a number of turning points in history; variously they
have proved decisive, stabilizing or catastrophic. Probably the most infamous was the “July
Ultimatum”, served on Serbia by Austria-Hungary after a Serbian nationalist assassinated
Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914; heir presumptive to the throne of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire). While such a
procedure was orthodox politics, what was notable about what Vienna did in 1914
was to make demands it was certain Serbia would be unable to fulfil. The Austrians hankered for war because they
wanted permanently to put an end the “Serbian
threat” and Berlin, anticipating a traditional, short, sharp, limited war
of a few weeks, gave Vienna the infamous “German
blank cheque” of support. Belgrade
accordingly turned to its traditional supporters in Moscow who agreed to offer
military support; that came after the Kremlin had received confirmation from
Paris that France would honor its treaty arrangement with Russia. From all this came the outbreak of war in
August 1914 by which time the British (for a variety of reasons) had become
involved and by 1917 the US had become a belligerent; this was conflict which
came to be called “The World War” before in the 1940s being renamed “World War
I” (1914-1918).
Even in
1945, the phrase “unconditional surrender” (the origin an apparently chance
remark (although subsequently he would cite a precedent from the US Civil War
(1861-1865)) by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, POTUS 1933-1945) at
the Casablanca Conference (January 1943)) had been controversial because of the
concern it had lengthened the war against Germany by dissuading (the probably
chimerical) opposition forces within the country from staging a coup with a
view to negotiating peace. Despite that,
at the Potsdam Conference (July-August 1945) the Allied powers (China, the UK
& US, the Soviet Union not then at war with Japan) served Tokyo with the
Potsdam Declaration demanding exactly that.
After the two A-bombs were dropped, the Japanese agreed to a surrender
that fell a little short of being “unconditional”
but the Americans decided to accept the offer, concluding having a “puppet
emperor”.
One once improbable text in 2016 added to the reading lists of political analysts was Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987) by Donald J. Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) with Tony Schwartz (b 1952). It’s a useful book because in it Mr Trump (or Mr Schwartz depending on one’s spin of choice) provided examples of negotiating techniques. That book was about commerce, notably property deals, but it gave an insight into why Mr Trump later succeeded so well in reality TV, his understanding of the potency of mixing fact, threats, spectacle and blatant untruths underlining that second career. He may not, while the book was being drafted, have been contemplating politics as a third career but he did find many of its techniques could be adapted to international diplomacy. In that he proved an innovator but there are limitations to how well things translate. One weapon in the arsenal is the ultimatum which can be used in real-estate deals with few consequences beyond the relatively few individuals concerned but in international relations, such things can have cascading global effects.
If within the White House there were any doubts the issuing of ultimatums might have consequences other than what was desired, the path of the conflict in the Middle East should have given them some interesting case studies. What’s also interesting is whether in the White House the possible reactions to ultimatums were discussed prior to them being presented. Giving the Ayatollahs 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face withering new airstrikes on Iran’s power generation infrastructure sounded decisive on Truth Social (which definitely is part of the modern calculation in such matters) but Tehran responded by threatening to target the energy and water desalination facilities in the neighboring Gulf states. As threats go, it was a stark warning because those nations can rely on desalinated water for as much as 90% of their needs and have no practical alternative so it would have been an escalation with potentially devastating regional consequences.
Accordingly,
prior to the deadline, Mr Trump announced he’d “temporarily” called of the
strikes, claiming that was induced not by Tehran’s counter-threat but by “productive”
talks with “the
right people”. He didn’t
descent to specifics (something not unusual in back channel diplomacy) but did
add the talks had revealed “major points of agreement” and “they want very
much to make a deal, we'd like to make a deal, too.” Apparently unimpressed, Iranian state media, claimed
the president had backed down in the face of their threats and denied talks of
any significance were taking place. Again,
in diplomacy of this kind, denials are standard procedure. A few hours later, Mr Trump assured an
audience the US was conducting “very, very good discussions” with Iran. So it’s competing narratives and analysts
made no attempt to try to work out how much truthfulness was coming from either
side but more than one observed that if the president had realized he’d painted
himself into a corner by delivering the ultimatum, revealing previously
unannounced back-channel discussions was a quick and face-saving way to buy
some time to hope plan A (missiles and bombs) works. There was though from some sources the notion
the mention of “the right people” may
put in the mind of the regime the audacious kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro (b
1962; President of Venezuela 2013-2026), an operation made possible by the
cooperation of “the right people” in Caracas. Some suspicion of one’s colleagues might be understandable
given the extraordinary success achieved in assassinating leading figures in
the Iranian political establishment and the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps).
While it can be guaranteed US-Iran “talks” are taking place in some form, trying to
predict the course of this conflict is difficult because there are relatively
few models from the past which might provide something of indicative value. Since the end of the Cold War, one endlessly repeated
admonition issued by those in the Middle East to successive occupants of the White
House has been not to do this or that because “you will open the gates of Hell”.
Many probably suspect that at some point
in that last few years, those gates were at least pushed ajar but if things do
escalate they could be torn from their hinges and the most worrying scenario is
that US land forces will be deployed against Iran with the active cooperation
of the Gulf States, something unthinkable as recently as a few weeks ago. The theory supporting this is based on the
notion that the attacks on Iran conducted over the past year have made irrevocable
the Ayatollah’s determination to acquire an IND (independent nuclear deterrent),
a quite rational response by any regime reviewing military matters since
1945. Of course, ayatollahs with A-bombs
would trigger a chain reaction because a number of states in the region would
also demand their own IND with a genuinely autonomous launch capacity because,
just as Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969) felt
compelled to acquire the capacity because he doubted “a US president would risk New York to save
Paris” the same concerns would extend to the fate of Dubai and Riyadh.
What Mr
Trump has done is to abandon the “power realist” approach to dealing with the
Islamic Republic. As explained by its
high priest (Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor
1969-1975 & secretary of state 1973-1977)), the approach was an
acknowledgment that “solving” some
problems was either impossible or so dangerous to attempt that the preferred
approach was endlessly to “manage”
things, thereby either maintaining the problem at an acceptable level or
allowing it, over time, to “solve itself”. Mr Trump probably genuinely believes there is
not a problem on the planet he can’t solve by “making a deal”, achieved by a combination of threats, inducements,
spectacle and ultimatums. In some
fields, such optimism is a virtue but when dealing with Ayatollahs with a
nuclear weapons programme and the dream of a global caliphate under their interpretation
of Shi'i Islam, it’s at least potentially dangerous. One can argue about whether the ayatollahs
had, prior to the last two rounds of attack, already decided to develop a
deliverable nuclear weapon but now there can be no doubt. No US president before Mr Trump would have
dared do what’s been done in the last twelve months but now he’s in the
position of not daring to stop because nothing short of regime change can now make
things better; all alternatives are worse.
On paper, given the regime’s internal contradictions and the widespread
dissatisfaction among the population, there should be paths to regime change
without a land invasion but the Ayatollahs and IRGC appear still to possess a formidable
defensive apparatus. As the missile exchanges
continue, Mr Trump has announced a ten-day extension to the deadline to re-open
the Strait of Hormuz. Whether
this will come to be regarded as ultimatum 1.1 or 2.0 will be one of the
footnotes when the histories of this conflict are written.
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