Richard Fernandez asks what happens if the "Beltway rules" are broken?

You may know the Beltway Rules and th eChicago Way, but what if somebody decides that they are not going to willingly die for your convenience?

Goldberg is probably correct to conclude that there is no Beltway solution conceivable in the path which Netanyahu now threatens to tread. It must be a bluff because there is no way to express, in the notation of alliance and Washington politics, the sort of condition that Bibi’s argument implies. No solution any more than there is a way out of the dim light apartment short of diving out the window or swinging the handbag at the host.

Because what Netanyahu’s outburst — and the Saudi threat to buy nuclear weapons — implies is not a solution set within the system, but a threat to leave the system; to smash the alliance, to walk out; to do the the unthinkable within the consensus the Beltway universe.