So here we are again. The United States has launched military strikes against Iran, ostensibly in defence of global shipping after yet another attack on a cargo vessel in the Persian Gulf. One might call it a predictable escalation in a theatre that has been simmering for decades, but I prefer to call it the terminal phase of imperial dementia.
The Americans, bless their hearts, still believe they can police the world’s oceans with cruise missiles and stern press releases. It is the sort of neo-Victorian hubris that would make Palmerston blush. The doctrine of free trade enforced by the Royal Navy has been replaced by the doctrine of globalisation enforced by the US Navy, but the principle remains the same: if you interfere with the movement of goods, you will be bombed.
Never mind that the Iranians are not pirates but a sovereign state with legitimate grievances. Never mind that the Houthis, the actual attackers in many of these incidents, are not Iranian soldiers but local proxies. The logic of empire demands a target, and Iran is convenient.
The tragic irony is that the more Washington bombs, the more the world’s shipping lanes become militarized, and the more the global economy fractures into blocs. This is not the Fall of Rome; it is the fall of an idea. The idea that a single power can maintain order through force.
The Suez Crisis already taught us that empires cannot hold canals without consent. The Americans are learning the same lesson in the Hormuz Strait. But they will not learn until the oil tankers are replaced by warships and the global shipping lanes become graveyards.
The real question is not whether the US can win this skirmish, but whether the West has the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that its model of global trade is dying. The 19th century is over. The British Empire learned that the hard way.
The American Empire is simply taking a bit longer.
