Can King Trump Pull the Sword From the Hormuz?
Can King Trump Pull the Sword From the Hormuz?
Whichever nation reopens the sea passage will prove itself a great power in the region.
The intensity and apparent aims of America’s war with Iran have shifted quite a few times since the first day of shock and awe in late February to the current ceasefire and negotiations. After an opening round of peace talks in Islamabad last weekend, President Donald Trump announced a plan to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which the U.S. Navy implemented days later.
On Friday, Iran announced it would reopen the strait for the remaining few days of the ceasefire but would require ships to travel on a pre-approved route in coordination with the Islamic Republic. If Trump can get Iran to fully open the waterway as part of a peace deal, he will have claimed a significant victory. If not, the world will face a new paradigm in the Hormuz. That the U.S. has come to the negotiating table, rather than opening the strait with force suggests it recognizes the limits of military force.
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz marked a new chapter in a war initially launched as part of a campaign to remake the region. After the Islamic Republic survived the opening onslaught, a new war aim emerged for Washington: to reopen the Strait. The climbdown is notable and tragic. U.S. goals shifted from domination and regime change to a restoration of the prewar status quo. The strategic reorientation makes sense but also demonstrates the folly of the hawks—and reveals the true and dramatic potential costs of the war with Iran.
This is not the first time a Western power has fought to maintain waterways and a system dependent on them in the east. The lessons of the Suez Crisis—when Britain, France and Israel tried to seize the Suez Canal but were forced to withdraw—loom large. In the 1950s, the U.S. was the outside party that was able to impose order and, later, help reopen sea passages. Taking a firm line against U.S. allies, President Dwight D. Eisenhower blocked IMF aid for the British and went even farther by calling for the United Nations to impose economic sanctions against Israel.
Eisenhower recognized that the ability to seize control was worth upsetting allies, especially when those allies have few other willing and capable partners. In that sense, he acted as a sort of King Arthur-esque figure—by pulling the sword from the Suez, America established itself as ruler of the seas and a great power in the region. The British and French are, in this metaphor, far more tragic figures—for them, the era marked the sunset of empire. They were no longer capable of directly imposing their will on the world. In fairness, this may have been something already lost, but Suez provided a vivid demonstration of that fact on the world stage.
The Suez Crisis isn’t an exact historical analogy for the current U.S. intervention, in part because America has no allies with the power to truly constrain its foreign policy, but the parallels are obvious: A world power is trying to reopen a vital sea passage, and failure would demonstrate its decline in relative power.
Global trade demands that some nation or group of nations reopen the strait. If one nation plays a leading or solo role in that process—perhaps the U.S., China, or Iran itself—it will correctly be seen as an imperial power in the region.
Hawks have taken notice. Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, speaking on a recent New York Times podcast episode, argued that “there’s still the battle of Hormuz to be won or lost, and I think that’s going to be a decisive battle that will determine whether President Trump can legitimately claim a major military success at the end of all of this.” If the battle is lost though, then what? What does a major military failure look like?
One might say the recurrent tendency of American politicians to commit and recommit to the Middle East over the past two decades shows exactly what failure looks like—the continual squandering of blood, treasure, and soft power to either wind up in a worse place than we started or back to square one. In that sense, the Hormuz crisis represents a familiar problem. But earlier failures, while important, were not as destructive as they would’ve been with a peer competitor watching our mistakes from afar, as we have with China today.
If neither negotiations nor U.S. military action manage to restore the pre-war status quo in the strait, it will be a humiliation perhaps greater than what France and Britain experienced during the Suez Crisis. The Trump administration risked competition with China in Asia by recommitting to the Middle East, but if the U.S. can’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic costs of the war with Iran would be greater than even many critics have realized.
We entered the war to project power in one region at the cost of withdrawing armaments and commitments from another, more important region. And we may yet wind up with control and influence over each being sacrificed together.
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