BACKGROUND
After WWII, the United States took on the responsibility of protecting global shipping lanes, which was crucial for international trade and security (and advancing the US's own economic and resource monopolization goals). In return, many nations became allies in the Cold War struggle, benefiting from U.S. naval power to ensure the safety of their maritime commerce.
Globalism (excerpt): By the late 1940s, the modern concept of globalism was formed in the United States. In their position of unprecedented power, US planners formulated policies to shape the kind of postwar world they wanted, which in economic terms meant a globe-spanning capitalist order centered exclusively upon the United States. This was the period when its global power was at its peak: the United States was the greatest economic power the world had known, with the greatest military machine in history. [...] this was a far-reaching conception of "American-centric state globalism using capitalism as a key to its global reach, integrating everything that it can into such an undertaking". This included global economic integration, which had collapsed under World War I and the Great Depression.
Globalization After WWII: The US, with its geographic protections and abundant natural resources, emerged from World War II as the only remaining country with a robust economy, a functioning industrial sector, and a strong military. Zeihan says that, instead of asserting itself as an empire, the US used its advantage to create a new world order-one aimed at isolating and economically strangling the Soviet Union. The US offered the world a deal: Align against the Soviet Union, and in return, the US would become the world’s police to ensure that international trade could flourish-except in the Soviet bloc. [...] Zeihan asserts that, during this period, we’ve lived in an era of unprecedented economic growth and stability facilitated by the US’s commitment to protecting worldwide trade and transportation.
CURRENT SITUATION (article below)
And via what's happened with the Strait of Hormuz (and its potential infectious spread to other areas), so much for the critics? "Critics of Zeihan’s perspective argue that the idea that global trade depends on a constant US naval presence is exaggerated. Most shipping lanes face little threat beyond natural hazards in peacetime, and while piracy is occasionally an issue in a handful of places around the world, it only affects a tiny fraction of global trade."
But even without the erosion of both globalism and the gradual diminishing of the US Navy, the key factor here is that new technology has made naval protection of the shipping lanes (at chokepoints) obsolete. Due to that, this return to taxing and pirating trade supply lines seems to have been inevitable, regardless of old Cold War policies and international order tumbling to the wayside.
After WWII, the United States took on the responsibility of protecting global shipping lanes, which was crucial for international trade and security (and advancing the US's own economic and resource monopolization goals). In return, many nations became allies in the Cold War struggle, benefiting from U.S. naval power to ensure the safety of their maritime commerce.
Globalism (excerpt): By the late 1940s, the modern concept of globalism was formed in the United States. In their position of unprecedented power, US planners formulated policies to shape the kind of postwar world they wanted, which in economic terms meant a globe-spanning capitalist order centered exclusively upon the United States. This was the period when its global power was at its peak: the United States was the greatest economic power the world had known, with the greatest military machine in history. [...] this was a far-reaching conception of "American-centric state globalism using capitalism as a key to its global reach, integrating everything that it can into such an undertaking". This included global economic integration, which had collapsed under World War I and the Great Depression.
Globalization After WWII: The US, with its geographic protections and abundant natural resources, emerged from World War II as the only remaining country with a robust economy, a functioning industrial sector, and a strong military. Zeihan says that, instead of asserting itself as an empire, the US used its advantage to create a new world order-one aimed at isolating and economically strangling the Soviet Union. The US offered the world a deal: Align against the Soviet Union, and in return, the US would become the world’s police to ensure that international trade could flourish-except in the Soviet bloc. [...] Zeihan asserts that, during this period, we’ve lived in an era of unprecedented economic growth and stability facilitated by the US’s commitment to protecting worldwide trade and transportation.
CURRENT SITUATION (article below)
And via what's happened with the Strait of Hormuz (and its potential infectious spread to other areas), so much for the critics? "Critics of Zeihan’s perspective argue that the idea that global trade depends on a constant US naval presence is exaggerated. Most shipping lanes face little threat beyond natural hazards in peacetime, and while piracy is occasionally an issue in a handful of places around the world, it only affects a tiny fraction of global trade."
But even without the erosion of both globalism and the gradual diminishing of the US Navy, the key factor here is that new technology has made naval protection of the shipping lanes (at chokepoints) obsolete. Due to that, this return to taxing and pirating trade supply lines seems to have been inevitable, regardless of old Cold War policies and international order tumbling to the wayside.
- The era of free seas is unraveling-and now everyone’s going to pay
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...g-and-now-everyone-s-going-to-pay/ar-AA20C97i
EXCERPTS: The “Tehran toll booth” was taking effect, as the U.S. Navy watched on, an admission that, at least here and now in the world’s oil corridor, America no longer rules the waves.
[...] Whatever happens next, the precedent of a toll booth in open waters will reverberate across a world order the U.S. helped build. America’s allies worry other players could try to replicate Iran’s example, like empires of the 17th century, when China’s Qing dynasty, the Ottomans and Portuguese taxed passing vessels. Trump has floated his own wish for an American toll on the Persian Gulf, and his expenditure of naval power in the Middle East has given Beijing and its navy-the world’s largest-freer rein to expand control over the South China Sea.
[...] shipowners will still have to consider the risks of fiendish new challenges that the U.S. Navy has been unable to resolve -- like cheap drones that can swarm past warships designed to shoot down planes and missiles. The U.S., once the guarantor of open seas, has shown it can acquiesce to their closure, and America’s European allies, which once ruled the seas, have rebuffed Trump’s demand that their navies reopen a strait that his own military left closed... (MORE - missing details)
- Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-strait-of-hormuz/
EXCERPTS: Back in the Persian Gulf today, the Navy grasps the reality of the circumstances, recognizing that it simply can’t sail into the strait without risk getting blown to smithereens by Iran’s missiles. Today, its carriers are stationed well outside the Gulf and the ranges of Iranian missiles. [...] Lessons of the Ukraine-Russia war are relevant. Ukraine successfully drove the Russian Black Sea Fleet from its shores through attacks by missiles and unmanned systems. Iran has integrated various of these systems into its tool kit in the strait. [...] Iran can threaten maritime operations in the strait relatively easily and cheaply through their missile, drone, and maritime unmanned attack systems from areas well back from the strait. There is no decisive military solution to this problem given Iran’s geography and military capabilities.
- Top eight Iranian weapons that could shut the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely
https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/...d-mines-missiles-irgc-navy-oil-supply-threat/
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