With the war against Iran and the naval blockade of Iranian ports in response to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the United States has plunged the energy artery of the Persian Gulf into chaos. This has triggered economic, social, and political upheavals from East to West, the full extent and uneven distribution of which have yet to be fully assessed.
That the third Gulf War of American imperialism would have unintended consequences had long been written into the laws of politics. Every political action, all the more so if conducted by military means, is part of a parallelogram of forces, the result of which can never correspond to the intention of any individual actor involved. The objective each power pursues is either hindered or aided by the others. Therefore, the course of the conflict will correspond, to a greater or lesser extent, to the strategic calculation of the forces, actions, and reactions of the powers within the system of States – assuming that such a calculation exists and that there are sufficient elements to carry it out. Given the multitude of factors at play – especially in a multipolar contention exacerbated by the crisis in the post-war order and the radical shift in power relations between the great powers – the outcome will invariably be something that nobody wanted.
A classic example is the wars waged by the United States in the Middle East. Here, quite simply, the use of force to counter the relative decline of American hegemony has ended up accelerating it. Patrick Foulis, former editor of The Economist who is now at the Financial Times, writes that the first Gulf War was regarded, according to the ideological representation of the balance of power, as a war of unipolarism. The second was seen as a war of American overextension, while today the third Gulf War marks the disintegration of the global order shaped by the United States after the Second World War. Washington will seek maximum advantage – or minimum disadvantage – from its new unilateral intervention in the Gulf. The multipolar trend, however, which sees China and Europe challenging the primacy of the US, is now firmly established, even if it will still take years to unfold.
The fact that every action generates unintended consequences does not in any way mean that the outcomes of the global contention are, on the whole, incalculable or incomprehensible. If anything, with Engels, we must regard international struggles as an infinite number of parallelograms of forces
. The longer the period under consideration and the more extensive the terrain studied, the more their results will tend to converge with the underlying trends of the contention, with the shift in power relations over the long term and, ultimately, with the median axis of uneven economic and political development. This means that every major crisis in international relations, to some extent, reveals the trends at play, as well as modifying, accelerating, or countering them, and redefining their internal dynamics. It is therefore not surprising that even the third Gulf War reveals the trajectories of American decline, Chinese rise, European rearmament, and Asian multi-alignment, variously reflected in the treacherous waters of Hormuz.
Critics accuse Donald Trump of having lost control of the war and of having handed Iran, unintentionally, a level of power over the Strait that Tehran has always only ever held in theory and never exercised. The war, transformed into a conflict over Hormuz, may have granted Iran a lever – the new deterrent of the threat to energy flows – which it has used to halt the attacks and secure a truce. According to these critics, what is at stake is the credibility of the United States in the face of the self-inflicted Hormuz dilemma: the future status of the Strait has become a prism through which to view the war of choice. This was not the case when the conflict began, when its objectives were to permanently degrade Iran's military strength and nuclear programme. Moreover, if one of its objectives was to prevent the Shia bomb, a collateral consequence has been to allow the Sunni bomb – the nuclear pact between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – to take on a military dimension in the Gulf, with the deployment of Pakistani fighter jets in Riyadh, as well as a diplomatic dimension, with Islamabad's mediation between the US and Iran.
It goes without saying that if Tehran were to maintain increased control over the Strait – for example by asserting sovereignty or, at the very least, joint control to collect a toll (the figure of $1 per barrel is circulating) – the war would set a precedent by altering the maritime order, which forms part of the world order codified by the institutions of unitary imperialism during the long liberist cycle. The 1982 Montego Bay Convention provides for the right of unimpeded passage through international straits, but neither Washington nor Tehran has ratified it. The 1936 Montreux Convention, which governs the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, guarantees freedom of transit in peacetime, but is under Turkish military control. Finally, Malaysia and Indonesia do not recognise the international nature of the Strait of Malacca, but grant toll-free transit through the straits, unlike canals such as the Panama or Suez Canals, which charge a fee. War can have vital implications for how States control the choke points and bottlenecks of the global economy, from the Mediterranean to the Gulf, from the South China Sea to the Taiwan Strait.
We have written about the exceptional and yet quintessentially American figure that is Trump, drawing on the dialectical method of The Eighteenth Brumaire. Karl Marx did not stop at the objectivist and subjectivist interpretations that made Louis Bonaparte a necessity of history and a giant of evil, but analysed the facts and circumstances that allowed that eccentric personality to play a hero's part
. In the specific analysis of the White House's erratic conduct, we must therefore consider these two dimensions simultaneously: the characteristics of a grotesque mediocrity
and the political circumstances that magnify their effects amidst the convulsions of decline. At the same time, we must take into account power relations, with the US still the world's leading power, even though its foreign policy is difficult to interpret.
With their political personnel selected by show politics and television democracy – of which Trump is the emblematic case – both parties of the American establishment and the exceptionalist political culture of the New World have proved incapable of managing the decline of the American metropolis, at least compared to the effectiveness with which the same political system was able to represent the country's relative primacy during the long post-war era. This non-correspondence is accentuated by the magnitude of the Chinese challenge; for the first time, the United States is dealing with a power it cannot overwhelm by flooding it with its own resources.
This was the argument put forward by Michael Green, George W. Bush's assistant for Asia, in By More Than Providence, which we now find underlying various commentaries. Green was responding to Special Providence, Walter Russell Mead's seminal work, titled after the famous maxim attributed to Bismarck: God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America
. Until now, America's special providence had protected the US; with China, this is no longer enough. The Dragon's rivalry drastically narrows America's margin for error.
The final judgement on the war in Iran hangs on the conclusion of negotiations in Pakistan, and may even have to wait for the scheduled meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing.
For Mead, Trump launched what he expected to be a short war; but if the war were to drag on, he would have to seek allies both abroad and at home: having failed to do so beforehand could prove to be the downfall of his presidency. The need to build consensus on a key decision such as war after the fact, or while it is underway, gives a measure of the political imbalance gripping Washington. Trump had already shaken Atlantic relations and the liberist nature of the cycle, prompting a Supreme Court ruling against him; but he had not yet taken up arms in a major conflict. With the decision to launch the third Gulf War, the imbalance crosses a further threshold, signalling, through an act of military force, a political weakness.
Ettore Sequi was secretary-general of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ambassador to China. In a series of articles for La Stampa, he has kept the crisis in focus, providing some effective summaries. The US is failing to mobilise its allies; Europe is distinguishing between common interest and a common war, wishing to contribute to stability but not to war. In the background, China is making its move, benefitting from a crisis in which the United States is dispersing its resources. While suffering from the disruption of energy flows, it is gaining a strategic advantage. For Sequi, the war has entered a phase in which military superiority is no longer sufficient to produce a political outcome: China observes an American power that strikes hard with its military might but struggles to translate force into order
.
Beijing has acted indirectly, through Pakistani mediation and a dense network of diplomatic contacts. Washington recognises the Chinese hand behind Islamabad, but Beijing is keeping a low profile. For Claude Leblanc of L'Opinion, China's role is influential but discreet. For Sequi, China ranks among the strategic winners of the conflict without exposing itself
: the war is reorganising itself around Beijing, not because China controls the war, but because it is becoming difficult to manage it without China. If one objective of the war was to drive China away from the Gulf, we note, it has failed. The Strait of Hormuz, once a threat to Beijing, is becoming a tool of Chinese influence.
For now, the war remains within the framework of the erosion of the Carter Doctrine rather than marking its reversal or undoing, even though China is being brought into the region by the very power that triggered the crisis to contain China. The Trump corollary to the doctrine – the old American guarantee of an open door in the Gulf – confirms, on the other hand, the possibility of plunging the artery into chaos to force other powers to negotiate, even if American strategic intentions are unclear. These may include negotiating China's entrance into the Gulf, or the formation of a coalition of powers to prevent or hinder it. Moreover, the naval mine clearing and security missions in Hormuz, planned by Europe and the Asian powers for the post-war period, may also take on a variety of characteristics: from the old powers internationalising the open door and preserving it from American oscillations, to a conditional opening up to China, within the concert of powers, as the framework for the new partition currently underway. In this sense, the form these missions take will reflect the shifting power relations.
There has been talk of a Suez crisis for the American power, in a somewhat forced analogy with the final phase of Britain's long decline. But a true 1956
, with the reversal of relations between China and the US in the Gulf, akin to that between the old colonial powers and the young American power in the 1950s, has only been glimpsed and not yet realised. Beijing has not taken over from the United States in the Gulf, and it is plausible that it will confirm its preference for a gradual 1956, reducing the burdens of its own external projection and preserving its capacity for playing a defensive game against the American presence. One can safely assume that in The Forbidden City Henry Kissinger's writings are taken note of, according to which in 1956 Washington was hasty in humiliating the Europeans, subsequently finding itself shouldering a burden in the Middle East and Vietnam that it could instead have shared. Chinese caution may be aimed at not repeating the same mistake. Political currents in Shanghai and Guangzhou, reluctant to wade into the Middle Eastern quagmire in opposition to the US, have in any case been documented by our newspaper.
Furthermore, during the crisis the Dragon has reinforced its image as a responsible power, gaining legitimacy from its criticism of the weakening of the international order. Beijing stakes a claim to the shared interest of the major powers in a degree of relative stability within the imperialist contention. However, the United States not only declares that it no longer wishes to guarantee this, but is now acting accordingly on the economic, political, and military fronts. Yet, for China's claims to be credible they must also include the US to some extent. Zheng Yongnian, of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong University of Guangdong, writes that the war in Iran has expanded China's strategic room for manoeuvre to negotiate a cooperative G2
with the US. China should welcome Trump to Beijing with the highest level of protocol
and offer an open door to the South China Sea in exchange for recognition of Chinese sovereignty. Zheng is a Manchesterian
from Guangzhou, for whom changing the world through productive capacity is the most peaceful approach
; but this does not mean renouncing political skill
. China wishes to avoid a clash with Washington in order to increase its influence within the crisis in the world order. This also aligns with the interests of other powers in delaying the breakdown of the order, if only to allow time for rearmament. China's strategic calm
may therefore serve to drive a wedge between the old powers.
At present, the intensification of the Atlantic crisis between the US and the EU is the most significant outcome of the war. In some respects, the conflict renders it irreversible, with Trump's threats to abandon NATO, the linkage – or blackmail – between American involvement in Ukraine and Europe's role in the Gulf, and European refusals to grant bases and airspace to US fighter jets.
The White House has, in practice – that is, through its own words – undermined the credibility of the American security umbrella: suspicion regarding the Alliance's mutual defence is now reinforced by the possibility that the US may re-elect a president who declares he does not respect it, even if he were to be opposed in the Senate. In other respects, the conflict has highlighted the US's dependence on European bases for air missions in the Middle East; according to Jana Puglierin of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), this is one of the cards Europe holds in its hand to exert pressure on Washington.
The precedent of the 1973 Yom Kippur War may be useful for situating the crisis within a longer-term context, and for understanding both the recurring pattern of American opposition to European autonomy and the shifting political relations between the two sides of the Atlantic. In his memoirs, Kissinger recalls how 1973 was supposed to be the Year of Europe
, intended by the Nixon administration as a revival of Atlantic relations following the shocks of 1971. Instead, it became the year of Watergate, the oil crisis, and the transatlantic crisis; reconciliation would have to wait until the Rambouillet summit in 1975.
The key development concerned the strengthening of the EEC with the accession of the UK, Ireland, and Denmark. The new Europe of the Nine was now committed to move toward political as well as economic unification. This expansion and the strengthening of European unity marked the end of the matter-of-fact American pre-eminence in the West
, Atlantic relations had been transformed. Kissinger doubted that Europe would unite in order to share our burdens or that it would be content with a subordinate role once it had the means to implement its own views
; the distinctive purposes
of the two continents might still be harmonised, but it would be a different relationship from that of the 'golden age' of the Marshall Plan, which had fitted in so well with the American penchant for taking charge and inundating problems with resources
. Once Europe had become economically strong and politically united, cooperation would require painful adjustment and patience and sensitivity on both sides of the Atlantic
.
Nixon's and Kissinger's initiative made it possible to examine hitherto unarticulated differences in perspective
by the European allies; but it was the war between Israel, Egypt, and Syria, and the Arab oil embargo, that brought to light differing and occasionally even clashing interests
. Europe's dependence on oil was compounded by its frustration at being a mere spectator in a region where it had previously enjoyed pre-eminence; but the deeper problem concerned the behaviour of the allies in a situation of emergency and mutual dissent: In 1956, when faced with this choice during the British and French attempt to seize the Suez Canal, the United States imposed its own assessment on its allies. [...] I have always believed that many of our later difficulties have stemmed from our insensitive conduct towards our allies at that time, which both stimulated a long-festering resentment and fostered a sense of impotence that accelerated their withdrawal from overseas commitments and added to American burdens. Now the tables were turned and Europe showed no greater wisdom than we had nearly two decades earlier
.
In 1973, the Europeans denied US air forces access to bases and airspace on various grounds, but the essence of the American dispute with Europe
was strategic: Europe wanted the option to conduct a policy separate from the United States and, in the case of the Middle East, objectively in conflict with us
. Today, the divergence is no less marked and is certainly more explicit than it was then in public debate. But over the decades, the course of Atlantic relations has seen Europe gradually structure itself into a continental imperialist force, with its plurality of State superstructures, and, with the war in Ukraine, accelerate its rearmament within the transatlantic framework.
On the one hand, it is foreseeable that the war in Iran will further intensify European pressure for the Europeanisation of NATO. The New York Times highlights three reports from last year pointing in that direction: for Camille Grand of the ECFR, a ten-year plan for European rearmament may paradoxically be the best way to preserve a strong Atlantic relationship and US engagement. For the think tank Bruegel, European defence against the Russian threat without the United States would require €250 billion in the short term; and according to the IISS in London, a trillion dollars is needed to replace American conventional capabilities in the Euro-Atlantic theatre. At the same time, initiatives for European deterrence and measures more closely linked to EU defence remain on the table. Finally, it is politically logical that the Atlantic crisis should prompt the re-emergence of European initiatives to restore ties with Russia, starting with the energy issue, given Europe's dual dependence on the Gulf and on American gas.
With the caution befitting a state of war, this prospect is being discussed in Russia and is beginning to surface in the German press. Fyodor Lukyanov, president of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, told the Slovak magazine Merker that Moscow would like to resume exports to Europe, but the European stance depends largely on Germany. Lukyanov counts himself among those in Russia seeking to forge relations with the EU. Dmitri Trenin, president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), called in the daily Kommersant for a closer study of Europe, to grasp its divergence from the US on the war in Ukraine and its opposition to war in Iran. Europe is no longer a vassal
of the United States, and their positions also differ on Russia. Finally, according to Ivan Timofeev, director of the RIAC, a future rapprochement cannot be ruled out. Signs of this are coming from the journal Internationale Politik published by the German Society for Foreign Policy (DGAP), where Christian Trippe highlighted the nuances
of the Russian debate and echoes Lukyanov. These signals, too, must be counted among the unintended consequences of the Gulf War.
As for the rest of the world, the hard facts of Asia's energy dependence on the Gulf are now rapidly turning into formidable blows to the economy, social relations, and internal political cycles of many countries. The consequences of the Hormuz blockade in Asia are severe, as we document elsewhere in this newspaper. Once again, it proves useful to follow the international press.
Tokyo's Nikkei reports that the Japanese government is considering contributing to the clearance of mines in the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities have ceased.
Happymon Jacob, editor of India's World, writes that the war has created more problems than it has solved: While it is clear that American military power can inflict enormous damage, it is increasingly unable to convert such damage into political outcomes
. Faced with the blockade of Hormuz, the American response has been to shirk all responsibility; the costs of Trump's global misadventures fall hardest on those who depend most on the old, dying global order; confidence in American leadership in Asia is at an all-time low. For India, the US is becoming a permanent source of instability in the strategic neighbourhood of the Gulf and South Asia, making it necessary to reassess the balance of its multi-alignment strategy – without abandoning its beneficial relationship with the US, but containing the fallout from Washington.
Raja Mohan sums it up: Asian capitals recognise the risks of outsourcing their core interests to Washington's shifting political moods
. The closure of Hormuz strikes at the heart of the region's economic security, whose prosperity also depends on the Montego Bay rules for freedom of navigation. India has consistently emphasised the two principles of energy security and unimpeded navigation through Hormuz. These shared concerns create the space for Delhi to build a regional coalition to uphold freedom of navigation
. There is also a Chinese proposal for an Asian Consumer Order Alliance
, equipped with monetary, insurance, and military instruments, put forward by the oil group CNPC in the Beijing Cultural Review. In the Guangdong Greater Bay Area magazine, however, we find a Chinese proposal for petrochemical cooperation and the joint exploitation of oil fields in the South China Sea.
In the twilight of the American open door policy, naval missions, unintended consequences, and half-baked 1956
scenarios are proliferating.