“The dynamo of geopolitics accelerates beyond the moral frameworks designed for a world where trade routes were avenues of faith, not arteries of pure force.”

“To blockade an adversary's lifeblood is to fill your own vessels while emptying his, a victory achieved before the first shot is fired.”

“A system that throttles the flow of energy for political theater is a machine designed for waste, not for the efficient transmission of power.”

“When free transit upon the seas, that self-evident right of nations, is made contingent upon the temper of a single executive, the architecture of liberty fails.”

“Observe how the spiral of a threatened waterway and the geometry of a price chart reveal a single law of pressure and resistance.”

“The proposal to secure the flow of oil by halting the flow of oil appears, upon examination, to be a perfectly sound solution to the problem of having too much oil.”

“A modest proposal: since we cannot agree on terms for peace, let us instead agree to starve commerce itself, a diet certain to produce a more reasonable temper in all parties.”

“Remember that the names of those who closed this strait will be as forgotten as the names of those who last opened it, all dust beneath the same indifferent stars.”

“Faced with the infinite uncertainty of another's resolve, the wager on force always appears rational, yet it stakes a finite peace against an infinite escalation.”

“All the intricate theories of geopolitics cannot disguise the simple fact of a sailor forbidden from his work and a family unable to afford their bread.”

“In every port from Aden to Jeddah, the price of pepper and the mood of the merchants will now turn on the disposition of warships in a narrow channel.”

“This dispute over a strait is a failure of jurisprudence, a confusion of the domain of power with the domain of law, which are meant to be separate authorities.”

“To educate nations for war while calling peace the natural state is to cultivate a helplessness in statecraft as pernicious as that taught to women.”

“'The negotiations failed to reach a deal to end the war,' the report states, a sentence whose passive construction perfectly conceals who holds the knife.”