There is a gate across this road. The modern man says, “I see no reason for it; let us remove it.” The wiser man says, “If you see no reason for it, I will not let you remove it. Go away and think. When you can tell me why it is here, I may let you destroy it.”

The gate in question is the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow, watery corridor that serves as the throat of the global economy. It is a place of immense tension, where the great powers of the world - the United States and the various actors of the Iranian state - are currently engaged in a most vigorous form of choreography. We are told by the news-reels that the traffic has slowed to a trickle, that the ships are idling like nervous horses in a thunderstorm, and that the blockade actions of the great players have turned a highway into a cul-de-sac. The reformers of the world, the clever men in the high offices of diplomacy, look at this congestion and see only a problem of logistics, a failure of movement, a knot that needs to be untied by the application of more pressure, more sanctions, and more naval presence.

They wish to remove the tension by removing the cause of the tension, but they have forgotten that the tension is the very thing that defines the geography. To look at the Strait of Hormuz and see only a “chokepoint” is to look at a human heart and see only a pump. It is a technical term used by people who believe that if they can just manipulate the valves and the pipes, they can ignore the blood.

The current crisis is presented to us as a dispute over ownership or a dispute over law, but it is actually a dispute over the very nature of a boundary. The United States acts as if the sea is a common playground where the rules of the playground must be enforced by the strongest child. Iran acts as if the sea is a private garden where the gardener may bar the gate at his whim. Both sides are attempting to dismantle the very concept of a neutral passage, yet both sides rely on that passage to justify their own presence.

The tragedy of the modern intellectual is that he believes a blockade is merely a way of stopping a thing from moving. He does not realize that a blockade is also a way of making everything else move toward a catastrophe. When you stop the flow of oil, you do not simply stop the oil; you start the flow of panic. You do not merely halt the tankers; you accelerate the momentum of the very forces you are trying to contain.

We see the ships slowing down, and the experts say, “The flow is interrupted.” But the common man looks at the slowing ships and sees that the interruption is not a mechanical failure, but a psychological one. The ships are not being stopped by hulls or by mines alone; they are being stopped by the sudden, terrifying realization that the “rules” of the world are being rewritten in real-time. The fence of international law is being dismantled, and the reformers are standing in the gap, wondering why the wind is blowing so much harder than it used to.

The cleverness of the blockade lies in its ability to achieve the exact opposite of its stated intent. The goal is to exert control, yet the result is a loss of control. The goal is to secure the energy supply by punishing the adversary, yet the result is a global uncertainty that makes the supply itself a hostage to the whims of the moment. It is the classic error of the man who tries to catch a butterfly by slamming a heavy book shut upon it; he may indeed catch the butterfly, but he will find that he has destroyed the very thing he wished to observe.

The true danger is not that the Strait might be closed, but that it is being “managed” by people who do not understand why it was ever left open. The openness of the Strait was not a lack of policy; it was a policy of equilibrium. It was a way of allowing the world to breathe. By turning the Strait into a theater of confrontation, the actors are turning a lung into a fist. And a fist, no matter how well-trained, is a very poor way to breathe.