Iran has re-closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial vessels after briefly reopening it, amid ongoing tensions.
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 Strait of Hormuz is currently being treated by the international community as if it were merely a plumbing fixture - a convenient, transparent pipe through which the lifeblood of global industry flows without friction or thought. The diplomats and the economists, those high priests of the frictionless world, look upon the movement of oil and commerce as a mathematical necessity, a natural law as immutable as gravity. They view the sudden closing and reopening of this passage not as a profound statement of political will, but as a technical malfunction, a temporary clog in the global drain.
But a gate is never just a gate. When a nation closes a passage, it is not merely obstructing a waterway; it is asserting a boundary. To the modern economist, a boundary is an inefficiency; to the statesman, a boundary is a definition. The tragedy of our present age is that we have become so enamoured with the idea of the “global market” that we have forgotten that a market is a place where people meet, and people, by their very nature, possess borders, grievances, and the capacity to say “No.”
The recent fluctuations in the Strait - the brief, hopeful reopening followed by the grim re-closure - are being analysed by the clever people in London and Washington as “tensions” or “disruptions.” They speak of “chokepoints” as if they were discussing a mere bottleneck in a factory production line. They fail to see that the chokepoint is not a geographical accident; it is a political manifestation. The closure is the fence being slammed shut.
The error of the progressive intellectual is to believe that because a fence is inconvenient, it must be irrational. They look at the Strait of Hormuz and see a logistical nightmare that threatens the stability of energy markets. They do not see that the “instability” they dread is actually the presence of a sovereign will. They want a world of highways without tollbooths, of oceans without shores, and of commerce without consequences. They wish to enjoy the fruits of global trade while pretending that the hands that control the gates do not exist.
We are told that these closures are “unspecified” in their duration and “contested” in their reasons. This is the language of the bewildered expert. The expert is bewildered because he is looking for a logical, legalistic justification that fits within the neat parameters of international maritime law. He is looking for a reason that can be debated in a committee. He cannot grasp the reason that is much simpler and much more terrifying: the reason is that the gatekeeper has decided that the gate is his.
The true danger is not merely the rise in the price of oil, which is a grievance for the pocketbook; the danger is the erosion of the understanding that commerce is a guest in the house of sovereignty. We have built a global house with magnificent, sprawling corridors of trade, but we have forgotten that these corridors pass through the private gardens of other men. We have attempted to build a system of total interdependence while simultaneously attempting to deny the very autonomy that makes such interdependence a choice rather than a hostage situation.
When the gate is closed, the economist cries “Inefficiency!” But the common man, looking at the darkened lights of a factory or the empty pumps of a station, understands something the economist does not: he understands that the fence was built to protect a claim. The question is not whether the closure is “fair” or “legal” according to the rules of the London Stock Exchange, but whether the world has become so enamoured with the idea of the open road that it has lost the ability to respect the existence of the gate. We are currently witnessing the moment when the modern world discovers, with great shock and much expensive indignation, that the fences it thought were mere inconveniences are, in fact, the very things that define the limits of its power.