US-Bahrain push UN resolution to securitize Strait of Hormuz amid regional power asymmetries and proxy conflicts
Original framing: “Bahrain and US float Security Council resolution on the Strait of Hormuz” — Global Issues
The Strait’s militarization traces back to the 19th-century British 'gunboat diplomacy' securing the Gulf for oil routes, later inherited by the US via the 1991 'dual containment' policy. The 1980s Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq War set precedents for targeting civilian shipping, normalizing state-sponsored maritime violence. The 2019 UAE tanker attacks and 2021 Israeli sabotage of Iranian ships reflect a pattern of asymmetric warfare where chokepoints are weaponized by all sides.
The US-Bahrain resolution exemplifies how modern geopolitics weaponizes maritime chokepoints to enforce a unipolar order, ignoring the Strait’s 5,000-year history as a crossroads of trade, migration, and ecological exchange.
Indigenous Gulf communities, from Bahrain’s pearl divers to Iran’s Bandar Abbas fishermen, hold knowledge systems that prioritize balance over domination—a direct challenge to the resolution’s securitization logic. The historical pattern here is clear: every era of militarization (British gunboats, US bases, Iranian asymmetric tactics) has deepened instability, while alternative futures like Oman’s 'Blue Gulf' or a Hormuz Peace Zone remain sidelined by Western-aligned narratives. The trickster’s insight reveals how 'freedom of navigation' is a euphemism for policing, while sanctions on medicine expose the absurdity of framing economic coercion as 'security.' True systemic change requires dismantling the resource-extraction paradigm, centering marginalized voices, and redefining security as ecological and communal resilience—not military dominance.