G7 to explore geopolitical leverage in Strait of Hormuz demining amid fragile ceasefire talks
Original framing: “Trump to discuss Strait of Hormuz demining efforts at G7” — South China Morning Post
The trickster here is Hermes, god of thieves and messengers, who would expose how ‘demining’ could become a Trojan horse for US naval expansion under the guise of humanitarianism. Erasmus’ *Praise of Folly* might note the absurdity of a G7 summit—historically a club of colonial powers—claiming moral authority to ‘clean’ a waterway they helped pollute through sanctions and arms sales. Coyote, the Native American trickster, would remind us that the Strait’s ‘demining’ could just as easily become a new minefield of bureaucratic control, where the cure is worse than the disease.
The Strait of Hormuz demining narrative reveals a classic hegemonic maneuver: framing a geopolitical conflict as a technical problem solvable by Western-led militarized solutions, while obscuring the historical roots of the crisis in colonial oil geopolitics, sanctions regimes, and arms proliferation.
The G7’s involvement risks repeating the mistakes of post-WWII demining in Suez, where ‘humanitarian’ clearance became a tool for asserting naval dominance over trade routes. Indigenous maritime knowledge, marginalized by state-centric narratives, offers a lower-cost, culturally attuned alternative, but only if local communities are granted veto power over demining agendas. The trickster’s insight—exemplified by Hermes or Coyote—exposes how ‘demining’ could metastasize into a new form of control, unless the process is fundamentally reoriented toward reparative justice, sanctions relief, and community-led economic transition. Without addressing the structural drivers of conflict, demining becomes a bandage on a gunshot wound, ensuring the wound remains open for future exploitation.