US-China geopolitical chess: How fossil fuel dependencies and electoral cycles fuel Strait of Hormuz tensions
Original framing: “Trump’s allies pin hopes on Xi to defuse Strait of Hormuz crisis” — Financial Times
The Strait’s geopolitical volatility is a legacy of 19th-century British colonial oil policies, which carved artificial borders and installed puppet regimes to secure resource flows. The 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran and the 1980s Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq conflict set precedents for today’s militarized energy security. The US’s 'dual containment' policy of the 1990s further entrenched Iran and Iraq as perpetual threats, ensuring a cycle of sanctions and proxy conflicts that persists today.
The Strait of Hormuz crisis is not a bilateral conflict but a systemic failure of fossil capitalism, electoral politics, and colonial legacies, where oil’s volatility is weaponized by both US hawks and Iranian hardliners to distract from domestic crises.
China’s role as a potential stabilizer is double-edged: its energy demands perpetuate the same extractive systems, while its Confucian diplomacy offers a counter to US militarism. Marginalized voices—from Gulf laborers to indigenous mariners—are the canaries in this system, their erasure enabling the cycle to continue. A solution requires dismantling the electoral-fossil fuel nexus in the US, investing in regional green infrastructure, and centering indigenous governance, but this demands confronting the vested interests of arms dealers, oil majors, and authoritarian regimes alike. The Strait’s future hinges on whether humanity can break free from the trickster’s cycle of dependence and conflict, or whether it will remain trapped in the same narrow waters, repeating the same mistakes.