Brett Six

Food for thought. Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface. The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities. Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed. In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines. In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive. A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent. By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right. In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

Hello Senator Thune, At 3 AM on Friday, March 27th, in a near-empty chamber, you passed a bill by voice vote that excludes all funding for ICE and CBP. Let me repeat that: voice vote. No roll call. No record of who was there. No accountability. Just you, Barrasso, and a handful of senators shuffling paper in the dead of night while America slept. You could have demanded a recorded vote. You chose not to. You could have held the line for five more days until the House returned. You chose not to. You could have used the same procedural tools Democrats have used against you for 40 days. You chose not to. Instead, you gave Chuck Schumer exactly what he asked for, DHS funding minus immigration enforcement, and called it a win. Then you walked to the cameras and blamed the Democrats. Let's be precise about what you did: 1. You caved to a demand Democrats made on Day 1 of this shutdown. Forty-one days of supposed hardball negotiation, and you settled for their opening offer. 2. You handed them a template. The next time Democrats want to defund any agency — ICE, CBP, or anything else — they now know: just shut down DHS and wait. John Thune will fold at 3 AM. 3. You punted to reconciliation. "Good possibility," you said. Not "we will." Not "guaranteed." Just maybe. Meanwhile, ICE operates on fumes from last year's bill with no certainty of future funding. The precedent you set: You have argued for months that the filibuster is sacrosanct. That the 60-vote threshold protects minority rights. That we cannot bend Senate rules for policy wins. But at 3 AM on Friday, you bent every norm that actually mattered: • Voice vote to avoid accountability • Empty chamber to avoid debate • Midnight deal to avoid scrutiny • Immediate recess to avoid questions You'll bend the rules to avoid a fight. You just won't bend them to win one. What you've actually accomplished: Democrats demanded ICE restrictions. They got ICE defunded. Not reformed. Not restrained. Defunded. And you're out here tweeting about how Democrats are the "Defund the Police" party while you just voted to defund border enforcement at 3 in the morning. The question you should answer: Why did this deal have to happen at 3 AM? Why couldn't it happen at 3 PM, with cameras rolling and every senator on record? You know why. Because you didn't want your voters to see what surrender looks like. Here's my message: We saw it anyway. Stop hiding behind "Democrat obstruction." You're the Majority Leader. You set the schedule. You control the floor. You chose this outcome. Own it.