Editor’s Note: When a military operation initially framed as a “quick victory” escalates into prolonged disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, rising global energy prices, and the implementation of fuel rationing and strategic reserve releases by multiple nations, the consequences of war extend far beyond the battlefield and penetrate the foundational systems of the global economy.

This article uses Robert Kagan’s piece in The Atlantic as a starting point to highlight a symbolic turning point: those who once long provided strategic justifications for U.S. military interventions now admit that America’s setback in Iran is not merely a local failure, but a deeper strategic defeat. What the author truly seeks to explore is not whether the United States won a war, but whether it still possesses the capacity to underwrite global energy security, Gulf order, and its alliance system.

What matters more is not whether the Strait of Hormuz will reopen in the short term, but that the global structure of trust surrounding this strait has been rewritten. In the past, the United States upheld “freedom of navigation” through naval power and security commitments; now, the author argues, this mechanism is being replaced by a new “licensing system,” with licensing authority shifting toward Tehran. Gulf states are reassessing their relations with Iran, allies are questioning the credibility of U.S. commitments, and energy importers are responding to this new reality through rationing, stockpiling, alternative imports, and price controls.

The article’s insight lies in connecting military defeat, energy crises, and domestic political deception as links in the same chain: war is not an isolated event, but the cumulative result of years of strategic arrogance, policy misjudgments, and political theater. When policymakers view war as a triumphant narrative on television, the true costs are borne by those waiting in line at gas stations, small businesses reliant on diesel transport, food systems strained by soaring fertilizer prices, and ordinary people whose lives depend on global supply chains.

When the United States is unable to reopen an energy lifeline it has long pledged to protect, the global order has already begun repricing itself around this reality. The cost of war will gradually shift from sentences in strategic reports to numbers on everyone’s bills.

The following is the original text:

On Saturday, Robert Kagan published an article in The Atlantic titled "Checkmate in the Iranian Chess Game."

Yes, the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, Victoria Nuland’s husband, Frederick Kagan’s brother, and the “official philosopher” behind every U.S. war over the past three decades.

In the text, he wrote that the United States suffered "a total defeat in a conflict, a defeat so decisive that this strategic loss cannot be compensated for or ignored."

This is not an ordinary critic, but someone who has long provided strategic justifications for hardliners like Dick Cheney; this is not an ordinary media outlet, but a magazine that has nearly always framed every U.S. military intervention as a “strategic necessity.”

But now, they are telling readers in language that would once have been dismissed by themselves as “defeatist” or even “unpatriotic”: America has just lost—not a battle, not a military operation, but its position in the global order.

If even the McDonald's clown starts saying the burgers taste bad, then the problem is truly serious.

What every American should pause to seriously consider is that while Kagan was still writing a postmortem on this strategic failure in the opinion section of The Atlantic, the real world—the world of gas stations, supermarkets, refineries, and shipping costs—had already begun to bear the consequences.

Sri Lanka has begun rationing fuel via QR codes; Pakistan has implemented a four-day workweek; India’s strategic petroleum reserves have dwindled to just 6 to 10 days’ supply; South Korea has enacted odd-even traffic restrictions; Japan is conducting its second emergency reserve release this year. Meanwhile, in the United States—the country where the Secretary of Defense publicly declared in February that Iran would “surrender or be destroyed”—gas prices are rising, and strategic reserves are being included in the largest coordinated release in IEA history.

This is the reality of a "chosen war": the so-called choice is made by a group of people willing to burn down their own country to manipulate markets and satisfy fragile egos.

Let’s take a look step by step.

One, Trump tells you this war will end in a weekend.

Rewind the clock (it doesn’t even need to be that far back, since it’s only been 70 days) to February 28, 2026.

That night, the Trump administration, in coordination with Israel, launched Operation Epic Fury—a coordinated air and naval strike. Within just 72 hours, Iran’s Supreme Leader was killed, the Iranian Navy was destroyed, Iran’s defense industrial base was severely crippled, and an entire generation of Iran’s military leadership was systematically eliminated.

The smoke had barely cleared when Trump announced on Truth Social, “Peace through strength.” Pete Hegseth—who now insists on calling himself “Secretary of War”—then took the stage at the Pentagon, delivering his usual bluster and virtually no analytical depth, declaring that Iran had “no defense industry and no replenishment capability.”

But he overlooked a key detail. What Iran plans to do next doesn't require its defense industry—it only needs a map.

On March 4, six days after Hegseth declared the war won, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—not merely "obstruction of passage" or "restricted shipping lanes," but full closure. According to Iran, not a single liter of oil may pass through without Tehran's permission. Any vessel attempting to transit that is "connected to the United States, Israel, or their allies" will be considered a "legitimate target."

Within 48 hours, war risk insurance premiums quintupled. Within 72 hours, AIS automatic identification system transponders on numerous large tankers worldwide were successively shut down. The strait, which normally handles about 20% of global seaborne oil transport and a significant share of liquefied natural gas shipments, has effectively fallen silent.

Fairly speaking, the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not fail to warn Trump. According to multiple reports, during briefings prior to Operation Epic Fury, the military explicitly cautioned that Iran’s most likely retaliatory move would be to close the Strait of Hormuz.

At the time, Trump’s response was essentially that Iran would “surrender”; if they didn’t surrender, “we can just reopen the strait.”

But the reality is that the United States has not reopened it, and the United States cannot reopen it.

This sentence is the core of the entire story.

II. What Kegen truly acknowledged, and what he still cannot bring himself to say

The most notable aspect of Kagan's article is not what it predicted, but what it acknowledged.

Strip away the jargon of the strategic circle and the Atlantic-style rhetorical packaging, and what remains is essentially a confession. More plainly, he admitted the following:

First, this is not Vietnam, nor is it Afghanistan. According to Kagan, those wars "did not cause lasting damage to America’s overall standing in the world." But this time, he openly acknowledges that its nature is "fundamentally different," and its consequences are "both irreparable and impossible to ignore."

Second, Iran will not return the Strait of Hormuz. Not “not this year,” not “only if negotiations fail,” but never. As Kagan stated, Iran today “can not only demand tolls but also restrict passage for countries with which it has good relations.”

In other words, the "freedom of navigation" regime that has underpinned the global oil order since the Carter Doctrine—the core premise that justified the United States' four-decade-long military presence in the Persian Gulf—has come to an end. What is emerging now is a new licensing system, with authority over licensing held by Tehran.

Third, the Gulf monarchies must compromise with Iran. Kagan writes: “The United States will prove itself to be nothing more than a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab nations to make concessions to Iran.”

Simply put: every Saudi and Emirati royal who has seen the U.S. fail to protect refineries and shipping lanes is now on the phone with Tehran, negotiating new arrangements. In other words, the security architecture the U.S. spent half a century building in the Gulf is collapsing in real time.

Fourth, the U.S. Navy cannot reopen the strait. This point deserves serious attention, as it is the most explosive admission in the entire article. Kagan writes: “If the United States, with its powerful navy, cannot or will not reopen the strait, then any coalition with capabilities only a fraction of America’s could not possibly do so either.”

Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius almost said the same thing more directly: How many European frigates does Trump expect to accomplish what even the powerful U.S. Navy cannot?

This sentence can almost be read as an obituary. The United States is asking its allies to clean up its mess, and the allies are asking back: What with?

Fifth, U.S. weapons stockpiles have been depleted. Kagan writes: “A brief war of just a few weeks with a second-rate power”—note that the phrase “second-rate power” comes from someone long supportive of regime-change narratives—“has drained U.S. weapons stockpiles to dangerously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight.”

If you are sitting in Taipei, Seoul, or Warsaw right now and reading this passage from The Atlantic, you will not feel any safer—only noticeably less safe.

Sixth, allies' trust has been damaged, America’s security commitments have been proven false, and the assessments of China and Russia have been validated. Kagan barely states this directly—he cannot, at least not so plainly in The Atlantic—but this conclusion lurks behind every sentence, like a corpse beneath the floorboards.

Of course, what he truly couldn't bring himself to say was: how exactly did the United States get to this point?

He himself is one of the people who brought the United States to this point—along with his wife, his brother, every co-signer of the Project for the New American Century’s open letters since 1997, and every think tank researcher over the past 25 years who has consistently portrayed Iran as an indispensable enemy of the United States.

In his article, there is not a trace of self-reflection. Not even for a moment does he acknowledge that perhaps 30 years of maximum pressure forged the very adversary that now turns the tables and pushes the United States into a corner.

Smoke had spread everywhere, yet the arsonist remained puzzled as to why there was a burnt smell in the air.

So, what solution did he propose?

You'll want to laugh first, then can't laugh anymore.

The answer is: a larger-scale war. Specifically, he advocated for "launching a full-scale ground and naval war to overthrow the current Iranian regime and occupy Iran."

Someone who just wrote 4,000 words explaining how the U.S. Navy couldn’t reopen a 21-mile-wide waterway against an opponent he called a “second-rate power” ultimately concludes that invading and occupying a country of 90 million people situated in the most defensible mountainous terrain in Western Asia.

The arsonist's solution to extinguishing the fire was to set a bigger fire.

III. Meanwhile, in the real world: a global oil crisis is unfolding country by country.

Strategic analysis is one thing. A strategic analyst can finish writing an article, walk to a coffee shop on Washington Street, and order a flat white without having to think about what kind of diesel fuel the milk truck is burning.

But everyone else on Earth is now calculating this bill—and the numbers aren't pretty.

As of this morning, the global situation has become this:

Sri Lanka has entered a nationwide fuel rationing status. Each vehicle is allocated a quota via a QR code, and schools and universities have also implemented energy-saving measures. This is not a prediction—it is already a reality.

Pakistan has implemented a four-day workweek in both the public and private sectors. Markets close earlier, and remote work has been widely promoted to reduce commuting demands.

India's strategic petroleum reserves are now down to only 6 to 10 days. Although total system-wide inventories stand at about 60 days, panic buying is rising rapidly, and the government is scrambling to secure emergency import sources. An increasing amount of crude oil is coming from Russia, which is clearly eager to supply it.

· South Korea has implemented mandatory odd-even traffic restrictions for the public sector, voluntary measures for other groups, and incentives through price caps. Additionally, South Korea has imposed a five-month export ban on naphtha.

Japan is now conducting its second large-scale emergency strategic reserve release this year. The first occurred in March. Today, Japan has begun drawing from its previously reported 230-day buffer stock with the International Energy Agency.

The UK has entered price shock mode. The government has introduced targeted assistance for households using heating oil, legislation on windfall taxes has been reinstated on the agenda, and enforcement against price gouging has been launched.

Germany has extended tax reductions on gasoline and diesel and has begun rolling out employer-funded fuel subsidies.

France has introduced targeted fuel discounts and accelerated the distribution of energy vouchers to high-mileage drivers, transport workers, fishermen, and the agricultural sector.

South Africa has significantly cut fuel taxes, but long lines at gas stations continue.

Turkey has reduced the special consumption tax on fuel.

Brazil has eliminated the diesel tax and is providing direct subsidies to producers and importers.

Australia has halved the fuel excise tax, launched a nationwide "Every Point Matters" energy-saving initiative, and provided business support loans to industries affected by fuel price impacts.

The United States is participating in the largest coordinated release of strategic reserves in the history of the International Energy Agency, totaling 400 million barrels. Meanwhile, several states have already implemented gasoline tax holidays, and the federal government is publicly considering extending this policy nationwide.

As the world’s largest crude oil importer, China responded in its typical crisis manner: first, pull up the drawbridge. Large domestic reserves were retained, refined oil exports were banned, and domestic price controls were further tightened. Meanwhile, it quietly purchased every available shipment of discounted Russian and Venezuelan spot crude oil—because, of course, it would.

And all of this is happening even as the International Energy Agency has already launched a historically coordinated release initiative.

Please read this next part carefully, because from here on, it’s no longer just numbers on a chart—it will enter your everyday life.

Eric Nuttall, energy analyst at Ninepoint Partners, recently told Bloomberg, according to the paraphrase, that his core assessment is: “This isn’t about what happens months or quarters from now. Over the coming weeks, you will have to compress demand by more than during the COVID-19 period.”

According to his description—not my summary—this could be “the largest energy crisis in modern history.” And rationing, particularly demand-side rationing of the kind the U.S. has scarcely seen since 1973, may be “only weeks away.”

Weeks. Not months, not an abstract medium term, but weeks.

You should now look at the car outside your door in a completely different way.

Four: Why this issue won't "solve itself"

I’d like to pause here because American readers may easily interpret this as a temporary disturbance.

They will instinctively assume that whenever a certain combination occurs, the situation will resolve itself in the next news cycle: Iran "blinks and surrenders"; Trump finds a face-saving exit; Saudi Arabia opens the oil tap; or the U.S. Navy finally "takes action."

But this will not happen, for the following reasons.

Iran has no motive to abandon the Strait of Hormuz.

No, not at all.

Today, this strait has become Iran’s most valuable strategic asset—more valuable than its nuclear program, for which it has nominally gone to war, and more valuable than the various proxy networks it has previously used as bargaining chips. Iranian Parliament Speaker Kalibaf has publicly stated, “The situation in the Strait of Hormuz will not return to its pre-war state.”

This is not bluffing; it is a policy statement.

For the past 40 years, Iran has been told it has no cards to play. Now, it holds the most important card in the global economy. The next Iranian regime—and there will inevitably be a next one, as airstrikes have killed enough of the old leadership to make a power transition almost unavoidable—will inherit and wield this card.

Believing Iran would easily return it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what has just happened.

The Gulf monarchies can no longer openly confront Iran. Saudi Arabia’s refining network, the UAE’s ports, and Qatar’s LNG terminals—all are within range of Iran’s missiles, drones, and proxy forces. These countries have just witnessed the United States fail to defend Israel’s most strategic assets, protect U.S. bases in the UAE and Bahrain, and reopen the strait vital to their economic lifeline.

The so-called security guarantee has been disproven by reality.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi will not bet their national survival on a guarantor that has just proven itself unable to provide guarantees. They will seek deals. In fact, they are already seeking deals.

Even the U.S. military cannot physically reopen this strait in reality. This fact should have sparked outrage from everyone.

In terms of absolute strength, the U.S. Navy remains the most powerful naval force in human history. Yet, after just 38 days of major combat operations against an opponent that Kagan himself called a "second-rate power," it has depleted its weapons stockpiles to "dangerously low" levels.

Today, the U.S. Navy has launched a progressively more subdued operation called Project Freedom, attempting to escort one commercial vessel at a time through the Strait of Hormuz. The result: only two ships passed through in a week.

Two. Before the war, the average was 130 per day.

On Tuesday, Rubio described the "Free Project" as a "first step" toward creating a "protection bubble."

A bubble. The strait, once as open as a highway, is now reduced to nothing more than a bubble that the United States can only try to protect.

More importantly, no coalition will step in to take over. Boris Pistorius has been very clear about this. While the defense departments of the UK and France have not been as direct, their meaning is equally clear. Trump requested on Truth Social that South Korea “join the mission,” and South Korea politely responded that it would “study the proposal.” In diplomatic language, this means: we will not join.

Japan is busy depleting its strategic reserves and has no capacity to deploy its navy to the strait. India is purchasing Russian oil. China, the country most dependent on passage through the Strait of Hormuz, is conspicuously absent—and clearly has no intention of cleaning up an American mess that it did not create and which may even be benefiting it.

The United States has appealed to the world for help. The world assessed the situation, did the math, and uncovered a deeply uncomfortable truth: for the first time in 80 years, the United States is effectively unable to underwrite global energy security.

This means the world is reorganizing itself around this reality. This is not a news cycle—it is a shift in order. But it is not the kind of "regime change" Trump and Hegseth originally envisioned.

Five: Trump and Hegseth: Deception Itself Is Policy

We must clearly specify exactly what is being alleged here, because it is important.

This was not an unforeseen disaster. It was not a black swan. Almost everything that has happened was predicted in advance: the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned during pre-war briefings; analysts at every major think tank not dominated by figures like Kagan warned; every American veteran with combat experience in the Gulf region warned; and even Iran itself repeatedly forewarned through public statements over the past 20 years.

The Strait of Hormuz scenario has been simulated so thoroughly that it even has its own Wikipedia category. Yet this administration still went ahead with it.

Why? Because Trump needs a victory. Because Hegseth needs to appear like a genuine Secretary of Defense. Because the political logic of Trump’s second term—domestic chaos, declining poll numbers, a restless base—demands an overseas adventure: it must have a clear villain and ideally deliver a swift, television-ready victory narrative.

The Bush era called such things “a nice little war.” Hegseth, on stage, referred to the 2025 preemptive strike operation “Midnight Hammer” as “the most complex and secret military operation in history.” Such a display of historical ignorance should have ended his tenure on the spot.

But it didn't.

He is still there. He still calls himself the "Secretary of War." He still takes the stage at the Pentagon to declare that even as missiles are in flight, the ceasefire holds; even as ships are burning, the operation is not offensive; even as diesel prices in Los Angeles have reached $7.40 per gallon, Iran has still been "destroyed."

This person is essentially a cable TV pundit dressed in a Pentagon suit. The position he holds requires the most rigorous strategic judgment and logistical capabilities within the U.S. government—both of which he lacks.

The consequences of this mismatch are now being borne in real time by every ordinary person on Earth: those who drive to work, those who take the bus to school, small business owners whose operations rely on logistics and delivery, those who eat grain grown with nitrogen fertilizer, and those living in countries dependent on imported diesel to keep their systems running.

In other words, almost all of us.

This war is illegal. Such large-scale hostilities have received no authorization from Congress, no mandate from the United Nations, and no credible imminent threat. It has only a president who wants war, a defense secretary who wants press conferences, and a national security apparatus—trained over the past 30 years by Kagan and his allies—to ultimately answer “yes.”

Meanwhile, those who once said "yes" are now writing 4,000-word articles in The Atlantic explaining how unexpected it all was.

Six: What You Should Do This Week

I usually don’t include a practical advice section. This newsletter also isn’t typically that type.

But Natoll said "weeks." Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and South Korea are no longer waiting. The International Energy Agency’s reserve releases are not unlimited. I think those who have read this far deserve to hear some direct words.

So:

· If you've been considering buying an electric vehicle, the math has changed. I'm not telling you how to spend your savings—I'm saying that every additional week you hold onto a gasoline-powered car, its marginal cost has become significantly higher than last month; meanwhile, the marginal benefit of going electric—your ability to keep moving when gas stations line up with long queues, tanks run dry, or fuel allocations are rationed—has correspondingly increased.

· If your charging conditions allow, this is the moment when the logic shifts.

If you have the ability to stock up on staple foods that rely on diesel-intensive distribution systems, do so now. This is not panic buying, but reasonable household储备. A shock to fertilizer supplies—remember, the Persian Gulf accounts for 30% to 35% of global urea exports and a significant share of ammonia exports—will transmit to food prices within six to nine months, and it inevitably will. Stock up on legumes, rice, oats, and frozen proteins. This is standard emergency preparedness, not doomsday bunker-style hoarding.

· If your work depends on physical supply chains, you should discuss contingency plans with your employer this week. Air freight costs are expected to continue rising—North American aviation fuel prices have increased by 95% since before the war, with no near-term relief in sight.

· If you're an American, call your member of Congress and talk about the War Powers Resolution. What's happening in the Persian Gulf right now has no congressional authorization—neither in the past nor now. The legal basis for the "Freedom Project" relies only on remnants of the authorization for Operation Inherent Resolve, which Rubio himself has stated has ended. The legal framework supporting all of this has, in technical terms, evaporated.

· If you are a journalist or analyst, read Kagan’s article. Read it twice. Notice what it lacks: moral reflection, self-examination, the human cost, the names of the dead. Also notice what it presents: a strategic-level acknowledgment that the neoconservative project has ended. This is a historically significant document that should be read both as a confession and as a warning.

· If you're outside the U.S., you've likely already done the math. You're rationing, hoarding, hedging. You don't need my advice. You might just want to know that some Americans are still paying attention to this. Not many, but they exist.

Seven: Smoke smell

I’d like to end with a line that has stayed with me since reading Kagan’s article, as I think it captures the whole thing.

The arsonist smelled smoke.

For 30 years, a specific group in Washington—Kagan, Nuland, Frederick Kagan, every signatory of the "Project for the New American Century" open letters, every think tank researcher whose name includes "America," "Defense," or "Security"—has consistently argued that the United States must maintain military dominance in the Middle East.

They said that regime change in Iraq would lead to democracy across the region.

They said that maximum pressure on Iran would either overthrow the regime or strip it of its ability to cause harm.

They said the United States can provide security guarantees to the Gulf monarchies indefinitely.

They say that U.S. weapons, U.S. intelligence, U.S. naval power, and U.S. resolve are sufficient to ensure the global energy system operates smoothly forever under conditions set by Washington.

Now, all these propositions have been refuted by reality, and this is happening in real time.

In just 70 days, a war once envisioned as the project’s ultimate triumph became its obituary. And in many ways, the chief architect behind this catastrophic worldview now sits in the pages of The Atlantic, writing in nearly blunt terms: We lost.

But he still couldn't say: We caused all of this.

He still cannot mention the dead—the 165 female students killed in an airstrike, thousands of Iranian civilians under bombardment, workers on burning oil tankers, personnel at Bahrain’s port, passengers on Tel Aviv buses, and soldiers from more than a dozen countries.

They did not appear in his article.

For him, it was a strategic chess problem, with the pieces just happening to be people.

But strategic issues are themselves moral issues. They are not separate.

A war launched by liars, sold by liars, carried out by liars, and ultimately lost by liars is, before it becomes a strategic disaster, first and foremost a moral disaster. And strategic disasters grow directly from moral disasters: the same cognitive defect that produces lies also causes battlefield errors. The arrogance of ignoring warnings about the Strait of Hormuz is the same arrogance as ignoring warnings about the cost of human life.

Over the next six months, Trump will continually try to frame failure as victory. Hegseth will keep holding press conferences where the word “destroy” will be mentioned far more often than “facts.” Cable news networks will swing back and forth between manufacturing anger and manufacturing optimism. The strategic reserve will continue to be depleted. Lines at gas stations will grow longer. Shipping rates will keep rising. Fertilizer prices will eventually make their way into bread prices.

Somewhere in Washington, Bob Kagan may be sipping a glass of wine, feeling for the first time something akin to fear.

Not for the female students, not for the truck drivers of Karachi, not for the families in Sri Lanka receiving QR-code-based rations—but for the project. For the building he had helped construct over thirty years, which was now collapsing before his eyes, along its very foundations.

The arsonist smelled smoke. And he finally, just now realized that the house was his own.

Americans now have to bear these consequences, which will become extremely painful over the coming months and may last for years.

So, everyone, make sure you're prepared.