The Strait of Hormuz Has Become the Chokepoint of American Decline
The dispute over Hormuz is not simply about oil, shipping fees or Iranian leverage. It is about whether the United States can still define the rules of global commerce by force, and whether other powers are now prepared to test the limits of that authority.
The Strait of Hormuz is no longer merely an oil chokepoint. It has become the place where the United States is testing whether it can still define the rules of global commerce and security, and where Iran is testing whether those rules can still be enforced.
The immediate dispute concerns negotiations over the future of the Strait itself. Reports have emerged of discussions involving a possible 60 day ceasefire extension between Washington and Tehran, while American officials have warned Oman against facilitating any system that would allow Iran to collect fees, tolls or administrative charges on shipping transiting Hormuz.
The United States Treasury has said it will aggressively target any actor involved directly or indirectly in facilitating such tolls. President Donald Trump has also escalated the issue rhetorically, warning that Oman must behave over the Strait or face American force. The language was crude, but the underlying message was familiar: the Strait may be described as international water, but Washington still claims the right to determine who may regulate it.
The Real Argument Behind Hormuz
On the surface, the disagreement appears technical. In reality, it is anything but. Beneath the arguments over shipping rights, transit fees, sanctions relief and security guarantees lies a much larger question: who possesses the authority to define the rules governing one of the world’s most important trade arteries?
For decades, the answer seemed obvious. The United States Navy protected global sea lanes, the dollar sat at the centre of international trade, and Washington possessed the military and financial power necessary to enforce compliance with the system it helped create after the Second World War.
Supporters called this the rules based international order. Critics increasingly describe it as an American managed order.
The difference between those two descriptions is now at the heart of the Hormuz dispute.
Washington insists that no regional power can exercise sovereign control over the Strait. Freedom of navigation, American officials argue, is a global public good that must remain protected from coercion by individual states.
Yet critics note an obvious contradiction. The United States argues that no state should control Hormuz while simultaneously asserting the right to police it, sanction states connected to it, deploy military forces around it, and pressure neighbouring governments regarding its administration.
President Trump’s insistence that nobody would control the Strait while the United States would continue to watch over it captures this contradiction in unusually direct language.
To supporters of American policy, this represents stewardship. To critics, it represents control by another name.
Iran’s leverage in this confrontation is not military parity. Tehran cannot challenge the United States globally. It lacks America’s alliance network, financial power, military reach and technological dominance.
Its leverage comes from geography.
Approximately one fifth of globally traded oil passes through the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to global markets. Any disruption immediately affects energy prices, insurance costs, shipping routes, industrial supply chains and government budgets across Asia, Europe and beyond.
Iran does not need to dominate the world economy. It merely needs to make one strategic chokepoint sufficiently difficult and expensive to control.
That reality is why the current confrontation has attracted attention far beyond the Gulf itself.
The deeper significance of Hormuz becomes clearer when viewed through the academic literature on international order and hegemonic decline.
Political scientist G. John Ikenberry has argued that American leadership after 1945 rested not simply upon military superiority but upon legitimacy, institutions, alliances and rules that persuaded other states to accept American leadership as broadly beneficial. The system functioned because much of the world consented to it.
But legitimacy is not permanent.
Martha Finnemore’s work on international legitimacy similarly suggests that even the most powerful states require recognition and acceptance from others if their authority is to remain durable. Military power alone cannot sustain an international order indefinitely.
This is where the contemporary debate becomes important.
Scholars such as Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon argue that the international system is entering a period they describe as an exit from hegemony. Their argument is not that American power has vanished. Rather, states increasingly possess alternatives to American dominated institutions, creating opportunities for resistance, hedging and strategic independence that were largely absent during the unipolar moment of the 1990s.
China’s rise, Russia’s resilience, India’s growing strategic autonomy, the expansion of BRICS, and the emergence of alternative financial and trading arrangements all point toward a more fragmented global landscape.
The result is not necessarily the collapse of American power. It is the erosion of automatic compliance.
That distinction is crucial.
David Lake’s work on authority in international relations draws a distinction between authority and coercion. Authority exists when rules are accepted as legitimate. Coercion becomes necessary when compliance must increasingly be compelled.
Daniel Drezner’s work on sanctions reaches a similar conclusion from a different angle. Economic sanctions are instruments of statecraft designed to alter political behaviour through the imposition of costs. Their growing prominence reflects the increasing importance of coercive tools within international competition.
This broader academic framework helps explain why the Strait of Hormuz matters far beyond maritime navigation.
The dispute is not fundamentally about shipping fees. Nor is it ultimately about Iran. It is about whether the post Cold War international order continues to command sufficient legitimacy to secure compliance without visible coercion.
Economists Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff approach the issue from a different intellectual tradition but arrive at a similar concern. Their argument is that systems of dominance often become more coercive as their underlying legitimacy weakens. Financial restrictions, sanctions, military pressure, asset seizures and displays of force become more visible precisely because voluntary compliance is becoming less reliable.
Whether one agrees with that interpretation or not, the pattern is difficult to ignore.
The United States remains the world’s pre-eminent military power. Yet it now confronts rivals and regional actors that possess greater freedom of manoeuvre than they did two decades ago. China can challenge American influence economically. Russia continues to resist Western pressure militarily. Regional powers increasingly pursue independent strategies.
Hormuz sits directly at the intersection of those trends.
Any ceasefire or diplomatic breakthrough may temporarily reduce tensions. It may reopen shipping lanes, lower insurance costs and stabilise energy markets.
But it will not resolve the deeper structural questions.
Sanctions remain in place. Frozen assets remain contested. The future of Iran’s nuclear programme remains unresolved. American military bases remain distributed throughout the Gulf. The strategic importance of energy routes remains unchanged.
The underlying contest therefore continues.
The old order answers confidently that international law, freedom of navigation and global stability require American leadership backed by American power.
The emerging challenge asks a different question.
Whose law?
Enforced by whom?
And at what price?
The Strait of Hormuz has become the place where those questions can no longer be avoided.
Selected Academic References
- G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton University Press, 2011.
- Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order, Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force, Cornell University Press, 2003.
- David A. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations, Cornell University Press, 2009.
- Daniel W. Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and International Relations, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Amitav Acharya, The End of American World Order, Polity Press, 2018.
- John Dugard, writings on international law, apartheid, Palestine and critiques of the rules based order.
- Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, Pluto Press, revised edition, 2021.
- Michael Hudson, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism, ISLET, 2022.
- Richard D. Wolff, The Sickness Is the System, Democracy at Work, 2020.
- Richard D. Wolff, Understanding Socialism, Democracy at Work, 2019.
