Join Us at the 2023 World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida!

? Dates: November 17, 18, and 19 ? Location: Orlando, Florida, USA (or tune in from home with our virtual ticket options)

Are you ready to unlock the future of economics and finance? Prepare for an unforgettable World Economic Conference experience in sunny Orlando, Florida! This premier event is your gateway to insights, networking, and valuable resources that will supercharge your understanding of the global economy.

?️ What’s Included for In-Person Attendees:

1. Event Admission: Enjoy reserved seating assigned based on the order of ticket sales, ensuring you have a prime view of every presentation.
2. Presentation Slides: Gain access to the presentation slides from all speakers, allowing you to delve deeper into the topics discussed.
3. Video Recording: Can’t make it to a session? No worries! You’ll receive access to video recordings of all conference presentations, so you can catch up at your convenience.
4. WEC Event App: Connect with the conference on a whole new level. Access presentation slides, bonus reports, recordings, and more via the official WEC Event App.
5. Bonus Conference Materials: Get a package of bonus conference-related materials, including exclusive bonus reports and videos (as provided by Martin Armstrong).
6. Morning Information Sessions: Don’t miss out on important morning information sessions, screened on-site in the meeting room on Saturday and Sunday.
7. Networking Opportunities: Exclusive access to the Event App Networking Feature allows you to connect with fellow attendees, both in-person and virtual, fostering valuable professional relationships.
8. Culinary Delights: Savor delicious breakfast and lunch on Saturday and Sunday, prepared to keep you energized throughout the day.
9. Cocktail Reception: Kick off the conference in style at our Friday evening cocktail reception. Meet and mingle with fellow attendees while enjoying refreshing drinks.
10. Swag Bag: As a token of our appreciation, each in-person attendee will receive a swag bag filled with goodies, including an Armstrong Economics notebook, pen, and an event collector’s mug!

Unable to travel? We also have two different ticket options for those wishing to attend virtually! 

Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a global gathering of economic and financial minds. Secure your spot at the World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida, and gain the knowledge, connections, and resources you need to thrive in the world of finance and economics.

Space is limited, so act now and reserve your seat! Visit our Events page to register and join us in sunny Orlando this November.

Now available at all major retailers!

The eBook will be available shortly.

The second edition of “The Plot to Seize Russia – The Untold History” is now available for purchase in paperback and hardcover on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The ebook will be available shortly.

Book description:

“Take care of Russia,” Boris Yeltsin said as he departed his presidency in August 1999. These words were directed at current Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin specifically picked Putin as his predecessor to prevent the takeover of Russia.

So, who was Yeltsin warning against? Newly declassified documents from the Clinton Administration prove that there was a plot to rig the Russian election of 2000. These never-before-seen documents confirm numerous attempts to implement pro-Western policies using the Russian oligarchy headed by Boris Berezovsky.

On the other side were the communists who desired a return to the glory days of the Soviet Union. As one of the largest international hedge fund managers, author Martin Armstrong found himself in the middle of perhaps the greatest espionage, or attempt at a regime change for Russia, in modern history.

The Plot to Seize Russia pulls back the curtain to expose the most extraordinary attempt to seize power in modern history, but with the pen rather than armies. These declassified documents reveal a plot that has altered our thinking about the relations between the United States and Russia. The thirst for power comes seething through every line of these papers that alter our perception of reality, change the course of history, and now threaten us with World War III.

China and Egypt had their second joint air force exercise, “Eagles of Civilization 2026,” running from mid-August into early September. The exercises include air combat tactics, air superiority operations, combat search and rescue, and force employment. This follows their first joint air exercise in 2025, so this is no longer some ceremonial visit between two countries posing for photographs. China is establishing a military relationship with Egypt at the same time that the economic relationship between the two nations is expanding rapidly.

This is what Washington never seems to understand. Trade and geopolitical influence go hand in hand. China does not need to invade countries to expand its influence. It builds ports, factories, railroads, industrial zones, financial relationships, and trade routes. Military cooperation naturally begins to follow economic cooperation because countries tend to develop strategic relationships with the nations upon which their economies increasingly depend.

Egypt is particularly important because of the Suez Canal. You cannot look at this merely as China conducting another military exercise in Africa. Egypt sits at the intersection of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East while controlling one of the most important commercial waterways in the world. China understands geography. The Suez Canal is critical to the movement of Chinese goods into Europe, and Beijing has spent years developing its economic presence around the canal.

China and Egypt conducted roughly $16 billion in bilateral trade in 2024, and Egyptian officials say more than 2,800 Chinese companies are operating in the country with investments exceeding $8 billion. The China-Egypt TEDA cooperation zone in the Suez Canal Economic Zone has become an important industrial base, with Chinese companies manufacturing inside Egypt rather than simply shipping Chinese goods through the canal. Half of the roughly $11.6 billion attracted to the Suez Canal Economic Zone over the previous three and a half years reportedly came from China.

This is where China is outmaneuvering the West. The United States looks at Egypt primarily through military aid and Middle East geopolitics. Europe sees Egypt through migration and the Mediterranean. China looks at Egypt and sees a commercial gateway connecting three continents.

Chinese companies are already producing goods in Egypt for export throughout the Middle East and Africa. Xinxing, for example, began operating a factory in the Suez Canal Economic Zone and quickly signed tens of millions of dollars in export contracts covering projects in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Tunisia. China is effectively using Egypt as a manufacturing platform to reach markets far beyond Egypt itself.

That is the Belt and Road strategy in practice. It is not simply lending money to poor countries to build roads, as Western critics constantly portray it. China is attempting to establish commercial infrastructure along the arteries of world trade. Once companies, factories, ports, financing, and supply chains become interconnected, political influence follows.

The financial relationship is also moving in a direction Washington should be paying attention to. Egypt and China have signed agreements promoting greater use of the yuan, including connecting financial institutions operating around the Suez economic zone with China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. Egypt has also issued Panda bonds in China. China is playing the long game.

Now military cooperation is following the economic relationship. The first Eagles of Civilization exercise in 2025 was unprecedented. Conducting it again in 2026 demonstrates that both sides want this relationship to continue. Beijing says the exercises are intended to increase mutual trust and deepen military cooperation. Egypt gains access to another major military power while reducing its dependence upon any single foreign supplier or security relationship.

Can you blame Egypt? The United States has spent decades turning foreign policy into a loyalty test. Governments are expected to choose Washington or Beijing, Washington or Moscow, Washington or Tehran. Egypt does not have to make that choice. It can maintain military relations with the United States while conducting exercises with China and trading with everyone.

Egypt’s geographic position makes such diversification entirely rational. It sits beside Libya, Sudan, Gaza, Israel, and the Red Sea while the Middle East has entered another period of tremendous instability. Why would Cairo place its national security entirely in the hands of Washington when American policy changes every four years depending upon who occupies the White House?

China offers Egypt something different. Beijing has generally built these relationships through commerce first, financing infrastructure, developing ports, establishing factories, expanding trade, and creating financial connections that gradually deepen the economic relationship. Diplomatic and military cooperation can then follow naturally where their interests overlap. China does not need to demand allegiance when it can make itself commercially valuable.

The West increasingly takes the opposite approach, arriving with sanctions, political conditions, lectures about domestic affairs, demands over foreign policy, and threats to withdraw assistance when governments refuse to comply. Nations are then treated as adversaries simply because they choose to pursue their own interests rather than those of Washington or Brussels. This is a major reason the geopolitical landscape is changing as developing nations discover they have alternatives and no longer need to accept every condition imposed by the West.

Egypt controls one of the greatest trade arteries on Earth while China is the world’s manufacturing giant. Their expanding relationship is hardly an accident, and it will become increasingly important as the old geopolitical divisions between East and West continue to fracture.

The West suddenly discovered that Brazil is sitting on one of the most strategic mineral reserves in the world. The Associated Press reports that Brazil has the second-largest known rare-earth reserves behind China, and foreign interests are now rushing into the country as governments desperately attempt to break China’s grip on the supply chain. More than 86% of Brazil’s rare-earth exploration applications were filed within the last three years, and over 40% have foreign financial backing. This is what happens when governments wake up decades too late to the importance of commodities.

China understood long ago that control of natural resources and their processing is a form of geopolitical power. The West abandoned mining and manufacturing, imposed endless environmental regulations, and outsourced production to Asia because politicians assumed globalization would last forever. China was happy to take the business. Today it controls roughly 90% of global rare-earth processing, and Beijing has already demonstrated that it is prepared to use that position when geopolitical tensions rise.

Rare earths are essential for electronics, automobiles, aerospace, robotics, energy technology, and modern weapons systems. Washington suddenly realizes that depending on China for materials necessary to manufacture military equipment is a national security problem. American and Australian interests are therefore pouring into Brazil, while Brazil’s only commercial rare-earth producer, Serra Verde, has been acquired by a U.S.-backed company. The West is now scrambling to recreate supply chains it voluntarily surrendered.

Brazil would be foolish not to recognize the tremendous leverage it now possesses. President Lula has made clear that he does not intend to allow foreigners simply to extract Brazil’s resources and take the valuable processing elsewhere. Brazil wants the refining, technology, and industrial development to remain inside the country. That is precisely what China did successfully. China did not become powerful simply because it possessed minerals. It built the processing capacity and then moved up the industrial chain until everyone else became dependent upon it.

This is where Brazil has an opportunity that commodity-producing nations have repeatedly squandered. Digging something out of the ground and exporting it creates revenue, but processing it and converting it into finished products creates industry. The British Empire understood that distinction. So did the United States during its rise as an industrial power. The countries that merely supplied raw materials remained dependent upon those that controlled manufacturing and finance.

The AP found that roughly one-quarter of the exploration applications overlap with or are located within about 10 kilometers of protected areas and Indigenous territories. Rare-earth production can create serious environmental problems involving toxic waste and water contamination. These are legitimate concerns, particularly around the Amazon, but the same Western governments that spent years lecturing Brazil about environmental protection are now desperate for alternative sources because they allowed China to dominate the industry.

The green movement never wanted to discuss where all these materials would come from. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, batteries, computers, and virtually every technology promoted under the so-called energy transition require enormous quantities of raw materials. Politicians pretended they could shut down mines and industry at home while simultaneously transforming the entire energy system. They merely exported the environmental consequences to other countries and then claimed they had become environmentally responsible.

Brazil is now caught directly between Washington and Beijing, but it does not have to choose either side. This is what the geopolitical establishment in Washington constantly fails to understand. Brazil should deal with China when that benefits Brazil and deal with the United States when that benefits Brazil. It is not Brazil’s responsibility to sacrifice its economic interests because Washington decided China is suddenly an adversary after spending decades encouraging American companies to move production there.

The rise of BRICS is part of this broader shift. Many emerging nations possess the commodities, energy, agricultural capacity, and growing populations that the developed world increasingly needs. They are no longer willing to accept the old arrangement where the West dictates policy while expecting unrestricted access to their resources. Brazil has food, energy, minerals, and an enormous domestic market. That gives it negotiating power that will only increase as the world fragments into competing geopolitical blocs.

China’s dominance of rare earths did not happen overnight. It was the result of decades of Western policy mistakes combined with deliberate Chinese industrial planning. Now Washington is spending billions attempting to reverse something it helped create. Brazil should certainly welcome investment, but it should not simply become America’s replacement mine for China.

The world is moving away from globalization and back toward economic nationalism. Governments are discovering that access to energy, food, metals, and strategic minerals cannot simply be assumed. Brazil happens to possess something everyone suddenly needs, and that places it in an extremely powerful position between China and the West. The question is whether Brazil will simply sell its resources or use this opportunity to build the industrial capacity that could transform its position in the world economy for decades to come.

Tens of thousands of people in northwest Indiana have been living without electricity for more than a week, yet this disaster received little national attention until residents had already entered what they described as “survival mode.” The blackout began after an August 11 derecho produced winds approaching 99 miles per hour, destroying power lines, transmission equipment, and utility poles across the region. More than 300,000 NIPSCO customers initially lost service, representing over 60% of the utility’s system and the largest outage event in its history. As of August 20, approximately 68,000 customers reportedly remained without power, with parts of Gary warned that full restoration could take until August 25.

This is not merely an inconvenience caused by a summer storm. Schools have closed, businesses have lost inventory and revenue, families have thrown away spoiled food, and people who depend upon refrigerated medicine or electrically powered medical equipment have been placed at risk. Traffic signals stopped working, communications were interrupted, and residents were forced to line up at community centers for hot meals and a place to charge their phones.

The national media will discuss an outage when it affects an airport, Wall Street, or a wealthy neighborhood. When working-class communities in Gary and Lake County lose power for more than a week, the story remains largely local until the suffering becomes impossible to ignore. There has been reporting, but the scale of the national response bears no relationship to the severity of what happened. If 68,000 customers in Manhattan had remained without electricity for nine days, every network would be broadcasting live from the streets and Congress would already be demanding hearings.

NIPSCO says the damage was unprecedented and that crews must replace or repair approximately 300 distribution poles and 44 transmission poles in Gary alone. More than 600 line workers have reportedly been involved in restoration efforts. Nobody should diminish the severity of a derecho with hurricane-force winds, nor blame crews working in dangerous conditions. The problem is that a natural disaster has exposed how little redundancy exists in the system. When a single series of storms can knock out electricity to most of a utility’s customers and leave tens of thousands disconnected for more than a week, the grid has become a single point of failure for the entire community.

America has built an economy in which virtually nothing functions without electricity. Food cannot be preserved, fuel pumps cannot operate, electronic payments fail, mobile phones eventually die, and many modern appliances become useless. Hospitals and emergency facilities possess backup generators, but ordinary households and small businesses are expected to fend for themselves. The government promotes the electrification of vehicles, heating, cooking, and transportation while the grid required to support this dependence remains vulnerable to trees, flooding, aging poles, overloaded transformers, and severe weather.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has repeatedly identified the country’s energy infrastructure as requiring massive investment. Much of the national transmission and distribution network was constructed decades ago for a completely different economy. Demand is now increasing from data centers, electric vehicles, manufacturing, air conditioning, and the attempt to electrify still more activities. The government cannot simultaneously increase dependence upon electricity and ignore the physical system that distributes it. That is not an energy transition; it is building society around a vulnerability.

Wealthier households can purchase whole-home generators, battery systems, hotel rooms, and replacement food. A low-income family may lose hundreds of dollars in groceries and have no money to replace them. An hourly worker may lose wages because a workplace or school is closed. Parents must choose between remaining home with children and reporting to work. Insurance deductibles can exceed the value of the property destroyed, while public assistance often arrives after the immediate crisis has passed.

Governor Mike Braun declared a statewide disaster emergency, deployed the Indiana National Guard, and requested federal assistance after the storms caused deaths, flooding, displacement, and widespread infrastructure damage. Those measures are necessary, but emergency declarations address the aftermath rather than the underlying vulnerability. The political system operates from crisis to crisis because preventive investment requires planning beyond the next election. Money is found instantly after disaster strikes, but routine maintenance is treated as an expense to be postponed.

This blackout should also raise serious questions about accountability. Regulators must determine whether maintenance, vegetation management, emergency staffing, spare-equipment inventories, and system redundancy were adequate before the storm. That inquiry should not become an attempt to scapegoat line workers or pretend that no storm should ever cause an outage. The relevant question is why restoration for an urban area can require nearly two weeks and whether the system was prepared for an event that severe-weather models have long treated as possible.

Ancient cities protected their wells because water represented survival. Industrial society must treat electricity with the same seriousness. A power grid is not merely another corporate service. It is the infrastructure supporting food, health, banking, transportation, communications, public safety, and employment. When it fails for days, civilization quickly contracts to generators, canned food, cash, and neighbors helping one another.

Indiana was struck by an extreme storm, but the prolonged blackout is a warning to every American city. The country is increasing electricity demand while its transmission and distribution systems remain fragile, centralized, and expensive to repair. Politicians speak endlessly about creating the grid of the future while residents in Gary are waiting for the grid of the present to turn their lights back on. The storm caused the blackout, but years of neglect determined how difficult it would be to recover.

PRIVATE BLOG – The Share Market vs Debt

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QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, the fact that you’ve appeared on national TV across Europe and even Russia, but not in the United States, really highlights the depth of censorship here.

On RT, you predicted oil would still hit $200 by 2028. Every analyst they brought on repeated the same line—short-term pain for long-term gain. As you pointed out, that’s straight out of the propaganda script. Not even Tucker Carson will interview you which raises question there as well.

So, with that in mind: do you think the Iran war will push oil to $200 by 2028?

DKK

ANSWER: Energy prices rise with war. This is not just Iran. This is NOT short-term pain and there is NO long-term gain whatsoever! Netanyahu sold the USA on invading Iraq and testified before Congress Saddam was moving to nuclear and he had weapon of mass destruction. We know that was all a lie. I believe Netanyahu should be charged with perjury before Congress aside from his desire for ethnic cleansing. We are showing 2028 as a major turning point. There are two choices. It is a major high, or a low and the major high comes in 2032. A closing above $111 at the end of the year will warn this is going to get worse rather than better.

There is a major long-term crisis that threatens the collapse of the United States. The defense contractors cannot just replenish the missiles that were hurled at Iran, they cost 10 even up to 200 times more than those of Russia, China, or Iran. This is why Iran is winning and I do not say this lightly for shocking headline value.

The U.S. won World War II in large part because Germany was overly fixated on engineering perfection. We mass-produced jeeps on a scale Germany could never match, and our production costs were a fraction of theirs. Today, the shoe is on the other foot.

America can boast the biggest military on paper, but our obsession with sophistication is becoming our downfall, just as it was for Germany in the 1940s. Production costs for modern missiles are absolutely off the charts. A single Patriot interceptor is estimated at around $4 million. Israel and the U.S. have sometimes used multiple interceptors against a single $50,000 drone, with some reports claiming up to eight missiles fired at one target.

By contrast, Iran’s primary attack drone, the Shahed-136, costs somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000 to produce. That low cost is central to Tehran’s strategy. I wrote at the outset of this conflict that Iran’s plan would be to overwhelm defenses with waves of cheap drones, forcing Israel and the U.S. to exhaust their expensive missile stockpiles, leaving them vulnerable to a more serious strike. This is a war of attrition, pure and simple.

The neocons assume that having the largest army guarantees victory. They don’t study history, and they fail to grasp that the way to defeat the U.S. and Israel is precisely through attrition. I cannot believe they are this STUPID.

Our defense contractors, of course, have every incentive to produce the most expensive missiles in the world. They couldn’t care less about the country or its people. They operate on the same assumption that America is invincible, so the checks will keep coming. Meanwhile, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea all produce their own weapons directly through state-controlled systems. That is the real vulnerability.

And yet the press keeps parroting the Neocon script—”short-term pain for long-term gain”—without ever defining what that gain actually is. What does it mean? Oil returning to pre-war prices? The war debt, if we keep rolling it over, will double within a decade. No one in the mainstream media seems willing to ask the obvious questions. What is the long-term gain?

I warned the Quantitative Easy would NOT produce inflation and fail. They assumed they were buying debt from domestic holders. The ignorance of the world economy is unimaginable. China sold into the Quantitative Easing so the money left the United States and never stimulated the domestic economy. This is why mainstream media would NEVER put me on the air because I do not read the scripts handed out by the Neocons.

Mainstream media today is no better than Pravda under the Soviet Union. The movie on me the Forecaster, was seen on national TV in many countries but not the United States, Marcus had a deal with Netflix and at the last minute they were not allowed to show it. Someone went as far as to break into Marcus’ studio in Germany stole the film. He had a backup. They went to extreme length to prevent that movie. So much for the freedom of speech. They even tried to kill me, but after being in a coma for a few days, I survived.

Mainstream churns out Neocon propaganda like a broken record, yet I’ve never seen a single interviewer bother to ask the obvious question: what exactly is this “long-term gain” they keep talking about? That is NOT journalism. That is propaganda dissemination.

I’ll personally pay for a first-class trip to the so-called land of freedom and democracy—Ukraine—if any of them cannot offer an intelligent answer. Perhaps they can discover the answer there. They clearly think we’re stupid enough to swallow whatever they say, no matter how little sense it makes.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but it proves a timeless truth: no matter the system of government, those in power will always act in their own self-interest. As Thrasymachus pointed out over 2,000 years ago, nothing has ever changed.

Until the media actually tells the truth, they are there to undermine society and our future.

PS: I have tried to warn President Trump, but the Neocons now intercept my letters to him.

PRIVATE BLOG – The 30-Year Treasury: The Canary in the Coal Mine of a Dying System

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The politicians continue to speak about the Strait of Hormuz as though this were merely a regional dispute between Iran and its neighbors. That is complete nonsense. The strait is one of the most important arteries in the global economy, carrying roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas shipments. Brent crude has moved above $91, but the headline price of oil is only the beginning. The real economic damage appears in shipping rates, insurance premiums, refinery margins, diesel prices, electricity costs, and ultimately government borrowing. War does not remain confined to the battlefield. It enters every household through inflation.

Washington claims the strait is open while Iran insists it remains closed. Both statements are political propaganda because it is the shipowners, insurers, and commodity traders who determine whether a waterway is commercially open. A tanker can theoretically pass through Hormuz, but that means nothing if the insurance premium becomes prohibitive or the crew refuses to accept the risk. Most politicians have never operated a business and do not understand that commerce depends upon confidence—not government declarations. Once confidence collapses, trade will retreat regardless of how many officials stand before cameras insisting that everything remains under control.

This is why the cost of the conflict cannot be measured solely by the number of barrels temporarily removed from the market. Every vessel delayed or redirected reduces available shipping capacity and increases freight rates elsewhere. Insurers must reprice the probability of a tanker being damaged, captured, or destroyed. Refineries must compete for alternative supplies, while countries dependent upon Gulf energy begin building precautionary inventories. Traders add a geopolitical premium because nobody knows whether the next missile will strike a ship, a refinery, a pipeline, or an export terminal. These costs compound through the entire system long before the average person notices the increase at the gasoline station.

The more serious warning is coming from refined products, particularly diesel. Politicians obsess over crude because that is the price quoted every evening on television. Yet modern civilization runs on diesel. Trucks transport food and consumer goods, farmers operate machinery, construction companies run heavy equipment, and emergency generators protect hospitals and critical infrastructure. When diesel rises, the cost of virtually everything rises with it.

Governments will pretend that this inflation is temporary or caused by greedy corporations. They said the same thing after the monetary expansion of 2020. Inflation is never politically convenient because it exposes the true cost of government policy. A war financed through borrowing does not require politicians to present taxpayers with an immediate bill. The expense is transferred into sovereign debt, currency depreciation, and higher prices. The public pays through the destruction of purchasing power, while officials continue claiming that military operations can be conducted without domestic sacrifice.

Europe is particularly vulnerable. It has spent years undermining its own energy security while increasing sanctions, regulations, and military commitments. European governments are already struggling with weak growth, aging populations, expanding welfare obligations, and enormous debt. A sustained rise in energy prices will reduce industrial competitiveness and force governments to subsidize households once again. Those subsidies will require still more borrowing at precisely the moment bond yields are rising. This is the trap: war raises energy costs, energy raises inflation, inflation prevents central banks from reducing interest rates, and higher rates increase the cost of servicing government debt.

The bond market understands what politicians refuse to see. Long-term government yields are rising across Europe, the United States, and Japan because investors are beginning to question whether governments can continue borrowing without limit. The Middle East conflict is accelerating a sovereign-debt problem that already existed. Governments accumulated debt during the pandemic, borrowed again to subsidize energy after the war in Ukraine, and are now expected to finance another expanding conflict surrounding Iran. Each crisis is treated as temporary, but the debt is permanent.

This is how confidence collapses. The decline of an empire does not begin when it loses one battle. It begins when the cost of maintaining its military commitments exceeds the productive capacity of its economy. Rome debased its currency to pay the army and preserve the frontiers. Spain consumed the wealth of the New World financing wars across Europe. Britain emerged from two world wars victorious but financially exhausted, surrendering its position as the center of global capital to the United States. Military power is always dependent upon economic power, yet the warmongers imagine the relationship works in reverse.

Iran also understands that Hormuz is more valuable as a threat than as a permanently closed waterway. Completely stopping trade would damage Iran and alienate China, India, and other Asian customers dependent upon Gulf energy. Tehran does not need to seal the strait with an impenetrable naval blockade. It merely needs to create enough uncertainty that commercial traffic slows and the world pays a permanent risk premium. A missile landing near a tanker can accomplish economically what a fleet might fail to achieve militarily.

The United States may possess the naval power to escort ships, but it cannot force private capital to ignore risk. Nor can it guarantee that mines, drones, missiles, or small boats will never penetrate the security perimeter. Every escalation requires more ships, more aircraft, more personnel, and still more government spending. The attempt to protect the trade route therefore adds to the fiscal burden created by the disruption itself.

The Strait of Hormuz is becoming a tax imposed upon the entire world economy. It will appear in freight costs, food prices, utility bills, interest rates, government deficits, and eventually elections. Western leaders will blame Iran, corporations, speculators, or climate change before admitting that their endless wars carry an economic price.