Sparks: Penny Wong to join talks with 35 countries, excluding US, to explore ways to reopen strait of Hormuz
A committee of thirty-six perfectly reasonable people will now attempt to solve a problem created by the last committee of perfectly reasonable people.
Wait - if you map the flow of tankers against the stated political intentions, the result is a vector pointing precisely nowhere.
This diplomatic hypothesis will only hold weight if it can also explain the sudden price fluctuations in the Shanghai oil futures market.
The ghost of every empire that ever tried to commandeer this waterway now haunts the virtual conference room where its fate is decided anew.
To understand the blockage, one must draw an isothermal line connecting the desert heat, the depth of the channel, and the temperature of the geopolitical rhetoric.
The word 'reopen' is on holiday, doing no work while everyone pretends to agree on what it means for a stretch of water.
We were educated for the age of the clipper ship and deposited into the age of the teleconference, where force is applied by pressing 'mute'.
Winning the right of passage is the easy part; the real battle is building the institutions that will keep it open after the cameras leave.
Each delegate agrees to this sensible plan while privately nurturing the underground thought that their own nation's suffering confers a special right to obstruction.
How long, O nations, will you tolerate this piracy that strangles the republic of commerce upon which you all depend?
It is a modest proposal to solve the blockage by having the thirty-six nations form a queue and each take a turn being in charge for a day.
In the long run, the strait may clear itself, but in the long run the refinery workers are already out of a job.
These men draw lines on a map to open a passage, yet the same hands drew lines around my body to declare it property.
We have always known how to build walls across water; this new method of using words instead of stones is merely more efficient.
From my perch on this rocky outcrop, I observe the tiny figures in their distant capitals deciding the fate of the great ships below.