Sparks: US military says it will blockade Iran’s ports as ship traffic appears to halt in Strait of Hormuz

The spiral of a constrained vortex and the geometry of a fortified perimeter share the same underlying principle of redirecting immense natural force through a single, calculated aperture.

That power which seeks to secure liberty by preemptively denying it to another people has already abandoned the very principle it purports to defend.

Naval power, concentrated and unchecked, inevitably flows from policing trade to administering empires, a historical sequence as predictable as it is perilous.

This hypothesis of military coercion, if valid, must also predict the secondary economic and diplomatic tremors now radiating far beyond the primary point of contact.

To trace the isothermal lines of political pressure from these closed ports is to map the coming disruptions in distant markets and climates.

Simplify: the complex machinery of statecraft reduces to one essential act, the deliberate obstruction of another's sustenance.

This top-down imposition of order, however technically precise, will inevitably provoke the spontaneous, bottom-up resistance that all rigid structures fear most.

Denying a nation's access to the commonwealth of trade under the pretense of securing it for others is the geopolitical equivalent of denying women education for their own good.

To choke the flow of energy at its source is the most brute-force and least elegant solution, betraying a failure of systemic imagination.

Nothing so concentrates a merchant's mind on the virtues of free navigation as the sudden appearance of a naval gunship hired by his competitor.

A dispute framed in the language of security must first be judged on its legal merits before its theological pronouncements can be taken seriously.

A most modest proposal for preserving the peace: that we should starve a troublesome population into docility for their own moral improvement and our commercial convenience.

In every port from Aden to Malacca, the quality of justice is measured by the freedom of the sea lanes and the safety afforded to the merchant and the pilgrim alike.

The same merchants who praise the invisible hand will be the first to applaud the very visible fist that smashes their rivals' supply chains.