France and the UK are leading efforts to establish a multinational mission to safeguard shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The working family in the English village will notice this in the cost of their evening meal and the weight of the loaf they bring home. That is where the analysis begins. When the ships that carry the oil and the goods of the world are threatened in a distant strait, the man at the plough does not see a map of the Middle East; he sees the price of the lamp oil for his cottage and the rising cost of the transport that brings grain to the local mill.
The news from the great capitals of Europe tells us that France and the United Kingdom, joined by their neighbours, are seeking to establish a “multinational mission” to “safeguard shipping” through the Strait of Hormuz. They speak of “security,” “maritime chokepoints,” and “regional stability.” These are fine, polished words, polished until they shine with a light that blinds the common man to the truth of what is being proposed.
Let us apply a plain English audit to this heavy, Latinate language. When they say “multinational mission,” they mean a gathering of fleets, a collection of warships from different flags, all moving into the same narrow waters. When they speak of “safeguarding shipping,” they mean the use of force to ensure that the great merchant vessels, owned by the great companies, can pass without interruption. And when they talk of “regional stability,” they are using a word that has become a favourite cloak for the interests of the powerful. In the mouths of ministers, “stability” often means that the current arrangement of wealth and power remains undisturbed, even if that arrangement is built upon the exploitation of distant lands.
If we strip away the gloss, the plain truth is this: the great powers are moving their navies into a narrow throat of the sea to protect the flow of commerce. They are building a fence around a waterway, much like the enclosures I have seen across our own green counties. But where the enclosure of the common land was done with a piece of parchment and a surveyor’s stake to benefit the local squire, this maritime enclosure is being done with steel and cannon to benefit the global merchant and the energy speculator.
Who profits from this movement of warships? It is not the weaver in Spitalfields, nor the labourer in Devon. The profit goes to the men who trade in the commodities that pass through that strait - the men who sit in counting-houses in London and Paris, watching the tickers and the prices. They profit from the “security” of the flow, for a secure flow means a predictable price, and a predictable price allows them to hedge their bets and grow their fortunes. They do not work for their living in the sense that a man works his field; they live by the movement of things they do not touch and the protection of waters they do not sail.
The cost, however, is borne by the family at the kitchen table. If this mission fails, the price of oil leaps, and the cost of every journey, every heated room, and every manufactured good rises. If the mission succeeds, it does so at the expense of the taxpayer, whose hard-earned pence are diverted from local roads and parish needs to fund the coal and the wages of a distant navy.
We are witnessing a new kind of enclosure. It is an enclosure of the seas, a fencing off of the world’s arteries to ensure that the great engines of global trade never falter. They call it “safeguarding.” I call it the protection of the merchant’s interest at the expense of the labourer’s purse.
The reports will speak of “strategic importance” and “international cooperation.” But if you want to see the truth of it, do not look at the diplomatic cables. Look at the flickering lamp in a worker’s cottage when the oil price has spiked. Look at the empty space on the table where a bit of extra meat might have been. The truth is not in the mission; it is in the cost of the bread and the light.