“What is next for Hormuz?” We’re all asking the question. It’s an interesting one. The answer is: anyone’s guess. If you have a long-term mindset, it is the wrong question. Strategists spend more time on empires than straits.
Throughout history, the blueprint of global dominance has followed a remarkably consistent trajectory: empires rise, reach a zenith of influence, and inevitably fracture under the weight of their own contradictions. To understand today’s shifting geopolitical landscape, we must look to these repeating cycles. Professors Nick Binedell and Adrian Saville at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) offer a framework through the title of their podcast: Fate, Luck & Choice.
Inspired by the work of French historian Fernand Braudel, the pair use this triad as a toolkit for understanding national competitive strategy. Fate is the institutional and geographical inheritance a nation starts with; luck encompasses the volatile, uncontrollable shifts in global conditions; and choice is the strategic pathway available to leadership. As Binedell puts it: “Fate is the past waiting for action” — and that is where choice comes in.
From this viewpoint, we can begin to understand the deep layers that influence not just the crisis in the Gulf, but the forces behind it that are also shaping the geopolitical and commercial future of the world.
Every empire begins from within. Binedell describes it as “an internal alliance or formation that becomes powerful and is therefore able to exercise its power beyond its boundaries and thereby acquire territory and peoples and goods”. That outward projection, according to Saville, is fuelled by structural innovation, infrastructural integration and the aggressive development of trade routes.
For centuries, this took the physical form of land or naval conquest. However, the medium of projection has evolved significantly over time: shifting from land warfare to sea power, moving skyward into air and space, and finally entering the invisible realm of cyber power. “Geography is a slightly outdated definition of borders,” concludes Binedell.
Secure in their supremacy, ruling elites grow cognitively blind
An empire reaches its zenith when influence stretches to its absolute limits — and that is precisely when it becomes most fragile. “In a word,” explains Saville, “it is hubris that topples great empires.” Secure in their supremacy, ruling elites grow cognitively blind. Leaders assume that “my view is right … my view is global, my view is dominant and I will assert and oppose that”. While the hegemon turns inward, peripheral states study its blueprint, absorb its technologies and use lower-cost bases and opposing strategies — think David vs Goliath — to mount new economic challenges.
Decline is accelerated by overextension and financial strain. Peak power almost always coincides with an unprecedented expansion of credit, and when real productivity can no longer support those obligations, the state reaches for a dangerous remedy. “In an ironic twist,” Saville continues, “empires change their perverse practice of extraction from the periphery to the core into a practice of extracting from themselves as their power weakens. In this, nations enter the monetisation phase. They begin debasing their currency. They become their own worst enemy.”
Wealth drains away from long-term growth engines — education, innovation — and into the defence of an overextended perimeter, fracturing domestic cohesion and leaving the empire exposed to faster, more agile rivals.
From Hollywood to Nike, the F-16 Fighting Falcon to Microsoft, and the World Bank to Wall Street, evidence of US dominance is ubiquitous. Uncle Sam is No 1. But where does it sit on this evolutionary arc?
The Trump administration’s “America first” positioning, isolationism (albeit erratically applied) and dramatic tariff policies represent a broader turn inwards. It is at odds with a world where agile supply chains span the globe and demand is growing in new centres.
The US gross federal debt is currently $39-trillion, or 125% of GDP. And it is growing by about $5bn a day.
Technology is increasingly diffuse, with innovation and manufacturing burgeoning in many parts of the world. Despite a military budget larger than the next six largest spenders combined, the US remains bogged down in the Middle East, where Iran and others exert a persistent spoiling power.
Standardised test scores show fewer than a third of American eighth graders are proficient in reading or maths, and PISA (programme for international student assessment) rankings place US students squarely in the middle of the global pack.
Whether this places the US at the wrong end of the arc of empire is precisely the question that brings us back to the strategic issues at hand. Some of those involve Hormuz. Most are far more enduring matters of fate, luck and — most important of all — choice.
Macleod is a founding member of the Centre for African Management & Markets at Gibs, which conducts academic and practitioner research and provides strategic insight on African markets
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