By Michael Every of Rabobank
Geopolitics is front and center, even in Argentina–England at the World Cup, where the contested Falklands/Malvinas, which could have oil reserves, saw jingoist 1980’s language. Yet it’s Hormuz, where 1980’s-style tanker wars are underway, that’s the penalty spot.
The US is striking Iran again night and day, as Tehran warns of an “existential war”. Reports have Trump leaning towards expanding US military operations; others say what he’s been hitting widen his options for escalation; and Trump has stated Iran “will be defeated soon.” However, the Financial Times today leads with Trump’s ex-defence chief saying the US will not win the war from the air, a sentiment echoed in the Wall Street Journal – and boots on the ground are highly unlikely.
Iran is attacking the Hormuz oil lifeline of ship-to-ship shuttle runs, with some vessels now reportedly refusing US-military guided transits. The US just hit a tanker heading for Kharg Island under the renewed Iran blockade, as some wonder again if the US could try to take control of Iran’s southern islands – which would certainly take boots on the ground.
The IRGC has threatened all global energy workarounds to Hormuz: that includes the Red Sea, where the Houthis may be preparing to attack; it might also involve Azerbaijan’s oil trade with Israel, meaning either striking Iran’s well-armed northern neighbour or the Eastern Mediterranean route its oil arrives via. Markets would move markedly if these developments were to occur.
Israel-Lebanon talks are getting some results, with agreement for Israel to pull back from two pilot zones to allow the Lebanese army to prove it can keep the territory free from Hezbollah – the IDF notably just killed three of the latter, and Trump is still talking about Syria fighting Hezbollah instead. PM Netanyahu will meet Trump in the US on Monday, as many fault lines are seen between the two. However, the flurry of radical domestic legislation the Israeli government just launched ahead of an October 27 election Knesset dissolution may suggest the foreign policy arena is not where they will look to flex for would-be voters.
Elsewhere, US General Caine is pleading with defense contractors to build weapons faster, as munitions constraints linger: the US Air Force plans to buy 28,000 low-cost cruise missiles ahead, showing procurement pivots are happening. The Secretary of War is also going to give US troops testosterone shots to make them stronger, as many NATO allies struggle to recruit the soldiers, sailors, and pilots that a military build-up will require; and senior defense officials are pushing for more censorship and are said to be looking at Cuba military options.
The EU again failed to strike a new Russia sanctions deal after three days of talks, with Athens reportedly opposing them to shield a Greek shipping company. On the other hand, the EU and Ukraine struck a deal to tap into €10bn of unspent SAFE funds to build drones in Ukraine – with a carve-out to buy some components from China. Ominously, Lithuanian and Latvian leaders also warned that Russia is planning infrastructure attacks on the Baltics or Poland, with other suggestions of potential false flag operations as the trigger for such.
Against that backdrop, and what Ukraine is doing to Russian refineries, a benchmark Bloomberg measure of crack spreads now stands above the panic peak of 2022, so while Brent oil is $85 --bang in line with where Joe DeLaura expected it to hover at while ‘Comfortably Bomb’ plays out-- the price of a barrel of diesel is around $147.
The EU also just published a report calling China a “key enabler” and a “crucial enabler” of Russia’s war on Ukraine, further noting that: “At the centre of this transformation lies the determination of some powers, Russia and China foremost among them, to establish regional dominance and reshape the global order in line with their interests, fostering a return to a sphere-of-influence logic.”
That language echoes European complaints already made about the US, as a Pew survey shows that Xi now beats Trump in terms of popularity. But given nobody gets to vote on that, how much does such soft power matter? In that regard, the X thread from the US Under Secretary of War poopooing the idea of Middle Powers having options other than siding with the US (or China), which we noted yesterday, drew polarised reactions.
Those who pushed back strongest came from politics or economics, with a few from the military; by contrast, those who said the blunt (so unhelpful) US argument was true think across those disciplines. As a good example, Velina Tchakarova’s ‘The Middle Power Mirage: Colby, the Sceptics, and the Verdict Nobody Wants’ states: “Here is the strategic reality the convening class prefers to avoid. We are in a new Cold War between two systems, Pax Americana 2.0 and the DragonBear, the structural alignment of Chinese and Russian power across every systemically relevant domain. In that contest, middle powers without sufficient strategic leverage or autonomy will not be neutral conveners. They will be the first victims, hollowed out or cannibalized for the sake of global supremacy, or they will become the battlefield itself. There is no comfortable third space for the underprepared.” She also underlines that preparations can be made for that kind of third space, but they are fiscally, political-economically, and even ‘civilisationally’ uncomfortable.
That’s as EU-China trade data this week saw Brussels state that safeguard measures permitting tariffs and quotas against import surges may “become legitimate on a case-by-case basis.”; the UK Treasury suggest alignment of its financial system with the US, not the EU, and a stablecoins framework that opens the door for the USD variant to be used; Bloomberg says ‘Trump's Aides See China Cheating on Trade, But Shun Retaliation’ - there are too many fish to fry in Hormuz, it seems; and India’s PM Modi is pushing to cut import reliance to shield the economy from shocks.
Against this backdrop, national elections are now more existential than during the 2000’s policy consensus for ever more globalisation. Today, each vote can push or pull economies towards one of the two global poles of power, tipping the balance between them and/or legacy vs emerging stakeholders within them.
In that light, Trump is to give an address today focused on “free and fair elections” rumored to be politically explosive, as Democratic Party Senator Fetterman warns he’ll leave the party if it turns its back on Israel, and Supreme Court justices worried about their safety were told by Congress, “There’s not a money fairy up here.” In the UK, the terror inquiry into the murder of former MP Ann Widdecombe continues, as a man was arrested for threatening to shoot Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who is involved in a scandal over a cash gift ‘for his security’. The Times of Israel opines that ‘Netanyahu hits new lows in his battle for survival; there will be a great deal of damage for better leaders to undo’; and Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy just ousted his reformist defence minister amid a government reshuffle, which critics have called a serious strategic error.
In short, norms are cracking up around us, not just in refined products, but in less ‘refined’ economics and politics.
To predict how this plays out one needs to join things up; and that involves looking at who is willing to join up, and where.