Look, I am a reasonable man. I understand the importance of the global supply chain. When my preferred brand of sparkling water is delayed at the port, I am the first to send a sharply worded email to my concierge. But watching the international community erupt into hysterics because President Donald Trump decided to pause the U.S. military operation escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz after exactly one day has left me utterly baffled.
Is one day not enough? It is a full rotation of the Earth. It is twenty-four continuous hours of the United States Navy graciously ensuring that massive commercial vessels are not blasted into shrapnel by coastal batteries. It is, by any metric, a lovely gesture. Why must we ruin it by immediately demanding a second day?
The sheer entitlement of the global shipping industry is staggering. I was discussing this very phenomenon just last evening over martinis at the Cosmos Club with a deputy undersecretary who shall remain nameless, though I will say he has impeccable taste in pocket squares. We were marveling at the culture of dependency that has taken root among these multinational freight conglomerates. They want a multi-billion-dollar guided-missile destroyer to hold their hand every single time they sail past Bandar Abbas. What happened to personal responsibility? What happened to the rugged individualism of the open sea?
If you are piloting a quarter-million-ton vessel loaded with crude oil through one of the most heavily militarized and volatile chokepoints on the planet, perhaps you should have thought about your exit strategy before you pulled out of port. Expecting American taxpayers to fund a permanent security detail for your logistics operation is the geopolitical equivalent of expecting your mother to cut your steak for you well into your thirties.
We simply cannot foster a culture of long-term dependency among supertankers, because once you establish that you will protect them on a Monday, they will inevitably return with their hands out on a Tuesday.
Carter is absolutely right. We escorted them out of the strait on day one. We proved we could do it. We provided a beautiful, heavily armed parade of American naval supremacy. The proof of concept was entirely successful. Why linger? Why let the magic fade into a tedious, open-ended chore?
We need to start viewing military intervention through the lens of the modern gig economy. For too long, the Pentagon has operated under the outdated assumption that a deployment must be a permanent, salaried commitment with benefits and a pension. President Trump is simply pivoting the Navy to an agile, independent-contractor model. We log on, we escort a few tankers, we collect five stars on the app, and we log off before the surge pricing drops. It is incredibly disruptive, and frankly, the defense establishment is just jealous they did not think of it first.
Furthermore, calling it quits after a single day is a masterstroke of strategic ambiguity. The U.S.-Iran truce is currently teetering on the edge of a complete meltdown. A grinding, endless stalemate is taking a severe toll on each side. By abruptly abandoning the escort mission before the sailors have even unpacked their duffel bags, we have injected a thrilling sense of unpredictability into the region.
Imagine you are an Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander staring at a radar screen. On Monday, the Americans are there, swatting away drones and ensuring the safe passage of commercial cargo. On Tuesday, they are completely gone, presumably watching television or playing golf. What do you do? You are paralyzed by the sheer caprice of it all. You cannot anticipate the moves of a superpower that gets bored of securing the global energy supply halfway through a Tuesday afternoon. It is the absolute pinnacle of deterrence.
Meanwhile, the hand-wringers in the media point to the actions of other nations. They note that Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, is traveling to Beijing today for bilateral talks with his Chinese counterpart on regional and international developments. The foreign policy establishment is terrified that China will step into the void and broker a lasting diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
They point out that while Beijing condemned the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that started the war in late February, China has largely adopted a posture of strict neutrality ever since, continuously urging a diplomatic resolution. The critics argue that our one-day attention span is handing the Middle East over to Chinese influence on a silver platter.
To this, I say: let them have it. Let Beijing play the exhausting, thankless role of the responsible adult in the room. Let China spend its diplomatic capital trying to parse the centuries-old grievances of the Persian Gulf. Let them host endless, dreary summits while sipping lukewarm tea and pretending to care about shipping insurance premiums. We, on the other hand, have perfected the geopolitical pop-in.
The pop-in is a classic power move. You show up at the party, you make a grand entrance, you remind everyone how incredibly wealthy and heavily armed you are, and then you leave before anyone can ask you to help clean up the kitchen. That is exactly what we have achieved in the Strait of Hormuz. We popped in. We escorted a few ships. We waved our aircraft carriers around. And then we remembered we had better things to do.
I simply do not understand the insistence that American foreign policy must be a grueling, decades-long marathon of incremental progress. Sometimes, foreign policy can just be a fun little day trip.
I frequently apply this exact philosophy to my own philanthropic endeavors. Last year, I spent exactly one afternoon volunteering at a soup kitchen in Georgetown. I ladled a few bowls of minestrone, smiled for the foundation’s photographer, and then promptly departed for a squash match. Did I solve hunger in the District of Columbia? Of course not. Did I provide a permanent, structural solution to systemic poverty? Do not be ridiculous. But for those two hours, I was there. I did my part. And frankly, it would have been highly inappropriate for the unhoused population to demand that I return the following morning to do it all over again.
The same logic applies to the United States military. We are a busy nation. We have an election cycle to complain about. We have endless domestic cultural grievances to litigate on cable television. We cannot be expected to babysit a fleet of Panamanian-flagged oil tankers in perpetuity simply because they are afraid of a few anti-ship ballistic missiles.
I was at Aspen last month, and I found myself cornered by an executive from a major logistics firm who was bemoaning the cost of rerouting his vessels around the Cape of Good Hope. I looked him dead in the eye and asked, have you tried simply being more agile? Have you tried not getting hit by the missiles? He had no answer. These corporate titans expect the government to solve every little problem for them, from navigating contested waterways to preventing the total collapse of the global economy. It is deeply un-American.
It is time for the shipping industry to pull itself up by its bootstraps. If you want to traverse the Strait of Hormuz during a period of intense regional warfare, you should be prepared to take a few risks. Perhaps install a few machine guns on the deck. Perhaps hire some enterprising privateers. Or, better yet, just sail really, really fast and hope the radar operators are on their lunch break.
I am tired of the endless whining from the global logistics community. You got your one day of American naval protection. You got to experience the awe-inspiring might of the greatest military force in human history safely guiding you through a perilous chokepoint. It was a lovely experience. Cherish the memory. Print out the photographs. Frame them in the corporate boardroom.
But please, for the love of God, stop asking us to do it again tomorrow.