On today’s episode of Critical Conditions, Claire and I discussed the absolute insanity of Donald Trump briefly floating the idea that the United States should charge a 20 percent toll on cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz — an idea that it undercuts the entire legal and moral basis of the US position in the Gulf.
The conflict, due to American mismanagement, is now about Iran’s insistence on emerging from the war with a win in the form of the right to charge such tolls for shipping through the strait. For decades, the United States has argued that no state has the right to close or tax one of the world’s indispensable maritime choke points. That principle is a pillar of the post-1945 international order. In Hormuz, the American position has always been that freedom of navigation is not negotiable, even if geography gives Tehran leverage over the narrow waterway.
Then Trump casually proposed doing precisely what America says no one is allowed to do. Yes, he backed down within twenty-four hours. But the damage was in the revealing that he doesn’t seem to understand the principle. Credibility rests on comprehension as well as consistency. If the US position is that strategic waterways cannot become toll booths, then it also cannot collect tolls.
Claire noted that since the end of the Second World War, perhaps America’s single greatest contribution to world order has been serving as guarantor of the freedom of the seas. That has also benefited the United States enormously. Free navigation underpins globalization, keeps energy flowing, lowers costs, and reduces incentives for conflict. The American navy has protected commerce not simply for Americans but for everyone. That role created extraordinary influence precisely because it wasn’t exercised as a protection racket.
Trump consistently mistakes the architecture of power for a business opportunity. He sees alliances as invoices waiting to be issued. He sees military protection as a subscription service. He sees diplomacy as real estate negotiation. It is a huge drain on the brand value of the US, and it cannot end too soon.
The same pattern emerged in our discussion of JD Vance’s explanation — on the Joe Rogan podcast — for the current Iran negotiations. He seems to believe there are pragmatic and hardline factions battling inside Tehran. Perhaps he’s simply trying to construct a coherent narrative around an incoherent policy. Either way, the broader reality remains that the administration repeatedly boxes itself into impossible positions and then improvises explanations after the fact.
We also touched on Israel, where fellow Trump traveller Netanyahu is staging an extraordinary legislative blitz before the coming election, aimed at weakening every institution capable of constraining executive power. The attorney general. Independent oversight. Equality before the law. Civil service protections. Media independence. One by one, the guardrails are treated not as democratic necessities but as obstacles to political victory. Authoritarianism these days arrives not wearing jackboots but carrying procedural amendments. We will see on Oct. 27 whether Israelis are fooled.
Claire noted that Elon Musk has now full-throatedly endorsed the Fremch version of this disaster, Marine Le Pen. That brought me to mention a film I recently watched: Mountainhead.
Jesse Armstrong, the creator of Succession, imagines four billionaire technology titans retreating to a luxurious mountaintop while AI-powered misinformation throws the world into chaos. Governments plead with them to slow down. Democracies wobble. Violence spreads. Their response is not horror but abstraction. Humanity becomes a spreadsheet. Death becomes market correction. Civilization becomes an optimization problem.
The title is a brilliant joke. It echoes Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, where the heroic individual stands against mediocrity and bureaucracy in pursuit of creative greatness. But Mountainhead flips the premise on its head. Today’s self-proclaimed supermen are not visionary builders creating magnificent structures despite society’s resistance. They are enormously wealthy men dismantling the structures that made their own success possible.
Rand imagined genius liberated from conformity. Armstrong imagines genius liberated from responsibility and bereft of morality. But alas, it feels real. On this, a full story is coming.
