When the world as we know it ceases
Iran’s effective oil blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which a fifth of seaborne oil and natural gas trade passes, is sending tremors through the world economy.
The continuing war in Iran by the United States and Israel that began on Feb. 28 has an outsized impact on the rest of the world. The asymmetric conflict is disproportionately affecting not only the Middle East, which shockingly finds itself at the receiving end of Iran’s ballistic missiles and drones, but also the fallout has shaken economies far from the battlefront, like the Philippines.
Everyone—rich and poor alike—is feeling the economic pain amid the unprecedented surge in global oil prices, which affects costs for everything from transport, shipping, and passenger fares to power, food, medicines, fertilizers, and other essential goods and services. The difference may be in the degree or level of difficulty being experienced, which is a function of one’s disposable income and social safety nets and other emergency aid being provided by governments, but hardly anyone in the globe today can claim to be insulated from the turmoil.
Roots of discontent, distrust. The economic pain Iran exports to the world—by choking oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz—runs deeper than the generational enmity between Israel and Iran or Iran and the US. War, conflict, and the famines they breed are as old as civilization itself. Empires rise and fall, nations are born, divided, and renamed, yet violence endures as a constant in human existence.
To understand the roots of discontent and distrust among these three nations, one must look back to the ancient era when it all began.
Followers of the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are familiar with the story of Cain and Abel, the first sons of Adam and Eve. God declared His creation “good,” yet the first family was soon torn apart by fratricide (Genesis 4). This pattern of sibling rivalry, laden with violence, recurs with the patriarch Abraham: though Ishmael was his firstborn through Hagar, the covenant is reckoned through Isaac, born of Sarah and promised by God (Genesis 15, 17, 21). As for Ishmael, “his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12). Nonetheless, God blessed him, promising to “make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of 12 rulers, and I will make him into a great nation” (Genesis 17:20).
The tension continued into the next generation, when Isaac’s wife Rebekah carried twin boys, Jacob and Esau, who struggled in her womb. God told her: “Two nations are in your womb … one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23). Jacob, later renamed as Israel by God, became the father of 12 sons from whom the 12 tribes of Israel descended (Genesis 35:23-26). Genesis 36 recorded Esau’s descendants.
If violence has torn families, clans, tribes, and nations since the dawn of history, the cynic would say there is nothing to be done—it is simply a fact of life. To them, enmity, and the murder and suffering it breeds, will never go away.
‘Vuca’ world. Yet times have changed. Violence is no longer a local affair—confined to a family feud or a tribal skirmish in a distant corner of the world. For instance, the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman south of Iran, has become a global oil trade chokepoint. Iranian attacks on the oil tankers and ships have roiled energy markets, sending prices of Brent crude oil surging above $100 per barrel that unnecessarily burden us all.
The biggest revelation in this widening conflict is Iran’s strikes on predominantly Islamic neighbors, an unprecedented move by Shia-led Tehran that caught off guard the US and Gulf nations Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and even Oman. “Nobody. Nobody. The greatest experts—nobody thought they were going to hit,” US President Donald Trump said (source: https://tinyurl.com/55e8myay).
In “Canoeing the Mountains” (2015), Tod Bolsinger said many of our assumptions no longer hold: “Leaders are rapidly coming to the awareness that the world in front of us is radically different from everything behind us,” he said. The present interconnected world has become what Bob Johansen described as “Vuca”—short for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. “When a mental model dies, a painful paradigm shift takes place within us. It is disorienting and anxiety-making. It’s as if the world as we know it ceases to exist,” Bolsinger said.
Thus, we need a paradigm shift that calls for “a new way of leading and learning” that is necessary when we’re about to go “off the map and into uncharted territory.”
(More on adaptive leadership in my next column.)
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