World

In the end, it doesn't matter where you live, but whether you can live with yourself. And in that, many Americans are starting over. From scratch. With a box, a GPS, and a decision that speaks volumes: leaving (the city) is the only way to stay (in the country).

The Chinese Communist Party's strategy to gain economic and symbolic ground on the African continent is simple: zero tariffs, soft loans, and promises of domestic market access. Meanwhile, the United States expels countries from AGOA, reduces benefits, and corners them with moral rhetoric. In the middle: an Africa that no longer wants to obey, but neither does it want to fall into another tutelage.

Global energy policy is a game of fine-tuned clockwork, with geographic springs that, when they snap, shake the entire system. The Strait of Hormuz —a narrow vein just 39 kilometers wide between Iran and Oman— is one of those springs. Between 20% and 30% of the world's oil passes through it.

When a war isn't televised, but is choreographed with surgical precision and high-flying propaganda, we're dealing with more than just a bombing raid: we're dealing with an act of global symbolic power.

If Iran decided to shut it down, the planet wouldn't go to war... but it would go into panic, because there's nothing more cowardly and fearful than money. But the real question is whether Iran can shut it down, has the capacity to do so, because if it wants to, it surely would.