There will be. It won't be military
Bold prediction... When an adversary uses military force to destroy your economy, military force is often the only politically viable option.
I'll believe it when I see it. Nobody is planning for it. Nobody is talking about it. Nobody is preparing their publics for it. We aren't seeing naval personel being called up. We aren't seeing a coalition forming. These things take time, there would be signs. A unified command. NATO, the UN, someone would take the lead. And most importantly, threats. There would be threats because threats before action is usually how things work. It's a very trump only thing to simply throw the military at a problem like Iran without a plan, not something the rest of the world will do.
And everyone knows we are a month, month and a half away from global oil reserves being exhausted. Yet....
Crickets. Crickets everywhere.
In the real world, that's called saving your powder.
The crisis hasn't hit. Any action now would be painted as an over reaction, or as support for Trump. This is where I suspect we agree, Trump made this fight politically unbearable for the West via his actions. The only thing that will change that is the reality of no oil, and no distractions.
When trains, busses and flights are canceled, and people get hungry, nobody will care who started the stupidity.
I'm not saying that's my sage advice. I'm saying this is what is most likely to happen if trump doesn't back down. But let's face it, he got spooked when everyone told him what oil would spike to last time. He will back down again before we cross that point. And if he doesn't....well, let's see what the global economy does without oil. Might be the biggest catalyst for the green transition we have ever seen.
Fun fact, China is using less oil now than it has in the previous 10 years. Again, China, winners of this. Congrats USA, China first.
There is no immediate green transition. The economy will fail before nuclear, solar, and unicorn farts replace oil.
As much as the world will hate that it has to act, any blockade so catastrophic as to impact the developed world in any serious way, will result in action. We can't pivot away from oil on a dime, and Iran knows this. It's the whole point of their game. If switching to other sources of energy was viable, Iran wouldn't be holding Europe hostage.
China can have all the energy in the world. It doesn't solve their problem of needing to sell stuff to others. If the rest of the world is oil poor, they can't buy stuff from China, meaning China faces an economic disaster. China wins nothing if they collapse because of a failing economy due to a collapse in overseas trade.
Another Monday?
No.
This will be an unprecedented oil shock. Very rarely has the economy had to deal with not enough oil. Like, physically not enough oil. That's going to hit the global economy worse than covid did.
People in far away places have been dieing due to famine and war since long before I was a child, and they will continue to do so as long as people exist. That is just another Monday, regardless of how impassioned the latest prophet of doom sounds.
If the world hits an unprecedented oil shock because a few religious wackos in the ME want an apocalyptic war, the world is likely to oblige. I know none of the fine upstanding people I know are good with letting some dictator win if it means their kids starve or freeze.
We aren't there yet, because this latest ME war is like the last few. The military goes to war, and the civilians go to the mall/Costco... When the civilians actually start to feel it, get ready for a call to "do something", even if that something is young Western troops dieing far away. That's the pattern of history, and I fail to see why this particular example is different.
For context, Italy became fascist in 1922, Germany in 1933... global events don't usually happen in 4-6 months.
