The Strait of Hormuz—that narrow strip of water between Oman and Iran—is the point where history has chosen to turn the page. Join us on Telegram , Twitter , and VK . Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su When Water stops the World There are moments in history when a crisis does more than simply shake up the existing order; it lays bare its rotten foundations. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz—that strip of water barely forty kilometers wide through which twenty percent of the world’s oil flows—is not merely an energy shock of extraordinary proportions. It is the mirror through which the world observes, perhaps for the first time with full clarity, just how fragile the commercial and financial architecture built by the West in the post-World War II era truly is. And, at the same time, it is the catalyst that could accelerate the emergence of an alternative order: more continental, more multipolar, more terrestrial.
The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—triggered by the escalation of the conflict between Iran and the Israel-U.S. coalition since February 28 and still in effect—has produced an unprecedented economic tsunami. The price of Brent crude oil surpassed $160 per barrel within seventy-two hours of the closure announcement, while liquefied natural gas futures contracts tripled in value. The supply chains of the European and North American manufacturing industries, already weakened by the consequences of the pandemic and the semiconductor crisis of the previous decade, have shown dramatic fragility: dozens of factories from Germany to California have reduced or suspended production due to a lack of components and raw materials. The costs of the alternative route via the Cape of Good Hope, which extends travel times by eighteen days and increases transportation costs by thirty to fifty percent, have placed inflationary pressures on an already strained system. Volatility in global financial markets has reached levels comparable only to the 2008 crisis: the VIX index hit 58, while the stock markets in New York, London, and Frankfurt recorded cumulative losses of more than 12 percent in the first four weeks. The International Monetary Fund has revised its global growth projections downward by two percentage points for 2026, bringing them to 0.8 percent.
To understand the historic significance of this moment, one must look at the system that the Hormuz crisis is eroding. The global economic order of the 20th century was, at its deepest core, a maritime order. The Pax Americana that has dominated the planet since the end of World War II was founded on three closely interconnected pillars: U.S. naval supremacy in the world’s seas, the dollar as the universal reserve currency, and control of the major ocean routes by Western navies—first and foremost the American navy, and secondarily the British navy.
This architecture was not ideologically neutral: it was the geopolitical extension of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of maritime power, codified as early as the 19th century by Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan in his work The Influence of Sea Power upon History . Control of the seas meant control of trade; control of trade meant control of the world economy; control of the world economy meant political hegemony. For nearly eighty years, this system functioned with surprising effectiveness, bestowing extraordinary privileges upon the United States—first and foremost the so-called “exorbitant privilege” of issuing the world’s reserve currency—and its allies.
But hegemonic systems have life cycles. And the Hormuz crisis has made clear what many have been asserting for years with growing insistence: the era of Western dominance is not in decline; it is already over. What we are witnessing are the death throes of an order that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge its own obsolescence. The U.S. Navy’s inability to keep the Strait open despite the presence of the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf has demonstrated that even American naval power has operational limits that once seemed unthinkable. The doctrine of freedom of navigation, a cornerstone of the liberal international order, has been shattered by the reality of a Middle Eastern state—with its proxies and asymmetric missile capabilities—capable of successfully challenging the maritime superpower par excellence.
The decline of Western maritime hegemony is not a recent phenomenon. It has its roots in China’s economic rise, in Russia’s geopolitical assertiveness post-2014, in the progressive de-dollarization initiated by a growing number of emerging economies, and in the erosion of liberal multilateralism within traditional international institutions—from the WTO to the IMF, from the UN to the World Bank. The Hormuz crisis did not create this drift; it simply accelerated it with the brutality characteristic of historical shocks. The Heartland to the Rescue: was Mackinder right? We have cited him many times; one more time will not surprise us. In 1904, the British geographer and strategist Halford John Mackinder presented an essay to the Royal Geographical Society in London that was destined to become one of the foundational texts of modern geopolitics. The title was The Geographical Pivot of History , and the central thesis was revolutionary for its time: the future of world power did not belong to the maritime powers, but to whoever controlled what Mackinder called the “Heartland”—that is, the heart of the Eurasian supercontinent, that vast continental zone stretching from the plains of Eastern Europe to the steppes of Siberia and the highlands of Central Asia, impenetrable to naval fleets and naturally inaccessible to maritime domination. Mackinder’s strategic synthesis, which we have all come to know, went down in history with the formula: “Whoever rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland; whoever rules the Heartland commands the World Island; whoever rules the World Island rules the World.” The Anglo-Saxon maritime powers of the 20th century built their global hegemony precisely by attempting to neutralize this axiom: the containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War was, in essence, an attempt to prevent the power of the Heartland from extending to dominate the coasts of the supercontinent.
Well, with the crisis in Hormuz, Mackinder’s logic returns to the center of global strategic thinking. If sea lanes become unreliable—due to wars, regional instability, or simple rivalry among great powers—global trade must necessarily seek alternative routes, and those alternative routes almost inevitably pass through the Heartland. The railways, gas pipelines, and transcontinental road corridors crossing Central Asia, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey: this is where the stakes of the new world order are being played out, and this is where the BRICS+ have already built—or are building as we write—the infrastructure of the future.
Mackinder has been rediscovered in the chancelleries of Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi with a level of attention he never even received in British universities. The Hormuz crisis has given that rediscovery a concreteness that had been lacking until now: suddenly, land routes are no longer a theoretical alternative; they are the only practical alternative. The only way out: the BRICS+ architecture and the post-Hormuz era It is here and now that the BRICS+ find themselves in the extraordinary position of being able to offer the rest of the world what no Western power is currently capable of proposing: a concrete and already partially operational way out of the maritime route crisis.
This way out has four mutually reinforcing dimensions: the new Eurasian land routes, alternative energy corridors, the de-dollarization of trade, and the construction of a financial architecture independent of SWIFT and the Western banking system. Let us consider them separately, while taking care not to lose sight of the big picture: it is their combination that makes the BRICS+ proposal strategically credible.
Over the past decade, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has quietly built the backbone of Eurasian trade that does not depend on the Strait of Hormuz or any other critical maritime chokepoint. The China-Europe rail corridors through Central Asia, particularly the China-Europe Railway Express—which in 2025 handled approximately 1.9 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), representing a 22 percent increase over the previous year—now offer a credible alternative to Suez-bound routes for high-value-added goods.
The Hormuz blockade has tripled demand for capacity on these lines in just a few weeks. According to preliminary data published by the China State Railway Group, in April 2026 alone, rail space bookings on the China-Europe route increased by 340 percent compared to the 2025 average. Transit times—typically fifteen to eighteen days compared to thirty to forty days for the maritime route through the Suez Canal—make the rail solution particularly attractive for sectors such as electronics, automotive, and pharmaceuticals.
But the BRI is not the only element of this realignment. The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), promoted by Russia, India, and Iran and now extended to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and several Central Asian countries, is experiencing a renaissance. This corridor—which connects Mumbai to St. Petersburg via the Arabian Sea, Iran, and the Caspian Sea—allows India to be linked with Europe in about twenty-five days, compared to the forty to forty-five days of the traditional Suez route, reducing estimated logistics costs by twenty to thirty percent. With Hormuz closed, the maritime segment of the corridor must be recalibrated, but the Iranian rail and road sections—which have been the subject of significant investment over the past three years—allow for effective bypasses. The INSTC was considered a secondary corridor, but the Hormuz crisis has transformed it into a top-tier strategic priority for all of South Asia.
On the energy front, the Hormuz crisis has given a decisive boost to pipeline and land-based energy infrastructure projects that had been slowed by political opposition, financial difficulties, or simply the economic convenience of maritime routes. The Power of Siberia 2—the pipeline intended to connect Siberian fields with China via Mongolia—has seen negotiations accelerate significantly following the blockade of the Strait. The agreement, which had been discussed for years without a final conclusion due to price disagreements, is now presented as a strategic priority by both parties: China, which imported about 18 percent of its gas via LNG from the Persian Gulf, must find land-based alternatives; Russia, excluded from European markets following the 2022 sanctions, needs stable commercial outlets to the east.
Meanwhile, the TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipeline), which carries Azerbaijani gas to Italy via Turkey, and TurkStream, which connects Russia to Turkey and the Balkans, are operating at full capacity. Turkey—which has not joined Western sanctions against Russia and maintains stable relations with all BRICS+ actors—finds itself in a position of extraordinary leverage as a continental energy hub. Ankara, not coincidentally, has formally applied to join the BRICS organization in 2024, a candidacy that could be definitively accepted by the end of the year.
The India-Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline—a project that had been on hold for decades due to U.S. pressure on Islamabad—has been relaunched in a different form, with a direct India-Iran link across the Gulf of Oman (bypassing the Strait) and then overland to Central Asian markets. Technicians from the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum and those from the Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas have resumed direct contact for the first time since 2012.
The Hormuz crisis has turned what was considered a theoretical alternative into a strategic priority: Eurasian land routes are now the only credible response to the blockade of maritime passages. Farewell, Mr. Dollar “Oil is bought and sold in dollars,” went Nixon’s sacred law. No alternatives were allowed, and this is what enabled the United States to finance its trade deficits at virtually no cost, to exert economic pressure through sanctions, and to keep the dollar at the center of the global financial system regardless of the actual performance of the U.S. economy. The Hormuz crisis has dramatically accelerated a trend that had already been underway for years: the de-dollarization of energy and trade exchanges among the BRICS+ countries. The process began with China-Russia bilateral agreements denominated in yuan and rubles after 2022; it had extended to India-Russia oil trade (largely settled in rupees) and to China-Saudi Arabia agreements for crude oil supplies partially denominated in yuan. Little by little, the greenback has ceased to hold sway. With the Hormuz blockade, de-dollarization has undergone a particularly sharp systemic acceleration. When trade routes are redrawn along Eurasian land routes, when trade takes place among BRICS+ countries through corridors that bypass Western financial systems, when U.S. sanctions lose their effectiveness because trade flows avoid the banking hubs over which Washington exerts its influence — the dollar ceases to be the only viable option and increasingly becomes a one-sided tool.
The BRICS Bridge — the interbank payment system proposed by the bloc as an alternative to SWIFT, operational in pilot form since January 2026 — saw transactions double in April alone compared to the previous quarter’s average. The system, based on a distributed platform that enables bilateral payments in the national currencies of member countries, is not yet competitive with SWIFT in terms of absolute volumes, but its growth is exponential. What we are witnessing is a structural shift in the international monetary system that could prove deeper than we expected, and it is happening more rapidly than standard economic models predicted.
The agreement announced in April between Brazil, Russia, India, and China to denominate trade in agricultural commodities—grains, soybeans, beef—within the bloc in yuan and a basket of BRICS currencies represents a historic step that could accelerate de-dollarization well beyond the energy sector. Brazil, the world’s leading exporter of soybeans and beef, is the missing piece: its participation in this scheme means that a significant portion of global agricultural trade will be able to bypass the dollar.
The direction is clear. This is not an instant replacement of the dollar—no serious analyst expects that in the short term—but a gradual erosion of its monopoly. The International Monetary Fund, in its April 2026 World Economic Outlook, noted for the first time that the dollar’s share of global foreign exchange reserves has fallen below 55 percent, to a historic low. Twenty-five years ago, it stood at 71 percent. Europe without a compass In this scenario of global realignment, Europe finds itself in a position of singular helplessness. Dependent on imports from outside the continent for 70 percent of its energy needs, lacking a common foreign policy capable of projecting strategic autonomy, militarily subordinate to the NATO umbrella and thus to American priorities, and commercially exposed to both the instability of maritime routes and Chinese industrial competition, the Old Continent risks becoming the major collateral victim of the ongoing realignment. European political elites—still intent on framing the Hormuz crisis as a regional security issue rather than as a catalyst for epochal change—struggle to grasp that the window for decision-making is rapidly closing. Europe has a window—which many analysts estimate will not exceed three to five years—to redefine its position in the emerging global order: either as a strategic appendage of the American-led West, or as an autonomous actor capable of engaging with all poles of the multipolar system.
Geopolitical and economic crises are, historically, the moments when orders disintegrate and new ones emerge. World War I destroyed the European imperial order and paved the way for Anglo-American supremacy. The Great Depression and World War II dismantled that first attempt at a multilateral liberal order and built, on its ashes, the Bretton Woods system. The 1973 oil shock heralded the end of postwar unlimited growth and ushered in the era of financialization and neoliberal globalization.
The 2026 Hormuz crisis belongs to this category of foundational events. This is not a temporary disruption that will be resolved with a few marginal adjustments—it is the dress rehearsal for an order that is about to arrive. The Eurasian land-based infrastructure that the BRICS+ are putting in place will not go to waste when the Strait reopens. Trade relations denominated in non-dollar currencies will not dissolve with the return to normalcy in energy markets. Trust in the maritime routes controlled by the Anglo-Saxon powers—already fractured following the 2021 Suez Canal incident (the Ever Given) and the instability in the Red Sea in 2023–2024—has suffered a rupture that cannot be simply mended by the reopening of a passage.
Crises do not create the conditions for change; they reveal them. Eurasian land routes, de-dollarization, the new BRICS+ payment systems—all of this already existed, as we know. Hormuz has simply made it clear that this is the future, not a marginal experiment.
Global investors understood this before Western governments did. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries hit 5.8 percent in mid-May—a decades-high—while the currencies of BRICS+ countries showed surprising resilience despite the general volatility. The ruble, supported by land-based energy exports to China, remained stable. The yuan gained ground as a reserve currency. The Indian rupee appreciated against the euro.
The landscape of international financial institutions reflects this transition. The BRICS New Development Bank approved a $15 billion emergency package in April to finance infrastructure upgrades in member countries hardest hit by the logistics crisis. The speed and scale of this response are unprecedented in the institution’s history and were deliberately contrasted with the bureaucratic timelines of the IMF and the World Bank. Toward the Great Eurasian Convergence Looking beyond the immediate emergency, what emerges is a scenario of structural realignment in global trade and geopolitics that could unfold over the next decade with consequences comparable to those of the end of the Cold War. The Great Eurasian Convergence—the progressive alignment of the commercial and strategic interests of China, Russia, India, Iran, the Gulf states, and sub-Saharan Africa around an alternative system of routes, currencies, and institutions to the Western one—has its institutional framework in the BRICS+ expansion and its catalytic moment in the Hormuz crisis.
The presence in the BRICS+ organization of both Saudi Arabia and Iran—despite the bilateral tensions that contributed to the crisis itself—is in itself an extraordinary development. The bloc now includes countries representing 46 percent of the world’s population, 37 percent of global GDP in purchasing power parity, 44 percent of global oil production, and over 55 percent of proven natural gas reserves. This is not a club of marginal countries seeking visibility: it is the economic and demographic majority of the planet organizing itself in an alternative form.
Demographic and economic growth projections make this figure even more significant. According to estimates by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, by 2035 the BRICS+ countries will account for 50 percent of global GDP in purchasing power parity and two-thirds of global growth. Europe and the United States, while maintaining higher per capita income levels, will see their share of world trade and influence in international financial institutions gradually decline.
The crisis in Hormuz appears less like a dramatic incident and more like the prologue to a story already written.
There is an irony in history that does not escape those who observe the great cycles of geopolitics: the modern commercial order was born on land—from the caravans of the Silk Road, the spice routes of Central Asia, and the continental markets of medieval Eurasia—before Portuguese and Spanish navigators shifted the center of power to the seas. For five centuries, maritime powers have dominated the planet. The 2026 Hormuz crisis could mark the beginning of the next cycle: the return of the land.
This is not a return to the past, but a new synthesis: high-speed rail networks instead of caravans, gas pipelines and data cables instead of caravanserais, digital payment systems in national currencies instead of gold coins. The BRICS+ are not offering the world a utopia; they are offering an infrastructure that is already under construction and that the Hormuz crisis has made urgent and visible. This is.
The old order will not disappear tomorrow morning. The dollar will remain a significant reserve currency for decades. The U.S. Navy will remain the most powerful in the world. The Bretton Woods institutions will continue to operate. But hegemony—that exercise of power which requires no explanation because it appears natural and inevitable—that, yes, is coming to an end. And when a hegemony ends, it does not return.
Mackinder wrote his Heartland theory to warn the British Empire of the danger coming from within the Eurasian continent. The warning came too late and was ignored. Today, 122 years later, his prophecy is coming true not as the triumph of a single terrestrial power, but as the rebalancing of a system that had lost its center of gravity.
The land is reclaiming what the sea had taken. And the Strait of Hormuz—that narrow strip of water between Oman and Iran—is the point where history has chosen to turn the page.