GENEVA—In geopolitics, there are moments when systems do not evolve gradually but rather reset overnight. The world may be entering such a moment now. The attacks by Iran on energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar matter not only for the damage they inflict, but also for what they reveal: how fragile the global energy system remains, and how quickly the world returns to first principles when that system is under threat.
For years, markets behaved as if energy had been domesticated—diversified, hedged, financialized. That illusion is now fading. Oil is no longer just a commodity. It is increasingly a weapon and a signal. It reveals, with precision, where real power still resides.
A global shock does not require a complete disruption of supply. It requires uncertainty. And uncertainty is priced more aggressively than scarcity. In such conditions, prices do not rise gradually. They jump, often overshooting fundamentals as markets attempt to price geopolitical risk in real time.
The Gulf states
The Gulf states understand this instinctively. For years, some of them pursued a careful balancing act by relying on US security while maintaining pragmatic relations with Iran, even amid accusations that elements within them tolerated or indirectly supported Iranian-linked proxy networks. That strategy collapses the moment infrastructure becomes a target. Ambiguity is a luxury of stability; it rarely survives contact with risk. States whose prosperity depends on uninterrupted energy flows will not tolerate prolonged uncertainty. They will align decisively with the only proven security architecture capable of guaranteeing stability. That architecture is American.
Iran
By contrast, Iran under the current regime risks a historic miscalculation. Its strategy has long relied on asymmetry—pressure without full confrontation, disruption without decisive response. But there is a threshold beyond which such a strategy becomes self-defeating. Targeting the infrastructure that underpins global energy flows is such a threshold. Nations rarely fail because they lack power. More often, they fail because they misjudge the consequences of using power. If Iran is perceived not merely as a regional challenger but as a systemic disruptor of global energy flows, then the response it provokes will not be incremental. It will be structural.
Russia, China, and North Korea
Much has been written about a new alignment among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—an emerging axis opposed to the West. In reality, this has always been more fiction than fact. China depends on stable energy flows from the Gulf. Russia benefits from higher prices but seeks equilibrium, not chaos. North Korea follows but does not lead. When the stakes become real, ideology gives way to interest—and those interests diverge.
Europe
Europe may be another major victim of this situation. At precisely the moment when hard power, energy security, and strategic clarity are required, Europe finds itself largely absent from the field. For decades, it built a model based on external energy, outsourced security, and the belief that economic and normative influence could substitute for geopolitical strength. That model is now showing its weaknesses, and a persistent energy shock could diminish Europe’s geopolitical role further. Without unified military capability or independent energy security, Europe is increasingly reacting to events rather than shaping them. It has shifted, quietly but unmistakably, from actor to arena.
The United States
Beneath all of this lies a deeper truth that has stayed with me for years. During my time at the London Business School, my professor Andrew Scott made a deceptively simple observation: oil and the dollar are the liquidity of the world. He was right. Oil remains the physical liquidity of the global economy. The dollar remains the financial system that prices and stabilizes it. Despite years of discussion about energy transitions, alternative currencies, and new geopolitical alignments, moments like this reveal how little has fundamentally changed. The system still runs on dollar-denominated energy flows. Liquidity, in the end, has no substitute.
There is also a historical parallel worth noting. When US President Ronald Reagan entered office, he defined a small number of strategic priorities. These priorities included restoring economic strength and confronting the Soviet Union. But on everything else, he reacted. That clarity allowed events, many of them unforeseen, to move in his favor. A similar dynamic may be unfolding today. US President Donald Trump did not set out to engineer a global realignment through crisis. But history does not ask whether leaders planned events. It asks whether they were positioned to benefit from them.
If the United States maintains economic strength, energy leverage, and military credibility, then shocks of this kind do not weaken its position. Instead, they reinforce it. Because when the system becomes unstable, the world does not look for consensus. It looks for order. And order requires a guarantor.
This is where one’s legacy is ultimately defined—not in moments of calm but in moments when the system begins to fracture, when uncertainty spreads and decisions become irreversible. Reagan understood this. He did not control events, but he shaped the environment in which they unfolded. History rewarded him for it. Trump may find himself in a similar position. If current dynamics continue, this period may be remembered not as a series of isolated crises, but as the moment when global ambiguity collapsed—and when US power reasserted itself, not by design but by necessity.
In geopolitics, power is measured not by who speaks the loudest, but rather by who cannot be replaced. In a world once again defined by energy, security, and liquidity, the United States remains indispensable.
