Three weeks into the US-Iran war, the world faces a dangerous convergence of risks: an energy crisis with no clear end date, a fracturing of the US-led security architecture that has underwritten global trade for decades, and a growing number of nations forced to choose between alignment and self-preservation.
The European-Japanese commitment to safeguard the Strait of Hormuz may offer a partial solution to the shipping crisis, but it also underscores a deeper truth: the post-American world order that analysts have long theorised may now be arriving, not through gradual transition, but through the chaos of war.