Breaking the System
The USA is the Author of a Dispensation it Cannot Perfect
There is a recurring temptation in strategy, especially for a dominant power. When the system you built begins to constrain you, the instinct is not to reform it, but to break it.
You can see the outline of that thinking now in discussions around the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The argument runs like this: the global energy system is too dependent on a volatile region. That dependence creates leverage for adversaries. If that system becomes unreliable; if the chokepoint is degraded, then the relative position of a continental, energy-rich power like the United States improves. Others need it more. Others suffer more. Let the system fracture, and advantage shifts.
There is a certain cold logic to this. It is not unserious.
But it rests on an assumption that does not survive contact with reality: that power is primarily positional. That if you occupy the strongest place in the current system, you will also dominate whatever comes after it. That is not how instability works.
When systems destabilize, the contest changes. It is no longer about who holds the strongest position. It is about who can move. Who can adjust. Who can operate when the structure itself is no longer reliable. When the system destabilizes, the strongest player does not necessarily gain. The most adaptable player does.
The United States has been strong not simply because of geography or resources, but because it has operated as a system manager. It secures sea lanes. It underwrites the financial architecture. It creates an environment where risk is legible and, to some degree, containable. That is not charity. It is power exercised through stability.
In that environment, strength compounds. Allies align. Capital flows. Decisions scale. But stability is doing more work than we admit.
Once that stability erodes, those same strengths begin to behave differently. The system we operate is large, complex, and deeply interconnected. Supply chains, capital markets, alliance structures, regulatory layers—these are advantages when the system holds. Under stress, they introduce friction. Coordination slows. Decision-making becomes contested. Domestic politics seeps into external action.
By contrast, actors we tend to describe as weaker—most notably China—are built differently. More centralized. Less constrained by internal dissent. More tolerant of volatility. That does not make them stronger in the current system. But it can make them more effective when the system itself begins to break. This is the part that is consistently underestimated.
The idea that one can deliberately degrade systemic stability and emerge relatively stronger assumes that the transition can be controlled. That the risks can be bounded. That the system will fragment in a way that advantages you. That is doing far too much work.
We are already seeing what degradation looks like. Transit through Hormuz is no longer a neutral function. It is selective, politicized, contingent. Shipping is rerouting. Risk is not being contained. No, it is spreading. What used to be a centralized constraint is becoming a fragmented contest. That is not diversification. That is a loss of governability which does not stop at shipping lanes.
At the same time that the external system is becoming less stable, the internal American system is becoming more compressed. The effective removal of Randy A. George during active operations, alongside other senior officers, is not business as usual. Nor is the targeting of figures like Kamal Kharazi, who, whatever their formal role, sit near the channels through which negotiation becomes possible. Each of these can be explained on its own. Together, they point in a direction.
Externally, fewer credible intermediaries. Internally, fewer independent centers of judgment. Combine that with a high operational tempo, and what you get is not simply strength. You get speed without friction.
That sounds efficient. It is not necessarily stable. Systems that lose their ability to self-correct do not fail slowly. They fail abruptly.
Now, there is still a path where this is all in service of coercive bargaining. Pressure applied to produce a settlement. Signals sent through intermediaries. A deal that each side presents differently to its own public. That path remains open.
However, the margin for error is narrowing.
Because diplomacy requires people. It requires channels. It requires time. And institutional stability is what allows power to be exercised with some degree of restraint. When both are under pressure at the same time, optionality disappears.
This is the deeper risk in the idea of “breaking the system.” It assumes that relative advantage will persist through the transition. But transitions are precisely where advantage is most fragile. The terrain shifts. The rules change. The skills required are different.
And the United States is not simply a player within the system. It is, to a large extent, the system’s organizer. Its power is not just material. It is relational, institutional, and embedded. It is the author of this dispensation, but has found it cannot be the perfecter of it.
If that system degrades, the United States does not step outside the consequences. It sits at the center of them. So the question is not whether the United States is strong. It is.
The question is whether it is structured to adapt faster than the instability it is willing to unleash. That is a harder question which leads to a less comfortable conclusion.
Breaking the system may feel like regaining control. But in complex environments, control is often what you lose first. When the system destabilizes, the strongest player does not necessarily gain.
The most adaptable player does.