Michael Froman’s NYT piece below on chokepoints is a lucid exercise in economic statecraft. He argues that Iran “overplayed its hand” in Hormuz, that its leverage is a “wasting and transitory asset,” and that chokepoints work best as deterrents. The mechanisms he cites—rerouting, substitution, diversification—are real, and his warnings about erosion deserve a hearing. But the framework beneath them rests on a premise: that the international system still has a centre, and that centre is the US.
Froman’s model is hub-and-spoke. The dollar is the benchmark, the “most potent” chokepoint, against which Iran’s geography and China’s rare earths are measured and found wanting. His warning to Washington is “do no harm.” This is hegemonic-stability logic. It treats US primacy as the default and deviations as self-inflicted wounds.
That assumption no longer holds. Kishore Mahbubani has repeatedly argued that Western domination of world history is over and that the world is already multipolar. The evidence is striking: the dollar’s share of reserves has fallen from over 70% in 2000 to 57% today; China settles roughly 28% of bilateral goods trade in renminbi, up from 11% in 2017; and the EU’s GDP, once seven times China’s, is now roughly equal. These are today’s operating conditions, not future trends. They are the ground on which any serious chokepoint analysis must now stand.
Once the system is plural, Hormuz looks different. Iran’s closure was not a deterrent failure but a positional play. Froman concedes that Iran “shifted the primary focus of negotiations with the US from its nuclear, missile and regional aspirations to the reopening of the strait itself.” That is a strategic gain: a middle power forcing a superpower to negotiate over the middle power’s leverage rather than the superpower’s agenda.
The strait has not returned to normal. Roughly 60% of regional crude still transits it. Pipelines and alternative ports exist, but Froman admits they “could be vulnerable to Iranian missiles and drones,” and more than oil moves through the waterway. Iran’s selective blockade—tolls, throttled traffic, selective access—is graduated and sustainable below the threshold of declared war. Iran need not win a military confrontation; it need only remain a credible disruptor. That is leverage, even if it is costly leverage.
Nor is Iran playing on only one board. The US may still play the dollar, but Iran plays geography—and chess. Its Houthi allies hold Bab el-Mandeb at the Red Sea’s southern mouth. Together, Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb form an asymmetric dual chokepoint: one throttles the Persian Gulf, the other strangles the Suez route. The Houthis need no navy, only drones, missiles, and a willingness to absorb retaliation. The result: surging freight rates, soaring insurance, and diverted Western shipping and assets. Tehran has turned a non-state actor into a deniable, sustainable, cheap extension of its coercive reach. This is not a weak hand overplayed. It is a weak hand multiplied by geography—and geography in a multipolar system is never solely American.
Chokepoint erosion is not symmetrical either. Froman calls the dollar durable because “there’s no viable alternative.” In a multipolar system, the question is not whether one rival replaces the dollar, but whether a mosaic of alternatives is emerging. Mahbubani’s 7-7-7 Security Council reform—Brazil, China, EU, India, Nigeria, Russia, US—is a metaphor. The issue is not who becomes hegemon next, but whether the architecture becomes structurally plural. The dollar may remain first among equals, but first is not sole.
Froman’s “self-harm” warning also reads differently. He locates US vulnerability in tariffs, deficits, and debt. Those matter. The deeper self-harm is refusing to listen—to engage rising powers as equals, to reform institutions that no longer reflect power. Western marginalization is not mainly a policy error; it is a structural consequence of insisting the system still revolves around the United States. That refusal is not a tactical mistake; it is a strategic blind spot.
Iran did not overplay its hand. It played a weak hand well—then found a second. It converted geography into narrative leverage, showing Beijing, Moscow, and the global South that Washington will weaponize the arteries of the global economy when it suits. That framing compounds: middle powers diversify not because they love Iran, but because they fear a hegemon treating interdependence as a cudgel. The lesson is not that Iran is winning; it is that the game has more players.
US power is not spent, by any stretch of the imagination. The dollar remains central; the US economy remains innovative. But centrality is not unipolarity, and durability is not monopoly. Froman asks whether Washington can preserve its chokepoints. The urgent question is whether Washington recognizes that it is no longer the only player holding one. Hormuz has not returned to normal. Neither has the system Froman’s framework assumes.
