Energy, Power and the Cost of Conflict
Power has never been neutral.
From the first human group that dominated fire to the states that today control the planet’s energy, the logic has been persistent. Whoever accumulates resources imposes conditions. Whoever controls the energy, controls the time of others. And when that control is perceived to be threatened, history shows a recurring response. Force is exerted. It is no exception.
It is a continuity.
The attack that reopens a known chain
The United States has intensified attacks on Iranian-linked positions in the Middle East. It is not an isolated episode. It is the continuity of an intervention logic that has been operating in the region for more than two decades. Each bombardment is presented as defensive, limited, necessary. But when you look at the whole, a coherent sequence appears. Use of force, strategic pressure and control of key areas.
Since 2001, U.S.-driven or U.S.-led wars have generated an economic cost of more than $8 trillion and a human impact that exceeds one million direct deaths, with millions more indirect victims from the collapse of health systems, hunger, and structural destruction. It is not an isolated figure. It is a sustained policy.
Each intervention activates mechanisms that history has already shown. It does not inaugurate an entirely new scenario, but rather reactivates patterns of retaliation, escalation, and regional reconfiguration. The sequence is predictable in its logic, although uncertain in its consequences. When force enters the scene, the chain does not close: it extends.
The power that imposes itself when it can do so
Not all states attack. Attack who can. Who accumulates enough power to do so without facing an immediate threat of internal or external collapse. The United States does not act from fragility or from immediate defensive urgency. It acts from a material superiority built up over decades, with military spending of more than USD 800,000 million per year and the ability to project force anywhere on the planet in a matter of hours.
That capacity is not circumstantial. It is the result of global infrastructure, strategic alliances, distributed military bases, and sustained technological dominance. The projection of power does not depend only on the budget, but on logistics, intelligence and international cooperation networks. The decision to intervene is based on that architecture. Without it, the margin for action would be substantially smaller.
In human history, from the earliest tribes to modern empires, the pattern is persistent. The group that concentrates resources, energy and coercive capacity imposes conditions on others. The accumulation precedes the imposition. The asymmetry creates the space for unilateral decision. Today that place is occupied by the United States in the international system.
Before that, it was occupied by other dominant actors. None of them held that position indefinitely. The concentration of power tends to generate resistance, balance and reconfiguration of order. The act of attacking is not just a one-off tactical decision. It is the visible expression of a power structure that allows it to do so without taking immediate existential risks.
Iraq
$2.9 trillion and a fragmented state**
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified by weapons of mass destruction that never appeared. The result was the destruction of the state. The economic cost exceeds USD 2.9 trillion and the deaths are estimated to be between 200,000 and more than 500,000 people, in addition to millions of displaced people.
Iraq has about 145 billion barrels of oil. After the intervention, its productive structure was reconfigured under new power dynamics. The country did not achieve stability. It fragmented. New forms of violence emerged. The conflict did not end. He transformed.
Afghanistan
20 years, $2.3 trillion and return to start**
Afghanistan was America’s longest war. It cost more than $2.3 trillion and left an estimated 176,000 dead, including more than 46,000 civilians. More than 5.7 million people were displaced.
After twenty years of intervention, the country returned to the starting point. The Taliban retook power in 2021. The economy contracted by more than 30% of GDP. More than 70% of the population faces food insecurity. The war did not stabilize. It deepened the fragility.
Libya
collapse of an oil state
Before 2011, Libya produced about 1.6 million barrels per day and had one of the highest per capita incomes in Africa. International intervention destroyed the internal balance.
Direct deaths are estimated in the tens of thousands. The country was divided into multiple armed factions. Libya has 48 billion barrels of oil, but control of those resources has fragmented. The State ceased to exist as a unified structure.
Syria
500,000 dead and USD 400,000 million destroyed
The conflict in Syria has left more than 500,000 dead, more than 6.8 million internally displaced and nearly 5.5 million refugees. The reconstruction exceeds USD 400,000 million.
Syria was transformed into a space of global competition. The United States, Russia, Iran and Turkey operate on the same territory. It is not just a civil war. It is a dispute for regional influence, routes and strategic balance.
Yemen
377,000 deaths and structural crisis**
Yemen has left more than 377,000 dead, mostly from indirect causes such as hunger and disease. More than 4.5 million people have been displaced.
It is one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world. The United States has supported the Saudi-led coalition. Iran has backed the Houthis. The conflict is regional, but its victims are local.
Iran
An actor that changes the scale
Iran is not Iraq or Libya. It has more than 85 million inhabitants, reserves estimated at 157,000 million barrels of oil and more than 33 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. It is not a peripheral player in the international energy system. It is a strategic node whose stability or instability has repercussions beyond its territory. Its demographic and energy weight gives it a different scale.
In addition, it has a direct influence on the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s traded oil circulates. This maritime corridor is not only a regional route, it is an artery of the global market. A conflict in that area can remove up to 20 million barrels per day from the international circuit. The impact on prices and supply would be immediate.
But Iran’s relevance is not limited to hydrocarbon volumes. Its geographical position connects Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Levant, making it a strategic convergence point. Trade, energy and military routes intersect in its surroundings. Any alteration in that balance has repercussions on logistics chains that go beyond the Middle East.
The internal dimension also matters. A country of that magnitude does not fragment without amplified regional consequences. Unlike states with smaller populations or lower institutional density, the Iranian scale introduces additional variables into any confrontation scenario. Destabilization would not be a contained phenomenon; it would have an expansive projection.
In this context, the scale modifies the equation. It is not just about military capacity or political discourse, but about structural weight in the energy and geopolitical system. A conflict with Iran would not be an isolated episode on the periphery of the international system. It would be an event with the capacity to alter global balances in real time.
Israel and the United States
Strategic convergence
Israel considers Iran an existential threat. The United States considers it a destabilizing actor in the regional balance. Both share a stated goal: to prevent Iran from achieving military nuclear capability. This strategic coincidence is not circumstantial, but sustained over time. It is expressed in official speeches, cooperation agreements and coordinated pressure mechanisms.
Economic sanctions have reduced the Iranian economy by more than $200 billion in cumulative value, according to public estimates. Financial, trade and energy restrictions have limited exports, access to foreign currency and foreign investment. The impact is not abstract: it affects employment, inflation and internal stability. Economic pressure thus becomes a protracted political tool.
Covert operations have been constant over the years. Cyberattacks, targeted sabotage and intelligence actions are part of a conflict that is not always openly declared. Coordination between allies is not always visible, but it operates at strategic levels. This dynamic conditions Iran’s response and defines regional room for manoeuvre.
Tension does not develop in a vacuum. It is inserted in a network of alliances, historical rivalries and fragile balances in the Middle East. Each movement is observed by regional and global actors who evaluate costs and benefits. The risk of escalation does not depend only on a specific decision, but on the accumulation of pressures.
In this scenario, deterrence is mixed with indirect confrontation. The strategy seeks to contain without unleashing an open war, but that containment is unstable. When the pressure intensifies, so does the possibility of miscalculation. And in conflicts of high strategic sensitivity, mistakes are rarely contained.
The call for insurrection
Pressure from within as a tool of power
The call for insurrection is not a rhetorical gesture or a simple diplomatic statement. It is a political action with concrete effects on the stability of a State. When an external power promotes internal changes in another country, it is not giving its opinion from a distance. It is intervening in their political dynamics. The difference between discourse and action, in these cases, is operative.
In the case of Iran, these calls occur in a context of accumulated sanctions, sustained economic pressure and internal social tensions. Encouraging institutional rupture in this scenario is not neutral or abstract. It is deliberately operating on the balance of the State. Each external statement acquires specific weight within an already stressed structure.
There are clear precedents in recent decades. Iraq, Libya and Syria show how internal destabilization, combined with direct or indirect external intervention, did not produce orderly transitions. It produced a power vacuum, territorial fragmentation, prolonged war and hundreds of thousands of deaths. The institutional collapse did not generate immediate democratic stability.
For Iran, such calls are not interpreted as legitimate political criticism. It is interpreted as a structural threat to the continuity of the regime and the integrity of the State. That perception conditions their response and hardens their position. External rhetoric translates internally as an attempt to disarticulate.
The cumulative effect of these pressures should not be underestimated. When discursive intervention is added to sanctions and indirect operations, the message is coherent and sustained. In scenarios of high strategic sensitivity, every incentive to break up can become a trigger. And when stability breaks down in complex systems, the consequences are rarely foreseeable or controllable.
The Iranian response
Asymmetry and expansion
Iran does not compete in military spending with the United States. The budget difference is structural: Washington exceeds USD 800,000 million per year, while Tehran is between USD 15,000 and 25,000 million according to public estimates. That gap defines the framework for action. In the face of overwhelming conventional superiority, the Iranian strategy does not seek parity. Seek compensation.
The doctrine is not direct confrontation, but calculated asymmetry. Medium-range missiles, low-cost and high-mobility drones, proxy warfare and projection through non-state actors. Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq, Houthis in Yemen are part of a regional network of influence. The capacity does not lie in a single front, but in multiple dispersed nodes.
The response, in the event of an escalation, would not be frontal or concentrated. It would be distributed, fragmented and staggered in different scenarios. Energy infrastructure, sea routes and regional bases could become points of indirect pressure. The logic is not to defeat the opponent in an open clash. It’s increasing the cost of each move.
That approach complicates containment. Geographical dispersion and the use of allied actors make a rapid and linear response difficult. The conflict ceases to be bilateral and becomes a network. Each secondary front expands the theater of operations and increases strategic uncertainty. The climb does not follow a simple trajectory.
Asymmetry is not improvisation, it is structure. In contexts where technological superiority is evident, compensation is articulated through flexibility and decentralization. This dynamic introduces a factor of unpredictability that alters conventional calculations. In a scenario of prolonged tension, indirect expansion can be more destabilizing than a direct confrontation.
The Strait of Hormuz
The artery that holds the world together
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most sensitive points in the global energy system. Approximately a fifth of the oil traded in the world transits through this maritime strip. It is not just a geographical step; it is a strategic artery that connects Gulf producers with markets in Asia, Europe and America. Its stability is not a regional issue, but a systemic one.
Any disruption to its operation has an immediate impact on prices, supply chains, and financial expectations. The vulnerability of this corridor turns every military tension into a global economic variable. Energy interests, trade routes and naval capacity converge there. In an interdependent system, the strait is not a cartographic detail: it is a pressure point that can amplify any conflict.
It is not only oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz. The stability of the global economic system circulates. Between 17 and 20 million barrels per day, about 20% of world consumption, cross that point every day. It’s a narrow line that sustains a $100 trillion economy. When that line is stressed, the impact is not regional. It is immediate and global.
A partial block is not an academic hypothesis. It is an event capable of taking the barrel to USD 120, USD 150 or more, in a matter of days. That’s not just energy. It’s inflation, transportation, food, supply chains, and social stability. Every dollar that oil goes up is transmitted to the entire world economy.
That is why, when that area is tense, a local conflict is not at stake. The energy balance of the planet is being put at risk. And when the energy gets messy, the rest of the system follows.
Climbing is not a mistake
It’s a construction
The military buildup in the Middle East is no accident. The United States maintains more than 40,000 troops in the region, with distributed bases and permanent intervention capacity. Israel operates under a logic of preventive action. Iran has developed networks of influence that cross borders and conflicts. They are not isolated pieces. They are part of a power system in constant tension.
There is no improvisation here. There is an accumulation. Decades of decisions, alliances, interventions and responses that have built a scenario where every movement has consequences. When political space shrinks, military space advances. And when the dominant signal is force, the response is organized in the same logic.
At this level of militarization, the mistake ceases to be an accident. It becomes a likely consequence. Not because someone is openly looking for it, but because the system is designed to react. And when it reacts, it does so with the capacity accumulated over years.
The first shot and the responsibility of power
(The attack and the decision to use force)
When the United States attacks, it is not an accident. It’s a decision. It does not respond to an impulse; it responds to a political and military will to intervene. The moment, the target and the type of shot are chosen. Nothing is improvised, nothing is spontaneous, nothing is alien to a previous calculation of consequences and costs.
There is no ambiguity here. The United States is the one who initiates the action, who decides to use force against another country. It is not an automatic reaction or an instinctive reflex. It is a deliberate intervention that is planned, evaluated, and executed. It is attacked to weaken, to mark limits, to impose a position on the international chessboard.
To call it just “defense” is to simplify what happens. It is also an exercise of power and an affirmation of strategic superiority. It is to demonstrate that those who possess global military capacity can act when they deem it necessary. That is the signal that is sent to allies and adversaries. Force is not only a military instrument, it is a political message.
The problem is that each attack generates a response. It opens a chain that is not easily controlled and rarely ends where it began. Tension grows, actions accumulate and the conflict expands beyond the initial objective. What is presented as a one-off operation can become a prolonged escalation.
Recent history shows that military superiority does not guarantee political stability. Intervening is relatively simple; sustaining the consequences is something else. Wars do not take place in the abstract, they impact populations, alter regional balances and redefine alliances. The decision to use force reconfigures scenarios that no one controls completely.
Therefore, when you decide to attack, you do not close a problem. A larger one opens. There is a risk that the logic of confrontation will replace diplomacy. Force may impose temporary silence, but it does not eliminate the root causes. And every deliberate use of military power leaves a mark that transcends the tactical moment. Force can win battles, but it rarely solves the root causes.
The decision to attack is not an isolated episode: it is the contemporary continuity of a logic of confrontation “that we inherited from our ancestors” that is and will be organizing power.
EPILOGUE
Energy, Power and the Human Pattern
The real cost in figures
Since 2001, wars directly or indirectly linked to U.S. intervention have generated:
- More than USD 8,000,000,000,000 in cumulative military spending
- Between 900,000 and 1,000,000 direct combat kills
- More than 3,800,000 indirect deaths from hunger, disease and collapse of health systems
- More than 38,000,000 displaced people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Libya
These figures are not projections or hypothetical scenarios. They are accumulated, they are measurable, they are verifiable in historical records and official balance sheets. Added to these are destroyed economies, collapsed infrastructure, and entire generations without access to education, health, or minimal stability. The real cost of war does not end with the latest bombing. It is prolonged over time, embedded in daily life and becomes a forced inheritance for those who did not decide the conflict.
A confrontation with Iran, a country of more than 85 million inhabitants and with direct influence over one of the main energy routes on the planet, would not replicate previous experiences on a limited scale. I would scale them. Risk is neither theoretical nor rhetorical; it is historic. Tensions in that region have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to drag down external actors and destabilize global balances. This is not speculation, but accumulated precedents.
The pattern is consistent. Decisions are made in centers of political and military power where strategic objectives and tactical costs are calculated. But the effects do not remain in these centers. They move to cities, neighborhoods, schools and hospitals. The human costs are systematically borne by the civilian population, who do not strategize or map attacks.
Every intervention promises containment, deterrence, or security. However, recent history shows that violence rarely brings conflict to a definitive end. Rather, it reconfigures the scenario, displaces tensions and sows conditions for new confrontations. Technological superiority does not eliminate the logic of confrontation; it amplifies and accelerates it.
The distance between those who decide and those who pay remains structural. That asymmetry is not new. Discourses change, armaments change, alliances change. But the deep logic persists: the dispute for control, influence and dominance. In this continuity, a pattern that spans centuries is recognized.
“The human of the 21st century operates with satellites, precision missiles and complex digital systems. But the structure that organizes the confrontation is not different from the one that drove the first tribes to defend territory and power. Technology became more sophisticated. The tribal pattern of the early human does not. It continues and will continue to be valid.”
Bibliography
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A classic work on the relationship between oil, power and modern geopolitics.
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