Rishi Sunak on Iran crisis: ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’

Former British Prime Minister Sunak said that the ongoing Middle East crisis has triggered the fourth supply shock in the past decade, the new crown epidemic is the first, the Russian and Ukrainian wars are the second and third China’s restrictions on rare earth exports. The former British Prime Minister wrote in The Times that the UK must strengthen its resilience because the UK’s strategic natural gas reserves are very limited and only enough for a few days.Sunak wrote: “The assumption is that Iran will not ultimately close the Strait of Hormuz because more than three-quarters of its revenue comes from exports through its waters. But the Iranian regime is trying to close it to friendly traffic only. They are trying to put a dagger to the throat of the world economy and make the cost of this conflict too high to sustain.” “If the United States fails to keep the Strait open, the consequences will be far-reaching, not just economic. A key role of global hegemony is to keep international shipping lanes open. This is what the Royal Navy did in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and what the United States has done since 1945. When I was prime minister, one of the reasons we bombed the Houthis with the United States was to maintain freedom of navigation in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. If the United States cannot keep the Strait of Hormuz open, it will be another breakdown in the peace under the United States,” he wrote. The impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will extend far beyond the oil sector. “Restaurants in Bengaluru are already closed due to lack of natural gas; South Korean electronics manufacturers fear they will soon run out of helium – a key ingredient in chip manufacturing; and domestic farmers are threatened by rising fertilizer prices. They are currently applying the first round of nitrogen fertilizer to winter wheat and winter barley. Sowing of spring barley, one of our main crops, is also underway. This fertilizer price increase could not come at a worse time,” he wrote. Sunak writes that the coronavirus pandemic has taught businesses and governments about the fragility of supply chains, and there are now encouraging signs that companies have learned this lesson. “A company that would be vital in any European war insists that its suppliers not use inputs from Taiwan because of the risk of attack, nor inputs from China because it would be the aggressor, nor inputs from the United States because of its current unpredictability. It requires suppliers sourcing from these places to hold a year’s worth of inventory. A leading defense company has used its increased orders to purchase a four-year reserve of rare earths as insurance against wartime disruption,” he wrote. Events in the Strait of Hormuz should remind everyone that Taiwan is at risk of a larger supply shock. “It is vital to prevent any conflict in the Taiwan Strait. But the real danger is that China sees how the United States has used its supply of Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors for more than a year in this war and realizes an opportunity. Even before the conflict, analysts believed the United States would run out of long-range precision munitions by the end of the first week of fighting over Taiwan. “ “We must speed up munitions production. The danger is that it will take Lockheed Martin seven years to quadruple the production of Patriot interceptor aircraft. If we do not want the decline of the West, we should remember the lesson the Romans taught us: si vispacem parabellum (if you want peace, prepare for war),” he added.