This is a very long opinion piece, but worth your time. Here is –

The Conclusion:

I am not arguing that Trump planned this from the beginning – The P&I club withdrawal was a cascading system failure that no central planner could have predicted or orchestrated – but it is possible.

What I am arguing is that the administration has, whether by design or adaptation, assembled the tools to exploit this moment. The DFC facility is the option. The incomplete P&I coverage is the strike price. The Jones Act waiver and Venezuela sanctions easing are hedge positions. The Navy’s deliberate pace is time decay working in America’s favor.

The strongest version of this thesis is not “Trump is playing 4D chess.” It is that the administration holds more options than anyone realizes, and the insurance mechanism, not the Navy, is the real lever of power.

The man who launched the SHIPS Act, tariffed Chinese shipping, killed the IMO carbon tax vote, brought CMA CGM to the Oval Office, signed the most ambitious Maritime Executive Order in decades, and then made the U.S. government the insurer of last resort for the world’s most important shipping lane does not lack a maritime strategy.

An alternative version of this scenario is simpler: apathy. America just does not care about ships or how long it takes to reopen Hormuz or what happens to Europe as a result. But that version raises its own question. It was European encouragement of American maritime apathy, and European exploitation of that apathy to corner the global shipping industry and keep control in London, that created this situation. If American indifference is the reason the Navy is taking its time, is that not Europe’s fault for cultivating it?

The biggest pushback on the Iran strikes among Democrats and the mainstream press is the question: what is the endgame?

He has one. But maybe he cannot say it out loud.

Because the endgame is leverage. And you do not announce leverage. You apply it.

I want to be clear about what this article is. It is a hypothesis written by an American ship captain who supports Trump and who has an agenda: getting Europe to wake up to the growing importance of U.S. maritime interests. To stop blocking the restoration of US shipbuilding and our US Merchant Marine.

Go look at the evidence. Formulate your own hypothesis. Test yours. Test mine.

But do not ask “what is the endgame” as if nobody in Washington has an answer. The answer is on the balance sheets of every P&I club in London, in the empty berths of every European naval base, and in the 1,000 ships sitting dead in the water, burning money, waiting for a green light that may not come until the price is right.