Trump made a pivotal error. A pivotal error is costly because it permanently removes options. Trump will never get the discarded options back, so he spends the rest of the game choosing from what is left, and everything left is worse than what was before.
For roughly 30 years after the Cold War ended, China and Russia turned their attention inward, and the United States mostly followed the rules it had written. The U.S. and Russia stopped funding opposite sides of the same insurgencies. Those funds and the peace helped fuel compounded growth and wealth. Globally, hundreds of millions of people moved out of poverty and into the middle class. Millions moved from the middle class to the wealthy. That was the rules-based order, and it worked: a positive-sum game in which everyone who participated could get richer.
Putin and Trump operate from a different cultural perspective. In their view, power means the more powerful nation taking territory, physically controlling government, and extracting other countries' resources at the expense of their people. That is a zero-sum game. It consumes wealth instead of producing it.
This is Trump’s pivotal error: a change from the positive-sum game to the zero-sum game. The underlying driver is a shift from Egalitarianism to Hierarchy (Schwartz).
Egalitarianism is the cultural perspective in which parties treat each other as equals and accept the same obligations, including the parties strong enough to ignore them.
Hierarchy is the cultural perspective in which an unequal distribution of power is the natural and legitimate order, so the party with the most power sets the terms but is not bound by them.
Russia is a clear example. Its National Wealth Fund held liquid assets worth 6.5 percent of GDP before the invasion of Ukraine. By April 2026, that figure had fallen to 1.8 percent. The economy contracted 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2026 despite a large increase in government spending, and Russian trade volumes are at their lowest level in more than a decade. Putin exerted Russia’s greater strength and holds slightly more territory at the expense of a good deal of wealth.
Trump made his pivotal error on February 1, 2025, when he ordered 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the two countries most tightly joined to the American economy. He then extended tariffs to nearly every nation. On January 3, 2026, American forces raided a military base in Caracas, captured the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and flew him to a jail in Brooklyn, New York. This was an illegal action under the UN Charter and violated the way nations deal with each other. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel began striking Iran, and Trump named regime change as a purpose, all Hierarchical actions that led to the zero-sum game.
With Iran, Obama, the European Union, China, Russia, and others spent years building the Iran nuclear agreement, signed on July 14, 2015. It was an Egalitarian instrument. Each party negotiated as equals and accepted the same terms, and a neutral agency verified them. It capped Iranian enrichment purity, limited the stockpile, removed about two-thirds of Iran’s centrifuges, and put inspectors inside the facilities. Trump withdrew from it on May 8, 2018, an outcome of his pivotal error: the move to Hierarchy.
By June 2025, Iran held 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, which is 99 percent of the way to weapons-grade. Inspectors could still count it, so negotiations over a verified number remained possible. Then Trump bombed Iran. Inspectors were blocked from sites. This reduced his options. Then he started a war with Iran. Iran denied the IAEA any access, further reducing his options.
Before the war, the Strait of Hormuz was open to shipping under Egalitarian maritime law. Iran closed it after Trump’s attack. Now Trump’s options to open it include Iran controlling the routes and charging a fee. Iran has proposed $1 to $2 million per vessel, or one dollar per barrel of oil, a move to Hierarchy. Options worse for the U.S. and better for Iran.
Since Trump’s pivotal error, all his options are worse for the U.S. and make Iran better off. The longer the war continues, the fewer options Trump has and the worse they are for him and the U.S. That is what Hierarchy costs.
Egalitarian rules held Iran because Iran had agreed to them. Hierarchy holds only when the weaker party accepts the terms, and Iran never will.
If you enjoyed this article, help support my work by becoming a paid subscriber or “Buy me a coffee.”
Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.
Canadians feel the pivotal nature of T’s actions. As I’m sure do Iranians. Not sure the long term implications have sunk in for most Americans
The single most dangerous lie circulating in macro commentary today is that American "energy independence" protects us from an escalated blockade in the Persian Gulf.
It conflates politics with molecular chemistry.
Here is the physical reality that Wall Street and Washington are ignoring:
Oil is not fungible by molecule: West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Permian shale produce Light Sweet Crude. It refines into motor gasoline. It does not yield the heavy middle distillates required to run an industrial economy.
The Gulf Coast refinery mismatch: American refining infrastructure was engineered over decades to crack Heavy Sour Crude—historically imported from the Persian Gulf, Venezuela, and Russia—into Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD), jet fuel, and maritime bunker fuel.
The Hail Mary is officially offline: The Saudi Petroline—the 7M bpd pipeline engineered to bypass Hormuz to the Red Sea—is out of commission. The drone strikes on specialized SCADA manifolds and turbine housings took months of capacity offline in a single morning.
Diesel has zero demand elasticity: When gasoline spikes, consumers cancel road trips. When diesel spikes, Class 8 trucking fleets, agricultural combines, and freight rail cannot stop moving. They pass every cent of the crack spread into consumer goods.
The U.S. is not approaching an October kinetic strike out of political malice. It is approaching kinetic action because the global diesel pool is facing physical starvation.
Read the full intelligence brief and the unredacted logistics breakdown:
https://triggledger.substack.com/p/the-gravity-of-escalation-why-hormuz?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=8gc1qf