Blain’s Morning Porridge March 12th, 2026 - Winning the Economic War

“I flew B-52 and bombed them with the blues..”

The War in Iran is a kinetic feature of the economic/hegemonic struggle between the USA and China. President Trump will lose because his Iran war is unwinnable. Iran won’t lose because it does doesn’t have to win. That’s a recipe for a forever war, and a definition of asymmetric warfare. The likely winner of a wider Economic War will be China. Energy and Supply Chains will determine the future.

What a curious world we live in. I had thought about writing on the rising likelihood of a Super-El-Nino event developing in the Eastern Pacific, and how it will trigger climate shocks and agricultural mayhem – but that’s going to happen tomorrow. What’s happening today is a much more immediate concern.

“War is a continuation of policy by other means,” said Carl Von Clausewitz, founder of the Prussian General Staff 200 years ago. Since then, we’ve come to understand Policy and Economics are interchangeable; war is a policy tool used to achieve economic objectives.

Thus far the immediate consequences of the Iran War are clear – economic instability from an energy shock due to blocked gas and oil supply chains. Further consequences are still to emerge and set what is a wider economic conflict between the America camp versus China and its Allies in stark reality.  

What follows is a rough scenario of how the Economic War plays out in coming months/years.