经济周刊：伊朗、能源与全球权力的新规则

6 March 2026 Richard de Chazal, CFArdechazal@williamblair.com+44 20 7868 4489 Economics WeeklyIran, Energy, and the New Rulesof Global Power Louis Mukamalmukama@williamblair.com+1 312 364 8867 William Blair As Bessent mentions, and as the NSS report is also quiteexplicit in highlighting, economic policy has now mergedwith national security policy. This is a major transition ingovernment policy that cannot be overemphasized, butit was not started by President Trump. The strategy wasalso pursued by the Biden administration with its “smallyard, high fence”—i.e., restricting Chinese access to criti-cal technologies and protecting critical trade routes (thesmall yard), coupled with intense controls, such as exportcontrols, military barriers, and regulatory investmentrestrictions (the high fence). The Trump administration ispushing this strategy much further. War has erupted in the Middle East once again. To under-stand why this is happening (beyond the obvious removalof the nuclear threat from a dodgy player), one needs totake a step back and look at the situation above the fogof war. What we see from this vantage point is the erup-tion of a kinetic hot war, in what has been an ongoing coldwar for many years now between the U.S., China, and tosome degree Russia. From this perspective, Iran seems tobe more of a skirmish in the global fight for control of theflow of energy, the domination of technology, and na-tional security.In thisEconomics Weekly, we attempt tolay out our view of the conflict, how this fits into theglobal geopolitical framework, and what this mightmean for financial markets. The traditional tools of economic policy, such as monetaryand fiscal policy, which are normally used independently ofeach other to achieve the goals of growth, stability, and em-ployment, are still very much in use; however, they are nowsubsumed into a broader strategic framework—statecraft.This strategic policy choice demands that all of the nation’sresources, very much including military and economicpower, are more explicitly redirected toward achieving thenation’s desired economic and security outcomes. When Two Become One—Economic PolicyIs Security Policy Perhaps the single best starting point for contextualizingthe current conflict is to simply read the slim 29-pageNovember 2025National Security Strategy(NSS) paperproduced by the Office of the President. Previously, economic policy would have been used asthe guiding hand behind directionally nudging cyclicaleconomic growth and free trade with like-minded na-tions. Now, the view is that to achieve structural eco-nomic growth—which includes low and stable prices,industrial capacity, technological dominance, and nationalsecurity—full statecraft is required. Or, as the NSS states,“[a]chieving these goals requires marshaling every re-source of our national power.” The document highlights the U.S. economic and securitypriorities, which include rebuilding industrial capacityand reclaiming strategic dominance in areas such as de-fense, energy, critical materials, pharmaceuticals, manu-facturing, and technology (e.g., semiconductors). Theseare all areas where the U.S. suddenly found itself exposedand vulnerable during the pandemic. We continue to refer to a quote from Treasury SecretaryBessent during his April 2025interviewwith TuckerCarlson, where he captures the administration’s strategicview in a nutshell: We see this already playing out in several ways: •Decisions to take government stakes in strategiccompanies—e.g., semiconductors and rare earths;•Encouraging greater foreign dependence on U.S. forcritical supplies—e.g., the EU gets 25% of its LNG fromthe U.S., up from 0% before the Ukraine invasion;•Control of the flow of energy, either directly by control-ling the producers (e.g., Venezuela) or indirectly viaareas that might represent choke holds for transporta-tion (e.g., Panama Canal, the Red Sea, and, the adminis-tration hopes, the Strait of Hormuz and Greenland);•Control of monetary policy, by attempting to controlthe Fed; and•A drive to further entrench dollar dominance viathe greater integration of stablecoins into the globalfinancial system. So, I think that this is the beginning of a process.We’re going to reindustrialize. We’ve gone to ahighly financialized economy. We’ve stopped mak-ing things—especially a lot of things that are rel-evant for national security. I think one of the fewgood outcomes from COVID was we had a beta testfor what maybe a kinetic war with a large adver-sary could look like. And it turned out that thesehighly efficient supply chains were not strategi-cally secure. So we don’t make our own medicines.We don’t make our own semiconductors. We don’tmake our own ships anymore. So I think if I wereto say, “Was there any good outcome from COVID?”it was—it woke the world up to these supply chainproblems.So economic security is national secu-rity.[Emphasis added] William Blair As stated in the NSS, the goal with regard to existinggo