The Emergence of a Self-Consuming System in the Strait of Hormuz: A Scenario-Based Analysis of War, Capital, and Human Resource Commodification

This paper presents a scenario-based analysis of a hypothetical military escalation in the Strait of Hormuz (March 2026), conceptualizing contemporary warfare as a self-consuming system. Drawing on critical war-economy scholarship—including Mark Duffield's analysis of war as a mode of economic governance and Foucauldian biopolitical theory—the study argues that modern conflict no longer operates as a bilateral confrontation between states, but as an integrated operational structure that sustains itself through the controlled depletion of human, financial, and narrative resources. By modelling warfare as a three-layer system—human capital, financial capital, and legitimizing narratives—the paper identifies the mechanisms through which war externalizes risk, commodifies human life, and erodes state sovereignty. The analysis concludes by outlining the critical thresholds at which such systems transition from self-sustaining to self-destructive, and by reframing 'human sovereignty' as a structural constraint rather than a moral ideal.