The Paradox of the Solvent Customer: Weaponised Interdependence and the Self-Undermining Logic of Hemispheric Consolidation in the 2026 Hormuz Crisis

This working paper advances an original theoretical contribution, the paradox of the solvent customer, and develops it through a detailed analysis of the spring 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis and the American "Fortress North America" doctrine that the crisis has brought into operational reality. The paper argues that the kinetic war initiated by Operation Epic Fury on 28 February 2026 should not be read as a discrete counter-proliferation campaign but as the activation phase of a neo-mercantilist restructuring of American engagement with the global economy, whose institutional foundations were laid weeks earlier through the United States seizure of Venezuelan crude marketing rights on 6 January 2026. Drawing on Susan Strange's framework of structural power, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman's theory of weaponised interdependence, and the classical hegemonic stability literature associated with Kindleberger, Krasner, and Keohane, the paper demonstrates how the Fortress doctrine produces a measurable insulation asymmetry favouring the Western Hemisphere while inflicting catastrophic industrial damage on Asian and European economies. Using verified empirical data from the United States Energy Information Administration, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Council on Foreign Relations, S&P Global Commodity Insights, and contemporaneous reporting from Reuters, Al Jazeera, and Just Security, the paper maps the asymmetric casualty landscape in quantitative detail and then advances its central theoretical claim. The paradox of the solvent customer holds that a doctrine which seeks to insulate the hemispheric core by inflicting supply and financial pain on external actors simultaneously erodes the purchasing power of those actors, thereby undermining the demand structure on which American export capacity and residual dollar hegemony depend. The paper validates this theoretical framework through comparative analysis of the 2010 Chinese rare earths episode, which demonstrates empirically how overused chokepoint power generates diversification responses that progressively erode the structural advantages of the hub state. A parallel with the mid-twentieth-century decline of sterling, drawing on Strange's 1971 study and Eichengreen's later analysis, extends the historical horizon of the argument. The paper concludes that Fortress North America is best understood not as a calculated strategy but as a wager on managed imperial decline, and that its execution is inadvertently financing the construction of a post-dollar monetary architecture outside its walls. The theoretical contribution, the paradox of the solvent customer, is offered as a framework for understanding similar dynamics in other contexts where hegemonic states attempt to combine coercive pressure against external economies with continued reliance on their purchasing power. This is Version 1.0, circulated as a working paper for scholarly discussion and peer feedback prior to journal submission. Comments, critical engagement, and suggestions for theoretical or empirical refinement are genuinely welcomed. The author can be reached at rrohrohmana@gmail.com.