The Strait of Hamburgers: Monitoring the situation from Delhi Metro

 The Strait of Hamburgers: Monitoring the situation from Delhi Metro

One evening in the Delhi Metro, after eating oily kachoris, I bought a chilled bottle of Amul Kool. I hadn’t seen the drink in years because Diet Coke is usually my default. In my college days it cost barely thirty rupees. When the vendor said sixty, I assumed the bottle must be bigger; from afar in the refrigerator it certainly looked so. Only after paying did I realize it was almost the same size as before.This little moment triggered almost all lessons I had learnt about marketing strategies, inflation, tariffs, rising crude oil prices, economy and the man who is at the helm of all of this, Trump. 

In Modern Family, Episode: Season 4, Episode 8 titled “Mystery Date.” Phil spends time wiring the whole house to his iPad so he can control lights, TV, and fireplace like a smart home. After turning everything on and off, he proudly says to himself “Phil Dunphy, this is the year 2025. Welcome. You’re the first one here.” The humor is classic Phil as he feels like he has entered the future just because he automated the house with his iPad. At the time (2012), smart homes were still new, so the joke landed even better. 

In January 2025, the political landscape shifted right as  Donald Trump returned to the White House. In the months that followed, rockets launched by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX continued their now-familiar spectacle: the reusable Falcon 9 rising into the sky and then descending back to Earth to land upright, a technological feat that once belonged only to science fiction. And then, in March 2025, another quiet but remarkable return occurred far above the atmosphere: astronaut Sunita Williams came back to Earth from the International Space Station, splashing down aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on 18 March 2025 after an unexpectedly extended mission in orbit. 

So yes Phil Dunphy would have totally loved all these developments but 2025 was not just  the beginning of Trump’s whims and fancies but also where technology became more powerful and integrated than ever with the emergence of AI and yet people showed interest in pursuing digital detox.

I have been obsessed with Donald Trump since 2025, closely observing how Indian perceptions of him have shifted over time. From cautious admiration to  post operation sindoor discernment , the way Indians view Trump  is interesting to understand how leadership, media, and politics intersect on a global stage. When Donald Trump returned to power in 2025, reactions reflected these archetypal lenses. Critics in the United States portrayed him as disruptive and chaotic, while some observers abroad, including in India, framed him as a heroic figure challenging entrenched systems. The interpretation tells us as much about human storytelling as it does about politics: we see heroes and villains where complex networks of power operate behind the scenes.

In the framework of archetypal criticism proposed by Northrop Frye, modern political narratives can often be understood through mythic storytelling structures. The political slogan and movement Make America Great Again (MAGA) constructs a narrative that resembles the archetype of a restorer of past greatness, a figure who promises to revive a perceived lost golden age. 

Within this narrative, Donald Trump is frequently framed as a businessman challenging Washington elites, positioning himself as an outsider confronting an entrenched political establishment. In Frye’s typology of literary heroes, this portrayal aligns closely with the high mimetic mode, where the central figure is not divine or mythical but holds a position of significant authority and power within society, similar to kings or political leaders in classical narratives. Through this lens, the MAGA narrative can be interpreted as a modern political myth in which a powerful leader emerges amid national decline to restore order and reclaim a former era of greatness.

This archetype of the outsider-restorer, however, requires constant enemies whether  foreign or domestic to sustain its narrative energy. Which brings us to a quieter but more uncomfortable question some analysts have begun raising: could Trump's intensifying focus on Iran serve a secondary purpose closer to home? Is Trump’s increasing focus on Iran a deliberate deflection from the Epstein files? Some analysts argue that redirecting public attention toward a foreign conflict offers a strategic way to regain media dominance. The timing appears suspicious: while the Epstein files linger in public consciousness, Trump’s rhetoric and maneuvers around Iran have intensified. The domestic context adds another layer. With egg prices soaring in the U.S., the pressure on any potential third-term Trump is enormous. Economic dissatisfaction combined with lingering Epstein controversies puts him on the backfoot, making foreign crises an appealing way to consolidate support or at least shift media narratives.

Historically, wartime presidents have gained extraordinary political authority and public support. During World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt consolidated leadership amid national emergency. After the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush experienced a sharp surge in public approval. Political science describes this as the “rally-around-the-flag” effect, where populations unite behind leaders during crises. Prolonged conflicts often shift media attention, strengthen executive authority, and create speculation about exceptional political circumstances, precisely the environment some suggest Trump is navigating today.

Observers often simplify U.S. foreign-policy priorities into partisan terms: Democrats keep their gruelling eyes over the  Middle East, while Republicans focus on the Indo-Pacific and competition with China. The rise of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue uniting the United States, India, Japan, and Australia reinforced the idea that policymakers increasingly view the Indo-Pacific as central to long-term competition with China. However, when the Quad got defunct and controversies surrounding Trump intensified, interpretations shifted. Some argued a confrontation with Iran could serve domestic political purposes, while others suggested the logic still centered on China. 

 Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative relies on routes through Central Asia, Iran, and the Persian Gulf. Its long-term cooperation with Iran is critical to this network. The China–Iran 25-year agreement is a long-term strategic deal where China invests heavily in Iran’s economy and infrastructure, and Iran supplies oil and strategic access for China’s regional projects. From this perspective, pressure on Iran could indirectly affect Chinese trade corridors and energy access. Strategic competition with China may thus unfold not directly in the Indo-Pacific, but through another geopolitical theater, missiles over Tehran instead of ships in the South China Sea, a subtle but financially impactful maneuver.

Back to my story, I walked toward the women’s coach at Saket station, holding the can in my bag. Normally I never sit on the floor because the rules clearly prohibit it and it always looks inelegant to me. But that day my legs were aching from travel. For the first time in years of metro journeys, I sat down on the floor near the yellow line and this time I did not feel embarrassed enough to sit on the floor because other girls of the women’s coach also sat with me.

 The crowd was so much that all the seats were filled and I was travelling all the way from Faridabad to Gurgaon. I sat crossed legged and saw the girls sitting nearby me. One wore a floral top with black boot-cut jeans and watched everything carefully. A talkative one wearing a black and white striped top with long hair and wide leg jeans. And her friend wore a delicate cream kurti with embroidery and simple jeans, speaking with soft humour. The quietest was wearing round spectacles, a rugged tee and jeans, carrying a calm, observant energy. It seemed like a group of four young girls. I smiled at them and tried to initiate some small talk. I told them how I have my youtube channel and even asked if they used Twitter but they replied how they only use Instagram. Talking to them briefly made me realise they were totally unaware about the west asia war and had no interest in geopolitics. 

That made me contemplate how many on twitter anons often say how geopolitics is a masculine phenomena and men are always interested in monitoring the situation but sitting on the floor, seeing the poster of sitting on floor prohibited, made me smirk on the western world’s pitch for a rules based order. The irony of the Western-led rules-based order lies in its selective enforcement, where principles of law and sovereignty are upheld in rhetoric but applied inconsistently in practice. 

I looked at the girls who seemed totally unaware of any world news. I argue even though geopolitics seems like running on masculine fuel, in its flux is the lore of psyche and emotions which are always correlated as a womanly subject matter. And I have little story to support it. Once upon a time, Genoa and Venice were long-standing rivals in Mediterranean trade. While Venice prospered through its profitable commercial ties with the Ottoman Empire, Genoa was gradually pushed out of the eastern Mediterranean and began searching for alternative opportunities. In response, Genoese merchants and sailors contributed ships, navigational knowledge, and highly experienced seafarers to emerging maritime ventures. Many Genoese individuals even entered the service of Iberian powers with most notably Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa who sailed under the Spanish crown. Supporting Portuguese and Spanish exploration also meant weakening Venice’s long-standing commercial dominance.

Genoa and Venice were not just cities; instead they were maritime commercial republics dependent almost entirely on long distance trade. Both competed in the same markets, for the same goods, and along the same routes. In medieval economics, trade was largely zero-sum: if Venice gained a monopoly, Genoa risked losing its economic survival. Their rivalry, therefore, was structural rather than emotional.

Venice, located in the Adriatic Sea, was naturally oriented toward the eastern Mediterranean, Byzantium, and the Levant. Genoa, situated on the Tyrrhenian (Ligurian) coast, looked toward the western Mediterranean and the Black Sea, accessed through the straits. Despite these different orientations, both powers had to pass through the same strategic chokepoints like the Bosporus, the Dardanelles, and the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, making conflict almost inevitable.

The fiercest competition centered on the spice trade. Venice controlled key Levantine routes, particularly through Alexandria in Egypt, and maintained close alliances with the Mamluks and later the Ottomans. Genoa attempted to dominate Black Sea trade, including Crimean ports, and relied on overland routes connected to Central Asia. However, after Ottoman expansion, the Black Sea effectively became an Ottoman lake. Genoese colonies were either destroyed or heavily taxed, gradually pushing Genoa out of these profitable networks.

Venice survived largely through pragmatic compromise with regional powers. Meanwhile, the two republics fought a series of intense naval wars over centuries, including the War of Saint Sabas (1256–1270), the Battle of Curzola (1298), and the War of Chioggia (1378–1381). The Chioggia War became a decisive turning point: Genoa nearly destroyed Venice, and Venice survived only with great difficulty.

Yet the aftermath changed the balance permanently. Venice recovered, while Genoa never fully regained its earlier strength. From this point onward, Venice emerged as the dominant trading power of the Mediterranean, while Genoa declined the remaining skilled and influential, but no longer supreme. The memory of this humiliation, however, never fully faded. 

The Genoese calculation was strategic. Portugal and Spain were Atlantic powers, operating outside Venetian control. A sea route to India would destroy the Venetian monopoly, break Ottoman transit control, and reopen opportunities for Genoese capital. Thus, Genoa supplied ships, pilots, navigational knowledge, and capital. A clear example is Christopher Columbus who was Genoese by birth but sailing for Spain. In effect, Genoa outsourced conquest while reclaiming relevance.

There was also a psychological dimension, often ignored. Venice was a stable oligarchy with smooth diplomacy and continuous profits. Genoa, by contrast, was internally divided, factional, and politically volatile. This made Venice appear arrogant and untouchable. Genoese resentment deepened because Venice succeeded calmly, without dramatic heroics. Hence emotions do rule over the calculus of geopolitics and are indeed very much feminine as it is masculine. 

Eventually the long-term outcome of the rivalry was ironic. Genoa “lost” the Mediterranean but won the Atlantic transition. Venice remained tied to the old routes and declined after new sea routes emerged. Genoa, meanwhile, became the bankers to Spain and the financiers of the empire — an invisible power behind expansion.

Genoa’s historical role was that of a financial powerhouse with a strong maritime trade network and flexible alliances. Rather than ruling large territories directly, it often worked through bigger empires. Later, it became the banker of the Spanish Empire.From Genoa’s perspective, the Republic of Venice had betrayed Christian Europe for profit. Genoese merchants saw Venice growing rich while Genoa was blocked, taxed, and sidelined. The hostility was therefore a mix of economic jealousy and political resentment. Venice controlled the redistribution of spices into Europe, dictated prices, and effectively became Europe’s middleman.

The Republic of Genoa, by contrast, could not match the Venetian naval presence. It gradually lost eastern colonies and merchant networks. As a result, Genoa faced a strategic choice: accept Venetian dominance or break the system altogether. It chose the second option.So all I want to conclude is that resentment, Economic jealousy and “feelings” for that matter do dictate the discourse of geopolitical theatre. 

So again getting back to my story, I tried opening the can immediately because I really wanted the cold milk drink. The pull-tab slipped from my fingers and snapped off, leaving the can sealed. The small hook fell on the floor while the bottle remained closed in my hands. Slightly embarrassed, I quietly put the can inside my bag, deciding to open it later at home. A girl sitting on the floor nearby noticed everything and smiled gently. Her name, I later learned, was Lakshita, with long dry hair and a striped top over wide blue jeans. She told me the hook was gone and that the can would probably need a knife to open now.

 I nodded at her and tried making some small talk I don't remember but after a while I asked if anyone in this group of four young girls had water, but they politely refused, saying what they had was not fresh enough to share. Lakshita suddenly suggested trying the broken hook again to open the can. I doubted the idea because logically the tab could not work anymore. Still, she picked the hook from the floor and insisted we try.

Someone joked about using a compass to pierce the can, and the cream-kurti girl laughed in response saying how they don’t carry such things (compass)  since boys never hover around them to eve tease. Listening to her all chuckled but then Tulika, rugged jeans and round spectacle girl, quietly opened her bag and pulled out a proper cutter. Everyone burst into laughter and surprise because the perfect tool had appeared silently. Lakshita used the cutter carefully and finally opened the can for me. I thoroughly fascinated myself with how all four got along opening the can and while Lakshita collaborated with spirit and boldness, Tulika did the required technology transfer to open the can. 

It was interesting how Tulika carried the cutter all along but took it out after her friends persuaded her into helping them. But without the communication and initiative taking the spirit of Lakshita, things wouldn't have happened. In that brief collaboration, I saw a microcosm of human ingenuity: bold initiative, quiet technology transfer, and collective problem-solving. It reminded me that progress rarely happens alone; it emerges from networks of people and knowledge, sometimes hidden, sometimes unheralded.

What fascinated me the most was how Tulika took out the cutter when it was least expected. Even though Lakshita kept turning the can lid with the broken knob but she did nothing but only seeing Lakshita exhausting herself, she offered the cutter with a big surprise. This was the perfect microcosm of "Technology Transfer we see around the world but Technology transfer has always been ironic throughout history. The Mariner’s Compass, invented in China, was not widely used there because Chinese trade was largely regional and the state discouraged private overseas expansion. The Astrolabe was widely used by Arabs and Indians, and Europeans later borrowed and improved it. European ships were not necessarily superior; Chinese junks were often larger and stronger. The irony is that Europeans used Asian inventions to eventually dominate Asia.

At the same time, the Renaissance spirit encouraged curiosity, experimentation, a scientific outlook, and intense competition among European states. The search for a sea route to India was therefore not a Portuguese accident, but the result of multiple forces coming together: the Ottoman monopoly over eastern trade routes, the Venetian compromise with the Ottomans, Genoese rivalry, North European capital, Iberian ambition, the Renaissance spirit, and borrowed Asian technology. I personally believe collaborations lead to tech transfer and help people move forward to better living and society and basically this is what I expected in 2025 when Trump and Meloni came to power and the right wing ecosystem seemed like it would emerge to dismantle the deep state powered by the left. But it is the sheer amount of irony that when the US left WHO, a saga of medical discoveries came to light right in the month of January.  But it was naive of me to contain such assumptions. Lakshita carried the same bold energy which bought different stakeholders together just like what was expected from Trump. 

And now with Trump applying the Suez canal formula to another chokepoint like strait of hormuz, he is definitely on his way to rename it to strait of america or in my favorite phrase, the strait of hamburgers but why Hamburgers because there is no logic behind it and that's how we operate in 2025 of Phil Dunphy, without logic. But the name strait of hamburgers does give off some American consumerist ego and thus explains its various misadventures in the Middle East all through the decades. 18 March 2026, Trump went on truth social to vent out how he’s asked ‘about 7' countries to join a coalition to police Iran’s Strait of Hormuz. The kind of collaboration he wants is way different than the collaboration we wanted from him. 

Having proposed a naval coalition to “police” or reopen the Strait of Hormuz has only garnered UK, France,Germany,Japan and Australia’s refusal or hesitation. He’s even framing participation as a “loyalty test” because he considers the strait his own rightful property. Reports describe him as “frustrated” and “exasperated” with the lack of support just like a woman dealing with the first day of her periods. “Not our war” sentiment from European leaders, lores of Strategic neutrality by countries like France and NATO’s plea of being  defensive  not offensive puts Trump's idea of collaboration on hold. It is precisely here that the story widens beyond one strait, one leader, or one moment.

In the modern world, whether it’s a cutter opening a stubborn can, Genoese merchants financing a voyage, or corporations managing energy and shipping networks, the lesson is the same: collaboration, initiative, and strategic insight shape outcomes far beyond immediate appearances. The “Strait of Hamburgers” is not just a joke, rather it is a metaphor for the emotions, mood swings, psychological attunement to a certain religion or cult and human stories that ultimately govern our lives.