The Diesel Shock Is Not an Accident; It Is a Failure of Rule

Diesel at a record high, more than $4 a gallon when it has never crossed that line on Labor Day, tells you more about government than about geology. A war in Iran, like the earlier war involving Russia in Ukraine, has pushed prices beyond the last peak. Fuel has surged since this latest conflict began in February, and now every refrigerated cart of food and every truck bears the cost. At the same time, the World Food Programme warns that a weather pattern may throw another 50 million into acute hunger. Here you see fortune as I described her: a raging river. But only the negligent blame the river for flooding fields where no dykes were built.

In The Prince, speaking of that river, I wrote that fortune rules about half of human actions, and that she overwhelms where men have not raised barriers in time of calm, as W. K. Marriott translated me. These conflicts and climate swings are the swollen waters. The effectual truth is that they were foreseeable in kind, if not in exact day and hour. States knew that their food moves by diesel and their fertiliser through narrow straits now blockaded. Yet they behaved as if peace, cheap oil, and stable weather were natural rights, not fragile accidents. When the prince entrusts his lifeline to one chokepoint and one season, he does not suffer misfortune; he commits it.

Every ruler’s first obligation is to maintain the state. Only afterward comes the luxury of appearing humane, moderate, or popular. When I see fuel costs leap, supply chains strain, and food prices reach a four‑year high, I look first for the preparations that should have been made. Did they diversify routes so that one strait’s blockade could not starve them? Did they build reserves when crude stood nearer $70 than $95? Did they fashion compacts with farmers and merchants to cushion shocks in diesel, which already accounts for a large share of food’s cost? Where I see none of this, I see not simply bad luck but bad rule. Survival incentives demand foresight, and rulers who live only from bill to bill are already dead.

The wars reveal another defect: noble plans without arms. In The Art of War I argued that citizens who fight for their own safety outmatch hired soldiers. The same holds for institutions. If you wish to shield populations from the hunger that now threatens tens of millions, you must give your policies arms: dedicated revenues, enforceable contracts, logistics that cannot be easily cut, coalitions that can pressure those who blockade seas or bombard ports. A promise of food aid without its own fuel, ships, and political leverage is like an unarmed prophet: revered in speeches, defeated in the field. Unarmed virtue is theatre. Armed virtue is policy.

Some will answer that everything is in motion and that these price spikes are temporary. They speak of riding out the turmoil, as if time were a river that returns obediently to its banks. I hold the contrary. Every state is either rising or falling; it never stands still. Those who built their prosperity on the old order of cheap energy and mild weather and now refuse to change their methods are like captains who insist on sailing by a coastline that war has already redrawn. In the Discourses I praised peoples that returned to first principles when corruption spread. Your first principles here are cruelly simple: without fuel, nothing moves; without movement, nothing eats. To act as if this foundation has not shifted is to hasten decline.

Instead of a decisive change, I see the middle course. Some subsidies here, some exhortations there, a few symbolic releases of reserves; gestures meant to show compassion without offending any powerful interest. This is the route I most despise. Ill‑used mercy lets disorder grow; well‑used severity cuts it quickly and wounds the few. A prince who fears to tax consumption, to ration for the rich before the poor, or to confront those who profit from scarcity, chooses to distribute pain by default. Then you have both high prices and spreading hunger, both political unrest and no lasting reform. The middle course pays the costs of war and climate without buying any new security.

One more point many neglect: appearances. Most men judge by the eyes more than by the hands. When Americans see pumps at $4.15, when merchants pass through those charges, they do not study tanker routes or meteorology; they judge whether anyone is in command. If rulers do not master the narrative, admitting the necessity, naming the enemies, sharing the burdens openly, then conspiracy and resentment fill the void. In the Discourses I trusted the people’s judgment when given full sight of events. If you hide the truth, they will invent a worse one. The time requires rulers who speak clearly, act boldly, and show that the suffering has a purpose, not simply a cause, or they will soon lose both revenue and obedience.

I do not know yet which states will seize this occasione to build new dykes and which will drown; I only know that fortune has given them the test and will not repeat the lesson gently.