Thirty-Eight Navies, No Authority: The Multinational Mission as Institution-Substitute
The UK and France have assembled a 38-nation Multinational Military Mission to clear mines, escort shipping, and assure freedom of navigation at Hormuz. Placed in the lineage of Operation Earnest Will, the anti-piracy task forces, and Operation Sentinel, the mission is the largest of its kind — and it is a security operation standing in for a governance institution that was never built. This post reads the mission as institution-substitute, and what its very scale says about the vacuum it fills.