Royal Navy and Trojan War Heros

On September 8, Britain’s Ministry of Defense told Parliament that the new nuclear-powered attack submarine HMS Agamemnon was completing the final stage of its sea trials and would proceed to further trials after being handed over to the Royal Navy.

The name, however, was not chosen yesterday. The decision was made back in 2013 — and that is precisely what makes it interesting.

Britain does not plan for a single political season. Ships like these are built and named with a service life of several decades in mind. So sometimes it is useful to look beyond the specifications of a weapons system and ask what historical image London is sending into the future.

The image Britain has chosen is a curious one.

The Royal Navy itself describes Agamemnon as the “warrior king” and leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. More interestingly, the final submarine of the Astute class was originally supposed to be named Agincourt, after the famous English victory over France. The name was later changed to Achilles, and the Royal Navy explicitly noted that Achilles would become the second Trojan War hero in the class after Agamemnon.

In other words, instead of commemorating an old Anglo-French war, Britain ended up with a very different symbolic pairing: Agamemnon and Achilles.

But there is something even more interesting.

The name Agamemnon has appeared on a British warship before — at precisely the moment when an old international order was collapsing.

On October 30, 1918, the previous HMS Agamemnon was present at the signing of the Armistice of Mudros with the Ottoman Empire. The very first article of the agreement opened the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to the Allies and allowed them to occupy the fortifications controlling the straits.

A commemorative plaque from that ship is still preserved at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

So for this particular region, Agamemnon is not merely a reference to Homer.

It is also a very specific British reminder of a moment when an empire was collapsing, control of the straits was changing hands, and the map of the Middle East was being redrawn.

And this is where I would suggest looking at what is happening from a much broader perspective.

For years, I have been paying attention to the struggle over the narrow passages through which global trade moves – Gibraltar, Suez, Bab el-Mandeb, Hormuz, the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, Malacca.

We looked at this map separately back in the spring.

Then came Europe’s growing energy isolation, the refining crisis, attacks on tanker logistics, trouble around Hormuz and the Red Sea, rising fuel costs and a political crisis inside Europe itself.

If every event is viewed separately, it looks like the usual collection of regional conflicts.

But put them on the same map and a different question emerges:

What if the objective is not to win a single conflict, but to break the connectivity of the entire system that existed before?

And this is where an unexpected analogy appears — the so-called Bronze Age Collapse.

Around the 12th century BC, a remarkable complex and interconnected world in the Eastern Mediterranean collapsed almost simultaneously.

The Mycenaean palace kingdoms disappeared. The Hittite Empire fell. Cities across the Levant were destroyed. International trade contracted dramatically.

Modern historians no longer explain this simply as the result of a single invasion by the mysterious “Sea Peoples.” The more likely explanation is a cascade: wars, migrations, internal crises and the disruption of trade networks began reinforcing one another.

The system was so complex and interdependent that breaking several of its critical nodes brought down the rest.

And the Trojan War — at least in our cultural memory — stands directly on the threshold of that catastrophe.

Which gives the pairing of Agamemnon and Achilles a very different resonance.

It is no longer merely a symbol of a new and stable coalition.

These are the heroes of the last great war of an old world.

Troy was destroyed. But the winners did not inherit a happy new order. Achilles died. Agamemnon was murdered after returning home.

The Mycenaean world itself soon disappeared. Victory in the war turned out to be only the prelude to the destruction of the system that had produced both the victors and the defeated.

And who survives all of this in the epic?

Odysseus.

Not the strongest man.

Not the richest.

Not the commander of the coalition.

A man who knows how to change tactics, enter temporary alliances, use other people’s strength, avoid direct confrontation, pass between Scylla and Charybdis — and, above all, preserve the one thing that matters: his own agency.

That is why I increasingly suspect that the real British ambition today is not to become the new Agamemnon.

London wants to become the new Odysseus.

It does not necessarily have to win every war.

It only has to survive the destruction of the system better than everyone else.

Seen from this perspective, Britain’s actions on several fronts begin to look rather different.

Take Ukraine

Donald Trump is now clearly trying to restart the negotiating process. His representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, have been travelling between Moscow and Kyiv. After speaking with Vladimir Putin, Trump publicly said that the Russian president wanted a deal. Following a meeting with the American delegation, Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that there were “ideas on the table.”

Washington, in other words, is trying to find a framework that could bring the war to an end.

And in parallel, London and Paris are building their own post-war military architecture for Ukraine.

The Coalition of the Willing.

The Multinational Force Ukraine.

A foreign military presence after a ceasefire.

Long-term security guarantees.

The continued arming of Ukraine.

On July 24, a British general took command of the multinational force. Britain also points to its agreement with Kyiv, which is designed to remain in force for a century.

Formally, all of this can be explained as an effort to guarantee a future peace.

But there is a problem.

Moscow has explicitly described the emergence of such a foreign military structure as unacceptable.

That means a potential Russian-American compromise may no longer be sufficient to end the conflict.

A second lock has appeared on the door.

And the key to that lock is in London and Paris.

The picture is even more interesting in the wider Middle East.

Britain officially supports American efforts to negotiate. Yet at the same time, London repeatedly introduces its own strategic constraints into the diplomatic equation.

And there is a recurring feature:

London seeks to embed its own security architecture into whatever settlement emerges.

Britain’s relationship with Turkey is also deepening sharply in 2026.

In April, the two countries signed a new strategic partnership framework. In July came a separate Security and Defence Partnership covering military industry, technology, cybersecurity, space and regular political-military consultations.

Earlier, Britain had concluded a major Typhoon deal with Turkey, including long-term pilot training and technical support.

At the same time, the confrontation with Israel has been deepening.

This week it reached the point of Israel closing the British consulate in East Jerusalem following new British restrictions on Israeli settlements.

The United States did not join those measures.

And here we encounter something we have been watching for some time:

London is increasingly positioning itself as a third force.

Not the Americans.

Not Israel.

Not Turkey.

Not the Arab monarchies.

A separate British network — involving Cyprus, European allies, Turkey, British diplomacy, the Royal Navy and its own web of strategic relationships.

Why?

If we assume that the objective is simply “stability,” much of this looks contradictory.

But suppose Britain is preparing for something much more fundamental: a restructuring of the international system.

The contradictions begin to disappear.

For an island maritime power, it is not necessarily essential to preserve one unified global system.

It may be enough to preserve the nodes through which such a system can eventually be assembled again.

Gibraltar.

Cyprus.

The Bosphorus and Dardanelles, through relations with Turkey.

The Gulf and Hormuz, through Britain’s old connections.

The Red Sea.

The Indian Ocean.

Singapore and Malacca.

And Australia, where AUKUS is already extending part of Britain’s nuclear naval technology into the Indo-Pacific.

It is almost the old British imperial route — except that today’s instruments are no longer colonies.

They are bases.

Financial centres.

Treaties.

Intelligence networks.

And naval alliances.

And this is where Britain encounters its greatest obstacle.

I increasingly describe it, for lack of a better term, as the United States–China–Russia triumvirate.

Of course, there is no formal alliance between the three.

They remain competitors — and at times outright adversaries.

But they share one fundamental strategic interest:

They cannot afford a Bronze Age Collapse.

China needs global trade and global demand.

Russia needs functioning North–South corridors, China, India, the Arctic and commodity markets.

The United States needs a functioning global financial and trading system, because the dollar and American government debt ultimately depend upon it.

They can argue over who controls which region.

They can negotiate spheres of influence.

They can compete on the periphery.

But they need connectivity.

And perhaps that is why we are now seeing such an extraordinary concentration of diplomacy around Moscow, Beijing and Washington.

It may also explain the importance of a potential Trump–Xi–Putin meeting.

The objective does not necessarily have to be the creation of some new “trilateral alliance.”

It could be something far more pragmatic:

to divide the old globalization without allowing it to collapse all at once.

And this is where the situation becomes fundamentally incompatible with Britain’s traditional strategic advantage.

In a world of large, stable macro-regions, the decisive assets are continent-sized territory, population, resources, energy and industrial capacity.

But in a fragmented world, entirely different assets become disproportionately valuable:

navies,

islands,

straits,

insurance,

intelligence,

financial intermediation,

and the ability to create, break and reassemble temporary coalitions.

In other words, precisely the instruments Britain has historically been exceptionally good at using.

London, in this reading, is deliberately preparing for a new Bronze Age Collapse.

There is, however, a more uncomfortable question.

Why is it that on almost every front where a possibility of a final settlement emerges, a parallel structure appears that allows the region to remain strategically contested — while preserving London’s independent role?

Ukraine is one example.

Turkey, Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean are another.

Hormuz and the Red Sea are a third.

The Caucasus, the Baltic and Malacca deserve the same scrutiny.

The pattern is increasingly difficult to dismiss as coincidence.

It is becoming a tendency.

And in this light, HMS Agamemnon, now heading toward further sea trials, becomes an almost unnervingly precise symbol of the moment.

Agamemnon is sailing toward Troy.

Achilles is already being built behind him.

The old interconnected world is entering an age of wars and ruptures.

But the most interesting part comes afterward.

Because London, it seems, does not expect to be Agamemnon.

Or even Achilles.

It expects to be Odysseus — the one who survives the destruction of the old world and makes it home after the other heroes have disappeared.

There is only one problem.

This time, Washington, Moscow and Beijing appear to understand how such journeys end.

And perhaps the defining conflict of the coming years will not be about Ukraine, Iran or Taiwan individually.

It will be about something much larger:

whether there will be a new Odyssey at all.

And how can one not think of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey?

Perhaps that is the most fitting final image.

A story about a world destroyed by war.

A hero who survives not because he is the strongest, but because he knows how to navigate a world that has ceased to make sense.

And an entire civilization waiting to discover what comes after Troy.