The American-led operation against Iran was necessary. Iran's nuclear program represented a direct and gathering threat, and the United States was right to act. Having watched that threat develop from U.S. Central Command, I have no quarrel with the decision. But necessary actions have consequences, and one of those consequences is now on full display: the Strait of Hormuz has been largely closed to commercial traffic for weeks. The International Energy Agency has called it the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Oil and gas prices have surged. Fertilizer shipments for spring planting are in jeopardy. Every logistics planner in Washington is now confronting the same urgent question: when a critical sea lane goes down, what moves the material that keeps this country's factories running and its forces ready?
The answer is that you had better have a domestic logistics backbone strong enough to carry the load. Right now, the United States does not have one fully developed ready for use. But our freight rail network presents an option.
America's freight rail network today consists of six Class I carriers operating in segmented regional corridors, with handoff interchanges that can add days to a transcontinental shipment. In peacetime, that is a costly inefficiency. In a mobilization scenario, it is a readiness risk. When the United States entered World War I, its fragmented private rail system seized up under war-level demand. By December 1917, the federal government had to nationalize the entire network to keep the war effort moving. A fragmented system is a liability in a crisis. We learned that the hard way.
The Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern combination offers what this country has never had: a single freight railroad connecting the Pacific and Atlantic coasts under unified, American operational control, with no mid-continent handoffs and no interchange delays. Shipping on a single unified line costs on average 35 percent less than when shippers are forced to use multiple lines. That matters for the defense industrial base. The Defense Department's own Strategic Rail Corridor Network coordinates with all six Class I carriers because rail moves 70 percent of the Army's unit equipment to seaports of embarkation. Every carrier handoff in that chain is a delay and a vulnerability. Eliminate the handoffs and you eliminate the risk.
The ownership question matters as much as the operational one. This is a merger of two American homegrown companies joining forces to keep freight dollars and jobs in America, rather than sending them to foreign-owned competitors. More than 80 percent of Americans say they prefer American-made products. The same principle applies to infrastructure: the networks that move critical goods should be American-owned, American-operated and answerable to American regulators. Major manufacturers have committed more than $200 billion to expanding U.S. production in strategic sectors. All of that reshored freight has to move coast to coast at scale and on time.
That point deserves direct attention. The loudest voices opposing this merger belong to foreign-owned railroads, specifically Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National. One of those carriers has pitched itself as a land bridge allowing Canada and Mexico to trade through the United States, cutting out American businesses and avoiding President Trump's tariffs. These are not companies advocating for American workers. They are foreign carriers working to keep U.S. rail fragmented for their own competitive advantage. The Surface Transportation Board should weigh that carefully.
The military plans for redundancy in everything: communications, power, logistics. The Hormuz crisis has exposed what happens when the global maritime system offers none. A single corridor, a single adversary decision, and a fifth of the world's oil is off the table. Domestic freight rail is one of the few critical infrastructure systems this country actually controls end to end. It should be American-owned, American-operated and built to perform when the maritime system cannot. Build it stronger, not more fragmented.
Col. Joe Buccino (USA, Ret.) served as communications director for U.S. Central Command from 2021 to 2023, with five combat deployments to the Middle East. He previously served as press secretary to Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan. His book “When Every Word Counts: How to Earn Trust, Command Attention, and Communicate Clearly in Any Situation,” is available on Amazon.
