World needs to reckon with rising pressure on its maritime choke points
Nearly half of global trade is affected by four military conflicts involving four seas. Traditional military means of opening up critical waterways no longer work.
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The Iran war that has hit shipping through the Arabian Sea is just one of four conflicts threatening global maritime trade.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Five months of the Gulf war have settled one question: The world’s foremost naval power can no longer guarantee that merchant ships will pass through a waterway an adversary has decided to close. Since Feb 28, when the US and Israel unleashed their air campaign against Iran, that proposition has been tested in real time at the Strait of Hormuz, and Washington has not emerged from the test well.
Nor is Hormuz an isolated case; the pattern of applying pressure on waterways has spread. In the Middle East, it is not just traffic through the Arabian Sea that has been affected. The pro-Iranian Houthi rebels who control much of Yemen have demonstrated once again that they can shut the Bab al-Mandab, the only southern gateway out of the Red Sea.