Browsing: Chokepoints

As Washington and Beijing weaponize trade networks, each defensive move breeds retaliation, trapping every power, including Europe, in a spiral.

Hormuz shows how easily sea lanes can be choked. Europe must build the reach and partners to defend them.

European energy vulnerability deepens as Iran war disrupts Gulf supplies, exposing chokepoint risks and forcing strategic recalibration in Brussels and Warsaw.

War-risk premiums now price tankers out of Hormuz, cutting transits and exposing Pakistan while Gwadar gains strategic value.

States must abandon grand designs and adopt artisanal responses as fragmentation, contagion, and chokepoint weaponization dissolve the American Order.

Iran’s destroyed navy still controls the Strait of Hormuz, forcing a new look at how weaker states disrupt global trade.

Global maritime chokepoints beyond Hormuz — Bab el-Mandeb, Suez, Taiwan Strait, Malacca — each pose their own threat to global trade and energy.

This brief analyzes why securing the Musandam Peninsula is critical to shielding global maritime traffic from hostile regional containment.

Financial stress, munitions shortages, and political gridlock doomed U.S. efforts to keep Hormuz open.