One month ago, the world witnessed an event that geopolitical experts around the world had been calling a hypothetical scenario for years: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in March 2026.
When we talk about geopolitics, people normally think about the global power rivalry between the United States and China. But it is a little bit more complex than that. Geopolitics is deeply rooted in how the land, the sky and the sea, impact political outcomes. Maritime dominance is rooted in the heart of geopolitics.
If you look at the world map, nearly 80% of global trade still moves through water. The shipping lanes, as the global trade flows, are deeply connected to the choke points — the straits and the canals that are the most vulnerable points and the ones that gives geopolitical experts a lot of room for thought.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has shown that these chokepoints are the ones that determine the future of the global economy. There are a few examples like this around the world. During the Second Israeli-Arab War in 1956, the Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 to March 1957, leading to global oil shortages, a spike in shipping costs and to the financial crisis in the UK. The ships had to be redirected to the Cape of Good Hope, leading to higher shipment costs and longer delivery times. This crisis alone signalled the end of the British and French influence in the Middle East and accelerating the transition to the global superpower to the United States.
Next come the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, one of the most feared points on the map of the world as the central question is: who dominates the South China Sea, and what happens when the Taiwan Strait gets blocked? Is it China that is putting out military bases and is conducting military trainings on the land and in the sea, or the United States which is on the hunt to take control over global earth minerals – as we have seen in the cases of Greenland and Ukraine – in order to become the global superpower of semiconductor manufacturing and eventually of the global trade?
There are several other maritime routes that call for attention, such as the Arctic, the Bosphorus Strair and the Strait of Malacca.
