Chokepoints Are Cheaper Than Armies

The oldest lesson in geopolitics is that geography rewards whoever sits on the narrow water. Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Suez, Malacca — a handful of straits carry the majority of seaborne oil and containers.

What changed is the price of contesting them. Cheap drones and missiles let a non-state actor impose insurance costs on the whole world from a single coastline, rerouting ships around an entire continent.

Great powers spent a century building fleets to keep these lanes open. The bill for closing them just collapsed.