Two Chokepoints, One Question: Who Actually Guarantees the Open Seas Anymore?
For the first time in decades, two of the world's most critical maritime chokepoints -- the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab -- are under simultaneous threat, and the deeper issue isn't this week's shipping disruption. It's whether the basic promise that the world's sea lanes stay open, a promise the US Navy has underwritten since World War II, still holds when tested by an active war.
Bottom Line
This story is less about any single blockade and more about a system under stress. The world has run for eighty years on the assumption that sea lanes stay open because someone credible guarantees it. With Hormuz contested, the Bab al-Mandab threatened, and the guarantor itself at war, that assumption is being tested in real time -- and the outcome will shape how every maritime power, friend and rival, calculates risk for years.