Chokepoints Are The Focus Of A New Cold War

How the Slow Strangulation of Global Trade Became the Defining Battle of a New Cold War

By Captain John Konrad (gCaptain) In 1883, Alfred Thayer Mahan laid out the brutal truth of global power: Whoever rules the waves rules the world. He wasn’t just talking about fleets of warships. He was talking about chokepoints—the narrow passages through which the vast majority of the world’s trade must pass. Control them, and you don’t need to launch an invasion. You can starve an economy and restrict military sealift without ever firing a shot.

For most of the past century, the United States understood this. Today, it acts as if it has forgotten. Its adversaries have not.

China, Russia, and Iran have spent the past two decades turning these strategic passageways into shadow war control points, quietly reshaping global trade in ways that benefit them and undermine the U.S. The Biden administration treated the problem like an abstraction. The Trump administration has recognized it as an emergency.

And now, the battle over the world’s shipping lanes is fully underway.

The Crisis No One Noticed Last night President Trump published a strong statement of rebuke and commenced a large-scale military strike against the Houthis with the goal of reopening the Bab–el–Mandeb chokepoint to US ships and international trade.

But if history marks a turning point, it wasn’t a missile launch or a military standoff. It was an American-flagged oil tanker, limping into Gibraltar in July 2024, low on fuel after a transatlantic journey from Texas to Israel. A routine stop. A simple request for fuel by the captain of the M/V Overseas Santorini.

The British—ostensibly one of America’s closest allies—downplayed the incident, brushing it off as a bureaucratic non-issue. But within certain naval circles, particularly among those with an eye on great-power competition, the alarm