M. K. Bhadrakumar
CONTROL of vital sea lanes and narrow chokepoints has been an underpinning of the United States’ foreign policy strategy since the Second World War. It is basically anchored on the so-called Rimland Theory expounded in 1942 by the Dutch-American political geographer Nicholas Spykman, which itself was a riposte to the Heartland Theory formulated in 1904 by the British political geographer Halford Mackinder that had advanced the view that the Eurasian core (read Russia) which he named as ‘pivot area’ or ‘Heartland’ and inaccessible to sea power but possessed the vast capacity of becoming the seat of a great world power, would be able to dominate the whole world.
Mackinder divided the world and called Europe, Asia and Africa as ‘World Island’ comprising two-third of the world land and seven-eighths of the world population. But that was before the US ‘crossed’ the Atlantic during the First World War and steadily acquired the gravitas to become a transatlantic power, and eventually the global power and even fancied for a brief spell as the world’s sole superpower or ‘hyperpower’.
Since WW 2, Mackinder’s Heartland Theory continued to haunt American strategists. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s classic work The Grand Chessboard (1997) directly adapted Mackinder’s Heartland Theory, re-contextualising its classical Eurasian focus to fit a unipolar, post-Cold War world where the US emerged as the sole global superpower. Of course, that was before China upended both Mackinder and Brzezinski.
According to Brzezinski, to maintain global preeminence, the US must dominate the Eurasian landmass to prevent any single rival challenger from rising. Mackinder sought to prevent the rise of a land-sea power alliance that could penetrate the Heartland, which Brzezinski found attractive — preventing coalitions between rival powers like Russia, China, and Iran.
Brzezinski expanded Mackinder’s mostly geographical model into a specific playbook. It is amazing how US strategists still navigate their way mostly using Brzezinski’s compass. Suffice to say, the US officials such as state secretary Marco Rubio are indulging in sheer sophistry when they propagate that what is unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz today is ‘precedent-setting’.
Actually, the struggle to secure waterways is as ancient as the hills. A fascinating article by FT which appeared in the weekend titled The power struggle in the world’s narrow seas begins like this: “In 405BC, the Spartans under Lysander targeted the narrow passage now known as the Dardanelles (present-day Turkey), cutting off Athens from its major source of grain. The resulting starvation forced the surrender of an empire.
“Such narrow chokepoints are a key vulnerability for global seaborne trade: as mariners navigate the tight waterways, they face risks from pirates to militants and major powers vying for control.
“Now those vulnerabilities are being laid bare in the Strait of Hormuz… After the US and Israel attacked Iran in February, Tehran announced that it had taken control of the strait. Washington has responded with its own blockade of Iranian ports.”
The FT flags that “Even before the Hormuz stand-off, disruptions at maritime chokepoints affected about $190bn of trade each year.” It quotes the CEO of Maersk, the world’s second-largest container shipping line, that “Some of these trade routes have been weaponised to an extent that we have not seen before.”
By the way, President Trump who threatened to take control of the Panama Canal, has since acted on his threat by blocking China from using the waterway for its trade with the Western Hemisphere. And Beijing is reportedly toying with the idea to “rekindle building a Nicaragua Canal” to neutralise US’ control of the Panama Canal.
Chatham House estimates the Indian Ocean as a pressure point between the US, China and Russia, as evident in the joint Russian-Chinese naval exercise (chokepoint power play) off South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast in January. The Northern Route, which Russia is developing through the icy Arctic, is not just about reducing journey times to Europe, but also would “circumvent five or six major chokepoints”, including, paradoxically, the narrow Bering Strait between Russia and the US!
The recent defence pact between the US and Indonesia with an eye on Malacca Strait, directly impacts ‘freedom of navigation’ in the South China Sea. The reported American plan to establish a military base in Bangladesh also is a related development.
Suffice to say, the the geopolitical reality is that the contestations over waterways will only intensify going forward. And, in turn, the search for alternatives to chokepoints may only create new dependencies. As the US’s stature and clout as a global hegemon keeps diminishing, other power centres are flexing muscles.
It is in war conditions that the control of sea lanes and waterways becomes crucial. Iran felt compelled to ‘weaponise’ the Strait of Hormuz only after a war was imposed on it by the US and Israel.
On the other hand, there is no question that the decade-long Syrian war was a geopolitical struggle to gain strategic ascendance in the East Mediterranean. The Russian bases in Syria, a close ally of the former Soviet Union, were an eyesore for the West in its post-cold war bid to transform the Mediterranean as an exclusive NATO preserve, weaken Russia’s pre-eminence in the Black Sea and make it harder for Moscow to be an influencer in Libya and the Sahel region (and further eastward in the adjacent region to the Horn of Africa.)
Interestingly, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa chose the venue of a panel discussion at Chatham House in London to announce that Russian bases in Syria will be converted into training centers for the Syrian army.
The raging war in Sudan testifies to the fierce rivalry to control the Red Sea. China built its first (and only) overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 at a cost of $ 600 million. The Russian proposal to establish a submarine base in Port Sudan was languishing on the back burner for almost a decade due to persisting American pressure.
According to reports, the Sudanese government recently proposed a 25-year deal with Moscow to host up to 300 troops and four warships, including nuclear-powered vessels, in exchange for air defence systems and other weapons to be used in the civil war that has plagued the country since 2023. The base marking Moscow’s first naval foothold on the African continent, provides Russia with persistent access to a vital global maritime corridor—handling 12% of worldwide trade—linking the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean.
Without doubt, one of the considerations in Trump’s planned annexation of Greenland is also that it will put the US in a commanding position to control the sea lane from the Arctic, which is sure to be a strategic sea lane once the permafrost melts and the Northern Route, which Russia is developing, becomes fully operational. Denmark Strait, the 480 km long waterway which connects Arctic Ocean’s Greenland Sea to the Atlantic Ocean’s Irminger Sea, is only 290 km wide at its narrowest point between Greenland and Iceland.
The international community should learn to live with the struggle for control of waterways as a fact of life. If Iran and Oman choose to charge a fee for rendering services to vessels using their territorial waters, so be it. The US is indulging in an irrationally self-destructive act.
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— The article originally appeared in Indian Punchline
