Chokepoints and the cost of cutting off access

The most dangerous chokepoint may not be the narrowest strait or rarest tech but where the final decision rests with the fewest people

It exposed a question hidden inside every chokepoint. We usually ask where dependence is concentrated: a strait, mineral, technology, network. But three simpler questions matter. How much depends on it? What does it take to use it? Who decides?

The threshold of a chokepoint lies in the second question: what someone must risk, in blood, money, law or reputation, before leverage becomes action.

China has lived with the first question for more than two decades. In 2003, then president Hu Jintao warned that “certain major powers” could control the Strait of Malacca, exposing China’s dependence on imported energy. Beijing gave the anxiety a name: the “Malacca dilemma”.

Twenty years on, that fear has bought a navy. Malacca did not by itself drive Beijing’s naval build-up; Taiwan, territorial disputes and great-power competition all mattered. But vulnerability at sea helped define the problem. If you cannot control the passage, build enough capability to make anyone contemplating its closure think harder about the consequences.