The South China Sea has become the testing ground for the future of global trade and the balance of power in Asia. For centuries, great powers have understood a simple truth that whoever controls the seas shapes the destiny of nations. In the twenty-first century, that proposition has acquired renewed urgency in the waters of the South China Sea, a vast maritime crossroads through which the arteries of global commerce flow. It has emerged as one of the world’s most consequent

In the world’s most vital oil chokepoint, the elegant certainties of maritime law dissolve into a murky contest of power, risk and coercion. The Strait of Hormuz is, in the dry language of international law, a “strait used for international navigation.” In the less sterile vocabulary of geopolitics, it is a loaded gun pointed at the global economy. Barely 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, this corridor connects the oil-rich Persian Gulf to the wider Arabian Sea.