Arthur Herman
President Trump is focusing U.S. grand strategy around the world’s five major waterways and maritime chokepoints.
President Trump’s campaign to end Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea highlights an issue every American grand strategist needs to focus on, in and out of the administration: which superpower will ultimately control the key strategic choke points for world maritime trade, the United States or China?
This issue was underlined a week earlier when President Trump began pressing for giving American ships free access to the Suez Canal as well as the Panama Canal—a move that infuriated the usual critics. They were quick to accuse him of arrogance and overreach, not to mention historical ignorance, since, unlike the Panama Canal, the United States played neither a role in building nor owning the Suez.
On the contrary, I would argue Trump’s Suez démarche reveals a shrewd grasp of grand strategic planning. The United States must have ready access to both maritime chokepoints for its commercial vessels and also its navy, both in order to protect U.S. trade and to stay ahead of our global competition with China.
In fact, Trump’s thinking is reminiscent of British first sea lord John “Jackie” Fisher’s list of “five strategic keys,” which he and the Royal Navy secured in the years before World War I, from the Dover Strait and Gibraltar to Suez, Singapore, and the Cape of Good Hope.
Today, some of Fisher’s keys (e.g., Dover and Gibraltar) may be less valuable than others (e.g., Suez and Singapore). However, thinking strategically about who controls access to the world’s most important shipping passages is still crucial—especially since last month, the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated seaborne trade accounts for 80 percent of global trade by volume.
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