New Delhi, May 24 -- Two straits are all it took to hold the global economy hostage. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz-through which about a quarter of the world's seaborne oil once used to flow daily-has combined with Iran's threat to close the Bab al-Mandab at the southern mouth of the Red Sea to transform a targeted military campaign into a full-spectrum maritime conflict of global consequence.

Missile and drone strikes on US military installations across the Gulf region and Israeli operations reaching deep into Lebanon have further expanded the theatre; today, the distinction between the West Asia war and Indian Ocean crisis has effectively ceased to exist.

But it pays to look at what lies beneath the surface-that is, under the c...