New Delhi, July 12 -- Hormuz is not a unique chokepoint. The Suez Canal, Bab el-Mandeb, the Strait of Malacca, and even the Panama Canal demonstrate the same strategic principle. Every critical choke point creates both dependence and an incentive to reduce that dependence. Geography may confer strategic advantage, but history shows that technology, economics, and human ingenuity rarely allow any monopoly to endure indefinitely.

Chokepoint That Shaped Global Energy

Few maritime passages have exercised as much influence over the global economy as the Strait of Hormuz. Barely forty kilometres wide at its narrowest point, it forms the only maritime gateway between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. For decades, it has served as the princ...