The water covers more than 70 percent of the earth’s surface, therefore there is no wonder if over 80 percent of the volume of world commercial exchanges takes place by sea: in 2023 this flow has reached 12.29 billion tons, +2.4 percent compared to 2022.
Some important maritime commercial routes connect North America, Europe and Pacific Asia through the Suez canal, the Strait of Malacca and the Panama channel. Most of the maritime traffic transits on these routes, but there are numerous other short “shorts” yet no less busy. The arctic polar routes are then gradually acquiring importance for now. The interest of the United States for Greenland must be framed precisely in this perspective.
It must be said that it is impossible to avoid the “bottlenecks”, that is, narrow and maritime channels, whose control is increasingly strategic in a globalized world.
The most important route is the transpacific one, which connects North America, Asia and Oceania. This is how the most part of the Chinese goods arrives on the west coast of the United States. The main starting points include the ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, while the arrival points are mainly Los Angeles in California and Seattle in the Washington state. Transpacific also passes through the waterways in the southern Chinese Sea and for the Taiwan Strait. A part of the goods crosses the Panama channel and landed in Mexico and on the eastern coast of the United States.
Then there is the Asia-Europe route, which connects the markets of China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and India with France, Germany and the Netherlands. It passes through the Suez canal, leading to the Mediterranean and from there to northern Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar.
More than a billion tons of goods transits every year on this route, often at risk due to tensions in the Middle East. The Suez canal actually represents one of the four major critical points of the world routes. After the enlargement of 2010, the channel is now 193 kilometers long, 205-225 meters wide and deep at the minimum point 24 meters.
In 2021, the channel was blocked for a week by a 400 -meter -long door holder ship, Ever Given, which was running through preventing the passage of the other ships. A tail of 250 large boats and many of these was created, to avoid the stop, they decided to undertake the circumnavigation of Africa, which involves greater costs and longer times than at least 10 days.
A choice that have also made other vessels, more recently, due to the attacks on commercial traffic by the Houthi militias off the coasts of Yemen, near the mouth of the Red Sea in the Bab El-Mandeb Strait.
Another very important route is the one that crosses the Atlantic Ocean, connecting the richest markets in the world, North America and Europe. New York, Norfolk in Virginia and Miami are the main sorting centers in the United States, while in Europe they are the ports of Liverpool, Hamburg and Rotterdam to manage most of the traffic. It is a route that includes other waterways, such as the sleeve, which separates the United Kingdom from continental Europe and connects the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. The least broad point of the sleeve, the narrow of having to see about 400 large ships every day.
The commercial route that connects South America to Europe, from the southern Atlantic to the European coasts, then starts from the Brazilian and Argentine ports to arrive in Portugal, the United Kingdom and, through the Strait of Gibraltar, in Spain, France and Italy. Along this way, exchanges mainly concern raw materials and agricultural goods.
Then there are two important Asian broken routes. The first covers the Asia-Pacific Region and connects the economies of India and Southeast Asia to the ports of Eastern Asia (China, Japan and South Korea). Australia and New Zealand represent important offshoots. The affected waterways are different: the Southern and Eastern Chinese Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca.
The second relevant Asian route is the one that connects Eastern Asia to the Middle East through the Indian Ocean and the Arabic Sea. The ships sail from the Middle Eastern ports in the United Arab Emirates, in Oman and Saudi Arabia towards the Asian ports of China, India or Southeast Asia. This route is strategically very critical, since a large share of oil consumed in Asia is transported through it. China imports large quantities of crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the oil tankers must cross the Strait of Hormuz, between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, to reach your destination.
In fact, about 35 percent of black gold transported by sea and 30 percent of world liquefied natural gas cross this strait between Iran and Oman, which has a minimum width of 54 kilometers. It is no coincidence that Tehran has threatened to block it as retaliation against recent attacks by Israel and the United States, jeopardizing the circulation of hydrocarbons.
In addition to Suez, therefore, Hormuz is one of the main bottlenecks of maritime commercial routes. The other important tightens are the Panama canal and the Strait of Malacca.
To these four so-called “Choke Points” (Strozzatures), four others of equal importance can be added: the Strait of Gibraltar, the Bosphorus-Dardanelli couple (which allows the connection between Mediterranean and Black Sea), the Strait of Bab-El-Mandeb (between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden) and the chief of good hope, at the southern end of the African continent. Those who control one or more of these eight strands, very important also from a military point of view, check the world traffic.
The Panama channel is about 80 kilometers long and involves the crossing of a complex of closed that raise and lower the ships by bringing them to the other outlet. It is a vital bottleneck, which avoids the route around Capo Horn, at the southern end of South America.
The Strait of Malacca connects the Andaman Sea to the Southern Chinese Sea. About 25 percent of world goods transit from here, even if there are navigation difficulties for the low seabed (the southernmost point is only 25-30 meters deep) and the risk, never completely eliminated, of piracy. It is 80 kilometers long and reaches a minimum width of 2.8 kilometers, at the Philips Strait in Singapore.
