![]() The world’s oceans, for 70 years assumed to be a global commons, would become a no-man’s-land. Nations would be reduced to living off their own natural resources, or those they could buy-or take-from their immediate neighbors. If oceanic trade declines, markets would turn inward, perhaps setting off a second Great Depression. ![]() The free seas that now surround us, as essential as the air we breathe, would be no more. Natural choke points such as the straits of Gibraltar, Hormuz, Malacca, and Sunda could return to their historic roles as havens for predators. For lack of activity and maintenance, passages such as the Panama and Suez Canals might silt up. Once-busy sea lanes would lose their traffic. A single such incident might create a cascade of failure throughout the entire industry. The cruise-ship business, which drives many tourist economies, would falter in the face of potential hijackings. The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials. The edges and interstices of this patchwork of competing claims would provide openings for piracy and lawlessness. Once one nation decided to act in this manner, others would follow, claiming enlarged territorial waters of their own, and extracting what they could from the commerce that flows through them. Local officials might demand bribes to speed their passage. It could impose large tariffs and transfer fees on the bulk carriers that transit the region. An emboldened China might then seek to cement its claim over large portions of the East China Sea and the entirety of the South China Sea as territorial waters. Or maybe the first to move would be Xi Jinping, shoring up his domestic standing by attempting to seize Taiwan and using China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles and other weapons to keep Western navies at bay. Navy, which has not built an Arctic-rated surface warship since the 1950s, nor any other NATO nation is currently equipped to resist such a gambit. Russia would then allow its allies access to this route while denying it to those who dared to oppose its wishes. A humiliated Russia could declare a large portion of the Arctic Ocean to be its own territorial waters, twisting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to support its claim. Imagine, though, a more permanent breakdown. These events were temporary, if expensive. A few months later, largely because of disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, more than 100 container ships were stacked up outside the California Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, snarling supply chains throughout the country. In 2021, the grounding of the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal, forcing vessels shuttling between Asia and Europe to divert around Africa, delaying their passage and driving up costs. Because freedom of the seas, in our lifetime, has seemed like a default condition, it is easy to think of it-if we think of it at all-as akin to Earth’s rotation or the force of gravity: as just the way things are, rather than as a man-made construct that needs to be maintained and enforced.īut what if the safe transit of ships could no longer be assumed? What if the oceans were no longer free?Įvery now and again, Americans are suddenly reminded of how much they depend on the uninterrupted movement of ships around the world for their lifestyle, their livelihood, even their life. The current reality, which dates only to the end of World War II, makes possible the commercial shipping that handles more than 80 percent of all global trade by volume-oil and natural gas, grain and raw ores, manufactured goods of every kind. Pirates, predatory states, and the fleets of great powers did as they pleased. But for most of human history, there was no such guarantee. Very few americans-or, for that matter, very few people on the planet-can remember a time when freedom of the seas was in question. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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