Page 8 - DMEA Week 43 2021

DMEA OPINION DMEA

Blocking maritime

chokepoints – a user guide

CHOKEPOINTS IN the first article in this series of three we toured of the ship before or after the blockaded passage
the world’s maritime chokepoints to assess their would deter most owners. Threats of adminis-
importance and found that most of them are trative action are also effective against crews, and
just marginal cost- and time-savers, whose clo- indeed given the tendency of owners to abandon
sure might feel alarming, but would be quickly responsibility for crews at the least provocation
accommodated by world trade. the threat of civil action against the crew is prob-
Most, but not all. Some chokepoints are ably even more effective than a threat against the
unavoidable. Two of these lock up marginally ship herself.
important routes (into the Black and Baltic seas) Administrative action can include the with-
while one, Hormuz, can lock up probably the drawal of insurance (perhaps itself under threat
most important sea route on the planet. Three of administrative action) which will stop a ship
of the avoidable chokepoints (Suez, Bab el Man- in her tracks as effectively as a kinetic weapon.
deb and Gibraltar) are individually avoidable but Administrative actions are effective and
together they can lock access into and out of the bloodless, but are in general only available to
Mediterranean. hostile actors with pervasive global economic
The potential for disruption of these key power. In practice that means the US, mem-
chokepoints justifies a closer look at how they bers of the European Union (alone or together),
could be blocked by a variety of hostile actors China and possibly the UK.
using a range of equipment and techniques. Furthermore, they are only effective against
Blocking a chokepoint is a task which is set ships which operate within the administrative
in a landscape of multiple weapon systems, ambit of the hostile actor – action by China is
tactics, commercial considerations, logistics, unlikely to affect the behaviour of shipping
geography, politics, weather, atmospherics and owned in the US, for example.
bathymetrics.
Kinetic choices are wide
Administrative action Other actors, especially non-state actors, must
A good place to start is in the mind of the ship- resort to kinetic threats to block a chokepoint.
owner, the ship operator and the ship’s captain. Kinetic action need not be intensely kinetic:
Actions which persuade owners, operators and a few determined men can take control of an
crews not to sail their ships into threatened unprotected merchant ship with little more than
waters can effectively block traffic overnight. a fishing skiff and a couple of Kalashnikovs.
The hostile actor has a wide choice of meth- Nor does kinetic action need to be either per-
ods to influence decision-making, from admin- vasive or persistent – crews, ship operators and
istrative actions (like sanctions) to extreme ship insurers are highly sensitive to small risks
kinetic action up to and including sinking or and probabilities if the outcomes are substantial
burning blockade runners. – ransom of the ship and crew, and even death of
Well before kinetic options are considered the crew members – meaning that a hostile actor can
hostile actor can use legal threats to dissuade a play a probability game: if a small percentage of
passage. shipping transiting a chokepoint can be reliably
The threat of civil detention or impoundment interdicted all shipping will avoid the route.™

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