Time was when the bottlenecks in global trade were limited in number and obvious to all. In 1904, the British Royal Navy admiral Sir John Fisher declared: “Five keys lock up the world! Singapore, the Cape, Alexandria, Gibraltar, Dover. These five keys belong to England.”You can see his point, though it didn’t last. Britain’s loss of control in 1956 over the Suez Canal, for which Alexandria had been the main local port, served as a marker for the end of its empire.
In today’s more flexible trading system, it’s striking how global goods commerce finds a way round even if one of those doors is locked. These days the real chokepoints of globalisation are more varied in function and location, from the ocean floor to space orbit, and their resilience more uncertain.
It’s now three months since the Houthi militants started bombing cargo ships in the Red Sea in earnest. It’s too early to say the attacks are already slipping into a new normal, but certainly there’s no obvious end to them. Yet, although there has been significant disruption to the shipping industry, it’s not been enough to derail global economic growth nor prevent worldwide disinflation.