Globalisation has transformed the scale of international commerce without abolishing one of its oldest constraints: geography. The contemporary world economy may operate through digital communications, instantaneous financial transactions and production networks extending across continents, but the physical movement of energy, raw materials and manufactured goods continues to depend heavily upon the sea. More importantly, much of that maritime circulation remains concentrated through a remarkably small number of narrow passages. The Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, Bab el-Mandeb, the Suez Canal, the Turkish Straits and the Panama Canal demonstrate that the global economy has expanded enormously while remaining dependent upon geographical gateways that cannot themselves be enlarged, moved or easily replaced.
The geopolitical importance of these passages cannot therefore be measured simply by counting the vessels that cross them. A maritime chokepoint becomes strategically important through the interaction of several factors: the concentration of traffic, the availability or absence of alternative routes, exposure to political or military disruption, the capacity of states or other actors to interfere with navigation, and the systemic consequences that would follow from interruption. Hormuz expresses this relationship principally through energy dependence; Malacca through the enormous concentration of commercial and energy circulation between the Indian and Pacific oceans; Suez through the compression of distance between Europe and Asia; Bab el-Mandeb through the vulnerability of that system to relatively limited disruptive capabilities; Panama through the combination of engineered geography, infrastructure and environmental constraints. Different passages therefore produce different forms of vulnerability, but they share a fundamental characteristic: international systems have organised themselves around restrictive geography.
This raises a further question that deserves greater attention. Maritime strategy traditionally identifies the places upon which the world is already dependent. But what if strategically significant geography can be recognised before that dependence has fully developed?
This is the reasoning behind the concept of the latent chokepoint. An established chokepoint derives its geopolitical significance from existing dependence upon restricted geography. A latent chokepoint possesses the restrictive geography but exists at an earlier stage in the development of systemic dependence. Its present traffic may remain modest when compared with the great established maritime corridors, yet environmental change, technological development, infrastructure investment, commercial adaptation or great-power competition may progressively transform its strategic importance.
The distinction introduces an element that maritime geopolitical analysis frequently lacks: anticipation. Strategic attention should not begin only when dependence has already become entrenched. By that stage ports have been constructed, supply chains established, investments committed and political expectations formed around the route. The more demanding task is to recognise the geographical architecture of vulnerability while it is still developing.
The Arctic Changes the Map
The Arctic provides perhaps the most important contemporary environment in which to examine this possibility. For much of modern maritime history, extreme climatic conditions prevented the Arctic Ocean from becoming a major component of global commercial navigation. Its military and strategic importance was considerable, particularly during the Cold War, but its role within ordinary international shipping remained comparatively limited.
That distinction is becoming less absolute. Greater navigational accessibility, improvements in maritime technology, Russian investment in the Northern Sea Route, growing Asian interest in Arctic connectivity and increasing international attention to the High North are gradually changing the relationship between the Arctic and the wider maritime system.
This does not mean that northern routes are about to replace Suez, Malacca or the established arteries of global commerce. Such a conclusion would be premature. Arctic navigation continues to face substantial environmental, infrastructural, economic, insurance and political constraints. The more significant geopolitical observation is different: even partial development of an alternative maritime corridor can alter calculations concerning distance, resilience, diversification and strategic dependence.
And every alternative route creates its own geography. A vessel travelling from Northeast Asia towards Europe through the Russian Arctic may avoid several of the geographical concentrations associated with the traditional southern route. Yet if it enters the Arctic from the Pacific, it encounters another geographical restriction: the Bering Strait. Route diversification therefore does not necessarily eliminate chokepoint vulnerability. It can redistribute it.
Bering: A Gateway Before It Becomes a Chokepoint
Bering should not presently be placed in the same commercial category as Hormuz, Malacca or Suez. Its significance lies precisely in the fact that it is not yet comparable with them.
The strait occupies an extraordinary geographical position. It connects the Pacific and Arctic maritime spaces while separating the territories of the United States and Russia. Alaska forms its eastern strategic environment; the Russian Far East its western one. Beyond the strait lies the maritime system associated with the Northern Sea Route. Beyond its southern approaches lie the great industrial and trading economies of Northeast Asia.
This geography becomes still more significant when China is introduced into the equation. China possesses no Arctic coastline, but its economic scale, maritime dependence, scientific presence and declared interest in Arctic connectivity give it a potentially important relationship with the region. The result is an unusual geopolitical triangle. Russia possesses the western shore. The United States possesses the eastern shore. China could become an increasingly important economic user of the maritime corridor connecting the Pacific with the Arctic.
The three powers consequently approach the same geography from very different positions. For the United States, Bering is simultaneously an Arctic frontier, a Pacific gateway and a maritime space adjacent to sovereign American territory. For Russia, it is the eastern entrance to a northern maritime system extending along a vast Arctic coastline and closely connected with Russian ports, icebreakers, infrastructure and regulatory capabilities. For China, its significance lies not in territorial sovereignty but in access, diversification and the potential economic value of an additional Eurasian maritime connection.
None of this makes confrontation inevitable. Indeed, the maritime environment itself creates powerful reasons for cooperation. Navigation safety, environmental protection, search and rescue, hydrographic knowledge and predictable maritime rules serve common interests. Yet cooperation and strategic competition can coexist. This duality may become one of the defining characteristics of Arctic maritime geopolitics.
From Chokepoint Security to Chokepoint Anticipation
The importance of the latent-chokepoint concept extends beyond Bering. It suggests a different way of thinking about maritime security. Governments naturally devote attention to protecting passages upon which their economies are already dependent. Hormuz, Malacca, Suez and other established chokepoints consequently occupy permanent positions in strategic planning.
But resilience also requires identifying where new concentrations may emerge. Growing traffic is one indicator, but it is not sufficient. Infrastructure investment, changing climatic accessibility, new maritime technologies, resource exploitation, military deployments, commercial experimentation and shifts in great-power strategy can all reveal that the geopolitical value of a maritime space is changing. A passage that appears peripheral when measured only by today’s cargo volumes may occupy a central position in tomorrow’s maritime architecture.
Bering is particularly valuable as an analytical case because the geography already exists while the scale of future dependence remains uncertain. The correct question is therefore not whether Bering today equals Malacca. It clearly does not. The question is whether developments in Arctic navigation could progressively transform a geographically restricted passage between two major powers into a gateway upon which a larger system of maritime circulation begins to depend.
If that process occurs, institutions, infrastructure, maritime domain awareness, environmental safeguards and mechanisms for international cooperation will be easier to establish before dependence becomes acute than afterwards. Anticipation is therefore not prediction. It is preparation for a strategically credible possibility.
The Geography of Tomorrow
The international system cannot widen Hormuz. It cannot move Malacca. It cannot eliminate the geographical relationship connecting Bab el-Mandeb with Suez. And it cannot relocate Bering. What states can change is the political, institutional and strategic architecture constructed around these geographical realities.
For this reason, the geopolitics of maritime chokepoints must increasingly address two questions rather than one. The first remains indispensable: Which maritime passages concentrate the vulnerabilities of the international system today?
Where is tomorrow’s dependence beginning to concentrate?
If the Arctic becomes a more significant maritime space, Bering will increasingly reveal its deeper geographical character: the narrow Pacific entrance to an emerging oceanic system, situated between the United States and Russia and potentially serving the expanding commercial interests of China and other Asian maritime economies.
That configuration does not guarantee that the Bering Strait will become one of the defining chokepoints of the twenty-first century. But it makes the possibility strategically important enough to examine before the answer becomes obvious.
The established chokepoints tell us where globalisation has already become dependent upon geography.
Bering tells us where geography may be waiting for globalisation.
Research Note
This commentary develops themes examined in Artur Victoria’s research paper, Maritime Chokepoints and the Geopolitics of Global Vulnerability: Strategic Gateways, Systemic Risk and the Emerging Importance of the Bering Strait, Ocean Geopolitics Centre Research Paper 01/2026.
The complete Research Paper is available through Zenodo, ResearchGate and Academia.edu. The broader comparative study of the world’s principal maritime chokepoints is developed in the author’s recently published book under the Ocean Geopolitics Centre.
Artur Victoria
Ocean Geopolitics Centre
2026