The End of the Maritime Age

 

Trade Routes and the Distribution of Power

The universal spread of maritime trade and the myth of its advantages are synonymous with Western dominance in global politics. The deeper states became integrated into maritime commerce, the more rigidly they were assigned a specific place within the global “food chain.”

If we truly accept that the world has entered the most fundamental period of transformation not merely in the past century, but in the past five hundred years, then we must also be prepared for the disappearance of things that appear natural and eternal. It cannot be ruled out that the prolonged saga surrounding the Strait of Hormuz is the first signal of radical changes in the entire architecture of global trade - above all in its spatial organization and in the advantages traditionally enjoyed by maritime transportation.

This is hardly surprising. If one accepts the inevitability of the collapse of the West’s monopoly on force in world politics, then one must also allow for the disintegration of the infrastructure built around it. Maritime trade occupies one of the central places within that system. For obvious reasons, it also becomes one of the first victims of the growing struggle over the distribution of power. And this is occurring within the framework of what is still a relatively localized conflict. Ahead may lie a far larger and more systemic confrontation between the United States and China.

At present, we do not know how the confrontation between Iran and the United States will evolve. Everything currently suggests, however, that Tehran understands Washington’s unwillingness to go all the way and will attempt to extract the maximum possible advantage from that realization. Condemning Iran for this or calling for restraint would not be especially productive. After all, the country has already endured a great deal in resisting what it sees as unprovoked aggression.

It is possible that the parties may soon reach a relatively stable agreement. Yet it is obvious that the damage already done to the global economy will be significant.

First, because mutual trust and brotherly affection between the parties are clearly not to be expected, market participants will inevitably price this into their calculations. Insurance costs for cargo transport will rise, narrowing the cost advantage traditionally enjoyed by maritime routes over land corridors.

Second, even the hypothetical possibility of another disruption in the Strait of Hormuz may trigger structural changes in global trade routes. States and corporations are likely to pay greater attention to transportation systems less vulnerable to political risk. The issue is not merely that the strait happened to be blocked today. What occurred was the first precedent in which a substantial part of the global economy found itself at the mercy of warring parties - regardless of the motivations behind their actions, which in Iran’s case are at least understandable.

In this sense, serious opportunities may emerge for more traditional land-based trade routes. For thousands of years, they represented the most widespread and reliable form of economic exchange, even between territories separated by enormous distances. The Silk Road existed from the third century BC until the sixteenth century AD and remains a symbol of the internal economic and cultural interconnectedness of Greater Eurasia. Trading cities emerged across its length, while cultural life flourished before entering relative decline largely for geopolitical reasons.

The Roman Empire and the ancient East were covered by networks of roads not only for military movement. Internal trade sustained the unity of political space itself. An old Chinese saying declares: “If you want to become rich, first build a road.” Not a port or a harbor - a road, understood as the most reliable form of communication. The seas, meanwhile, were never truly safe. Merchants and travelers constantly faced the threat of piracy. It is hardly surprising that Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, announced thirteen years ago, provoked such hostility from the Anglo-Saxon maritime civilization.

The universal spread of maritime trade and the myth of its advantages are synonymous with Western political dominance. It is no coincidence that maritime commerce began its explosive expansion and gradually became dominant after the sixteenth century, when Western European powers achieved major advances in shipbuilding. This allowed them to impose upon the rest of the world a model of relations based on plunder and exploitation of geographically distant regions. The transfer of global commerce to the sea also served Europe’s interest in constraining its two most dangerous rivals - Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

No civilization outside Europe managed to resist this pressure. Russia - the only major power that avoided becoming a passive object of Western European and later American power - quickly found itself isolated. It too was forced to struggle for access to maritime trade routes, spending limited national resources over centuries in the process. In other words, maritime trade became dominant only after its dominance had been secured through force by a relatively small group of states. And it has remained dominant on precisely that basis until very recently.

This is exactly why maritime trade contributes so little to internal development and political stability. Even China, despite achieving extraordinary economic success over the past fifty years, faces severe underdevelopment across most of its interior regions compared to its coastal provinces. Among major inland industrial centers, only Chongqing readily comes to mind. The development of all other inland territories requires enormous subsidies from the central government, with limited success so far.

By its nature, maritime trade is relatively primitive from the standpoint of infrastructure development. Goods need only be moved from the production site to the nearest port. It contributes almost nothing to economic integration between the internal regions of exporting countries. At the same time, integration into maritime trade rigidly locks states into predetermined positions within the global “food chain.” This aligns perfectly with the broader Western idea that everyone outside the West should develop only to the extent necessary to serve the needs of the United States and Europe.

Unlike land trade, which creates supporting infrastructure and chains of added value along its routes, maritime commerce creates few additional jobs in the internal territories where states often need them most. In doing so, it deprives countries of strategic depth. To defeat them, it becomes sufficient merely to block straits or destroy ports.

We are now witnessing how fragile the economies of the Gulf states truly are. Not only because they depend heavily on oil and gas exports. Their core vulnerability lies in total dependence on the monopoly of those who rule the seas. In the specific case of the Strait of Hormuz, that monopoly was undermined by Iran. Yet this merely confirms the strategic vulnerability of relying on old communication systems whose security can no longer be guaranteed.

Maritime trade separates neighboring states because it redirects their economic interests toward distant parts of the world rather than toward each other. For this reason, one should not expect it to produce positive regional political effects. It is no coincidence that Western powers actively promote transportation corridors linking Central Asian states to the Indian Ocean. Such routes would reduce their interest in maintaining close relations with Russia and China.

The West is now confronting limitations to its power that it cannot overcome. Its response has been increasingly aggressive behavior which, as we can already see, damages the principal assets of the United States and Europe themselves - their dominance over the global economy and world trade. It cannot be ruled out that the events surrounding the Strait of Hormuz may become a turning point for the development of Eurasian land trade routes - the real guarantee of the continent’s internal stability and of constructive relations among the peoples inhabiting this enormous region.