The struggle over Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb and alternative trade corridors shows why connectivity is becoming inseparable from national security.
A narrow stretch of water can matter more to the world economy than a declaration signed by a roomful of leaders. That is the lesson emerging from the conflict around Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Modern commerce depends on networks designed for speed and efficiency. Under pressure, the same networks reveal how much depends on a handful of passages, terminals and pumping stations.
The Strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb and the Suez route are not interchangeable. Each serves a different part of the trading system. But trouble at one can redirect traffic towards another, lengthen journeys and expose weaknesses elsewhere.
The result is a form of power that does not require control of the entire system. The ability to interrupt movement can be enough.
An alternative route needs its own protection
Saudi Arabia’s East–West pipeline was built to reduce reliance on a single export geography. By moving crude to Yanbu on the Red Sea, it provides an alternative to shipping through Hormuz.
Yet the alternative is not outside the conflict. Pumping stations can be struck. Tankers heading south from the Red Sea towards Asian customers encounter the risks around Bab al-Mandeb. Sending cargoes north can involve longer journeys, greater costs and additional logistical complications.
This is not an argument against alternative infrastructure. It is an argument for understanding what alternatives can, and cannot, achieve.
A bypass can reduce dependence on one vulnerable point while creating obligations to defend another. National resilience comes from several workable options, supported by maintenance, security and commercial arrangements. A line drawn on a map is only the beginning.
Governments should therefore judge infrastructure not merely by its capacity in normal conditions, but by its usefulness when part of the network fails.
IMEC must move from promise to performance
The India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor is an important attempt to expand connectivity. Its proposed rail, port, electricity and data links could widen commercial choices and deepen cooperation among participating economies.
But strategic promise must not be confused with an operating system.
A corridor becomes useful when goods move through it predictably and at a cost businesses can accept. Rail connections must be completed. Ports must work together. Border procedures must avoid turning physical connectivity into administrative delay. Security arrangements must survive political friction.
There is no benefit in presenting IMEC as a replacement for maritime trade before its own commercial case has been demonstrated. Nor should it be dismissed because its development is difficult. The sensible approach is to pursue achievable sections, establish workable procedures and judge progress by delivered capacity.
Connectivity should be built, not proclaimed.
Political consent cannot be engineered away
Saudi–Israeli normalisation could affect the regional setting in which new commercial links develop. But shared economic interests and concerns about Iran do not remove the Palestinian question.
Saudi insistence on Palestinian statehood reflects a political constraint with implications for legitimacy and the durability of any agreement. Treating that constraint as a minor inconvenience would risk building expectations on foundations that cannot support them.
Infrastructure does not sit above politics. It passes through it.
Ports and railways can encourage cooperation, but they cannot independently settle territorial disputes, overcome public opposition or guarantee that governments will honour commitments during a crisis.
The same caution applies to visions of a new global bloc. Countries can cooperate on one project while disagreeing sharply on security or foreign policy. Commercial convergence is not necessarily an alliance, and membership in a diplomatic grouping is not a promise of mutual protection.
Multipolarity is not automatically stability
The weakening of any single power’s ability to shape events does not necessarily produce a fairer or safer order. It can create more bargaining opportunities, but also more uncertainty about who will protect commerce and enforce restraint.
Armed movements can impose costs disproportionate to their conventional strength. States can finance ambitious projects while struggling to secure the approaches to them. Private operators can reroute ships according to risks that political declarations have not resolved.
These are not signs that state power has disappeared. They show that power is distributed across more actors and more points of vulnerability.
For India, the answer is to invest in redundancy: alternative suppliers, routes, reserves and partnerships that remain useful when one part of the system is interrupted.
That includes taking maritime security seriously while pursuing overland and multimodal connections. The two are complementary. Neither can carry the entire burden of national economic security.
The emerging order will be judged less by the corridors governments announce than by the connections they can keep open. Countries that combine reliable infrastructure with credible diplomacy and practical security will have an advantage over those that possess only grand designs.
A new route is valuable. A route that still works during a crisis is a strategic asset.
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