As Hormuz crisis rattles the world, eyes are on another key waterway
HONG KONG — As the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz drags on, guardians of another critical waterway worry about the precedent it sets for any future clashes between the United States and China.
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“If they go to war in the Pacific, what you are seeing now in the Strait of Hormuz is just a dry run,” Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said last month.
Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia all border the Strait of Malacca – a waterway approximately five times longer and 10 times narrower than the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest point. It carries more than a quarter of global trade, including most of the oil shipped from the Persian Gulf to major Asian markets.
Goods from China rely heavily on the strait, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean via the South China Sea, but it also serves as a major energy lifeline for U.S. allies such as South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, making control of the waterway crucial in any future conflict between the United States and China.
For decades, the United States has maintained a strong naval presence in the region, with the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet playing an active role in several wars in Asia, including Korea and Vietnam. Its constant presence has long irritated Chinese leaders, whose own navy has undergone rapid modernization and is now the largest in the world.
With the world’s two superpowers in close proximity to the strait, the question is whether a Hormuz-style confrontation could one day happen here too.
“If I were the admiral, I would close Malacca,” said retired Australian navy captain Sean Andrews, referring to a hypothetical future conflict between the United States and China. “In any potential crisis, Malacca will be something of a control operation.”
“Some ships would be allowed to pass, and some ships would not be allowed to pass,” he said.
Any disruption to the strait would force ships to make costly detours for several days. Ships are expected to reroute further south, via the Lombok Strait, around the Java Sea near Jakarta, or around the Indonesian archipelago entirely. “It’s the quickest way to get over a geographic barrier like Southeast Asia,” Andrews said.
However, the potential disruptions may not be as critical as the Hormuz crisis, which left many Gulf states without access to the wider ocean. There are alternative routes for ships if Malacca is blocked, meaning a closure could prove more of an inconvenience than an outright barrier to trade.
Wary of any geostrategic vulnerabilities, China has spent decades seeking a solution to what former Chinese President Hu Jintao dubbed the “Malacca Dilemma,” seeking to reduce its reliance on crude oil imports transiting the strait.
