If the Iran War has taught us nothing else, it’s that weaponizing shipping routes is now the military move du jour. That’s rightly turned attention to the Taiwan Strait, but in this era of intense U.S.-China rivalry, the Strait of Malacca is just as important.

The shipping route — which carries roughly 40% of global trade and around 80% of China’s imported oil — has long been regarded as vulnerable to disruption. Southeast Asia’s divisions will make any crisis much harder to contain.

The confrontation between the U.S. and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz has shown how easily chokepoints can be militarized and how quickly economic fallout can spread. The same logic applies to Malacca, except here, the consequences would cut to the heart of Asia’s economies.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore border the strait and jointly manage it, but have no common framework to deal with pressure in their own waters. Existing cooperation has largely been limited to operational issues such as piracy and safety, but that approach is poorly suited to geopolitical pressure.

Recent discussions between Jakarta and Washington on expanding defense........

© The Japan Times