Abstract: The US Navy is without a doubt the strongest naval force humanity has ever seen. Yet it stands opposed by a third-rate military power that can still threaten one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints and potentially hold the global economy hostage by dominating the waters off its own shores. How can a much weaker naval power deny passage to a vastly larger and stronger fleet? Is the US Navy weaker than we were led to believe? Is this a portent of things to come? It behooves us to remember that during the First World War the strongest navy the world had ever seen, Britain’s Royal Navy, still found itself strategically challenged by a much weaker Germany through submarines, mines, and asymmetric maritime warfare. Worse still, this challenge emerged not in some distant strait, but in Britain’s own backyard. The takeaway is not that we are witnessing a permanent shift in the naval balance of power, but that new technologies can temporarily weaken even the dominant military power of an era before strategic balance is eventually restored through new countermeasures.

Before WWI the idea that a weaker naval power could blockade the ports of a stronger rival was almost absurd. How........

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