Charles Hill—Grand Strategies

The Panama Canal—the transoceanic waterway through which five percent of global commerce flows—is critical for U.S. national security.

The proliferation of land-based missiles, cheap drones, and integrated anti-access/area-denial networks has overturned centuries of assumptions about naval dominance, allowing regional powers—and their proxies—to hold critical maritime trade at risk. Traditional sea powers must adapt on two fronts: preventing chokepoint closures through deterrence by denial and mitigating them through resilience by design.

There is one sure-fire way to prevent adversaries and enemies from weaponizing chokepoints against the United States: Maintain an economy that does not require goods and commodities to pass through them.