from TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 01 May 18:26
https://lemmy.world/post/46309865
When Indonesia’s Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa floated the idea last week of charging a toll for vessels passing through the Strait of Malacca – inspired by Iran’s moves in the Strait of Hormuz – it set off alarm bells among insurers and Asian importers. While Indonesia quickly walked back the suggestion, it underscored a growing reality, analysts say: what was once a rules-based order governing maritime navigation is becoming a more dangerous, expensive, and, above all, politicised business.
“We have not seen the oceans this turbulent and dangerous,” said Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, since “when countries met to establish rules” decades ago. For as long as it has existed, shipping has been a dangerous endeavour, subject to piracy and sea banditry. But as international trade expanded after World War II, nations got together to establish a maritime order. They signed a flurry of treaties and agreements between the late 1950s and the 90s, aimed at making the oceans safer and free to navigate. And since maritime transport moves more than 80 percent of goods traded worldwide, those rules enabled global trade to balloon from about $60bn in the 1950s to more than $25 trillion last year, according to the World Trade Organization.
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