IN the second week of September, Houthi forces completed their seizure of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, capturing Mocha and the island of Mayyun and placing themselves astride Bab al-Mandeb, the Strait carrying roughly twelve percent of global trade and eleven percent of the world’s seaborne oil. This followed seven months in which the Strait of Hormuz, carrying a quarter of the world’s maritime oil trade and a fifth of its LNG, passed through closure, ceasefire, reopening and renewed disruption after war broke out between Iran, Israel and the United States in February.

Daily transits through Hormuz, which averaged well over a hundred vessels before the crisis, fell at points to single digits. Together, these episodes expose the fragility of the global trading system and raise a question squarely within international law: who has the right to open, close, tax or control passage through the world’s most consequential waterways. The straits that matter most for global trade form a rough hierarchy. Hormuz, between Iran and Oman, remains the single most important energy chokepoint, moving some twenty million barrels of oil daily in ordinary times. Malacca, busier by vessel count with over a hundred thousand transits a year, carries roughly a quarter of global seaborne trade and twenty million barrels of oil daily, vital to China, Japan and South Korea. Bab al-Mandeb, the hinge of the Asia-Europe trade route via Suez, forces vessels around the Cape........

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