Global Chessboard: Trade, Resources, And Ideology Driving U.S. Strategic Moves |
Three things are in play on today’s global chessboard: trade routes, natural resources and ideology.
The key maritime arteries, the Strait of Malacca in the South China Sea, the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the Bab el-Mandeb at the entrance to the Red Sea, and the Arctic–Atlantic sea lanes around Greenland, have become major strategic flashpoints in the United States’ efforts to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. These chokepoints are vital for global commerce, particularly for the flow of energy and manufactured goods between Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Many of the regions experiencing instability and conflict lie along or near these routes and are also rich in oil, critical minerals, gold and other high-value natural resources — notably Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Somalia. Greenland, while not affected by civil conflict, has gained growing geopolitical importance because of its location between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and its substantial reserves of rare-earth minerals, which are increasingly critical for modern technologies.
Alongside these material factors, ideological rivalries continue to shape international politics. Tensions between states such as Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India are in part legacies of twentieth-century geopolitics and unresolved historical conflicts. These deeper cultural and ideological fault lines were theorised at the end of the Cold War by two American scholars, Samuel P. Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, in their influential works The Clash of Civilizations (1996) and The End of History and the Last Man (1992).
In late December 2025, Israel announced its recognition of Somaliland’s separatist administration, a move condemned by regional states and subsequently discussed at the United Nations Security Council, where the United States adopted a broadly supportive stance. Two days later, on 28 December, protests erupted in Iran, initially triggered by hyperinflation and economic hardship in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, but........