The superfreighter blocking the Suez Canal has been refloated, but the canal’s weeklong standstill has opened the eyes of the worldwide public to the vulnerability of global shipping. Billions of people depend on each cog in the shipping process for their livelihoods—it involves everything from oranges to machinery to port workers and complex software organizing each step—but ignore the many vulnerabilities until something goes wrong.
Indeed, the Ever Given’s highlighting of canal blockades is a useful reminder that many other mishaps can disrupt global shipping. During World War I, the British Royal Navy carried out a blockade of German-bound shipping so effective it caused starvation, and in 1967, then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, a move that helped spark the Six-Day War. Consider the prospect of a hostile government spoofing vessels’ navigation systems. And what if China, the Philippines, Indonesia, or Russia stopped supplying the world with sailors?
