SEPTEMBER 11 — The world is increasingly trapped between two narrow bodies of water: the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

Neither is large on a map. 

Yet both have become disproportionately important to the functioning of the international economy. 

If instability around them deepens simultaneously, the consequences will not remain confined to West Asia. 

They will travel through energy markets, shipping routes, insurance premiums, inflation and eventually the everyday cost of living across Asia and Asean. 

The latest fighting in Yemen therefore deserves much more attention than it has received.

The Houthi movement is seeking to consolidate its position along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. 

Its advance towards the strategic port of Mocha raises the possibility of stronger Houthi influence near Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow passage connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

This cannot be viewed merely as another chapter in Yemen’s long civil war.

It changes the strategic geography of the Arabian Peninsula.

To the east lies the Strait of Hormuz, where the continuing confrontation involving Iran has already demonstrated how vulnerable the international economy becomes when freedom of navigation through a maritime chokepoint can no longer be taken for granted.

To the southwest lies Bab el-Mandeb. Between them sits the Arabian Peninsula, including Saudi Arabia and some of the world’s most important oil and gas infrastructure.

This is beginning to resemble a geopolitical pincer.

The significance does not depend on Iran controlling Hormuz completely or the Houthis physically closing Bab el-Mandeb. 

Indeed, framing the problem in terms of absolute control can obscure the more important strategic reality.

Neither chokepoints has to be completely closed to inflict enormous economic damage.

Commercial shipping depends upon predictability. 

Insurance depends upon calculable risks. Energy markets depend heavily upon expectations.

A handful of missiles, drones or attacks on commercial vessels can therefore produce consequences vastly disproportionate to the cost of launching them.

Shipping companies reroute vessels. Insurance premiums increase. Delivery times lengthen. 

Freight charges rise. Energy traders begin pricing geopolitical uncertainty into oil and gas.

The effects cascade through the world economy. This is asymmetric warfare applied to maritime geography.

Iran understands this extremely well. So do the Houthis.

The strategic problem confronting Saudi Arabia is consequently becoming more complicated. 

Riyadh has long understood the vulnerability created by dependence on Hormuz and has developed infrastructure allowing some oil exports to move westwards towards the Red Sea.

But a bypass around one chokepoint becomes less reassuring when another chokepoint becomes unstable.

That is precisely why developments around Yemen’s Red Sea coast matter.

If pressure continues around Hormuz while insecurity intensifies around Bab el-Mandeb, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf economies could find themselves confronting strategic uncertainty on two maritime fronts simultaneously.

The United States faces a similar dilemma.

American military power remains formidable.

It can strike missile batteries, radar installations, weapons depots and command centres. 

Yet military superiority cannot change geography.

Nor can aircraft carriers permanently guarantee the safety of every commercial vessel passing through narrow waterways surrounded by potentially hostile forces. Especially when air craft carriers are vulnerable to the drones.

This is the uncomfortable lesson of asymmetric warfare.

A weaker actor does not necessarily have to defeat a stronger power militarily. It merely has to impose sufficient costs to alter the stronger power’s calculations.

The Houthis have already demonstrated the ability to use missiles and drones to disrupt shipping and challenge much larger military powers.

Iran possesses considerably greater capabilities.

The possibility that pressure from Iran around Hormuz could coincide with sustained Houthi pressure around Bab el-Mandeb therefore creates something larger than two separate regional crises.

It risks producing a single interconnected maritime-security crisis stretching around the Arabian Peninsula.

ASEAN cannot afford to regard this as somebody else’s problem.

Southeast Asia is geographically distant from Yemen and Iran, but economically it is intimately connected to both waterways.

Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei may possess their own hydrocarbon resources, yet their economies remain exposed to global energy prices.

Singapore is one of the world’s most important maritime, refining, financial and logistical centres.

Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam remain heavily dependent upon international trade and imported energy.

Across Asean higher shipping costs eventually become higher production costs. Higher oil prices affect transportation and electricity. 

Higher insurance premiums become another invisible tax on trade.

Inflation consequently travels much further than missiles.

This is especially important when Asean economies are simultaneously attempting to manage slower global growth, supply-chain restructuring, technological competition between the United States and China and the enormous investment requirements associated with the green and digital transitions.

Another prolonged energy shock is the last thing Southeast Asia needs.

The situation therefore demands diplomacy of a scale commensurate with the geography.

The Strait of Hormuz must be returned to normal commercial navigation. 

The Yemeni conflict must not be allowed to transform Bab el-Mandeb into another permanent theatre of maritime confrontation.

Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have reasons to avoid returning to the devastating patterns of their earlier conflict.

Iran, too, ultimately requires functioning energy markets. 

A permanently destabilised Strait of Hormuz may provide temporary strategic leverage, but it cannot provide Iran with the sustained oil revenues and economic normalisation that the country ultimately needs.

Washington should understand the same paradox. Military pressure can deter certain actions. 

It cannot indefinitely substitute for diplomacy.

The world therefore needs to resist becoming trapped by the strategic logic now forming around the Arabian Peninsula.

There is a route out, but it requires simultaneous diplomatic engagement with the crises affecting Yemen, the Red Sea, Iran and Hormuz rather than treating each as an isolated security problem.

The alternative is dangerous.

A world economy already struggling with geopolitical fragmentation could find two of its most important maritime arteries under pressure at the same time. 

Bab el-Mandeb in the west. Hormuz in the east.

The Arabian Peninsula caught between them.

And the rest of the world paying the bill. Asean may be thousands of kilometres away from both waterways, but geography no longer provides economic insulation.

When the Red Sea becomes unstable and the Strait of Hormuz remains under pressure, Southeast Asia will be affected by the perpetual chaos in West Asia.

* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies, and director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.

** This is the personal opinion of the writers or publication and does not necessarily represent the views ofMalay Mail.