Threads of trade ties across the world’s oceans must never snap

Geopolitics and hard power are taking apart the global fabric of prosperity and roiling our oceans

- GAUTAM CHIKERMANE

The threads of commerce once wove tapestries of trade, with steady routes and exchange hubs lifting the prosperity of nations.

But the map of international business is no longer tranquil—we now sail on the turbulent seas of hard power and violent oceans of geopolitics. Marine piracy has evolved from rogue adventurism to a systematic assault on entire economies. Today, the fate of trade is held hostage by two bullies, one each from the East and West, determined to reverse half a century of progress and wield the single most devastating weapon: power.

In the last five years, the fabric of our existence has nearly been torn by a virus and now the fabric of trade is on its way to being shredded. The first was utterly unexpected. Covid and its mutations infected every company, hammered every economy and ground every nation down. It left a $2.37 trillion hole in global GDP, greater than the entire economies of Italy, Canada or Brazil. Governments scrambled to contain the economic crises with fiscal responses of vastly enlarged public spending.

The second fabric, trade, is being taken apart by hidden and overt tools of trade weaponization by the two largest economies. China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), projected as a global connectivity project, turned into an arena of aggression through wolf-warrior diplomacy and debt-trap engagements.