February 1, 2025: Eighty percent of global trade moves via ships in a vast network of seagoing trade routes. Chima and the United States account for 43 percent of that trade, with China accounting for 17 percent and the Americans the rest. Anything that threatens this trade is a major problem and both America and China deal with the problem in their own ways. While the United States and its Western allies use warships and airstrikes against those who try to disrupt maritime trade, China prefers to bribe those who are attacking shipping to not attack Chinese ships.

When this Chinese immunity is noticed, China dismisses the accusations and claims its ship captains are simply more capable at avoiding attacks. This is obviously not the case and there the dispute ends in a muddle of mutual accusations. The current attacks are not destructive or widespread enough to do any serious damage to world trade. Currently Iran-backed Yemen Houthi rebels are firing Iran supplied rockets and missiles at ships passing the Yemen coast headed for the Suez Canal. Many if not most of the ships that normally use the Suez Canal now prefer to take the long way around to reach the Mediterranean Sea. This can cost over a million dollars per ship while adding several weeks to the trip. This did not turn out to be as much of a disaster as expected. There was a surplus of cargo and tanker ships and the additional time needed by existing ships to reach their destination made it practical to put those surplus ships to work to ensure that all cargoes reached their destinations without incurring excessive additional insurance and operating costs.

Other potential choke points include the Strait of Malacca, the Taiwan Straits, Strait of Gibraltar, Bass Strait, Strait of Hormuz, Singapore Strait, Bering Strait, Lombok Strait, Bab-El-Mandeb Strait, and Bosporus Strait.

While the Red Sea crisis was dealt with, a more ominous threat to global shipping is war between nations' submarines. For submarines to be involved with would mean a non-nuclear world war. Anti-submarine escorts are not available in large numbers and shipping companies, like their counterparts early during both world wars, would downplay the value of convoys and insist that they could avoid the submarines using new technology and tactics. When that doesn’t work the convoys are used and Anti-Submarine Warfare or ASW are allowed to evolve and come effective enough to reduce losses to a sustainable level.

Protecting sea transportation is a vital task for shipping companies and most of the world's nations that depend on this trade. Shipping companies complain that not enough work is being done by navies to protect shipping in wartime. How accurate that is will only be revealed if there is another submarine offensive against maritime trade.