Malacca Strait could be the next hinge point if Asia isn’t careful

Professor Syed Munir Khasru is chairman of the international think tank IPAG Asia-Pacific, Australia, with a presence also in Dhaka, Delhi, Dubai, and Vienna.US President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, at a time of rising tensions over Iran, sanctions, tariffs and Taiwan, shows how far the Hormuz crisis has travelled beyond the battlefield.What began as a regional war is now touching energy markets, currency politics and the balance of influence between Washington and Beijing. The US is trying to keep Gulf and Asian partners anchored to the US dollar system, while China continues to push for wider use of the renminbi in trade transactions.Whether diplomacy can prevent a wider economic rupture remains uncertain. But one lesson is already clear: the Strait of Hormuz is no longer just a regional security problem. It is a warning about every strategic chokepoint on which the global economy depends. Shipping security is hard power in real time, and strategic straits have become pressure points where geography, commerce and power collide. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the Strait of Hormuz.The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that around 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products passed through Hormuz in 2025, roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, with about 80 per cent of those flows destined for Asia. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates rely on the route for liquefied natural gas exports, which together account for nearly a fifth of global LNG trade.Hormuz disruption showed how quickly a chokepoint can become a macroeconomic event. Global oil supply fell by 10.1 million barrels per day in March, the largest disruption in history, as oil prices recorded their largest-ever monthly gain and North Sea Dated crude traded around US$130 a barrel, about US$60 above pre-conflict levels.Nonetheless, the deeper lesson should extend beyond Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca. Chokepoints that appear efficient can quickly become points of systemic fragility; workarounds that exist on paper often prove far less reliable under stress and even short-lived disruptions can trigger outsize economic consequences. As geopolitical competition intensifies, control over these passages is increasingly contested.