Strategic straits and economic attributes

The “Strategic Straits and Economic Attributes” study is part of a larger effort to understand more about the complexities of the world’s major maritime straits, and the degree to which they have geo-political and geo-economic importance.  While straits have long been issues of maritime law since the time of Hugo Grotius, as well as global agreements such as the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and national security, the degree in which they are linked to the larger attributes of boundary nations claiming jurisdiction of one form or another, their economies and world standing, is less fully understood. 

In this paper we begin to develop a classification of attributes related to straits, particularly those of an economic nature. Among these are trade data, demographics of regions adjacent to straits, and country risk data that serve as indicators of strait attributes, both singularly and by comparions.  In doing so, we attempt to determine the similarities and differences about these key bodies of water and the degree to which straits are relevant to nation-states and their past and future economic and political behavior.  

Using a set of straits and passages ranging from the Middle East to the Arctic, specifically, 15 geographic straits considerd as major global maritime routes (i.e., Straits of Hormuz, Dardenelles, Dover), are assesed.  Preliminary findings suggest that straits' international importance to global trade is also highly linked to a nation or set of a nation's politics, both domestic and international in nature.  The extent that these characteristics vary will provide direction for further analysis and study.