The Caspian strike and the collapse of supply chain illusions

THE structural mapping of global commerce has long relied on a comfortable geographical fiction, namely that regional conflicts remain neatly sequestered within their immediate territorial zones. For years, strategists and trade analysts operated under the assumption that maritime choke points could be choked off in one theater while alternative continental corridors remained safely insulated elsewhere. That illusion was systematically dismantled over the weekend of July 25 to 26 when the long arm of the European conflict reached into the landlocked expanse of the Caspian Sea. The targeted strike by Ukraine against Iranian-linked cargo vessels and a Russian warship in the…