Global economy flourished when seas were free. Of course, this freedom has to be enforced. US did the job, until now. Consequences of abandoning that stand can be terrible
Once upon a time, Indian Ocean was famously called Mare Liberum, meaning a ‘Free Sea’ in Latin. It referred to a golden age of commercial freedom, when Indian Ocean was a true global commons.
International trade was free, not governed by any state. Merchants of Arabia, Persia, India, and China rode the monsoon winds to form a cosmopolitan global economy.
But one day in 1507, a Portuguese admiral named Afonso de Albuquerque, seized the tiny Strait of Hormuz with naval guns, and turned a free port into a toll-paying gate.
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Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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