Chokepoints, Corridors, and Contested Waters: Maritime Security from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea
The waters linking the Gulf to the wider world have rarely been more contested. From the Strait of Hormuz through the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, a chain of chokepoints now faces attacks on shipping, vessel seizures, resurgent Somali piracy and the diversion of global trade.This workshop treats these waters as a single, interconnected security environment and invites papers that examine ...
Abstract
The waters linking the Gulf to the wider world have rarely been more contested. From the Strait of Hormuz through the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, a chain of chokepoints now faces attacks on shipping, vessel seizures, resurgent Somali piracy and the diversion of global trade.This workshop treats these waters as a single, interconnected security environment and invites papers that examine how maritime insecurity is produced, classified and governed. Insecurity at sea is never simply a matter of incident numbers. Naval doctrine, international law, war-risk listings, insurance markets and the everyday decisions of those who work at sea all shape how it is understood. We welcome work on piracy and attacks by armed groups, maritime risk governance, naval coalitions and regional security architecture, private maritime security, critical maritime infrastructure, and new ways of theorizing maritime space.The workshop is a deliberate meeting point for academics and practitioners. We encourage submissions from scholars at all career stages and from those working in naval services, shipping, marine insurance, security consultancy and policy. Practitioners are welcome to submit papers that draw on operational, commercial or policy experience. All participants are expected to submit a full paper, which will be discussed at the workshop and considered for publication.
Description and Rationale
Maritime security has become an increasingly consequential dimension of the Gulf regional order, yet scholarship and policy analysis continue to treat the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, Bab el-Mandeb and Red Sea largely as distinct strategic theatres. Recent developments demonstrate the limitations of such a fragmented approach. Attacks on commercial shipping, vessel seizures, the persistence and resurgence of piracy, disruptions to established trade routes, and the expansion of multinational naval deployments have effects that extend well beyond individual incidents. The Red Sea crisis, for example, has affected vessel operations, freight markets and global maritime supply chains, while raising wider questions about freedom of navigation, the resilience of maritime trade and the adequacy of existing security arrangements (Notteboom, Haralambides, & Cullinane 2024; Rodriguez-Diaz, Alcaide, & Garcia-Llave 2024). The 2026 conflict in and around the Strait of Hormuz has likewise disrupted transit through one of the world's most important energy chokepoints and raised pressing legal questions about transit passage (Nevitt 2026). These developments suggest that the Gulf and its adjacent waters should be understood as an interconnected maritime security environment rather than as a series of discrete regional spaces.
The workshop builds on an expanding interdisciplinary literature that conceptualizes maritime security as a multidimensional political and governance challenge (Boşilcă, Ferreira, & Ryan 2022). Bueger and Edmunds (2024) show that maritime security encompasses interstate conflict, terrorism, piracy, and other forms of maritime crime, and involves diverse actors and governance instruments, including information-sharing, maritime domain awareness, coordination, and capacity-building. Research on naval strategy and seapower similarly emphasizes the importance of maritime doctrine, naval presence, coalition-building, and the relationship between military power and broader forms of maritime order (Krause & Bruns 2016; Speller 2023; Till 2018). At the same time, scholarship on modern piracy demonstrates how threats at sea evolve in response to changing political and economic conditions and generate complex patterns of international response (McCabe 2017).
Taken together, this work shows that maritime insecurity is not simply a question of military incidents but of how risks are identified, interpreted and governed across public and private domains. This perspective also speaks to an emerging literature that challenges territorially bounded understandings of Gulf security. Verhoeven (2018) demonstrates the growing security interdependence between the Gulf and the Horn of Africa, while Simonds and Pearson (2026) conceptualize the Red Sea as an interregional geopolitical space, with its maritime corridors and chokepoints challenging conventional land-centric approaches to regionhood. Recent work on Gulf security likewise highlights tensions between external alignment and aspirations for greater regional autonomy (Miller & Kardaş 2026), while Albimani and Kardaş (2026) draw attention to the ongoing difficulties in developing common maritime-security policies within the GCC. These debates are particularly relevant to understanding how Gulf states, Iran and other regional actors respond to security challenges that cannot be contained within territorial boundaries.
The workshop further addresses the growing importance of critical maritime infrastructure and the political economy of maritime risk. Undersea communications cables, ports, shipping routes and other infrastructure constitute strategic assets whose disruption can have consequences that extend across national borders (Cannon 2026). Marine insurance markets also shape how insecurity is experienced at sea. War-risk listings and premiums translate incidents into commercial costs that influence routing, crewing and security decisions, giving insurers a governing role that is often overlooked (Simonds 2025). International law is equally central, particularly where security operations intersect with navigational rights and the legal status of strategically important waterways (Nevitt 2026). The role of European and other external actors also warrants greater attention. The EU's evolving maritime engagement in the region, including Operation Aspides, illustrates how external powers increasingly contribute to the governance of Gulf–Red Sea security while navigating competing regional priorities (Parente 2026).
Altogether, this literature points to an important research agenda on how maritime insecurity is produced and governed across interconnected waters. The workshop will bring these strands into dialogue by examining interactions among regional actors, external naval powers, international institutions and commercial stakeholders, thus advancing a more comprehensive understanding of Gulf regional order.
