[hax0ron3]

I'm not sure that the USN would have been any more effective 30 years ago if it tried to make a narrow waterway that is off-shore from a medium-strength world power accessible for safe commercial ship traffic. Effective anti-ship missiles have been around for a long time. Given how understandably sensitive commercial ship crews and owners are to even slight danger, there's just no way to reduce the risk to the necessary near-zero without a prolonged air campaign and/or land invasion to support the naval effort.

[jojobas]

A medium-strength world power that it Iran only figured out how to make anti-ship missiles only 25 years ago. They sure got their hands on Chinese ones a bit before that, but that quantity just didn't amount to strait-blocking capability.

[oa335]

> I'm not sure that the USN would have been any more effective 30 years ago if it tried to make a narrow waterway that is off-shore from a medium-strength world power accessible for safe commercial ship traffic.

Yeah I'm not too knowledgeable about this subject, I'm just theorizing.

My thesis is that the only ways that someone could control a waterway was through naval power, air power, or missile power. Air and naval power is negated by a stronger air force/navy, and 30 years ago missiles were only available to a small number of advanced economies nations. Now, high-quality (or at least credibly dangerous to shipping) missiles and drones can be manufactured cheaply by many nations.