COLUMN-Shipping seeks safe waters in era of deadly geopolitics: Peter Apps

As tankers, car-carriers and other merchant vessels pass through the Malacca Strait, unlit fishing boats criss-cross the shipping lanes at night, making it one of the most challenging sea areas of the world to transit, even during peacetime. Should a major war ever come to Asia, those challenges could be magnified spectacularly, with hundreds of vessels abruptly leaving the international waters in the middle of the Strait for what they hope might be the relative safety of the national territorial waters of nearby neutral nations. The Strait – between Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore – marks the entry point between the Indian Ocean into the South China Sea, a maritime chokepoint through which much of the goods manufactured in Asia pass out into the world.