Three things are in play on today’s global chessboard: trade routes, natural resources and ideology.
The key maritime arteries, the Strait of Malacca in the South China Sea, the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the Bab el-Mandeb at the entrance to the Red Sea, and the Arctic–Atlantic sea lanes around Greenland, have become major strategic flashpoints in the United States’ efforts to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. These chokepoints are vital for global commerce, particularly for the flow of energy and manufactured goods between Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Many of the regions experiencing instability and conflict lie along or near these routes and are also rich in oil, critical minerals, gold and other high-value natural resources — notably Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Somalia. Greenland, while not affected by civil conflict, has gained growing geopolitical importance because of its location between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and its substantial reserves of rare-earth minerals, which are increasingly critical for modern technologies.
Alongside these material factors, ideological rivalries continue to shape international politics. Tensions between states such as Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India are in part legacies of twentieth-century geopolitics and unresolved historical conflicts. These deeper cultural and ideological fault lines were theorised at the end of the Cold War by two American scholars, Samuel P. Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, in their influential works The Clash of Civilizations (1996) and The End of History and the Last Man (1992).
In late December 2025, Israel announced its recognition of Somaliland’s separatist administration, a move condemned by regional states and subsequently discussed at the United Nations Security Council, where the United States adopted a broadly supportive stance. Two days later, on 28 December, protests erupted in Iran, initially triggered by hyperinflation and economic hardship in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, but rapidly mutating into broader demonstrations against the Ayatollah-led system that has ruled the country since the 1979 Revolution. Following this, a major Saudi strike targeting UAE-backed separatists in Yemen occurred on 30 December 2025 at the port of Mukalla, hitting weapons shipments intended for the Southern Transitional Council (STC).
Shortly afterwards, on 3 January 2026, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured during a U.S. military operation and flown, along with his wife Cilia Flores, to the United States to face federal criminal charges. President Trump publicly stated that Washington would “run” Venezuela during a transitional period and emphasised the strategic importance of the country’s vast oil reserves, estimated at over 300 billion barrels, for U.S. interests.
If Washington’s emerging strategy is to delegate security management across the Middle East and parts of Asia to an Israel–UAE–India axis, then a sustained American footprint in southern India becomes not incidental but essential
These events triggered a chain of developments that unfolded over the following weeks.
As fears of potential U.S. military action against Iran intensified and protests reportedly spread across multiple cities, President Trump revived his demand for American control over Greenland, reigniting a controversy with Denmark, which administers the 2.2-million-square-kilometre island, more than 80 per cent of which is ice-covered. His stated rationale was blunt: the United States could not allow China and Russia to gain strategic dominance over a territory so close to its shores.
All these events unfolded within an exceptionally short span of roughly two weeks and form part of a single strategic continuum. Each reflects the intersection of trade routes, resources and ideology, and together they point to a coordinated reassertion of American power across multiple theatres. What may appear as isolated crises in Latin America, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and the Arctic are in fact interconnected moves on the same global chessboard.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is strategic.
A little-known document published in New York in the mid-1930s proposed the creation of a Jewish state not in Palestine but in the Horn of Africa. The text argued for uniting Ethiopia’s Harar region with parts of British Somaliland to establish a territory for European Jews, citing strategic location, climate, agricultural potential and access to trade routes linking Africa, Arabia and India. It framed the proposal as administratively feasible under British and Ethiopian authority, and even invoked Ethiopia’s Solomonic lineag,e the “Lion of Judah”, as a moral basis for accepting Jewish settlement. While ultimately unrealised, the document reveals how imperial strategy, resource considerations and ideological narratives were already intertwined in geopolitical planning long before the contemporary conflicts that dominate today’s global chessboard.
Simultaneously, expanding UAE–Israeli collaboration across multiple strategic domains has raised concerns in Yemen. Saudi-led air operations affecting UAE-linked assets in Yemen have reinforced perceptions that Emirati support for the Southern Transitional Council may be influenced by broader regional calculations, including Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. Southern Yemen, which existed as an independent state until 1990, occupies a similarly strategic position. Control or influence over both territories would allow a decisive presence along the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea corridor leading to the Suez Canal.
Should such a configuration materialise, the next strategic pressure point would inevitably be the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant proportion of global oil supplies transit, directly affecting and potentially benefiting Gulf states such as the UAE.
Further east along this maritime arc lies Pakistan’s port of Gwadar, heavily financed and secured by China as a critical node of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. Between Gwadar and the Strait of Malacca, the southern Indian coastline, particularly the Kerala region, occupies a pivotal position. It is notable that only months ago, a British Royal Air Force F-35 made an unscheduled landing there and remained stationed for over a month, prompting widespread speculation.
As the new American strategy announced in December 2025 appears to downplay direct U.S. engagement in the South China Sea, and as Secretary Rubio’s redefinition of the “West” signals a desire to disengage from regions farther from U.S. shores, questions arise about India’s evolving role in American strategic thinking.
If Washington’s emerging strategy is to delegate security management across the Middle East and parts of Asia to an Israel–UAE–India axis, then a sustained American footprint in southern India becomes not incidental but essential. Whether through overt military arrangements, as in Greenland, or through subtler instruments of power such as technological dominance exercised by companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, the logic remains consistent. Proposed 500 per cent tariffs on Indian exports, the possible repatriation of Indian technology workers from the United States, and the parallel push for American firms to invest in India point to a deliberate effort to pressure India into a more compliant role within President Trump’s broader strategic architecture.