The Ever Given incident is a warning about what Russia and China are capable of, top Democrat warns

• The Ever Given container ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal was a billion-dollar disruption to global trade.
• The incident also illustrated an overlooked maritime threat, Rep. Elaine Luria said this month.
• That threat is growing, especially as China expands its presence at chokepoints around the world, Luria said

The container ship Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal in March was a billion-dollar demonstration of an overlooked security threat, a top Democrat in Congress says.

"I would have liked to have more focus and more people's hair on the back of their neck standing up, because I think a lot of people don't think about maritime chokepoints," Rep. Elaine Luria, vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a Navy League event in July.

The Ever Given was dislodged after six days, and experts were quick to note the military significance - in 2014, Russia sunk obsolete ships to block Ukrainian ships in a Crimean port. Disruptions like that are a threat in more places than most people think, Luria says.

"If you ask people if they even know what a chokepoint is they would probably come up with the Suez Canal [and] the Panama Canal, but not a lot of other ones," Luria said at the Hudson Institute this month.

Many chokepoints are already closely monitored. The Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil is shipped, and the Bab-el-Mandeb, through which Suez Canal traffic passes, both have a heavy multinational military presence to counter threats from state and non-state actors.

Other chokepoints are seeing increasing military activity amid changes to the security and natural environment.

The Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, which Russian warships must transit to reach the Atlantic Ocean, is an area of renewed focus for NATO. The Strait of Malacca is a vital channel between the Indian and Pacific oceans, and China's increasing presence there has worried neighboring countries, particularly India.

A more accessible Arctic may also make the Bering Strait busier. In March 2020, the US Navy's top officer said he expected that strait will "at some point" be "strategically as important" as the straits of Malacca or Hormuz.

US policymakers and military officials have warned repeatedly about China's presence in those waterways and at ports around the world.

China's construction of bases in the South China Sea is an effort to "create their own chokepoints" in one of the world's busiest shipping corridors, Luria said this month, adding that China's sole overseas military base, in Djibouti near the Bab-el-Mandeb, is also in "an incredibly strategic point."

Beijing has added "a significant pier" at that base that can accommodate an aircraft carrier, the head of US Africa Command said this spring, warning that China also sought a naval facility on Africa's Atlantic coast "where they can rearm and repair warships."

China has also invested heavily in Latin American countries, which experts say it could leverage for military benefit, including around the Strait of Magellan, through which Chinese ships first sailed nearly a decade ago.

Adm. Craig Faller, head of US Southern Command, has warned about Chinese investment in dozens of ports in the region, including on both sides of the Panama Canal.

Army Gen. Laura Richardson, who will replace Faller, told lawmakers this month that "two ports on either end of the [Panama] Canal are owned by Chinese state-owned enterprises, and so that's very concerning."

In the Arctic, Russia wants to do "the same thing" that China is doing in the South China Sea by exercising control over traffic along the Northern Sea Route, Luria said this month. Even before Ever Given was freed, Russian officials were using the incident to promote that route.

"So we literally have the Chinese and the Russians who want to essentially create new chokepoints, and not only that but the Chinese have positioned themselves in a variety of ways at every major chokepoint in the world," Luria added.

US officials have warned that Chinese investments in infrastructure, particularly in ports, are being made with the goal of developing "dual use" capabilities that would support future military operations.

Whether China has the political influence and logistical ability to establish such facilities is still uncertain, but the Djibouti base and other facilities that Chinese firms own or have stakes in aren't suited for power projection, according to John Culver, who retired from the CIA in 2020 after more than 30 years as a Chinese military analyst.

"I think that the [intelligence] community can maybe take a breath here about the dire threat of Chinese bases as locuses of power projection," Culver said in May. "I think they're really more the accoutrements of a great power, especially a country with global trading."

But China's growing presence around the world's most important waterways still presents an outsize risk, Luria said this month.

"The interruption to the flow of trade and these geographic maritime chokepoints are ways that [China] can disrupt that are not just one-on-one, like naval vessel vs. naval vessel," Luria said.