IN today’s modern, globalised world, we often take for granted that many of the commodities we use in daily life begin as raw materials thousands of miles away. These raw materials require extraction, assembly and, crucially, transportation before they are placed on the consumer market to be sold.

Marx’s second volume of Capital emphasises the importance of circulation as an essential feature possessed by capital: “Capital as self-expanding value embraces not only class relations... It is a movement, a circulatory process going through various stages.”

Globalisation has meant that transportation of capital in the commodity-form is something that occurs on a worldwide scale. Key to the transport of commodities (everything from computers to clothes to petrol) are global shipping routes.
 
The Panama Canal is an artificial waterway created through the narrow strip of land in Central America that separates the Pacific Ocean from the Caribbean Sea. It is an essential conduit for maritime trade, meaning that ships can circumvent the long and dangerous route around the southernmost tip of South America when travelling from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean.

When it was opened in 1914, about 1,000 ships passed through the canal in its first year. That number has risen to over 14,000 in 2023 — many of them gigantic vessels capable of transporting more than 13,000 cargo containers — with 5 per cent of shipping globally passing through the canal.
 
The canal works the same way any ordinary canal does, via a system of locks. Locks are devices used to transport watercraft between stretches of water at different levels. They rely on a fixed chamber in which the water level can be varied to either raise or lower the boat. The Panama Canal uses three locks at one end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial freshwater lake 26 metres above sea level, created by damming the Chagres River.

At the other end, three more locks lower the ship back down to sea level. Gatun Lake is a vital part of this process: it is not only the conduit through which the ships must pass to get to the other side of the canal, but it also supplies the water to the locks so that ships can be raised or lowered. The passage of one ship requires 200 million litres of water from the lake. For an average day of traffic, around 7 billion litres are extracted.
 
Gatun Lake must therefore receive enough rainfall to allow enough water to be provided to the locks while not letting huge container ships go aground. During the fiscal year 2024 (October 1 2023 — September 30 2024), Panama experienced a prolonged dry season as well as a severe drought, causing the number of ships traversing it daily to fall from 36 to 22.

Too much precipitation can also be dangerous: in 2010, torrential rainfall threatened to increase the water level in the lake until it overtopped the earthen dam that holds back the Chagres River. The canal was completely shut down until water levels returned to safe heights.
 
Climate change is affecting global weather patterns on an unprecedented scale — extreme weather events like extended dry periods or large tropical storms are being recorded more frequently.

Since 2016, the Panama Canal has used new locks that recycle the water from the locks to reduce water loss and mitigate the effect of these droughts. But supply of water to Gatun Lake is crucial not only for the global shipping trade but for the people of Panama City: the lake is the city’s primary potable water source.

The water recycling introduces salt into the lake, and during drought, this threatens the drinking water of the more than one million inhabitants of Panama City. The threat to the stability of the shipping industry from climate change is passed directly onto the lives of the people of Panama.
 
Another threat comes from the current US government, with President Donald Trump threatening to “take back the Panama Canal.” The Panama Canal Authority, a branch of the Panama government, currently has complete control over the operation and management of the canal.

On a recent visit to Panama, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump’s sentiment, telling Panamian President Jose Raul Mulino that he must reduce Chinese influence over the Panama Canal area or face potential retaliation from the US.

He cited the two ports on either end of the canal being owned by a Hong Kong-based firm (CK Hutchinson) as evidence that China could “turn the canal into a choke point in a moment of conflict,” which “is a direct threat to the national interest and security of the US.”

Afterwards, Panama withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative: a diverse array of infrastructure projects aimed at developing new global supply chains throughout the global South. On March 4, CK Hutchinson sold the ports to the US multinational investment company BlackRock and a consortium of fellow investors for a total of $22.8 billion.
 
On the other side of the world, the Suez Canal is another key channel for global shipping routes. It connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas, allowing ships to pass more quickly between the North Atlantic and Indian oceans.

From October 2023, passage through the Suez Canal has decreased significantly: in January 2024, freight container volumes through the Red Sea region fell by around 78 per cent from expected values, affecting 10 per cent of all globally shipped goods. Ships are instead choosing to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, adding days or even weeks to their travel time.
 
The reason for the decrease in traffic? Between October 2023 and February 2024, at least 40 ships were attacked by the Houthis, a Yemen-based political and military organisation that is part of the Axis of Resistance alongside Hamas and Hezbollah. They did so in order to exert pressure on Israel and its allies to agree to a ceasefire — US and British vessels were among those targeted.
 
Maritime trade routes and the infrastructure that supports them are crucial to the smooth functioning of global capitalism. As such, they are a useful diagnostic. These recent disruptions are indications of the precarious and changeable state of the current international order.