Chokepoint deterrence (chain of peace)

Chokepoint deterrence is the argument that mutual dependence on non-substitutable supply-chain chokepoints can deter war as well as enable coercion: the same network nodes that give hub states denial power also raise the cost of conflict for any state that cannot route around them. It inverts the offensive reading of the chokepoint effect, and its durability is contested.

Mechanism

The classical commercial-peace thesis held that high trade volumes deter war; the record is against it in its simple form, since extractable resources can be seized with the territory that holds them. Phuong Pham and Melle Scholten sharpen the claim: what deters is not how much states trade but what they trade, and specifically whether the goods sit at chokepoints no single state can internalise. Their exemplar is semiconductors, where raw materials, design software, lithography, optics, and chemicals converge from a dozen jurisdictions at foundries none of which is self-sufficient. They call this the "silicon testudo", refining the silicon shield thesis: it is the global production network behind TSMC, not the foundry itself, that deters, because even a successful invasion yields factories that produce nothing. The argument builds on Dale Copeland's trade-expectations theory, in which interdependence pacifies only while leaders expect future access to remain secure.

Contestation and limits

Three objections are live. First, the chain of peace is self-consuming when used: every export control and reshoring subsidy that pushes an adversary towards self-sufficiency loosens the chain, the same dynamic treated at Self-undermining arsenal; Pham and Scholten argue that United States policy is eroding its own deterrent. Second, the mechanism assumes cost-sensitive leadership; critics of the silicon shield make the same rationality objection here. Third, deterrence by interdependence and coercion by interdependence are the same capability described twice, so the concept offers no stable equilibrium, only a wasting asset. Whether chokepoint dependence deters, restrains, or merely delays conflict over Taiwan is unresolved and contested.

See also

Chokepoint effect · Weaponised interdependence · Silicon shield · Semiconductor chokepoint · Self-undermining arsenal · Economic deterrence · Taiwan blockade scenario (economic dimension) · Economic statecraft

Sources

• Phuong Pham and Melle Scholten, "The Chain of Peace: Do Supply Chain Chokepoints Deter War?" (11 June 2026; accessed 30 July 2026).
• Dale C. Copeland, *Economic Interdependence and War* (Princeton University Press, 2015).
• Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, "Weaponized Interdependence", International Security 44, no. 1 (2019).
• Chris Miller, *Chip War* (Scribner, 2022).