Boards, Seas, and Civilizations: How Ancient Games...

Umur UĞURLU

09 Temmuz 2026 Perşembe 23:42

Boards, Seas, and Civilizations: How Ancient Games Reveal the Future of Global Maritime Trade

Three Games, Three Civilizations
To understand the current upheaval in global maritime trade, one must first understand the civilizations that are shaping it — not through economic charts or naval tonnage alone, but through the games they invented. Games are mirrors. They reveal how a civilization thinks, plans, and defines victory.

The West plays Chess. In chess, the goal is singular and absolute: capture the king. Once the king falls, the game ends. This logic has guided Western foreign policy for centuries. In Iraq, the removal of Saddam Hussein was the checkmate. In Libya, the fall of Gaddafi ended the game. In Venezuela, the isolation of Maduro was the target. Capture the king; declare victory; exit the board. It is a strategy of decisive, visible endpoints.

Iran plays Backgammon — Nard, as the Persians call it, a game that Iranian civilization is widely credited with inventing over 5,000 years ago. In backgammon, there is no king. The board is a field of movement, probability, and patience. When Ayatollah Khamenei was killed on February 28, 2026, Western analysts expected paralysis. Instead, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) closed the Strait of Hormuz within hours. The game did not end. The dice simply shifted. Iran’s strategic culture has no single point of failure — it operates through networks, proxies, and distributed resilience.

China plays Go — the oldest and most complex strategy game in the world, born in China approximately 4,000 years ago. In Go, the objective is not to destroy the opponent’s pieces but to surround them, to encircle territory silently and patiently. A master of Go can see dozens of moves ahead, but even grandmasters are often surprised when they realize they have been encircled long before the decisive moment arrives. China’s commercial and maritime expansion follows precisely this logic: not confrontation, but encirclement through infrastructure, investment, and institutional presence.

These three civilizational strategies are now colliding in the world’s most important maritime corridors.

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated military campaign against Iran, assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and striking key IRGC installations. The chess move was made: the king had been removed. But the game did not end. Within days, Iranian forces — operating through their resilient, decentralized military structure — declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to vessels affiliated with the US, Israel, and their Western allies. What followed was the largest maritime disruption in modern history. The Strait, which before the conflict carried approximately 25% of the world’s seaborne oil and 20% of its liquefied natural gas, ground to a virtual halt. Tanker traffic that had averaged over 153 vessel transits per day collapsed to just 13 per day within the first week of the conflict. War-risk insurance premiums surged by more than 1,000% in some cases. Brent crude oil prices broke $100 per barrel for the first time in four years, reaching a peak of $126 per barrel by mid-March 2026 — the largest single-month oil price increase ever recorded. Major carriers, including Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, suspended all transits and rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to delivery times and billions to freight costs. Nearly 2,000 ships and 20,000 seafarers were trapped inside the Persian Gulf.

The backgammon player had rolled again. The board had not been cleared — it had been transformed.

China’s Go Strategy: Silent Encirclement on the High Seas
Long before the first bomb fell on Tehran in 2026, China had already been placing its stones across the maritime board. Through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beijing has established ownership or operational stakes in ports spanning Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain, Morocco, and dozens of other countries. The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is not a shipping lane — it is a strategic web, carefully woven over two decades. Even as the Iran conflict erupted, China publicly called for deepening the “Belt and Road International Port Alliance” and improving cooperation along maritime corridors. The Go master does not pause mid-game for a crisis; he uses the crisis to place more stones. China’s position in the current conflict is a masterclass in Go-style pragmatism. Beijing neither endorsed Iranian military action nor condemned it. Instead, it negotiated quietly. By early March 2026, Iran announced that Chinese-flagged vessels would be permitted to transit the Strait — a privilege denied to Western carriers. Chinese ships began broadcasting “CHINA OWNER” on their transponders as a safe-passage signa. China simultaneously dispatched its 48th naval fleet — including the missile destroyer Tangshan and the frigate Daqing — from its Djibouti base toward the Strait, participating in the joint “Maritime Security Belt 2026” exercises alongside Russia and Iran.

This dual approach — securing energy supply while maintaining plausible neutrality — is the essence of the Go strategy. China is not trying to win the Middle East conflict. It is positioning its pieces so that regardless of how the conflict resolves, Chinese trade flows, port networks, and diplomatic relationships remain intact. China currently imports approximately 13% of its crude from Iran and depends on the Gulf for roughly 30% of its total oil supply. The Strait’s closure is painful for Beijing, but it also creates an opportunity: as Western shipping retreats, Chinese carriers quietly expand their footprint in the remaining corridors. The player who keeps pieces on the board when others are retreating gains territory.

On the other hand Russia does not lead the maritime game in 2026 — but it plays a significant supporting role as part of a broader struggle between Western maritime dominance and BRICS-aligned alternatives, calling for a “full-fledged strategic maritime dimension” within the bloc. Russian naval vessels participated in joint exercises in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman alongside Chinese and Iranian forces. Russia’s strategic interest is not in Iranian victory or defeat, but in the prolongation of Western distraction. Every week that US carrier strike groups remain anchored in the Persian Gulf is a week that reduces Western naval attention to the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Arctic corridors through which Russian energy and trade flow. In this sense, Russia’s maritime strategy is also a form of Go: not direct confrontation, but the exploitation of opponent distraction to expand one’s own territorial presence.

The rerouting of global shipping away from the Gulf and the Red Sea — already underway since the Houthi attacks of 2023–2025 — will accelerate. The Cape of Good Hope has re-emerged as a primary east–west corridor, with daily diversion traffic reaching record levels. This adds an estimated 10–14 days to transit times for Asia–Europe routes, permanently restructuring freight costs and insurance pricing. Carriers will not quickly return to the riskier corridors, even after a ceasefire. The crisis has demonstrated the fragility of the world’s energy supply chains and the inadequacy of Western maritime insurance mechanisms in conflict zones. And most consequentially, China’s privileged access to Iranian-controlled waters — even if temporary — has revealed the strategic depth of its maritime diplomacy. While Western carriers were barred, Chinese vessels moved. This is not a minor commercial advantage; it is a demonstration of geopolitical positioning with decades of implications. It confirms that the BRI port network is not merely commercial infrastructure — it is a strategic asset that functions precisely when conventional shipping collapses.

Over the longer horizon, the crisis may accelerate the bifurcation of global maritime trade into two parallel systems: a Western-aligned network centered on military chokepoints, US Navy escort capabilities, and dollar-denominated freight contracts; and a BRICS-aligned network built around Chinese port investments, yuan-denominated trade settlements, and diplomatic access agreements like the one China has quietly secured with Iran.

The United States made its chess move. It removed the king. But the game on the ocean is not chess. It never was. Iran, playing backgammon, continues to roll the dice — distributed, resilient, and unmatched in its ability to inflict asymmetric costs on a superior military power. The Strait of Hormuz is not a single square on a chessboard; it is a field of probability that Iran has spent decades learning to navigate. China, playing Go, watched patiently as its rivals exhausted themselves on a board it had already begun to surround. Its ships sail through closed straits. Its ports anchor across six continents. Its naval exercises signal partnership to those who feel encircled by the West. By the time the chess player looks up from the board, the Go player may have already claimed the sea.

The future of global maritime trade will be shaped not by who wins the war in the Persian Gulf, but by who controls the ports, the insurance frameworks, the trade corridors, and the diplomatic relationships that determine which ships sail safely — and which fly “CHINA OWNER” on their transponders when no one else can pass.

It seems the ocean is a Go board.
Wishing Calm Seas to All Mariners