MARITIME CHOKEPOINT
Bosphorus Strait · Held by 🇹🇷 Turkey · Measured across 4,320 simulated wars
The Bosphorus closes in more simulated wars than any other strait in this model, and it has never once become a blockade. That is not a contradiction, it is the mechanism showing through. A closure is the lower of two terms — the resolve to shut the strait and the means to keep it shut — and Turkey has the means in abundance while almost never acquiring the resolve. It is in NATO, so it is dragged into nearly every large war; it is rarely anyone’s target, so it is almost never actually shot at. The damage ladder that turns a warning into a blockade needs the holder to be hit, and Turkey does not get hit. What you are looking at is the profile of a state that manages a waterway during other people’s wars rather than one that strangles it.
The engine sets a level per strait per round, and it is the lower of two terms: how badly the holder wants the strait shut, and whether it still has the ships, mines and coastal missiles to keep it shut. Willingness only ratchets up — a state that has been hit has less reason to reopen, not more. Capability is the only term that can fall, which is why a closure here is not permanent.
A level is the lower of two terms, so every strait is limited by one of them. Resolve arrives when the holder is shot at — that is what buys the second rung. Whether the level actually follows depends on whether the holder still has the ships, mines and coastal missiles to enforce it.
Willingness-bound. The holder is almost never shot at, so the damage ladder never leaves its first rung. This strait is harassed far more often than it is closed — and not for want of the means to close it.
Share of all simulated wars in which this state is cut off by a partial blockade or worse.
No state loses a lane in the measured sweep — closures here stay at the harassment level.
Opening moves that most often end with this strait shut. Click one to run it.