Latent chokepoints and cascading risk: Greenland and the future of Arctic supply-chain fragility

Abstract

Abstract

Global maritime supply chains are shaped not only by established chokepoints but also by emerging routes whose anticipated importance already influences investment, governance, and contingency planning. Existing scholarship explains disruption at nodes that have achieved sustained throughput dominance, but it under-theorizes how constrained maritime corridors may generate systemic fragility before operational scale. This paper introduces Latent Chokepoint Theory (LCT) to explain how strategically anticipated routes can reshape supply-chain behavior before becoming traffic-intensive. Using Greenland as a conceptual illustrative lens within emerging Arctic shipping networks, the paper develops a cascade model showing how anticipatory investment distortion, governance ambiguity, technology-enabled overconfidence, and premature network coupling can embed fragile assumptions despite uncertainty in infrastructure readiness, institutional coordination, and environmental conditions. LCT contributes to maritime policy and supply-chain resilience scholarship by shifting chokepoint analysis from reactive disruption toward anticipatory fragility and by distinguishing functional from illusory redundancy in emerging-route planning. For policymakers, port authorities, insurers, and maritime operators, the framework highlights the risks of premature route integration and the need for governance, infrastructure, and risk-assessment capabilities to mature before emerging corridors are treated as dependable substitutes in global shipping networks.