Canals and seaways become wartime chokepoints

Are the Suez and Panama canals and the St. Lawrence Seaway soft targets that navies should do more to protect?

They would be serious wartime vulnerabilities, although primary responsibility for protecting them belongs to the countries that control them.

Major canals and seaways become security concerns in wartime. Their fixed locations make them strategic checkpoints whose disruption would complicate maritime movement. The main protective duty rests with the states that control the infrastructure, even though many fleets depend on those routes. Global maritime mobility can therefore rest on locally defended chokepoints.