February 15, 2024
DHAKA – Today’s Red Sea skirmishes raise multifaceted concerns, which range from the war in Gaza widening and awakening old wounds, to geopolitical frontlines being rewritten by shifting chokepoints.
Occupying Gaza snuggles with Eretz Israel (Greater Israel), a non-negotiable Zionist goal from 1897. Institutionalised by establishing a “Palestine Office” in 1908, today, Israel is one step away from fulfilling that goal, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu channels a lesson he learned from his mentor, Menachem Begin: inflict a Palestinian nakba.
Netanyahu widened the Gaza war by actually unleashing it. By decapitating Hamas, he mobilised Hezbollah (Iran’s Shia militia in Lebanon), while activating two other Iranian militias: Yemen’s Houthis (who are attacking ships in the Red Sea) and Iraqi/Syrian Kataib Hezbollah (which killed three Tower-22 US servicemen along Jordan-Syria borders last month and quickly dissolved itself upon Iranian instructions, but were still mercilessly bombed by the US).
Ever since the Shah of Iran was evicted in January 1979 (the Central Intelligence Agency once restored him in 1953), Iran and the United States have been at loggerheads. Iran’s 1980s war with another US supporter, Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein, revived Shia-Sunni tensions and stirred an extant Middle East cauldron. Gaza enters this stew as a “wild-card” component.
The Middle East supplies one-fifth of today’s oil flows. Passage through the 21-mile-wide Straits of Hormuz makes it a chokepoint for trade. Red Sea attacks shifted that chokepoint from Iran’s frontier to Bab-el-Mandeb, an equally narrow stretch connecting the Gulf of Aden from Africa to the Red Sea. Half of all Asia-Europe trade passes through the Red Sea, Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean Sea; the Suez Canal alone commands 15 percent of global trade.
Bringing Africa into the Middle East tinderbox opens four strands of thoughts. The first stems from Israel pushing Gaza residents into Sinai, destabilising the Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Saudi neighbourhoods. Secondly, it restores “Western” controls over Asia-Europe trade—which Great Britain and France had lost when the Suez Canal was nationalised in 1956—by converting South Gaza into a Suez alternative. Third, the G20 last year approved India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) which also eyes a Mediterranean outlet through southern Gaza, after crossing the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Finally, the US’ actions speak volumes in this regard: abandoning its democratic values, opposing a ceasefire in Gaza—allowing the brutal killing of children and women, and the bombing of hospitals—and militarily supporting Israel, undergirding their strategic interest.
Invoking the term “red” rattles US hormones, as it conjures hostility and eradication. US settlers built this Manichaean mindset—pitting a self-constructed good against a self-constructed bad—centuries ago: first by dubbing natives of the land they’d usurped as “Red” Indians (painting their faces red was a ritual), then after acquainting them, dehumanising their culture in popular narratives and imprisoning them in settlements, as the early 19th century Trail of Tears grimly reminds us. Socially, this spilled onto African-Americans, who were kept as slaves and even denied the right to vote, despite the US Declaration of Independence that pronounced democracy. The Manichaean mindset also affected Hispanics, from whom much of the land stretching from west of the Mississippi was first confiscated, and whose language, Spanish, is now the fastest-growing in the United States. The political spillover from US history is best represented in former Senator and Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s “Better dead than red” theory, referring to the Soviet Red Army, echoing McCarthyism, lambasting the US Department of State for being “infested with communists,” and glorifying the nuclear arms race.
Political scientist Samuel P Huntington’s post-Cold War thesis, Clash of Civilizations, identified the next Manichaean US target: Muslims (and Hispanics). With Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria spoken for (sometimes falsely, as with Iraq in 2003), the Houthi Red Sea strikes implicate yet another Muslim group target, suggesting the “clash” that Huntington wrote of will continue until Armageddon.
All three remaining strands of thought directly fuel Red Sea confrontation. US-China rivalry dominates them. China’s 2013 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) sets the tone, brewing initial tensions where the Indian and Pacific oceans meet. Adding to it is Japan’s Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Indo-Pacific region” reference of 2018, AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) of 2021, US President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy of 2021, and the preparation of a Japan-centric “Pacific NATO.”
That fulcrum shifted West, tip-toeing China’s port-building plans, from Ream (Cambodia), Kyaukpyu (Myanmar), Sonadia and Payra (Bangladesh), to Hambantota (Sri Lanka) and Gwadar (Pakistan). Japan immediately reacted, making deals and building ports in Yangon (Myanmar) and Matarbari (Bangladesh). India followed suit in Sittwe (Myanmar) and converted its Look East policy approach into “Act East.” After targeting the Malacca chokepoint and the Bay of Bengal, the Indo-Pacific rivalry confronted Middle East chokepoints. China’s only foreign naval base, in Djibouti—it must be noted that a dozen other African possibilities await formalisation—secured China’s Red Sea foothold, to project it as a Persian Gulf, Suez Canal, and Mediterranean power.
Iran has blossomed the most, as the second strand suggests. Against Russia’s distractions in Ukraine and BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa grouping) expansion into BRICS+ tilting in Global South directions (by adding Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates from Asia, Egypt and Ethiopia from Africa, and Argentina from South America), China’s ascendancy also featured a 25-year Strategic Cooperation Agreement with Iran in 2021. Worth $800 billion of Chinese investments, supplies, and workers, it may open up even larger coffers to meet the necessary military spending by both sides competitively.
Politics have resultantly gotten murkier. China’s rival, India, built Chabahar Port in Iran, adjacent to China’s Gwadar Port, thus opening a direct northern corridor to Afghanistan to further surround Pakistan. China’s presence softens Pakistan’s concerns, but encourages Iranian machismo, such as bombing Balochistan last month. Similarly, India’s Foreign Minister Jaishankar went to Iran to stop Yemeni Houthis from bombing Indian ships.
Iran has managed the Red Sea and Yemeni civil war against Saudi Arabia and the United States since 2015. Though Biden pledged to “prevent [the Gaza war] from spreading,” he foments it with arms and funds. Pundits debate if Houthi attacks or Western interests caused this confrontation. Whichever it is, Gaza seems more like a nail-in-the-coffin development than a catalyst.
The third strand relates to a restless Africa. Displeased by the West’s unconditional support for Ukraine, South Africa led the BRICS expansion, revitalised the Global South, and placated Israel for genocide. In a continent questioning Western relations, China wins even with its rough edges.
Because of petroleum, the Straits of Hormuz became pivotal to global growth and security. US fleets upheld the status quo, against threats such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—as a prelude to Persian Gulf positioning. As Middle East oil-dependence decreases, shifting the chokepoint to the Red Sea widens the conflict playground, hastens casus belli, and deepens Hamas’ retaliatory actions. Will a “red-minded” US approach help? It may shake geopolitics for sure, but a stalemate could cripple more, by marooning more states and upholding the status quo which will open an even nastier “can of [proverbial] worms.”