There cannot be a multipolar world without safe movement, trade, and integration across the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Therefore, BRICS must stabilize these waterways to make them, safe, and competitive relative to the Atlantic.
Preventing the historical Asia-Africa integration
The US and Europe attempt to prevent Africa-Asian integration, which historically supported great civilizations in The Middle East, India, and Africa. These North Atlantic countries pursue their policy through creating security threats and inflaming tensions in the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Iban Battuta, a 14th century explorer, revealed advanced social, economic, and intellectual integration involving the North and East Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, India, and East Asia, which thrived due to safe Red Sea, and Indian Ocean. This integration occurred in the context of thriving societies spanning these regions from Mombasa in East Africa, Morocco in North Africa, Astrakhan in Russia, and beyond India to the east.
Therefore, the notion propagated by European-Atlantic empires, that the rest of the world was dark and backward before western colonization, is false. European’s account is also wrong according to western early explorers (who were pillagers, and pirates), who reported finding city-states conducting spice trade along the East African, Arabian, and Indian coasts. These explorers proceeded to plunder these city-states and to pirate spice trade to returned treasures and spices and hence enrich Europeans.
Former colonial empires understand that Indians, Arabs, and Africans can rebuild their ancient trade, develop wealth, and be strong trade partners of Eurasian powers. This prospect alarms the historically resource-poor Atlantic empires, inspiring them to attempt to make the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean risky for navigation and trade, while keeping the North Atlantic safe and hence economically competitive. Also, unsafe Red Sea and Indian Ocean presents a threat to contain Eurasian BRICS members, which explains US and Europe’s actions against Yemen and recent mysterious rise of piracy.
Same Old Containment Schemes
Lately, the Western media, including the pentagon’s enterprising propaganda outlet, African Defense Forum (ADF) has been hyping how Houthis attacks on Israeli-linked ships and ‘Somali pirates’ threaten the international trade. ADF’s report summarized views from an ‘expert’ from the Atlantic Council, who argued that pirates are not terrorists and should be negotiated with or be paid ransoms to free vessels and hostages. Therefore, the expert becomes pirates’ apologist, which shows how Atlanticists encourage and accept criminals to destabilize other oceans, but not the Atlantic. Approving pirates’ hijacking, and demanding ransom, constitutes encouraging them. Notably, both the ‘expert’ and the pirates are doing for western empires in 2024, what Francis Drake or Vasco Da Gama did in the 15th century.
Curiously, these pirates strike when the US needs them, for instance when they hijacked a Ukrainian ship MV-Faina which was loaded with T-72 tanks bound for Kenya, prompting the Western mainstream media to spin a narrative to accuse Kenya of importing these tanks for South Sudan, as opposed to condemning sea piracy. Also, the ‘pirates’ established contacts with the US navy over a short time, and threatened to blow up the vessel, but the Atlantics Council ‘expert’ think these actions were okay. The US navy conveyed the pirates’ demands for ransom, observed as the hefty sum was paid, before letting the buccaneers escape without arresting them. The reason why the US navy was so lenient to pirates remains unexplained.
The Atlanticists cannot reveal that the US and Europe are trying to prevent Eurasian powers from integrating with other continents by creating instability in surrounding shipping lanes. It is not a coincidence that the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea have been facing ‘security’ crises of Washington’s making in the last decade. The Atlantic neocolonial empires understand that the unipolar world that made them rich was created (and perpetuated) through facilitating transatlantic integration and reversing the same across the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Therefore, The West will continue spawning chaos and threats in waterways around Eurasia, and screaming about these dangers, to make the Atlantic competitive. Washington directly created threats by ramming civilian vessels and crafting and harping about a nuclear-submarine accident in the South China Sea, showing its desperation to disrupt trade and economic integration. Similar desperation is informing its policy in the Middle East.
Plot in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Washington and its North Atlantic allies are destabilizing the Red Sea and the Indian by ravaging Yemen instead of forcing Israel to stop its genocide in Gaza to serve their interests. The US and EU naval operations are not meant to secure shipping, but to create a tense environment where other destabilizing activities such as piracy can thrive. As noted earlier, the Pentagon’s outlet, ADF, has already reported that piracy has been expanding amidst The West’s naval deployment. It gave a winding tale of how ‘pirates’ hijack large fishing vessels in Somalia’s territorial waters and use them to get to commercial vessels in the high seas. There must be a three-latter-agency that ventures into Somalia’s territorial waters, to avail large fishing vessels to pirates.
ADF’s narrative is meant to shift the attention to pirates instead of their, enablers, and beneficiaries. It is too convenient that pirate’s started operating when American and European navies began their Anti-Houthi operations. BRICS powers in Eurasia, must take control of the situation to ensure that western ‘fishing’ vessels do not cross into Somalia’s territorial waters. They may also monitor militaries and special services conniving with pirates, and rescue hijacked vessels before Atlanticists negotiate for ransoms. Importantly, BRICS countries should ensure that their commerce flows freely across all oceans.
Context from History
The prospects of a multipolar world cannot be achieved without free navigation across all the world’s oceans. The last time the world was multipolar, in the 14th and 15th century was when there was free navigation in the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. This reality enabled, Africans, Arabs, and Indians to freely exchange products and cultures, including spices, coffee, technology, and Religion, until the Western ‘explorers’ (pillagers and pirates) arrived. These characters are revered in the West as they enriched their empires by plundering coastal kingdoms of the Indian Ocean by forcing them to pay tributes to Europeans, and pirating on their trade. Vasco da Gama went as far as burning a ship with women and children on board, and made the previously safe Indian Ocean perilous for travel and trade.
Henceforth, people from this region would not sail or trade safely, and only European ‘merchants’ and navies could, which enabled them to monopolize commerce, in a similar manner that American and European navies, and their allied pirates are attempting in the Indian Ocean today. The West also profits from this instability, since their security and insurance firms are paid huge sums to for vessels to transit in areas that would be safe if the West was not meddling. BRICS must develop solid mechanisms for making oceans surrounding the Eurasian continent safe and competitive as the North Atlantic.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa.