Financial Times: The world cannot rely on the United States to maintain trade peace
The Financial Times newspaper published an article by its one of senior writers and specialist in trade affairs, Alan Beattie.
In his article, Beattie discusses the threat to global trade represented by the attacks launched by the Houthis in Yemen on shipping ships crossing the Red Sea through the Bab al Mandab Strait, and the efforts made by the United States to stop these attacks.
Beattie says that the United States is the country that is resorted to when it comes to confronting pirates, and it has played this role for decades.
But he believes that what is happening in the Red Sea isn’t an ordinary act of piracy and that the Houthis, whose attacks on cargo ships and US Navy ships in the Red Sea have limited commercial traffic through the Suez Canal, aren’t like pirates.
Beattie says, “The current situation confirms that the American work in protecting supply chains is within complex geopolitical and military situations, but its goals are more strategic than economic in nature, which makes its measures vaguely useful and subject to political transformations”.
Beattie says that the Houthis are not a group of thieves on speedboats.
They are militants motivated by ideological motives, they have bases on land, and they are supported by a powerful country, Iran.
Therefore, they can inflict damage from a distance through missiles and drones and are prepared to suffer heavy losses.
Beattie says, “Their attacks deal a strong blow to global trade by reducing the volume of shipping traffic in the Suez Canal, and that there are a few countries inside and outside the region that express their admiration for them”.
Beattie believes in his article that there is a feeling that the Houthis wouldn’t have likely attacked the ships if the United States hadn’t provided support to Israel during its attack on Gaza; Therefore, given the widespread international condemnation of Israeli tactics, the United States doesn’t have many reliable allies willing to join the war with it.
According to the article writer, the first American strikes on the Houthis included British participation and received non-operational support from Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands, but Bahrain was the only country from the Middle East that contributed to those strikes.
Despite their clear commercial interests in keeping the canal open, China and India have not participated militarily.
As for Egypt, which is suffering due to a 40 percent drop in its revenues from the Suez Canal this year, it didn’t dare publicly join an attack targeting militants declaring their support for the Palestinian cause.
The article concludes by saying that the United States is motivated by geopolitical, not economic, interests in maintaining freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, and these motives are affected by political changes in Washington.
Therefore, political changes in the United States, such as Trump’s return to the presidency with his protectionist policy in the economy, may have a major impact on the region, especially in light of the absence of any major commercial or military power capable of assuming the American role in protecting the weak points in the global economy.
