The most amazing thing that has been pointed out over the last couple months is that China's base on Djibouti's Gulf of Aden coast, at the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab chokepoint into the Red Sea, gives them the perfect location to monitor Houthi action and American reaction:
—China Officially Sets Up Its First Overseas Base in Djibouti, The Diplomat
From Phenomenal World, February 15:
Egypt, Ethiopia, and histories of maritime war
Every few years, a crisis in the Red Sea makes global headlines. In 2014, the Yemeni Civil War spilled into the Red Sea after the Houthis captured the capital Sana‘a and dissolved the parliament. As a warning, the Houthis allegedly conducted two missile strikes on US Navy ships, prompting a swift but limited retaliation from a US warship. In 2021, a malfunctioning commercial vessel was left stranded in the Suez Canal for six days, obstructing the trade of an estimated $9 billion in commercial goods passing through the Red Sea each day. The scale of the economic impact was so severe that the Egyptian government, which profits from tolls on Suez transport, initially demanded close to a billion-dollar settlement from the Japanese owner of the vessel.
Since October of 2023, the Houthi organization, the de facto governing authority in Yemen backed by Iran, has launched a barrage of attacks on several commercial ships in response to the war in Gaza and US support for Israel. The goal of these attacks has been to undermine US military presence in the area as well as to restrict the passage of Israeli commercial ships.
In light of the Houthis’ unprecedented military capability, the US has organized a coalition to secure Red Sea trade. The political implications of these naval operations are momentous. India, for example, has taken the opportunity to flex its own naval might, deploying warships east of the Red Sea in response to its rising concerns about its exports, 50 percent of which travel through the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait.
This most recent escalation invites a deeper reflection on the history of a small but profoundly important body of water—a history which traverses several centuries and crucially takes place on both sides of the sea, recounting persistent rivalries of great and middle empires. In particular, we can look to Egypt and Ethiopia’s battle for dominance in the Red Sea to contemplate current crises. Their rivalry embroils powers like the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China, extends to the wars in Palestine and Israel, and implicates past and present national claims in the Horn of Africa. While the actors may have fluctuated over centuries, the singular significance of this water passageway to the global political economy has endured.
Geographies of power
It is difficult to overplay the Red Sea’s economic importance. At the northern edge of the sea, the Egyptian-owned Suez Canal connects it with the Mediterranean. By extension, the Bab-El-Mandeb at its southern edge serves as the gateway between Europe and Asia. In normal times, up to 15 percent of all global trade passes through the Red Sea, though recent conflicts have cut this volume by nearly half. The current crises in the region have disrupted the supply chain of critical commercial goods, including grains, oil, and natural gas. Given these high economic stakes, it is no surprise that established and emerging powers alike have sought to project naval power in the region.
Well before the latest series of crises, the Red Sea served as a battleground for states seeking a higher position within the global order. Much of the focus of these new power contentions has been on the Horn of Africa, lying at the crossroads of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean. Traditionally, the Horn was dominated by the influence of Egypt, the United Kingdom, and France. Beginning in 1896, the latter utilized Djibouti as a strategic hub for its colonial endeavors along the coast, known as French Somaliland. The Djibouti base enabled France to monitor maritime trade routes from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and facilitated the expansion of its military operations in the 1930s.
Power within the Red Sea has shifted throughout the period of US hegemony and then with the emerging multipolar order of the twenty-first century. In 2001, the United States took ownership of the Camp Lemonnier base under the guise of the War on Terror. With its own pretext of combating piracy, China established its first overseas naval base in Djibouti in 2017. The same year, Turkey established its largest overseas military base in Somalia. The Gulf Powers have also been eager to spread their influence west of the Suez; after failing to garner concessions from Djibouti, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) secured agreements for military installations in Eritrea, another coastal state in the Horn.
This diplomatic interest has, since 2018, eroded the traditional geopolitical divide between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. The Gulf monarchies were quick to assert their influence west of the Suez, investing billions of dollars and brokering groundbreaking peace agreements between Eritrea and Ethiopia....
....MUCH MORE
We watch chokepoints:You Knew China Had A Base At The Approaches To The Red Sea, Right? "...Chinese, Iranian and Indian Warships Are Now in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden"
July 25, 2021
"China & Egypt Strengthen Belt And Road Collaborations Including The Suez Canal International Logistics Zone"
And the Panama Canal:
China Will Help Panama Secure the Canal Against Terrorists
And
all of a sudden you have China on-site on three of the world's MAJOR
shipping chokepoints and what could very well become the fourth at the
Bering Straits.
....It's just that, as we've seen over the last year, supply lines are fragile, a weak spot even without unfriendlies doing an interdiction.
Should someone actively attempt to halt transportation it would make the Ever Given snafu look like child's play. As just one example, China has been very active in extending their belt and road initiative in Panama, including a $1.4 billion bridge over the canal and rail and other infrastructure.
And that's just one potential flashpoint. The Chinese influence in Brazil, hitherto based on VALE and iron ore could potentially go exponential as Brazil expands/modernizes its shipping and rail infrastructure. And then there's Australia...and...
I suppose somebody should keep an eye on Morocco to note if the Chinese set up camp on the Strait of Gibraltar.
