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African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

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91–100 of 219 posts

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#91

I like how Chinese do not want to get involved in protecting vessels, despite the fact that it’s their containers on board. Oh well, good old America has to save capitalism, yet again :)

It's far better for America if they're the only ones capable of doing this.

> far better for America if they're the only ones capable of doing this

No, we’d much rather the Saudis and Emiratis get their shit together.

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the de facto Shia Government of Yemen They “exert de facto authority over the bulk of North Yemen” [1]. The problem is there is no single person who controls their armed groups. So striking a deal with one person provides zero assurance around what the others will do. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_movement#Houthi-contr...

I for the life of me can't figure out how countries end up in situations where a large subset of said population is not only armed by effectively uncontrollable by the government. How do they get money for arms? Where do the arms come from? Why is the government unable to exert any realistic control within their own borders? I know its a complex political problem, but I still don't get how in 2023 we still have warlo…

> How do they get money for arms? Where do the arms come from? Why is the government unable to exert any realistic control within their own borders

In the Houthi's case, they're a clan.

The entire clan pitched in because they were persecuted under Saleh - businessmen, service men, low level govenenent officials, etc.

Familial and Clan traditons are still a thing.

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#93
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. My guess is that this will be resolved through a combination of re-routing, new players (friendly to the Persians/Houthis) who will take advantage, and a bit of higher prices or some delay. The two big regional players (Saudi Arabia, UAE) are ignoring this because they made their deals already.

Or the U.S. unloads cruise missiles on Houthi locations like last time and business returns to normal.

It just doesn't work. It didn't work last time either. The missile launcher are too easy to hide and relocate.

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#95

I like how Chinese do not want to get involved in protecting vessels, despite the fact that it’s their containers on board. Oh well, good old America has to save capitalism, yet again :)

No Chinese ship has been targeted so far, to my knowledge, even if transiting.

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yemen is at war with Israel. They are targetting Israeli ships. It's not piracy. It's act of war.

> They are targetting Israeli ships No evidence of this discrimination. That’s a big part of the problem.

Nonsense; take them at their word. On October 31 they vowed to attack Israeli targets until the military action in Gaza stops. They later said they would target any ship that was headed to an Israeli port. There have been literally dozens of news articles quoting them.

The only reason to not consider it an act of war is to avoid recognizing their legitimacy as a governing force.

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are definitely not American containers. Yet everyone counts on America to save the day! Multipolar world my ass.

China would sooner reroute that get involved in conflicts so far from home. You're blaming people who aren't American for not being American enough. Not everything has to be resolved violently.

China is involved by coming out aginst Isreal. Thus they support this terror campaign overall.

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So striking a deal with one person provides zero assurance around what the others will do They're primarily a clan/tribe - al-Houthi. It's fairly organized like other clan systems. The issue is they don't want to negotiate. They have bad blood stretching from the Saleh government and even earlier - the same way how Daesh is able to hold Deir ez-Zur because of Al-Bakr support.

> fairly organized like other clan systems Embedded with foreign fighters. (EDIT: Nvm.)

Embedded with IRGC advisors, not fighters.

The Houthi movement isn't a pan-International Shia movement like Liwa Fateymoun, Liwa Zainebiyoun, Hezbollah, etc.

Zaidis are technically Shia, but also base it on ethnic and familial ties.

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for the life of me can't figure out how countries end up in situations where a large subset of said population is not only armed by effectively uncontrollable by the government. How do they get money for arms? Where do the arms come from? Why is the government unable to exert any realistic control within their own borders? I know its a complex political problem, but I still don't get how in 2023 we still have warlo…

> How do they get money for arms? Where do the arms come from? Why is the government unable to exert any realistic control within their own borders In the Houthi's case, they're a clan. The entire clan pitched in because they were persecuted under Saleh - businessmen, service men, low level govenenent officials, etc. Familial and Clan traditons are still a thing.

Middle East politics have always felt beyond my understanding. I know we (as in western countries, specifically the US and the UK, but also others) contributed greatly to this mess (and still do to this day, in multiple ways).

That said, at some point, you expect things to normalize, because fundamentally people should be conflict adverse, however, it seems this region has an unusually high rate of conflicts that aren't strictly due to massive government failing in succession, since it appears Middle Eastern governments have been in power a long time (thus, can establish a relative order) but seem unable to control their own country within their own borders still. Which i suppose is indeed government failure, just of a different nature than one would typically imagine (IE, losing total control)

Re: African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

#100
post #13
post #3

Is there anyone here with relevant expertise who can tell us: Are the Red Sea attacks are a relatively minor, temporary hiccup? Or can they lead to another global wave of supply-chain disruptions, like the those we experienced during the pandemic? There's lots of evidence that the pandemic's supply-chain disruptions triggered inflation, and we're still fighting it. I'm not looking for predictions. I'm more interested…

Peter Zeihan analysis from a couple weeks ago: https://youtu.be/WJE7g08NldQ

As I've said a thousand times - stop listening to Zeihan. He's a quack. In my policy days, we never listened to the Stratfor guys.
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