Suez Canal, what the Ever Given ship accident taught us
Will we be able to manage the future (and third) challenges of global maritime trade? This is what the Ever Given ship accident in Suez shed light on. The in-depth analysis by Michele Scarpa
As long as they are fragile. This is what the Ever Given ship accident in Suez taught us about global value chains.
The fragmentation of production activities for the world, the criticalities that lie behind the gigantic cargoes that ply the main sea routes and the importance of chokepoints (or bottlenecks) are issues that cannot fail to be addressed by policy makers.
Secondly to these major issues, however, an evaluation of a perhaps more technical but equally important character emerges.
The Suez accident was a fatality, but if there was a hostile act aimed at blocking the bottlenecks through which world maritime trade passes, would we be prepared to handle it?
The question was recently posed by Scott Savitz, senior engineer of the Rand Corporation, one of the most influential think tanks in the world, who remarked that we must not forget the danger of blockships in the different ways in which it can be carried out.
The blockship, or ship blockade, is a military tactic that consists precisely in replicating what happened by chance in Suez last month: that is to voluntarily obstruct, by means of a ship that was sunk, narrow accesses to the sea. The tactic in military history has been implemented several times, the first cases date back to about a thousand years ago, but it was mainly used in the twenty-first century.
One case above all. In 2014, Russian forces used this tactic to trap part of the Ukrainian fleet stationed in the Crimea. For the Russians it was enough to sink two obsolete ships to obstruct the exit from the port, thus preventing Ukrainian ships from escaping to the open sea and allowing them to be captured from the land side.
In this example, the technique was used during an armed conflict between two states, but it is easy to guess that the same tactic can be used by non-state groups with the aim of damaging strategic companies or enemy countries.
To frame the question, just think that about 90% of world trade passes by sea and a very significant share of this percentage passes through some straits called chokepoints. These passages are subject to international conventions that regulate and guarantee their transit. An example is the Turkish case where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in order not to submit to the 1936 Montreux Convention which regulates access to the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, would like to build a new artificial canal free from international constraints: the Kanal Istanbul.
But terrorists or non-state groups obviously transcend the rules of international law and conventional conflicts, being able with moderate effort to deal a severe blow to the economies and armies of their adversaries. In fact, precisely because of their intrinsic vulnerability, chokepoints will always be the object of the attention of many of the state or non-state actors present on the world stage.
The Suez story can help us better understand risk.
In fact, the canal, in addition to the fortuitous blocks or due to war conflicts, has also been the subject of terrorist attacks that have made evident the fragility of the strait to asymmetric warfare tactics.
On 29 July and 31 August 2013, the Furqan Brigades (a Qaedist-inspired faction active in the Sinai) attacked two commercial ships in the Egyptian waterway with RPG shots. In both cases, only minor damage to the boats occurred.
But the message has reached the world, terrorist groups are clear that hitting the bottlenecks is attacking the world at a very sensitive point. After the attacks of 2013, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that the closure of the Suez Canal for an oil tanker in navigation "would add about 2,700 transit miles from Saudi Arabia to the United States" with a corresponding increase in costs as well as time. But for the US, the closure of Suez also means closing the rapid route to the seas of the Persian Gulf for the military fleet. This concept is also clear to the jihadist groups who, following the 2013 attacks, declared that Suez had " become the safe way for the Crusader aircraft carriers to attack Muslims".
The military question is perhaps just as important as the commercial one. Even during the latest incident in the canal, although the US Navy press releases offered ample reassurance, it was obvious how the Suez obstruction hampered the operations of the American 5th Fleet engaged in operations in the Middle East area.
In fact, the IKE CSG works together with regional and coalition partners in the Resolve operation inherent against ISIS and is a fundamental component in American politics in the geographic quadrant of reference.
Although the tactics of the Furqan Brigades against Suez have so far been ineffective, analysts estimate that they have the skills for more effective attacks against merchant shipping in the channel through, for example, the attack with explosive boats or by means of devices placed on board. For example, in 2009, Egyptian authorities said they had arrested 25 militants with suspicious ties to al-Qaeda for plotting to use explosives equipped with cell phone-activated detonators against ships in the canal.
We could say these are the traditional asymmetric risks. If we pay attention to Savitz's work, then we understand how we must also keep in mind everything that revolves around the cyber defense of the gigantic freighters passing through the chokepoints. In a multidimensional world, the threat is too. The digitization of the control systems of these giants of the seas increases the risks of cyber attacks, for which the author suggests the strengthening of the entire cyber defense system of these ships as well as a coordinated response by the authorities to protect maritime safety. . On the other hand, a remote tampering with navigation systems could be successful in the tactics of blockship, as well as more rudimentary tactics.
Electronic warfare and cyber attacks, traditional attacks with explosives, firearms and small boats, intelligence actions and corruption of on-board personnel, are all threats that states must face in order to protect merchant shipping. The latest Suez incident reminded us that a ship, no matter how large, is enough to block a route where 12% of world trade passes, more than one million barrels of crude oil a day and 9% of all world LNG. Crisis of global value chains with consequent increase in costs and times for the various operators, increase in the price of crude oil on the energy markets, compromise of military operations, are all the damage caused by the case. It is advisable to know how to exploit these negative events to draw a lesson, today it is a random event but tomorrow it may not be. Given the inherent fragility of chokepoints, it is good to remember that the threats are many and we must work to prevent and deal with them if they arise.
Today it is Suez, tomorrow it could be Bab el-Mandeb, Hormuz or Malacca, the sensitive points are many and the hostile actors are varied, in a globalized world the challenges are global and multidimensional. Even Italy fully inserted in the dynamics of modernity, it is appropriate to consider these scenarios, avoiding being found unprepared for the challenges of the future.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/canale-di-suez-cosa-ci-ha-insegnato-lincidente-della-nave-ever-given/ on Sat, 17 Apr 2021 04:00:57 +0000.