Tanzania may have the lowest GDP of the three port countries mentioned but Dar es Salaam has the largest population compared to the smaller cities of Mombasa and Durban. From what little I understand the Tanzanian government may be in the best place politically to use these stress tests to focus more attention on port health and capabilities. I'd be happy for anyone else to weigh in.
It's fascinating to try to imagine the atmosphere in the room as they dust of decades old contingency plans of "what to do if Suez is closed?" and divert a sixth of the worlds shipping around the whole continent of Africa, probably adding a lot of cost in fuel and serious operational concerns as the ports naturally aren't ready for such a huge increase in traffic.
I think most miss is that what the media refers to as "Houthis", is the de facto Shia Government of Yemen.<p>Pointing this out because some of the comments read as bafflement over their organization and equipment. They are not a rag tag collection of villagers who decided pirating is the best path forward. They are often trained military.
I wrote an article the other day on how beneficial ownership makes this situation worse: <a href="https://omarabid.com/beneficial-ownership" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://omarabid.com/beneficial-ownership</a><p>As ships can't be anonymous (both on ownership and journey), this reduce the intelligence work to 0 by "hostile" entities. This would not have been possible if privacy was the default as their options will be reduced to a full blockade.
Is there anyone here with relevant expertise who can tell us: Are the Red Sea attacks are a relatively minor, temporary hiccup?<p>Or can they lead to another global wave of supply-chain disruptions, like the those we experienced during the pandemic?<p>There's lots of evidence that the pandemic's supply-chain disruptions triggered inflation, and we're still fighting it.<p>I'm not looking for predictions. I'm more interested in an informed assessment of the risks.
It's so weird whenever these topics come up how there's always one or two accounts replying to every comment like it's their job or something.
I like how Chinese do not want to get involved in protecting vessels, despite the fact that it’s their containers on board.<p>Oh well, good old America has to save capitalism, yet again :)
You know how sometimes you find theres an simpler way of doing things? Sometimes its easier, or more scalable, it just takes creative thinking. Imagine for a moment a crazy idea, instead of sending a strike force to go turn people into mist, we try talking first? Its this weird phenomena, sometimes people dont rush into violence when they feel like their grievances are being taken seriously.