The Red Sea Economic Belt Emerges from BRICS Plus

February 05, 2024

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The newly inaugurated BRICS Plus mechanism reflects not only the expansive attraction of multipolarity for developing economies,¹ but also the wisdom of the China-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the utility of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Russian energy cooperation with OPEC+. While an unstable Argentina has reverted to the US camp and rejected BRICS Plus membership, the new BRICS Plus formulation consolidates regional connectivity across the Red Sea and provides new impetus to developing economies to wrest control from the destabilizing grip of a diminished US over regional security, diplomacy, and trade.

 

Washington's foreign policy elites have begun articulating the notion that the present and profound instability across the oceans and continents of the globe is directly attributable to the United States' attempt to regain global military predominance, political primacy, and economic pre-eminence in the wake of the disastrous "War on Terror."

 

Washington's profound involvement in Ukraine and Israel and its malicious narratives about China and Russia are glaringly at odds with the realities of Africa.²  However, Washington's failures in the Red Sea region, which exacerbated factional frictions and ignited frequent regional conflicts, have further exposed US foreign policy biases, critically constraining its diplomatic influence and creating a power vacuum in the Red Sea region.

 

In March 2023, the Biden administration exacerbated tensions in Sudan, ostensibly over a new Russian naval base on the Red Sea, and unleashed a civil conflict that joined the litany of regional conflicts in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Following the devastating US and NATO-led interventions, China has seized more opportunities for mediation in collaboration with the Arab League, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Russia, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the siege of Gaza,³ and the Saudi Arabia-Iran détente have made China gradually displace the US as the preferred mediator in Afro-Eurasia.

 

Moreover, the potential emergence of a "Red Sea Economic Belt," shaped by the new BRICS Plus formulation, consolidates the gains from China's development projects manifested in the BRI, such as railways, ports, and highways. This also supports the expansion of trade and investment ties within and between the African Union (AU), Arab League, Iran, Russia, Türkiye, and other regional actors, enhancing their collective access to global markets. The inclusion of Egypt and Ethiopia in BRICS Plus coincided with reduced friction over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile and the simmering tensions in Sudan. President Abdel Fattah al Sisi's recent electoral victory grants a six-year window for Egypt to leverage BRICS Plus in catalyzing economic development stakeholders to form a "Red Sea Economic Belt." It also coincides with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Ethiopia agreeing on a new investment deal as interest grows in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Sudan and Somalia's sea waters and ports.⁴  

 

"An important priority for BRICS interaction is the creation of new sustainable and safe transport routes... We believe that the time has come to establish within the framework of BRICS a permanent commission on transport, which would deal not only with the North-South project, but also, in a broader sense, with the development of logistics and transport corridors."⁵ —Vladimir Putin.

 

The single remaining chokepoint for completion of the BRI land transport corridors that triangulate Africa, Asia, and Europe is the presence of remaining US troops along the Iraqi-Syrian border. The Iraqi government has set the withdrawal process for US troops (military/security advisers) in motion, which implies accelerated withdrawal from Syria.⁶  However, the major recessionary trends in the US, the UK, and the European Union (EU), coupled with the post-pandemic regional power vacuum amid Russia's growing influence in Ukraine, have unleashed a flurry of political maneuvering to counterbalance US-induced instability. The Turks attacked US-backed, Syria-based Kurds, the Arab League readmitted Syria,⁷ India expanded its footprint to compete with China across the Indian Ocean, and power transitions across the entire Sahel expelled French and EU forces, causing the US to renegotiate its force positioning under duress.

 

The Red Sea has become a focal point of a larger global strategy. The recent US-UK revenge attacks on Houthi positions, without United Nations Security Council (UNSC) authorization, are perceived as illegal unilateral interventionism and further demonstrate to regional leaders that the so-called "rules-based order" does not apply to Anglo-America.⁸  The war in Yemen, which was largely ignored by Western media,⁹  was "frozen" after Riyadh and Tehran renewed diplomatic ties, but conflict immediately erupted on the African side of the Red Sea in Sudan,¹⁰  and swept westward across the Sahel, engulfing the former French colonies of West Africa—Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.¹¹

 

The dissolution of the French empire in Africa, thought by many as long overdue,¹² has accelerated the departure of EU, NATO, and US forces from the region. Moreover, future energy and mineral supplies to Europe and the nuclear energy security of France face critical restructuring.¹³ Additionally, North African states like Morocco, Algeria, and Libya may follow Egypt into BRICS Plus, seeking greater sovereignty and territorial integrity, and strategically reconfiguring their engagement with continental Africa, Europe, and West Asia. More significantly, the US Africa Command faces partial, or potentially total, expulsion from the Sahel region stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, replaced with a swath of unfriendly states, which favor the less interventionist policies of both Russia and China.¹⁴  Thus, the Sahel region may transform into a vast containment barrier limiting EU, US, and NATO operations to the Mediterranean and loosening their grip over access to the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean.

 

For China, the completion of BRI infrastructure connectivity is the optimal means to revive the war-ravaged region. China has used its deep reservoir of diplomatic goodwill to position regional issues into multilateral networks buttressed by a complex web of bilateral and trilateral trade and cooperation agreements. As such, the BRICS Plus mechanism promotes consensus and compromise, aids political stabilization and economic development, reinforces sovereignty, and provides a strategic balance for the multipolar transition.

 

The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab-Israeli War, was a British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956, and an effort to maintain control of the Suez Canal and its critical energy supply. While Franco-British humiliation largely extinguished the British Empire and severely injured French colonialism, it also underscored the need to accelerate formation of what would later become the EU. Another fateful outcome was Western Europe's pursuit to access the vast oil and gas reserves of the USSR. This led to a long-term energy development program in collaboration with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, with pipelines built from East to West, re-establishing Russia as a reliable and inexpensive energy source. However, from the late 1950s onwards, the extraordinary economic synergy between Russia and Europe instilled fear in Anglo-America. The US would henceforth insist on joint EU and NATO expansion and eventually undermine the EU's "strategic autonomy" objectives, starting with Brexit.

 

Anglo-America's primary objective remains to control maritime chokepoints, maintain its 1 trillion US dollar services export surplus, and promote the economic interests of its global energy companies, and technology monopolies.¹⁵ The US has consistently undermined OPEC and sanctioned all who offer more favorable prices than Anglo-American and EU energy firms. Placing a price cap on Russia has not worked because demand for cheap energy from China and India has risen. China is also the dominant global supplier of renewable energy, electric vehicles, batteries, and semiconductors produced by the world's most complete supply chains and most advanced manufacturing. Formalization of a "Red Sea Economic Belt" and the development of complete regional supply chains are the trend for regional development. The embrace of the Red Sea region by BRICS Plus provides ample impetus to deliver win-win solutions, countering the instability and turbulence generated by a deeply flawed US regional foreign policy.

 

Ultimately, the nascent third front across the entire African Sahel, spanning from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, imposes great costs to the US, EU, and NATO. They struggle to finance and equip Ukraine to counter Russia, while also funding the militarization of the first island chain in the Western Pacific to contain China. The coterie of hawks directing the Biden administration is learning that the constraints imposed on the US by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans far exceed Washington's zero-sum machinations in containing Russia, China, Africa, or indeed the majority of the globe.

 

The United States faces a self-perpetuating maelstrom of economic, political, and military insecurity resulting from its preference for military solutions to almost all external challenges, weaponization of economic and legal instruments, trade protectionism, self-centered manipulation of interest rates and inflation, subversion of multilateral mechanisms such as the WTO, and inability to offer concrete alternatives to China's economic development model. As the US contends with its constraints, a more nuanced foreign policy approach to cooperation and diplomacy emerges and eclipses nostalgia for unilateral dominance. The inclusion of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE stabilizes and consolidates the Red Sea region as the mechanism evolves and grows, heralding the start of a new chapter in global diplomacy.
 

 

 

1. Joseph Nye, Liz Economy, and David Shambaugh, "Is China's Soft Power Strategy Working," China Power, February 27, 2016, https://chinapower.csis.org/is-chinas-soft-power-strategy-working/.

2. "The World Bank in Africa," World Bank, last modified October 5, 2023, https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/overview.

3. "Chinese FM Expounds on China's Position on Palestinian-Israeli Conflict," Xinhua, May 16, 2021, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-05/16/c_139948339.htm.

4. Ismail Osman, "BRICS and Ethiopia: A New Frontier in Geopolitical Tug-of-War," Modern Diplomacy, August 29, 2023, https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/08/29/brics-and-ethiopia-a-new-frontier-in-geopolitical-tug-of-war/.

5. Ekaterina Blinova, "BRICS Security to Be Achieved Through New Logistics Routes," Sputnik, August 26, 2023, https://en.sputniknews.africa/20230826/1061637894.html.

6. "Iraq Wants 'Orderly' Withdrawal of 'Destabilizing' US Troops: PM," The Cradle, January 24, 2024, https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/18236.

7. Jan Yunul, "Arab League Readmits Syria," China Daily, May 9, 2023, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202305/09/WS6459a868a310b6054fad1dc1.html.

8. "World Reacts to US, UK Attacks on Houthi Targets in Yemen," Aljazeera, January 12, 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/12/world-reacts-to-us-uk-attacks-on-houthi-targets-in-yemen.

9. Moosa Elayah and Fatima Al Majdhoub, "Framing Conflict in the Middle East: Yemen and Syria in European Media," in Europe and the MENA Region: Media Reporting, Humanitarianism, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 173-199.

10. "China Urges Two Sides of Sudan Conflict to Implement Cease-fire, Move Forward Political Transition," Global Times, April 16, 2023, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202304/1289215.shtml.

11. "Before Niger, Several Recent Coups in the Sahel," Africanews, July 27, 2023, https://www.africanews.com/2023/07/27/before-niger-several-recent-coups-in-the-sahel/.

12. Owen Mulima, "Absolute Decolonisation of Africa: The Impossible Journey," Kwame Nkrumah University Multi-Disciplinary Journal 1, no. 1 (March 2023): 1-4, https://accessjournal.nkrumah.edu.zm/index.php/knuj/article/view/7.

13. Francesca Caruso and Francesca Lenzi, "The Sahel Region: A Litmus Test for EU-Africa Relations in a Changing," IAI Istituto Affari Internazionali, June 15, 2023, https://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/sahel-region-litmus-test-eu-africa-relations-changing-global-order.

14. Nabila Ramdani, "The Niger Crisis Shows France's Quasi-Empire in Africa Is Finally Crumbling," The Guardian, August 5, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/05/niger-crisis-france-empire-africa-coup-colony.

 

 

 

Please note: The above contents only represent the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of Taihe Institute.

 

This article is from the January issue of TI Observer (TIO), which examines the dynamics of the BRICS expansion in a global context. If you are interested in knowing more about the December issue, please click here:

http://www.taiheinstitute.org/Content/2024/01-31/1604465221.html

 

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