Practically, and theoretically, calculus, like all branches of mathematical sciences, aims to provide logical precision in problem solving.
Extending the reasoning within a political context; calculus, accommodates many things from the spectrum of definitive conflict resolution, to the spectrum of precision weapons deployment in warfare and several intermediating “known unknowns”; except, scientific exactness.
This hypothesis holds true in the escalating warring trinity of global economics, geopolitics and the Red Sea, which has, quite literally, turned red, given the fatal attacks of Wednesday, March 6, 2024.
Blood on the Red Sea
On that day, Yemeni Houthi rebels launched a daring missile attack on the Barbadian-flagged, Greek-operated, Liberian-owned ship, MV True Confidence, circa 50 nautical miles off the Yemen port of Aden, which resulted, for the first time, in the death of three sea farers (two Filipinos and one Vietnamese), and severe injuries to many others.
On February 18, 2024, the Belize-flagged MV Rubymar was struck by Houthi missiles. It sank on March 2, 2024 following that attack. On January 16, 2024, the Houthi rebels attacked a Malta-registered-Greek-vessel, The-Zografa.
Two months earlier on November 19, 2023, the Houthi rebels hijacked a commercial vessel. The consistency, determination, precision and scale of these attacks have escalated and become more brazen.
U.S. and United Kingdom forces, aided by Australia, Bahrain, Canada and The Netherlands retaliated on January 11, 2024 by striking dozens of Houthi targets in Yemen which, according to American President Joe Biden, were in ‘direct response’ to attacks on Red Sea ships which imperilled global trade and freedom of maritime navigation.
Economics
The strategic significance of the Red Sea cannot be overemphasised. It is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and accounts for approximately 12% of global maritime trade, and 30 per cent of global container trade. Plus, the Red Sea connects Asia and Middle East to Europe via the Suez Canal and the Bab-el-Mandeb, which intersects the Gulf of Aden, and therefore the Indian Ocean.
The Houthi attacks on vessels traversing the Red Sea evidently imperil global trade and economic stability by imposing additional delays, risks and insurance costs on vital supply chains. The critical risks, uncertainties and volatilities implicated by these attacks, practically mean that vessels are travelling further through South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, incurring additional cost burdens, which ultimately, increases the costs of global trade, thus compounding the cost-of-living crisis in import-oriented countries, like Nigeria.
According to JP Morgan Research, the disruptions to global trade risks adding 0.7 per cent to global core goods inflation and 0.3 per cent to overall core inflation in the first half of 2024.
Root Cause
Root cause analysis affords broader and deeper insights in this dangerous conundrum, with far-reaching repercussions on global trade and strategic geopolitics. Proffering solidarity with Palestinians in the ongoing war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, the Houthi rebels, who are also fighting for control of Yemen, claim to be attacking vessels plying the Red Sea en route Israel or, vessels of those nations they claim, to be directly or indirectly pro-Israeli.
That war began on October 7, 2023 following the Palestinian Hamas attack on Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people and resulted in the hostage taking of more than 250 Israeli nationals, of which approximately 112 were released following Qatari mediation efforts.
Exercising its sovereign right to self-defence, Israel responded; albeit with overwhelming force, which has so far killed 30,228 Palestinians, internally displaced 1.7 million people in Gaza (or 75 per cent of the local population), and left 2.2 million people facing food insecurity and devastation of swathes of Gaza, according to the United Nations Office for Co-ordination of humanitarian Affairs. Advancing the case for an immediate ceasefire, on humanitarian grounds, the United Nations Secretary General, Anthonio Guterres, has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and condemned the killing of civilians by both Israelis and Palestinian Hamas fighters.
Geopolitics
The geopolitics are equally complicated because world opinion has tended to shift against Israel, not so much, against its right to self-defence which is inviolable; but, and importantly, against, its seemingly disproportionate use of force against ordinary Palestinians and, collectively punishing ordinary Palestinian civilians for the actions of Palestinian Hamas. These volatile issues were repeatedly considered by the United Nations
Security Council.
Extraordinarily, on December 8, 2023, a UN Security Council resolution vote was invoked by the Secretary-General via Article 99 of its Charter given “existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security”; because “civilians throughout Gaza face grave danger…nowhere is safe in Gaza”; and sought an immediate ceasefire on humanitarian grounds.
Nevertheless, this was vetoed by America, Israel’s most formidable ally, because the political calculus was deemed to be skewed against Israel in that it failed to sufficiently address atrocities committed by Palestinian Hamas fighters on October 7, 2023. 13 of the 15-member UN Security Council voted for the resolution, the UK abstained and the United States entered a veto.
A de facto barometer of the global pulse on America’s deployment of its veto power was further established at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on December 12, 2023. Of its 193 members, 153 voted for a non-binding resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza; 23 countries abstained and 10 nations voted against.
In an emergency session of the UN Security Council on February 20, 2024, the United States, again vetoed a resolution advanced on behalf of Arab States by Algeria calling for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that must be respected by all parties” 13 UN Security Council members voted in favour, the UK abstained and the US, entered a veto.
By virtue of the UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/76/262 of April 26, 2022, whenever a permanent member of the UN Security Council invokes a veto, the President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), shall, within 10 working days thereof convene a formal meeting of the General Assembly. Thus, at UNGA’s 78th Session, per GA/12586 of March 5, 2024, Saudi Arabia, a close US ally, via its representative “stressed that the use of the veto by the United States was an obstacle to ending the bloodshed in Gaza”
Added to this complexity, and the global sense of injustice meted out to innocent and defenceless Palestinians, was South Africa’s application against Israel alleging gross violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”) relative to the Gaza strip, on December 29, 2023. South Africa’s application further requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to establish provisional measures to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention” and “to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide”.
The ICJ decided, inter alia, on January 26, 2024, by a majority of 16 votes to one dissenting opinion that Isarel “shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza strip”
Conclusion and recommendations
A number of key points emerge from the foregoing. First, is a factual point; U.S. foreign policy is anchored on its strategic national interests, not world opinion, no matter how strident. Second, is the humanitarian point; how can the United States justify its claim to be bastion of liberty, freedom, justice and the rule of law, if it either cannot, or is reluctant, to effectively, and enduringly, wield its strategic influential levers for a humanitarian pause of the war in Gaza.
Third, rightly or wrongly, the Houthi rebels now fancy their chances as the only true public defender of the Palestinian people allied to the Iranian axis of resistance. Fourth, the undemocratic nature of the veto power by permanent members of the UN Security Council is brought to sharper focus.
How, analysts have queried, can it be that a single veto by a UN permanent security council member can override the will of majority of the UN? Fifth, by which ever political calculus, the Houthi attacks on the Red Sea have drawn the U.S. and UK deeper into the regional conflict between Israel and Palestinian Hamas.
The material question therefore is whether this will be a protracted conflict between two permanent UN Security council members, U.S. and UK, defending freedom of navigation, and crucially, their Israeli ally on one hand; and Houthi rebels, in Yemen, one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world, defending Palestinians; at the same time as the U.S., UK and NATO forces are defending Ukraine, in its war with Russia.
The optics are pretty dire and the case for more effective and smarter diplomacy vis-à-vis the deployment of hard and soft power, couldn’t be more compelling. It will not be easy because the stakes are pretty high, especially for Democratic President Joe Biden, who faces an uphill battle in U.S. Presidential elections on November 5, 2024 against his old Republican opponent, former President, Donald Trump. Nevertheless, the real political calculus which, although may not provide the mathematical precision for the dispute resolution in the destructive Palestine/Israeli crisis, of which the Red Sea conundrum is a perilous symptom, is for a viable humanitarian pause.
Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a firm of legal practitioners and strategy consultants in Lagos, Nigeria, and the author of The Dynamic Intersections of Economics, Foreign Relations, Jurisprudence and National Development.
