When failure advances against success and wins, prospects for world trade are bleak
 An ancient truism holds that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But the saying comes with the corollary that after a while, you must start counting the flies. This contrasts predictions against results.
World shipping - from the shippers' point of view - has applied the honeyed approach with little positive result over the last 50 years. It has led to increasing consolidation with the emergence of fewer and bigger carriers increasingly attached to subsidiary terminal operators. All of which has limited the choice for shippers the world over.
In today's oppressive regulatory framework, one no longer can opt for the cheapest fuel available to gain a competitive advantage without fines being imposed of such severity that small fry are put out of business. Even failing to report one's emissions potential, incurs financial penalties.
One would have thought that major ocean carriers would be against the insatiable appetite of regulatory regimes. But major players can get the financing to cover any extra costs incurred by the rising tide of regulation. But no. The Maersks, MSCs and Hapag-Lloyds of this world are the first to demand rigorous enforcement.
This drives out the small fry and increases market share for the majors. Perhaps a lesser player performing a useful small service is put out of business, but the boutique service he provided is too small for a big CMA CGM company to bother with. So something's lost and nothing's gained.
While China and Russia are serious geopolitical concerns one senses that MAD (mutually assured destruction) Cold War thinking in the West and the Communist world rendered each side sensible to the threat of annihilation posed by the other. Thus, doomsday scenarios were avoided and commonsense prevailed in crisis.
But this is not the case with Muslim jihadists and the rogue states they run. In the words of Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US: "To them mutually assured destruction is an incentive." That is to say, the jihadists want to kill or convert non-Muslims worldwide or embrace martyrdom if they tried and failed.
For Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Job One is to rid the world of Jews and Israel with an immediate follow-up plan is to destroy that Great Satan, the United States.
From a shipping point of view, the fate of Israel is not that important, but it is safe to say that the US would defend it almost as surely as it would defend Canada and the UK, and maybe France too. But Iran, by financing and supplying Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen with rocket attacks have blocked the Suez Canal and much of the Mediterranean, making the Asia-Europe go around South Africa.
And if the Houthi and now the Iranian rocket attacks don't scare the liners, then the insurance war risk rates certainly do.
But this is not the first time the West has dealt with a powerful implacable Muslim foe in the region. The West encountered this problem before in the long running 1881-99 Mahdist War, led by an Ayatollah-like figure called Muhammad Ahmad, in the Sudan, who declared himself the Mahdi - the "Guided One".
In 1885, his Fuzzy-Wuzzy troops took Khartoum from General Charles (Chinese) Gordon, slaughtering him and all they could find in true Hamas style. But the cult leader died shortly after this victory, and the movement faltered without his leadership.
Then In 1898, British General Herbert Kitchener in the decisive Battle of Omdurman saw the Mahdist army crushed - over 11,000 Mahdist fighters were killed, compared to fewer than 50 British casualties.
One might add that Kitchener's imaginative strategy and it's brutal application brought about a quick surrender in the 1899-1902 Boer War in South Africa.
History shows that empathy in international relations is overrated, and that lasting peace is best brought about by decisive victory, which, while brutal, makes wars shorter and less frequent.
The 1918 Armistice ended World War I, but restarted after 20 years as World War II in 1939 is a good example. World War II ended not in an armistice but in an unconditional surrender.
That was also a war that was brought to an end in 1945 by inflicting massive civilian casualties, with area fire bombing of Germany and atomic bombing of Japan. There is little doubt that without deliberately inflicting casualties the war would have continued into 1946 and beyond.
What World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan had in common is that the West's war aim was to frustrate the enemy's plan to impose a form of government over which we disapproved. And in the course of these wars co-belligerents were expected to make a deal that would bring an end to these conflicts.
One of the early such deals were made after Napoleonic Battle of Leipzig in 1813. It was the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I with Napoleon losing 70,000 men, after which he abdicated and was sent to Elba. But the deal fell through, and while he re-united France, Napoleon lost the decisive Battle of Waterloo, a defeat that gave Europe peace for 50 years, interrupted by the brief 10-month Franco-Prussian War in 1870.
In Napoleonic times, wars were fought between armies and navies at the behest of kings who provided war chests to buy what armies needed from civilians. But as war became more of a national enterprise, requiring popular support, farms became supply depots and sources of remounts.
And, of course, the 20th century unfolded civilian populations became even more central to the war effort and thereby becoming military assets worth killing just as uniformed cooks and driver are.
One can hardly fault Israel for calling Iran the head of the snake, as it calls for the destruction of Israel and death to the United States on a daily basis. It is also the supplier of funds, arms and materiel to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
So when Hamas terrorist teams return from their killing sprees to civilian expressions of delight at the killers' handiwork, one ceases to care about civilian casualties.
Ditto for the Houthis whose rockets target ships to-ing and fro-ing through the Red Sea. If such civilians vote for the jihadist war parties, it is only fair we give the voters what they want. Perhaps it is time to give war a chance. It seems the best way to bring about lasting peace - if it provides decisive victory. |
