Text/Joel Beinin Translation/Zhang Jiale
On March 29, 2021, Egypt's Suez, trapped in the Suez Canal, the Evergreen Shipping Group "Changzhi" freighter finally got out of trouble, and the Egyptian president praised the rescue operation as "successful". At this point, the congestion of the canal finally began to ease.
Recently, the giant container ship Ever Given wedged into the entire trough of the canal, paralyzing maritime traffic through the Suez Canal. The accident highlighted both the fragility of global capitalist trade and the suez canal as a major link in international maritime trade and its important role as a strategic competitive target that was once coveted by the European imperialist powers and now coveted by Israel.
On average, 50 boats cross the 193-kilometer canal every day. The 50 vessels account for about 30% of container ship shipments, 12% of the world's total maritime trade, 10% of all crude oil and refined products, and a third of the UK's imports of liquefied natural gas from Qatar.
With two-way traffic blocked, more than 300 boats lined up to cross the canal. According to the Lloyd's List, hourly delays are estimated to cost $400 million in insurance premiums and delay penalties. Unable to determine how long it will take for the canal to open again, some ships have chosen to bypass the Cape of Good Hope, extending the voyage by two weeks and adding $26,000 a day to fuel costs. The Ever Given accident is estimated to have cost the Egyptian government $95 million in revenue losses.
Ever Given is owned by a subsidiary of a major Japanese shipbuilding company and is leased and operated by a taiwan-based container shipping company. The vessel is registered in Panama and is technically managed by a German company.
Like other countries, Panama implements an "open registry," which allows ships to fly the country's flag, even if the vessel owner and operator have no ties to the country. The practice, which was introduced during the Prohibition era in the United States to circumvent the law, allowed U.S. ships to register in Panama and serve alcohol to passengers.
Today, Panama allows ship owners to register online, does not require them to pay income tax, and has more relaxed labor and safety standards than traditional North Atlantic coastal countries. The mess of Registration, Ownership and Operational Responsibilities of Ever Green, coupled with the requirement that all vessels transiting the canal have two Egyptian crew members, make it extremely difficult to assess liability for accidents.
Partly because very large and very large tankers (VLCCs and ULCCs), which carry 2 million barrels or more of oil, cannot pass through the Suez Canal at full capacity, and because of this, the importance of the Suez Canal as a global shipping artery has been weakened. However, its material and symbolic significance to Egypt is still enormous.
History of empires
The excavation of the Suez Canal was the result of imperialist rivalry between Britain and France throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. The British, who had already begun construction of a concessional rail network in Egypt, wanted a land route between Egypt and India through the Sinai Peninsula.
To circumvent the British, french entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps received a concession from the Egyptian government in 1854 to build the Suez Canal. In 1858, de Reseb registered the Universal Company of the Maritime Canal of Suez in Paris, in exchange for the concession, and 44 percent of its shares were distributed to the Egyptian government.
Reiseb persuaded the Egyptian rulers to force Egyptian farmers to do the actual digging of canals for the lowest remuneration. By 1862, more than 55,000 men and boys were living in overcrowded work camps with no obstacles. It is estimated that from 1859 to 1869, 100,000 Egyptians died during the construction of the canal.
During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the North blockaded the ports of the South, leading to a world cotton shortage that brought the price of Egyptian cotton to an all-time high, and European banks eagerly lent huge sums of money with extremely high interest to Viceroy Ismail, the ruler of Egypt, to advance ambitious infrastructure projects and cultural projects.
When the Civil War ended and Southern cotton returned to global markets, cotton prices fell and Egypt was unable to repay its debts. In 1875, Governor Ismail sold Egypt's stake in the Suez Canal Company to the British government at a very low price. In 1882, Britain gained full control of the canal by invading and occupying Egypt.
On November 17, 1869, the fleet participated in the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal.
The crisis of the 1950s
In 1952, the Free Officers movement, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew the Egyptian monarchy and established the praetorian republic, which had the potential to dominate the political structure and the army as the political core group and ruling class. Nasser and his junta sought to expel the British occupiers, ensure Egypt's complete independence, and Egyptianise, an economic commanding height dominated by European companies and the local non-Muslim minority.
In June 1956, the last British soldiers left Egypt. By then, Nasser had become the global leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought to create an alternative to the international system governed by the Cold War.
Despite Nasser's anti-communism, the United States refused to sell weapons to Egypt. Nasser turned to the Soviet bloc, and on September 27, 1955, Egypt announced an arms deal with Czechoslovakia.
The United States and Britain wanted to attract Egypt back into the Western bloc, so they agreed to fund Nasser's primary development project, the Aswan High Dam. But Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' Manichaean worldview cannot tolerate Nasser's continued advocacy and practice of the Non-Aligned Movement. On July 18, 1956, Dulles, in a deliberately insulting tone, withdrew his financing offer from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom.
Nasser's counterattack was bolder than anyone expected, choosing to nationalize the Suez Canal. In response, in October 1956, France, Britain, and Israel invaded Egypt, and Israeli forces easily defeated Egypt, occupying the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. While both the United States and the Soviet Union insisted that Israel withdraw its troops, Egypt had sunk 40 ships in the canals before the end of the war, only to be cleared after eight months of blocking shipping traffic.
After Israel attacked Egypt again in the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967, Egypt blocked two entrances, sank ships and planted mines in the canal, resulting in another eight years of blockade of the canal – after the Arab-Israeli war in 1973 allowed Egypt to regain full control of the canal in June 1975, the Egyptian-Israeli peace process was launched and the canal was reopened.
status quo
The suspension of the Suez Canal during the 1956-1967 wars stimulated the development of container ships and created the conditions for the Ever Given accident.
Container shipping allows standard-size metal boxes containing any commodity to be loaded directly onto ships, trucks or trains. This innovation drastically reduced the number of dock workers needed for ports – both the wages of shipping companies and the size of port workers, who have historically been a very radical part of the working class.
The long closure of the Suez Canal has necessitated sea traffic to take a longer route around the Cape of Good Hope. This has prompted maritime operators to add more and more container ships in order to borrow economies of scale to obtain higher profit margins. The 400-meter-long Ever Given is one of the largest container ships in the world, and a huge vessel with a deck full of containers like this is vulnerable to high winds, which is also a factor in the Ever Given accident.
Between 2014 and 2015, Egypt launched the massive Suez Canal Corridor Area Project, which includes both a number of regional development projects and the construction of a new 35-kilometer-long waterway parallel to the former Suez Canal at a cost of $8.2 billion. The new canal allows ships to sail in both directions over much of the canal at the same time, but the section of the canal where the Ever Given accident occurred is still a one-way sailing place.
The Egyptian government claims that by doubling the canal's capacity (97 boats per day, 35,400 ships per year), the new channel will increase the annual revenue of the Suez Canal to $13.5 billion by 2023. But in 2020, only 18,840 ships passed through the Suez Canal, with tolls of $5.61 billion, suggesting that the growth in international trade is not enough for Egypt to recoup its investment, and not likely for the foreseeable future.
Just as imperialist intervention in the nineteenth century deprived Egypt of most of the benefits it derived from the Suez Canal, Egypt's subordinate position in the global capitalist market is likely to prevent Egypt from achieving its canal-related development goals in this century— even if Ever Given is no longer blocking its shipping lanes.
Original link: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/03/the-long-struggle-over-the-suez?fbclid=IwAR0O4J8kzfpGchkdt7piyVS7ieQRwIYEoxsRWXyTGJ83jatnrG5mZfQf2mw
Editor-in-Charge: Wu Qin