Many people did not expect a complete blockade of the Bab al-Mandab Strait by the Houthi militia. For most shipping companies, the actions off the coast of Yemen were not entirely unexpected.
Ship operators and captains have known for years: the route from the Arabian Sea via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean is one of the most dangerous shipping routes in the world. And not just because of piracy off the coast of Yemen, from which many ships have been protecting themselves with private security forces for some time.
“We have been suffering from a tense security situation around the Red Sea for about three years. It may even be a little longer,” says Martin Kröger, managing director of the Association of German Shipowners, to tagesschau.de. At that time, the Houthi militia began shooting at merchant ships in solidarity with the Islamist terrorist militia Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“Back then, this led many shipping companies to avoid going through the passage,” said Kröger. This also includes the Hamburg shipping company Hapag-Lloyd. At the end of 2023, those responsible there decided to reroute the ships due to the increasing number of attacks. The safety of crews and ships is always the top priority, emphasizes a spokeswoman for Hapag-Lloyd in an interview with tagesschau.de.
Instead of going through the Suez Canal, most ships on their way from Asia to Europe now have to take a detour. Since then it has been going past the Cape of Good Hope. Once around the southern tip of the African continent. The problem: This route not only takes longer. The passage is extended by around ten to fourteen days depending on the type of ship. The detour also leads to higher costs. Hapag-Lloyd speaks of around 600 million dollars since the beginning of the conflict in the Middle East.
The vast majority of this is due to higher fuel prices. There would also be additional costs for insurance and new port calls. But because the ships are large, the price increases would hardly be noticeable, according to the shipping company. They would be in the cent range - and would be paid for by the end customer.
Despite these cost increases, the company is resilient, at least the Hapag-Lloyd spokeswoman emphasizes. Alternative routes would be offered to customers. In addition, one is able to maintain the supply chains.
Kröger from the shipping association also agrees with this attitude. "In shipping, we are used to crises and wars. We constantly sail through areas where the situation is tense. We are resilient because we can almost always find a way around the crisis area." Kröger, however, rules out arming the ships.
“The principle applies: merchant ships are civilian ships. That means we are unarmed,” says Kröger. It is difficult for a civilian merchant ship to protect itself against drones, missiles and submarine missiles. “Then you can no longer drive through an affected area.”
However, security experts doubt that the situation on international sea routes will improve in the future. “In my view, the problem is not Bab al-Mandab or the Strait of Hormuz. It is also not about another strait alone,” military economist Wolfgang Müller from the German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies (GIDS) analyzes tagesschau.de.
The problem is that the globalized world economy is based on a few maritime bottlenecks. And these important routes are very vulnerable. "You don't have to completely close the sea routes. It's enough to create a threat there and exploit the resulting economic power position," says expert Müller.
This is still manageable if it only affects one of these geostrategic bottlenecks. However, things become critical when several bottlenecks come under pressure at the same time. “Then an individual risk becomes a systemic risk for the entire global economy,” explains Müller.
In this context, the expert particularly highlights the bottlenecks on the sea routes in Asia, such as the straits of Lombok, Malacca or Taiwan. "If there were tensions or disruptions there, global trade would be massively affected. And the entire Asian region would only be able to participate to a limited extent in maritime goods traffic."
However, conducting less maritime trade is not the solution to the current geopolitical challenges. Instead, one must ensure that a disruption does not lead to complete system failure, but that the industry can continue to produce.
"If you diversify suppliers, you also have to think about diversifying transport routes and also storage capacities." This means that companies will have to factor geopolitical risks even more into their route and investment decisions in the future.
“Because you have to assume that just-in-time no longer works,” says Müller. It must therefore be considered beforehand what will happen if a route fails.
