The Empire Strikes Back

Recently, Yahoo Finance had a headline on YouTube: Oil prices tick up over Red Sea attacks, disruptions. In the video, they talk about the effects of the war between Israel and Hamas and how it effects oil prices. In particular, oil prices have been going up recently, given the higher cost of shipping through the Suez Canal.

People might not realize that this shipping conflict has been going on for much longer than just the few months worth of war. The Suez conflict reaches far back before the 1970s. Furthermore, the conflicts over global trade have been going on since the founding of the United States and before.

In this article, I would like to investigate the history behind American and British trade, the Suez Canal, and how it all ties together with geopolitics.

A brief history of the United States.

A long time ago, back in 1776, the Founding Fathers got together to make the Declaration of Independences. They formed a new nation with God-given rights enshrined in the founding documents. Using ideas put forward by many philosophers before them, they created a Republic that was designed to limit the government and take away power from a central ruler.

The British, from whom this new nation was rebelling, were not thrilled with the plan. In fact, their king was downright upset about it. They fought a war with the new nation where the latter came out on top. They were not happy about that either.

The new nation, the United States, set about to make themselves a real country, with a government and a currency and trading partners.

Let me ask you a question: would you trade with the country that you just spent many years, lives, and dollars fighting off? Keep your answer in mind.

Westward Expansion

The United States, then made up of 13 colonies, saw that there was much land to the west. So much, in fact, that they decided to make it part of the new nation.

Now, the liberal college professors would like you to believe that the westward expansion of the United States was a military invasion fueled by the hate of the white man.

But that is not what Manifest Destiny was like.

First of all, no invasion and takeover of another land is successful if you have to have a military presence there all the time. That is just an occupation.

Second of all, the land claimed in the west was not really claimed. There was no concrete nation of Indians. Rather, it was a series of warring nomadic tribes that would be constantly moving and fighting with others. There are always exceptions, but there were no nations like there have been in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for thousands of years.

So, America expanded through largely unclaimed lands throughout the west till they came to the Pacific Ocean.

Now the stage is set to talk about trade.

Trading

When people first began to go from east to west, they took the Oregon Trail and other such routes. These were long, grueling trips that took months at a time and where you had to be careful not to die of dysentery.

A real picture of the trials of the Oregon Trail.

Now, what could be better than a railroad to connect the entire country, from sea to shining sea? That’s exactly what people like Abraham Lincoln thought and did.

But there was another guy who took this idea further. William Gilpin was Lincoln’s bodyguard and later the governor of Colorado. He thought that it would be a great idea to connect the world via railways.

He even made a map of it, confidently called “Gilpin’s Economic, Just and Correct Map of the World”. Talk about go big or go home.

Notice that this map is Pacific-centered, not Atlantic-centered like most maps. It puts emphasis on the connection between Russia and North America over the Bering Straits.

And the British hated it.

Why?

Ever since the Brits cooked the Spanish Armada in the days of Elizabeth I, the Royal Navy was the king of the seas. Up until World War II, the British Navy was the largest in the world (but that is another story).

This large and powerful navy was essential in Britain’s control of the world at the time. If they ruled the seas, then they could control global trade. Unless two geographically large nations that each have vast land masses in their respective continents decided to create a trans-continental railway that connected them over land.

So, it was in the best interests of the Brits to keep the Russians and the Americans from trading together. If the Russians could just import from the Americans and sell to the Chinese, then who needed the British to make sure everyone made the right things?

The British have been largely successful in keeping a hold on trade. They were able to infiltrate US intelligence and influence our economic policy through NGOs (that, also, is another story).

So, with that, we can talk about one of the two most important trade corridors in the world, the other being the Panama Canal.

The Suez Canal

One of the busiest, and probably the most important trade route is through the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, and thereby the Indian Ocean.

The idea of a canal connecting Asia to Europe had been an idea for a long time, dating back even to the ancient Egyptians, who had to take all their goods across the desert.

During the beginning of the 1800s, plans were pitched to the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, who at the time controlled the area. But the Ottomans were not interested in the project till the 1850s, when the French convinced the Ottoman state of Egypt to go forward with it. Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal gradually became an important means of global trade.

At the time, the British controlled the African city of Cape Town on the Cape of Good Hope¹. Before the Suez Canal was created, Cape Town was the main port at which all traders stopped on their route around Africa. With the building of the canal, however, business started to dwindle.

The British, as to be expected, took control over the Suez region in the 1880s, first by buying shares in the Canal Company, and then by basically invading the country and setting up the Suez region as a “neutral zone” under British control.

During the First World War the Ottomans, under the command of the Germans, tried to take control of the region but the British fought them off.

During the Second World War the Germans again tried to take control of the region in their North African Campaign (the one were Rommel was such a great Nazi leader) and the British (with the Allies) again fought them off.

Finally, after all this fighting off of Germans, it was time for the Suez Crisis that you hear about all the time.

The Suez Crisis

This story is one of the more complicated ones in history, since it takes into account post-WWII Britain, Cold War US and USSR, the newly formed country of Israel, and the always-extremely-complex-situation-in-the-Middle-East.

[Deep breath]

Our story opens in 1956, when the British and French controlled the Suez Canal Company, which meant that they owned the Canal. The British had signed the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936 that said they could keep troops there till 1956.

The President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was looking to fund his own projects in Egypt, such as the dam that would create Lake Nasser. At the time, Egypt was getting aid from both the US and the Soviet Union (it seems that Nasser was good at playing leaders off each other).

The US did not like the idea of funding a nation that was being funded by the USSR, so they cut funding to Egypt. Nasser thought control of the Suez Canal was just the thing to provide the missing money. He proceeded to nationalize the Suez Canal Company, making it part of the Egyptian Government.

The British and French were not thrilled by this, and wanted their canal back.

The Israelis, who had declared independence from Britain in 1948 and had fought a war with Egypt and their allies in 1949, had been barred from the Red Sea region as a result, and were looking for some access to the coveted trade routes. The Israelis proceeded to attack the Egyptian peninsula and take control of all the land up to the banks of the Suez.

The idea was that the Israelis would take control of the peninsula, so there would be a standoff with the Egyptians on one side and the Israelis on the other. The French and British thought that would be the perfect time for them to come into the Suez region to “make peace”, meaning they would have control of the canal.

So, let us look at who liked who:

• The US liked the Israelis², but not the Egyptians. They were also mad at the British/French for not telling them they were taking back control of the canal.

• The Egyptians liked… no one but the Soviets.

• The French/British did not like anyone but the Israelis.

• The Israelis liked the US, and the French/British for helping them.

The result of this war/conflict/high-school-quarrel was that the UN created their own police force called the UNEF Peacekeepers. The Egyptians retained control over their canal. The Israelis had to give back the Egyptian peninsula, but still were besties with the US. The British prime minister, Anthony Eden, had to resign and the Brits lost control of the most important canal in the world.

Yep… so that was at least an overview of the Suez Crisis.

The Israel/Hamas/Palestine conflict

So the Israelis have control of Israel. The Israelis that live there now largely came during a period called the Aliyah, and the Palestinians that were in Israel before the Israelis, went elsewhere, to places like the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Fast forward to today. The Palestinian group called Hamas launched attacks on Israeli civilians. The Israelis responded with the like.

I do not want to spend too much time talking about this Israeli-Hamas conflict because the point of my essay is that the conflict is not the most important part of the conflict. It is this way in many wars: what is ostensibly being fought over is not the real news, but rather what is going on at the same time.

What is going on at the same time as the conflict in Israel?

Egypt is going into BRICS.

BRICS

BRICS refers to the Belt Road Initiative, and is basically a plan by China to revive their old Silk Road ideas from way back when they were an empire.

In the very far past, the Chinese discovered silk, a cloth that was made from the weaving of the cocoons on silkworms that feed on mulberries. In those days, only the Chinese were allowed to use silk, it was seen as an exclusive privilege for China.

But then the Chinese figured out that other countries, such as the ones in Europe, would pay a ton for silk, so the Chinese built trade routes through China to trade silk, and they called them the Silk Roads.

Well, wars happened, the Ottoman Empire came along, more wars happened, the Brits came along, drugs came, and more wars happened, and the Silk Road faded into the background behind British “free” maritime trade.

But now the Chinese want those connections back—but this time with the entire world. What they are doing is getting a bunch of countries together to trade. They also have been financing infrastructure in smaller countries to make them better allies.

There are five main countries in the Belt Road Initiative: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. That is what makes up the five letters in BRICS.

But these are not the only countries involved. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, and, most importantly for our discussion, Egypt.

The first question this raises is what letters they are going to add. Is it going to be BRICSSUAEIE? Doesn’t roll off the tongue.

In addition to the mere fact of entering BRICS, China and Russia are encouraging Egypt to default on their IMF debt. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) is a institution created after World War II to help poor countries fund their projects. What happens, though, is that the IMF works like a Mr. Potter from Its A Wonderful Life, using the debt as leverage rather than demanding payment.

If Egypt defaults on their debt (basically just stops paying the IMF any interest or principle on their debt), they will be free from western-economic handcuffs.

But this conflict between sea and rail is more fundamental than just a preference for infrastructure. It has to do with the conflict between sovereign nation and empire; between multi-polar and uni-polar.

Multi-polar vs. Uni-polar

One definition that is pointed out by Matthew Ehret is that we are in a battle between two different ideas of how the world should work. The first is a uni-polar world of imperialistic globalists who want all the nations to come together into a supernation.

The British Empire is an example of this uni-polar idea. The main vehicle Britain had for this was their naval power. That is why control of the Suez was so important to them and why Gilpin’s map was so dangerous to them.

Gilpin’s map is an example of a multi-polar world, where each nation has control over it’s own shipping.

Think about it this way: who controls maritime shipping? Those who control the seas and ports. Who controls land shipping? Those who control the land—the countries themselves.

For a long time now, America has replaced Britain as the top maritime power in the world. Just like the former British Empire, the American Empire relies on the control (albeit sometimes soft control) of the major shipping lanes around the world. This can be seen with the way the US patrols the South China Sea, or how they moved in ships to “support” Israel directly after Hamas attacked.

We have to remember, however, that the American Empire we are talking about is in fact an heir to the former British Empire, and is largely influenced by British intelligence even today in the form of the Counsel on Foreign Relations and the Five Eyes.

So, the Brits are mad at the BRICS for taking away their canal? Yes.

I would theorize, as others have done before me, that the whole point of the war in Israel is not the last stand of the chosen people, or the redeeming of the lost land of the Palestinians, or the Israelis trying to get some attention because of the Ukraine war. People fight about those things, but that is not the signal, it’s the noise.

The real point of this war is to mess up Egypt’s entry into BRICS. Borders change very fast, and a full-scale war in the Middle East could easily create and destroy a few free and fair democracies to give the right people control of the Suez Canal.

In conclusion

This entire article goes to show how important the Suez Canal is to the current economy. Control of it is hyper-important to the globalists, whether they are British or American or WEF/German/Hungarian. This can be observed throughout history, as we have seen with the Suez Conflict in the 50s.

But there is always a fly on every cloud (or is it a silver lining in every ointment?), and that is BRICS. They are encouraging Egypt (who has control of the Suez Canal) to join them and default on the IMF debt so they are not slaves to another globalist charity fund.

There is a purpose for every war, or else it would not be fought. Everything that happens in geopolitics has to be viewed through the lens of history.

Post Scriptum

This has been a jam-packed article, and I have only scratched the surface of what is a very complex and fascinating issue.

I would like to remind people that I am not dooming and glooming about the end of the world. To think that this time is any more bad than any other time is rather arrogant.

In closing, remember that I am no expert in anything that is relevant to this article, so don’t take any of this as financial/medical/legal advice.

I hope I have been accurate with everything I said. If you find something that is wrong with my history or economics or the like let me know and I’ll probably be motivated to write another article.

I found this video very informative. Johnny Harris’s politics, history and philosophy are questionable but his editing skills are awesome.

I must remind you that I am just an 19 year old young man who is trying to figure things out. I am not a doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, or theologian. I read the doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, or theologians and try to understand what they are talking about, and then write about it. Don’t listen to me! Listen to the people I listen to.

1. The Cape was such a dangerous part of the route around to the Indian Ocean that it was called the 'Cape of Storms'. However John II of Portugal seemed to think that was bad publicity, so he renamed it the Cape of Good Hope.

2. In the 1960s, the United States was wondering just how they could profit from European-Asian trade without the Suez Canal. They thought it would be a great plan to make their own canal through Israel using nukes. No, seriously, they were.