African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1303: Chapter 312: Strategic Stronghold

Ambassador Thomson said: ”Your country’s significance to regional stability is crucial, and we in France are willing to support East Africa in playing a greater role within the Indian Ocean. However, I’m curious about your country’s development strategy in the Indian Ocean.”

Diplomacy is a process of probing step by step, so even though Thomson made the decision to befriend East Africa, he wouldn’t easily make commitments to East Africa.

He used East Africa’s Indian Ocean strategy as a wedge to open the next topic, thereby facilitating the agreement with East Africa.

Facing Ambassador Thomson’s inquiry, Frier understood and pretended to be helpless, saying: ”Although East Africa is based in the Indian Ocean and is a regional great power, we have always lacked strategic locations in the Indian Ocean, which makes us very passive there.”

”For instance, the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, is controlled by the British, and the Mand Strait, second only to the Suez Canal, is also heavily influenced by the British.”

”Moreover, our East African east coast is similarly threatened to some extent, such as the Socotra Islands, Seychelles Islands, Maldives Islands, Chagos Islands, etc., which puts us in a very passive situation.”

The Socotra Islands are located in the Aden Bay; in previous eras, they belonged to Yemen and are perfectly positioned at the junction of the Aden Bay and the Arabian Sea, making it a strategic outpost for controlling the Red Sea route.

Of course, its importance is evidently less than that of the Suez Canal and the Mand Strait; controlling these would effectively cut off the lifeline of the Red Sea route.

Controlling the Socotra Islands certainly doesn’t achieve this effect; after all, passing ships can still choose to go along the Arabian Peninsula’s coast. The sea between the Socotra Islands and the Arabian Peninsula is hundreds of kilometers wide, making it difficult to blockade the Aden Bay from this point, requiring more resources.

Nonetheless, even if the islands can’t completely control the Red Sea route, they still pose a significant threat to passing ships, especially those from hostile nations.

In the 1980s, during the earlier era, the Soviet Navy, in order to counter the United States Navy and realize the Russians’ long-dreamed warm water ocean strategy, entered the Indian Ocean and became the backing for South Yemen.

The Soviets stationed a fleet on Socotra Island, using it as the Middle East naval base until the Soviet Union collapsed and withdrew from there.

Moreover, the once famous Somali pirates also used Socotra Island as a supply point and hideout, intercepting merchant ships in the Aden Bay, thus obtaining a large amount of illicit wealth.

Before the rise of East Africa, Socotra Island was successively controlled by Arabs and Portuguese, and now it’s in British hands.

It’s not that East Africa doesn’t want to control Socotra Island, but East Africa’s history is too short. By the time East Africa had the strength to intervene in Indian Ocean affairs, it had fallen into British hands.

In fact, Socotra Island’s value to the British is rather negligible, given that both the Suez Canal and Mand Strait are under British control, and Socotra Island is extremely arid, lacking rivers and lakes, and even basic natural water sources like rainfall.

Yet East Africa still values the Socotra Islands because, apart from its position at the gateway of Aden Bay, the Socotra Islands can be considered the gateway to East Africa’s maritime domain.

Beyond the Socotra Islands lies the East African east coast, somewhat akin to the southern sea reefs of the Far East Empire in terms of maritime strategic value.

If East Africa could control the Socotra Islands, a maritime defense line could be built to provide warning and interception against enemies coming from the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, or the Aden Bay.

As for the Seychelles Islands, there’s even less need to elaborate; since the formation of the East African Navy, it has coveted this vital Indian Ocean archipelago.

The Seychelles Islands consist of ninety-two islands located in the southwest Indian Ocean. Although their area isn’t large, their strategic value, especially to East Africa, is extraordinarily prominent.

The Seychelles Islands are over sixteen hundred kilometers from the East African East Coast and face East Africa’s eastern continent, while they are only nine hundred kilometers from Madagascar to the southwest—it’s a shortcut for East African ships heading to India and the Nanyang.

In the previous century, France and the United Kingdom clashed over the Seychelles, and at that time France and the United Kingdom were the world’s only two superpowers. Their emphasis on the Seychelles underscores its vast strategic value.

The East African Navy has always hoped to seize the Seychelles Islands; doing so would enable East Africa’s maritime defense line to extend east into the Indian Ocean by approximately sixteen hundred kilometers, significantly enhancing East Africa’s territorial sea security.

Between the Seychelles Islands and East Africa, there are almost no usable islands, although near the East African coast are islands like Zanzibar and Bemba Island; these are too close to the mainland and can’t effectively serve as early warnings or buffers.

If an enemy launched a surprise attack on East Africa from the Indian Ocean direction, cities and ports along the East African east coast would be particularly vulnerable.

After all, beyond the Seychelles Islands, the sea leading to East Africa is vast, and East Africa simply couldn’t predict which route an enemy might choose to attack East African cities or ports.

This is why East Africa has historically prioritized deploying extensive coastal defense projects along its shores.

One can draw parallels with the previous Far East Empire, where losing the Ryukyu Islands—a strategic point—gave potential threats from the Pacific, like the United States and Japan, strategic initiative, making the Far East Empire’s East Sea and Yellow Sea strategy highly passive.

However, there’s some good news: the Seychelles are much smaller in scale compared to the Ryukyu Islands, with limited resources, meaning that any deployed military forces would be small, making it easier for East Africa to launch a counterattack.

Should there be a war between the United Kingdom and East Africa, the East African Navy might attack this strategic point from all sides and prioritize it as a target.

The Seychelles’ isolation means it’s difficult for the United Kingdom to dispatch naval support from other regions to it.

The nearest potential support for the Seychelles Islands would come from the Maldives Islands and the Chagos Islands, both of which have British military bases.

If the Socotra Islands and Seychelles Islands form the first island chain restricting the East African Navy, the Maldives and Chagos Islands constitute the second island chain.

The term restriction is used mainly because of the geographical distance between these strategic points, making coordinated deployment difficult and maintaining large garrison scales untenable for extended periods.

The island chain blockade East Africa faces is far less usable than the two chains employed by the previous United States against the Far East Empire.

For instance, the straight-line distance between the Socotra Islands and Seychelles Islands exceeds one thousand five hundred kilometers, and the open sea between them makes it impossible to rely on these two islands for completely blockading the East African east coast.

Even if the United Kingdom were to concentrate its entire naval strength into the Indian Ocean, it couldn’t achieve a complete blockade of the East African east coast via the first island chain.

Obviously, the British weren’t banking on just two island chains turning the East African Navy into a green-water navy, or navy confined to coastal defense.

As seen with the navies of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, these were restricted by geography to dominate the Baltic and Adriatic Seas without breaking out.

Aside from that, even if the British had the capacity to blockade East Africa’s east coast, the fact is East Africa’s a three-ocean nation, with not only the east coast but also the west facing the Atlantic, and significant naval power in the Pacific.

Therefore, since the East African Navy was equipped with large vessels capable of long-range operations, it’s inherently an ocean-going navy.

The maritime landscape of East Africa is inherently suited to developing naval strength, evident from the Navy being on par with the army as a military branch from its inception.

The mention arises because some countries’ navies were not initially positioned like this, Germany being a prime example. Its navy’s original and even current primary strategic aim is to support the German army’s bid for dominance in Europe, with the Prussian Navy initially formed by many army soldiers.