Chapter 1290 Strategic Location

Ambassador Thomson said: "Your country is of great significance to regional stability, and we in France are also willing to support East Africa in playing a greater role in the Indian Ocean. However, we do not know what arrangements your country has for its development strategy in the Indian Ocean."

Diplomacy is a step-by-step test, so even if Thomson makes the decision to make good friends with East Africa, he will not easily give East Africa a commitment.

He used East Africa's Indian Ocean strategy as a wedge to open up the next topic, thereby making it easier to reach an agreement with East Africa.

Facing Ambassador Thomson's inquiry, Freer understood it well. He pretended to be helpless and said: "Although East Africa is based on the Indian Ocean and is a regional power, we have always lacked strategic locations in the Indian Ocean, which makes us very passive in the Indian Ocean. "

“For example, the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, is controlled by the British, and the British on both sides of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, second only to the Suez Canal, also have profound influence.”

"And our east coast of East Africa is also threatened to a certain extent, such as the Socotra Islands, Seychelles Islands, Maldives Islands, Chagos Islands, etc., making our situation very passive."

The Socotra Islands are islands in the Gulf of Aden. They belonged to Yemen in their previous life. They are located at the intersection of the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. They are also the bridgehead controlling the Red Sea routes and have a very prominent strategic position.

Of course, its importance is obviously not as important as the Suez Canal and the Bab el Mandeb Strait. If we control the Suez Canal and the Bab el Mandeb Strait, it will be equivalent to cutting off the lifeblood of the Red Sea route.

Controlling the Socotra Islands obviously cannot achieve this effect. After all, passing ships can still choose to pass along the coast of the Arabian Peninsula. The sea area between the Socotra Islands and the Arabian Peninsula is hundreds of kilometers wide. If you want to use this as a Blocking the Gulf of Aden from a base point is difficult and consumes more resources.

Of course, although it will not completely control the Red Sea route through the archipelago, it can also pose a huge threat to ships along the route, especially hostile countries.

In the previous life of the 1980s, in order to compete with the US Navy and to realize part of the warm-water maritime strategy that the Russians had always dreamed of, the Soviet Union entered the Indian Ocean and became the backer behind South Yemen.

The Soviet Union stationed a fleet on Socotra Island and used it as the Soviet naval base in the Middle East. It was not withdrawn from here until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There are also well-known Somali pirates in their previous lives who also used Socotra Island as a supply point and hiding place, intercepting merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden and obtaining a large amount of ill-gotten wealth.

Before the rise of East Africa, Socotra was controlled by Arabs and Portuguese, and is now in the hands of the British.

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

In fact, the value of Socotra to the UK is relatively trivial. After all, the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb Strait are in the hands of the British, and Socotra is extremely arid. The island lacks rivers, lakes, and even basic water sources such as natural rain. .

And the reason for this is that East Africa also attaches great importance to the Socotra Islands. In addition to its location as the gateway to the Gulf of Aden, the Socotra Islands can be said to be the gateway to the East African ocean for East Africa.

After passing the Socotra Islands, heading south is the east coast of East Africa, which is somewhat similar to the value of the Far Eastern Empire's South China Sea islands and reefs to its maritime strategy.

If East Africa controls the Socotra Islands, it can use this to build a maritime defense line to provide early warning and interception of enemies coming from the Mediterranean or Red Sea, as well as the Gulf of Aden.

Not to mention the Seychelles Islands, it can be said that since the establishment of the East African Navy, it has been coveting the Seychelles, an important Indian Ocean island group.

The Seychelles Islands are located in the southwest Indian Ocean and consist of ninety-two islands. Although the Seychelles Islands are small in area, their strategic value, especially to East Africa, is extremely prominent.

The Seychelles Islands are more than 1,600 kilometers away from the east coast of Africa. They are far away from the eastern continent of East Africa. They are only 900 kilometers away from Madagascar to the southwest. They are a shortcut for East African ships to India and the Southern Ocean.

In the last century, France and the United Kingdom had conflicts over the Seychelles. At that time, France and the United Kingdom were the only superpowers in the world. The fact that they were valued by both countries also shows the strong strategic value of the Seychelles.

The East African navy has always hoped to seize the Seychelles Islands, so that East Africa's maritime defense line can directly expand about 1,600 kilometers eastward to the Indian Ocean, greatly improving East Africa's maritime security.

Because there are almost no usable islands between the Seychelles Islands and East Africa. Although there are Zanzibar, Pemba and other islands offshore East Africa, they are too close to the East African mainland and it is difficult to serve as early warning and isolation.

If an enemy sneaks into East Africa from the Indian Ocean, the cities and ports on the east coast of East Africa will be very vulnerable.

After all, after leaving the Seychelles Islands, the sea area between East Africa and East Africa is vast. East Africa has no way of predicting which route the enemy will choose and which city or port in East Africa will be attacked.

This is also the main reason why East Africa once prioritized the deployment of a large number of offshore defense projects along the coast.

This point can be referred to the Far Eastern Empire in the previous life. After losing strategic locations such as the Ryukyu Islands, potential threats from the Pacific such as the United States and Japan took the strategic initiative, making the Far Eastern Empire's strategies in the East China Sea and Yellow Sea extremely important. passive.

However, there is also good news. The size of Seychelles is much smaller than that of Ryukyu Islands, and the resources are relatively scarce, which means that the enemy can deploy a small military force here, which is easy to be counterattacked by East Africa.

Assuming that there is a war between Britain and East Africa, the East African Navy may forcefully capture this strategic location from all directions, and it is bound to become the priority target of the East African Navy.

Moreover, the location of Seychelles is relatively isolated, and it is difficult for Britain to mobilize naval forces from other regions to support here.

The first place that can support Seychelles is the Maldives and Chagos Islands mentioned by Freer. The British have military bases in both places.

If Socotra Islands and Seychelles Islands are the first island chain for Britain to contain the East African Navy, then Maldives and Chagos Islands are the second island chain.

The reason why it is called containment is mainly because the distance between these strategic locations is too far, making it difficult to coordinate and dispatch, and it is difficult to maintain a long-term and large scale of garrisons.

The availability of the blockade island chains faced by East Africa is far lower than the two island chains that the United States used against the Far East Empire in the past.

Take the Socotra Islands and the Seychelles Islands as an example. The straight-line distance between them is more than 1,500 kilometers, and the sea in between is very empty. It is impossible to rely on these two islands to blockade the east coast of East Africa.

Even if the United Kingdom transfers all its naval forces to the Indian Ocean, it is impossible to achieve a complete blockade of the east coast of East Africa by relying on the first island chain.

Of course, the British certainly did not expect that the two island chains would turn the East African Navy into a green-water navy, that is, a naval force for offshore defense.

The navies of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are of this type. Trapped by geographical restrictions, they can only dominate the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic Sea and find it difficult to break out of the cage.

Apart from anything else, even if Britain really has the energy to blockade the east coast of East Africa, the problem is that East Africa is a three-ocean country. East Africa itself has not only an east coastline, but also a west coastline facing the Atlantic Ocean. In the Pacific direction, the naval power of East Africa cannot be ignored.

Therefore, the East African Navy is a natural ocean-going navy after being equipped with large ships with ocean-going capabilities.

The maritime situation in East Africa is naturally suitable for the development of naval power, which can be seen from the fact that the East African Navy has become a military branch at the same level as the army since its birth.

The reason why this is mentioned here is naturally because the navies of some countries were not positioned in this way at the beginning. The typical example is Germany. The original purpose of the German Navy and its current main strategic goal are to assist the German Army in achieving its hegemony in Europe. Even the Prussian Navy was composed of many army soldiers at the beginning.