Seatrade-Maritime: Shipping caught in between geopolitical powerplay

The opening panel of the Capital Link’s conference at Singapore Maritime Week was set against the backdrop of the US firing on and storming an Iranian container ship. 

“We just live in a nightmare of geopolitical crisis. And it’s not one crisis there are so many areas where we have the shipping industry and we see what is going wrong, and it’s going wrong between states and politicians,” Dr. Gaby Bornheim, President of the German Shipowners’ Association (VDR) told the conference.

“It’s about who has the power, and it’s a power play. And we as the shipping industry, we are just in between and see all the geopolitical situations.”

The geopolitical situations include the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the Red Sea and the Black Sea which Bornheim noted was continuing. 

“It is difficult for shipping,” she said, and that the shipping business was becoming more and politicised and it’s something it would have to adapt to.

Thomas A. Kazakos, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), said he hoped everyone agreed that as an industry shipping was ready to adapt to new challenges.

“For us the way going forward is to make sure that we continue our efforts to make sure that we have a stable international regulatory framework, freedom of navigation, especially when see what’s happening to the Persian Gulf and the adjacent region, and, of course, an environment whereby investors achieving will feel secure to continue investing in shipping.”

Sebastian von Hardenberg, President, InterManager, said that unfortunately the industry needs to factor in that world leaders had started to deploy war and conflict as a mechanism for dispute resolution.

“Obviously, for ship management, ship owning this poses terrible, terrible safety risks and stresses on the crew, safety risks on the vessels that are entrusted in our management. But I think we will have to factor in certain probability that this continues in the future.”

As well as the safety risk there was also a risk that world falls in blocs again where no longer can everyone go to the Strait of Hormuz or the Black Sea. “Look at the current drama with Panama and China, can everybody still go to the Panama Canal?” he asked.

“So, I think we’ve got so used to the freedom of navigation, shipping, that we now have to keep a keen eye on these realities and have the experts inhouse are available to us to help us guide our shipowners.”