Reading Laleh Khalili’s Sinews of War and Trade in Critical Ethnic Studies, Filipinx Studies, Philippine Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies

It is mid-July 2022 when I write this essay for the Critical Ethnic Studies forum on Laleh Khalili’s Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. Even if you are not a global shipping/maritime/naval studies scholar, the “perfect storm” of recent events, such as the global Covid-19 pandemic and resulting supply-chain disruptions; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on February of 2022, and the subsequent sanctions placed on Russia by the Biden administration, the European Union, and other U.S. allies; the grounding of the Ever Given (a twenty-thousand TEU container ship), which blocked the Suez Canal for six days in March of 2022; as well as the broader aftermath of worldwide inflation for many commodities and goods around the world, especially oil—has likely made it clear(er) to folks that nations and regions are deeply interconnected, especially economically and politically. More specifically, and to Khalili’s main point, war and trade are intimately entangled; shipping and maritime infrastructures critically matter, and these infrastructures are often affected and shaped by the needs of imperial and petroleum states and capital. Khalili’s focus is largely on the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. Moreover, Khalili reminds us that machines (e.g., industrial container ships and port container cranes) do not run on their own. Indeed, although shipping and the transportation industries are industrialized and mechanized industries, people/laborers work in these maritime and naval spaces, and the global shipping industry is not (yet) fully automated. As such, there is a human toll in these local, regional, and global infrastructures, systems, and processes and trade, shipping, and naval routes.

Khalili does an outstanding job of critically discussing war and maritime trade in and around the Arabian Peninsula, the broader Middle East, Indian Ocean world, and East and Southeast Asia and many of the connected ports and port cities in these regions. Khalili is particularly strong when discussing the development and impacts of the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869. Khalili describes the impacts and consequences of the Suez Canal in this way: “The opening of the canal encouraged the expansion of Aden and Jeddah; helped Britain consolidate its imperial power, facilitated the transformation of the petroleum industry, and accelerated the expansion of extractive industries in Asia and Africa.”1 In short, the opening of the Suez Canal intensified historical connections, resource extraction, and trade among, between, and in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

For those in critical ethnic studies who focus on transpacific trade and connections, Khalili essentially gives us a postgalleon and post–Suez Canal history of global shipping. Galleon here, of course, refers to the 1565–1815 Manila–Acapulco galleon trade, a key maritime trade route and important historical era in Philippine studies, Filipinx/Filipinx American studies, Latinx studies, and Caribbean studies. The galleon trade extended beyond Manila and Acapulco and connected ports and port cities in the Spanish empire in the Americas and Caribbean (e.g., Veracruz, Mexico, and Havana, Cuba). The galleons also sailed to and from these Western Hemisphere ports to the metropole (e.g., Seville, Spain). Sinews of War and Trade brings Spanish colonial and Indigenous galleon/maritime histories to what might be seen as the more contemporary age of global shipping and warfare—that is, into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In doing so, I see Khalili as an important interlocutor for the aforementioned fields in the context of critical ethnic studies and as these fields intersect. I use the word Indigenous in relation to galleon/maritime histories here because Indios (“Indians” in English) in and from the Philippines and Mexico played an important role in developing the transpacific and global trade and in establishing the routes that can be considered earlier sinews of colonial war and trade that linked Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Indio men built the galleons in shipyards in the Philippines. They were the laborers who cut the trees for timber to make the galleon ships, the sailors who sailed the galleons around the world, and the pilots who navigated archipelagos and waterways.2 Without Indio knowledge and labor and without the strong timber from the Philippines, the Spanish global galleon trade would have neither existed for as long as it did nor been as economically viable for the Spanish monarchy and its empire.

Khalili’s book also helps us to understand an important moment in more contemporary Philippine migration history, specifically related to overseas Filipino/a/x workers (OFWs) who migrated to Saudi Arabia, beginning in 1973, to work as engineers. OFWs also migrated to Saudi Arabia to work in the medical, automotive, construction, desalination, and petroleum industries. As Saudi Arabia and its citizens became wealthier (through oil extraction and the selling of oil), OFWs migrated to Saudi Arabia to do the service work that local Saudis no longer wanted to do (e.g., domestic/household labor and other service jobs). While the Filipinx diaspora in the United States, Canada, and occupied Hawaiʻi receives significant attention from critical ethnic studies scholars, especially by scholars situated in Filipinx, Filipinx American, and Asian American studies, Khalili directs us to think about Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East and central Asia as other important sites in Filipinx diaspora studies. In 2022, Filipinx outside of the Philippines remitted a record $31.4 billion. While Filipinx in the United States contribute the most remittances to the Philippines (40.5 percent of the $31.4 billion), Saudi Arabia comes in third (after Singapore), and currently, almost one million Filipinx live and work in the kingdom.

As OFW migration expanded into Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, Filipino seamen working in the global shipping industry also established themselves during a turbulent period in the Arabian Gulf. During what is known as the Tanker War (1984–1988), many seamen did not want to work on ships that traveled through the Arab/Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. This was during the Iraq–Iran War when both nations participated in naval skirmishes and also attacked merchant vessels. Many Filipino seamen were willing to take the risk, though, and agreed to work in these dangerous waters. This was a critical period when Filipino maritime labor in the global shipping industry further established itself as available and willing to work in dangerous and extreme conditions. In 2019, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration reported that there were 469,996 Filipino seafarers deployed overseas. By 2020, that number had dropped to 217,223. This decrease was due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the international border closures and lockdowns that ensued, as well as the crewing challenges that emerged as a result of physical mobility decreasing and contracting regionally in Asia and around the world. That is, lockdowns and changes in who could enter a particular country decreased the overall flow of global migrants around the world. This included Filipino/a/x seafarers. I use the term Filipino/a/x seafarers because I am also talking about OFWs who work in the cruise industry. Filipina women, nonbinary people, transpinays and transpinoys, and other gender and sexual minorities work in the cruise industry onboard ships. They work as cabin cleaners, entertainers, chefs, etc. They also operate the ship and work as captains and officers.3

The 1980s was also the time of the U.S.-backed Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. It was the dictator-president Ferdinand Marcos who began the state policy of sending as many Filipino/a/x as possible overseas as a way of addressing massive unemployment and underemployment in the Philippines. This is not to say that Filipino/a/x were not migrating before the 1980s. Filipino/a/xs have been significantly migrating overseas since the U.S. occupation of the Philippines in 1898 when Filipino/a/xs traveled to the United States and Hawaiʻi as (colonial) “nationals.” During the 1980s, the United States operated Subic Bay Naval Base in Olongapo and Clark Air Base in Angeles (both in the Philippines). At the time, Subic Bay Naval Base was the largest U.S. military base in the world, and both U.S. military installations (i.e., Subic Bay and Clark) were important support and infrastructural sites during the U.S.–Vietnam War (1954–1975).

It was interesting to read in Sinews of War and Trade that the base in Saudi Arabia played a similar role in the Middle East. Khalili’s book and framework open up avenues for future comparative or relational decolonial studies of both bases, especially given that Khalili stresses the importance of paying close attention to infrastructures and routes of war and trade, which she suggests are sinews of the world, precisely manifested and enforced through shipping, naval routes, war, and the ports and bases, which are the connective tissues of imperial/colonial systems.

While Khalili’s book stimulated my thinking around histories of maritime and naval infrastructures—as well as shipping and trade routes, equally important—it also stimulated my thinking around specific contemporary archipelagic and island nodes or sites and connected shipping lanes that are critical to regional inter-Asias capitalist trade, as well as broader global capitalism, and that are currently also militarized spaces/places due to their strategic importance to two imperial powers: the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States. Specifically, we can engage Khalili’s framework when considering Taiwan (Republic of China or ROC) and its many islands and waterways, including the Taiwan Strait (a 110-mile-wide strait that separates the island of Taiwan and continental Asia, specifically, territory that is a part of the PRC). It is also productive to think about Khalili’s book in relation to the Spratly Islands (its English name), a group of islets, atolls, cays, reefs, and shoals spread out over 158,000 square miles of ocean and seas. Parts of the Spratly Islands lie about 200 miles northwest of Palawan island in the West Philippine Sea, while other parts are situated off the coast of Vietnam and Malaysia. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei, and the PRC all have claims to various parts of the Spratlys. While space limitations prevent me from fully addressing the details of the controversies and contestations regarding the Taiwan Strait and Spratly Islands and why the islands are a part of international disputes, I want to address the island of Taiwan’s strategic location in the Asia-Pacific region and the importance of the Taiwan Strait to regional Asian and global trade. I also want to address why the Spratly Islands and their waters are an important oceanic/archipelagic/regional shared space.

As I finish this essay (early August 2022), tensions between the PRC and Taiwan have increased. Under the pretext of being angry with and provoked by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s quick, but nevertheless official, visit to Taipei, the PRC held military drills in August 2022 and the PRC military fired five missiles (which landed in Japan’s nearby waters, which are a part of its exclusive economic zone). The missile message or warning appeared to be aimed at the United States and its close ally Japan, both of which are generally considered geopolitical adversaries of the PRC. Taiwan’s foreign minister described Beijing’s recent military exercise in waters close to the island of Taiwan as a “serious provocation” and as part of preparation for a (future) invasion.4 At stake is Taiwan’s independence and sovereignty, while the PRC claims Taiwan as theirs and wants supposed reunification. While the PRC claims the entire strait as their sole exclusive economic zone, Taiwan also has territorial sea claims, as the strait can be split down the middle with both Chinas controlling or managing one side. The United States considers the Taiwan Strait to be international waters and protects the state’s and capital’s interests by maintaining a significant naval presence in the area, and U.S. navy ships regularly conduct their own exercises there in order to reinforce its position that there needs to be freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait. These international dynamics reveal that the Taiwan Strait is an extremely important waterway or chokepoint. Bloomberg reports that “almost half of the global container fleet and a whopping 88% of the world’s largest ships by tonnage passed through the waterway this year.”5

In the case of the Spratlys, in addition to issues of sovereignty and claims to land- and sea-based territories, what is at stake is the potential for resource extraction (e.g., fossil fuels and fisheries). China recently expanded its military presence by building bases and infrastructures on small islands and atolls, which are vulnerable marine ecosystems. The PRC’s imperial naval and coast guard presence in the Spratlys significantly affects commercial shipping in the highly contested waters and archipelago, as the PRC’s military presence basically polices the maritime region. Recall that based on historical claims, the PRC claims the ownership of the entirety of what they call the “South China Sea.” This claim, however, is not supported by international law. In sum, the Taiwan Strait and the Spratlys provide us with two connected case studies of geopolitical maritime and marine ecology hotspots that illustrate Khalili’s timely main points about the sinews of war and trade and how these industrial complexes are braided together.

While Khalili discusses environmental concerns in Sinews of War and Trade—for example, dredging, construction, land reclamation, emissions, and shipping discharge—I was interested to hear more about some of the environmentalist activist work being done in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East related to militarized and maritime infrastructures.

For example, in the context of the Spratlys, Antonio A. Oposa Jr., the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay awardee (the Magsaysay Award is often referred to as the “Nobel Peace Prize of Asia”), has made a radical call for the Spratlys and the West Philippine Sea to be declared an international marine reserve. Oposa points out that there is a vast difference in military strength between the PRC and the Philippines. Rather than engaging with the “bully” through military means, he instead suggests that Philippine leaders take a moral high ground. He writes, “Small thinking is to quarrel over a few pieces of rock in the middle of a big sea in the hope of finding oil to take out and use up for the present needs of a single country. Big thinking is that instead of fighting like children over a piece of candy, let us bring the debate to an altogether different plane. Let us start diplomatic and legal initiatives to have the entire West Philippine Sea (a.k.a. the South China Sea) as well as the Spratly Islands declared an International Marine Reserve.”6 I concur with Oposa’s call for the development of said international marine reserve.

While Kanaka Maoli scholar Haunani-Kay Trask taught us how militarism and tourism work together (Trask coined the term militourism), usually with devastating outcomes for Indigenous peoples and ancestral lands, demilitarizing and deindustrializing the Spratlys and creating an international marine reserve, perhaps with an international marine station, would show the international community that the sinews of war and trade are transformable and hold possibilities for social, economic, and environmental justice.7 Indeed, moving toward the kind of solution Oposa imagines would show how different sinews of war and trade—like the Spratlys in Maritime Southeast Asia and the shipping lanes that run through them—can be radically rewilded for different purposes and for a different kind of present and future—a present and future that do not prioritize resource extraction, fossil fuel capitalism, Southeast and East Asian nationalisms, or Chinese or U.S. American empires.

Kale Bantigue Fajardo is associate professor of American studies and Asian American studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He is the author of Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and a coeditor of Q&A: Voices from Queer Asian North America (Temple University Press, 2021). Fajardo has a recent essay in Hydrohumanities: Water Discourse and Environmental Futures (University of California Press, 2021). Currently, he is working on a book entitled Another Archipelago: Filipino Migrant Masculinities and Visual Cultures: From St. Malo, Louisiana to Astoria, Oregon.