Chapter 1253 Indo-Pacific Bridge

Chapter 1253 Indo-Pacific Bridge

Although East Africa has always attached importance to the military's tropical jungle combat training since the 1970s, it is basically carried out in the local tropical rainforest area and lacks large-scale actual combat experience.

East Kalimantan is a real battlefield, which has deeply tested the tropical jungle combat capabilities of the East African army in the past two years.

As for the final result, it can only be said that it is barely above the passing line. In order to encircle and suppress the remnants of the two sultanates, the casualty data in East Africa is not too good.

And this is not unexpected. After all, Ernst knows very well that East Africa's colonization in the Southeast Asia region is different from other countries.

Other countries pay attention to "virtue" to win people over. As long as the local upper class is settled and they are willing to serve various countries, there will basically be no fierce war conflicts.

The most typical example is India. For example, some uprisings and riots in India did not even require the British to take action themselves. The Indian princes and nobles solved them by themselves.

The two are actually in a symbiotic relationship, and they are united together to parasitize on the lower-class people. In layman's terms, they are the imperialist powers and the compradors they support.

They can coexist, so there is no need to fight to the death.

On the other hand, East Africa is different. East Africa's colonial activities in Southeast Asia do not need to support compradors at all. East Africa has always implemented the policy of "removing people and keeping land".

This also means that local forces will work together to fight against East Africa, the mortal enemy.

Cristiano said: "As long as the Kra Isthmus Territory is handled well, the empire's colonial system in Southeast Asia will be basically formed. At this time, whether or not the Strait of Malacca is controlled is no longer a decisive factor for East Africa."

After all, there is not only the Strait of Malacca from East Africa to Southeast Asia. In fact, the East African Navy can also take the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java.

Even the fastest route from East Africa to the Lan Fang Overseas Province is the Sunda Strait, but it takes more detours to take the Strait of Malacca.

This is mainly related to the geographical location of East Africa. East Africa straddles the equator, and its territory extends to both sides. The economy and population of East Africa are concentrated in the south, and so are the ports.

For example, the thousands of miles of coastline in Somalia are difficult to be used and developed. In addition to the desert area and the small population, the coastline of Somalia is too smooth and lacks good ports.

If the ship departs from the southern part of East Africa, the distance to the Sunda Strait is closer, and the significance of the Strait of Malacca is greater for Europe and Asia.

Cristiano said: "The Sunda Strait is one of the substitutes for the Strait of Malacca. In addition, there are other channels between the Dutch East Indies, and our early acquisition of the Isthmus of Kra further strengthens our strategic security between the East Indian Ocean and the South China Sea."

"But the Sunda Strait is not in our hands after all, but controlled by the Dutch. Although the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are two countries, we must also consider the possibility of being sanctioned by both countries at the same time, although this possibility is very small."

The Netherlands certainly does not have this courage, otherwise East Africa would not be able to easily take East Kalimantan from the Netherlands, and even the original Lanfang Overseas Province was the sphere of influence of the Netherlands.

If the Netherlands dared to block the Sunda Strait, it is estimated that the entire East Indies would be in chaos the next day.

"So the establishment of the Kra Isthmus means that the Empire has three stable and economically significant channels between the Indian Ocean and the South Sea."

"The connection security issues between the mainland and the South Sea have been basically resolved, so that the effective radiation range of our navy has expanded from the mainland to the East Indian Ocean and the South Sea."

"The Indian Ocean Fleet can effectively support any conflict in the South Sea at any time."

"Among them, the role of the Kra Isthmus is to provide us with strategic support points in the East Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Siam."

"As long as the Kra Isthmus is in hand, other countries will not be able to cut off the communication and material transportation between the Empire and the Pacific Fleet."

In the past, the biggest threat faced by the Pacific Fleet was the cutting off of the sea transportation channel. After all, the Pacific Fleet is not small in size, and the material transportation is too dependent on the Strait of Malacca and the Sunda Strait.

This is equivalent to handing over the Pacific Fleet's logistics supply line to the British and the Dutch. East Africa will certainly not tolerate this risk continuing.

With the Kra Isthmus, it is different. Even if the Tabi River Plain is not included in the Kra Isthmus Territory, East Africa cannot pay a high cost to build the Kra Canal.

The fact that the Kra Canal was proposed in the past shows that it is still somewhat cost-effective, after all, it can indeed shorten the route distance of the Eurasian continent.

In the absence of the Tabernacle Plain, building another Kra Canal would cost several times more. Although East Africa is not incapable of construction, it will certainly not do such a loss-making business.

Cristiano said: "The Kra Isthmus Territory can build an Indo-Pacific bridge to connect East Africa between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean through railway and road transportation."

"In this way, we can ensure that the ports in the east of the Kra Isthmus can maintain a potential material and trade channel through land transportation."

"And this requires us to build shipyards, oil depots, war reserve material warehouses, etc. in the east of the Kra Isthmus to provide materials and ship maintenance services for the Pacific Fleet at any time."

"And the cost is that we only need to build one or more 100-kilometer roads to achieve our goal. The narrowest part of the Kra Isthmus is only about 100 kilometers, and it is impossible to exceed 200 kilometers by bypassing the complex terrain."

It should be made clear here that the Kra Isthmus and the Kra Isthmus Territory in East Africa are two completely different concepts.

The Kra Isthmus includes the territories of Siam, East Africa, and the United Kingdom, while the Kra Isthmus Territory is just East Africa's description of its own colonial area of ​​the Kra Isthmus.

If it is the Kra Isthmus, its narrowest part is actually only more than 50 kilometers, but this narrowest part is not in the Kra Isthmus Territory in East Africa.

It is in Chumphon and Ranong in Siam to the north, which is the area that the British tried their best to prevent East Africa from obtaining. If East Africa obtains these two areas, it only needs to build a 100-kilometer canal to connect the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

If it is other areas, if East Africa continues to implement the canal plan, it will take at least 200 to 300 kilometers, and it cannot use the Thabi River.

In other words, if the Tabi River Plain had fallen into the hands of East Africa, East Africa would only need to dig an artificial river of dozens of kilometers and build a number of infrastructure such as ship locks and dams to achieve this goal. After all, using the original channel of the Tabi River can save a lot of costs.

In other words, the amount of work is not much greater than that of the Panama Canal, and Sir Clare of the United Kingdom at that time naturally saw this, so he tried his best to prevent East Africa from achieving this goal.

Of course, East Africa, or at least Ernst himself, had no intention of building the Kra Canal from the beginning. After all, East Africa could have chosen to bypass the Sunda Strait, or choose the farther east of Java Island to bypass the Strait of Malacca, such as the Lombok Strait.

This is also what the East African Navy actively does. It can be said that the East African Navy has mastered much more hydrological and geographical data in the East Indies than the Netherlands has accumulated for hundreds of years.

And some of East African merchant ships would not have chosen to bypass the Strait of Malacca if they were not restricted by the poor infrastructure conditions of the Sunda Strait.

After all, before East Africa, there were basically not many ships that chose this route in the Sunda Strait, so the infrastructure conditions of cities on both sides of the Sunda Strait were far behind those of the Strait of Malacca.

Cristiano finally said: "Through land construction, connecting the two sides of the Kra Isthmus, this is a very short land bridge, which we call the Indo-Pacific Road Bridge."

Although the Indo-Pacific Road Bridge is an important channel connecting the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, it is not as wide as a land bridge, which is thousands of kilometers long. It is only more than 100 kilometers, so it can only be said to be a road bridge.