CESMAR Daily Global Maritime Geopolitical Forecast – November 13 2026 –
CESMAR Daily Global Maritime Geopolitical Forecast
– November 13 2026 –
Summary prepared by the Centre for Geopolitics and Maritime Strategy Studies, compiled on the basis of analyses from third-party sources. While the content does not reflect the Centre’s own positions but is instead drawn from the work of other authors and publications, as indicated in the references, the structuring and interpretation of the data are the result of the Centre’s own synthesis process, aimed at creating a coherent and organic analytical framework. The summary therefore represents a structured reorganisation of the collected and selected information, based on the expertise of our scholars, who have subsequently extrapolated its implications in the geopolitical, strategic, technological, and maritime fields, as well as those related to Mediterranean countries. Reproduction, in whole or in part, is authorised provided that the source is acknowledged.
Geopolitical Scenarios of November 13, 2026
Daily Summary of Global Maritime Geopolitics
Reading time: 15 minutes
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Introduction
The press reviews of 12 and 13 November depict an international system that negotiates without reaching conclusions. In the Donbas, prisoners are exchanged while core issues are deferred; in the Caucasus, an ally of Moscow is detaching itself; in the Red Sea and at Hormuz, sea lanes remain exposed to armed actors. The underlying thesis is that those who depend upon the sea are the first to pay the price of any stalemate.
Key Events
On the geopolitical front, IARI reports that the Collective Security Council of the CSTO has suspended Armenia’s voting rights and institutional prerogatives. The decision formalises a rift that has developed over the years: Yerevan had frozen its participation following the lack of a collective response to incursions along its borders. However, economic, commercial, and energy ties with Russia remain intact, meaning that decoupling will take time. Meanwhile, Armenia is intensifying relations with the European Union, France, and India in order to construct an alternative security architecture. For Moscow, this signal carries significant weight in the Caucasus—an already contested and unstable region—where an alliance that fails to provide protection loses its raison d’être. On the strategic front, Formiche writes that the second round of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine yielded only an exchange of over a thousand prisoners. On the Donbas and security guarantees, positions remain far apart, as Moscow continues to demand the entire region. The Council on Foreign Relations interprets these meetings as evidence that channels remain open rather than as the herald of an imminent agreement, noting that the outcome still depends on military developments on the ground. Meanwhile, strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure and retaliatory attacks on Russian oil targets continue. On the maritime front, the Med-Or report La grande guerra del Mar Rosso (The Great War of the Red Sea), presented on 11 November, authored by Umberto Tavolato and Chepkorir Sambu and covered by Formiche, links Iranian pressure on Hormuz to the Houthi threat at Bab el-Mandeb. Both jeopardise sea lines of communication between Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as energy supplies and digital infrastructure. The text outlines vulnerabilities and scenarios without proving that rerouting around Africa constitutes an irreversible shift in trade flows. For Italy and the European Union, the challenge identified combines naval protection, regional diplomacy, the safeguarding of subsea infrastructure, and port competitiveness.
Geopolitical Agorà
Re-reading the article by Giuseppe Gagliano, published by IASSP on 29 January 2021 as a translation of a piece that originally appeared in Modern Diplomacy, allows us to revisit a subject close to our hearts: the relationship between seapower and economics. Gagliano begins with a simple distinction: the sea is simultaneously a transport artery and a resource repository. Across its waters travel containers, oil, and minerals, while beneath them run the cables sustaining the Internet; the sea also provides fisheries, hydrocarbons, offshore wind and tidal energy, and sand for construction. From this dual nature stems the history of its control. From the fifteenth century onwards, naval dominance became a lever of wealth, and the United Kingdom supplanted Spain and Portugal—exhausted by colonisation—as well as an overly continental France. With Alfred Mahan, the principle was refined: command of the sea runs through sea lanes and is contested at maritime chokepoints. Gagliano identifies 1914 as the turning point, when the opening of the Panama Canal under American control coincided with a war that weakened London. The Second World War completed the handover of supremacy, and the Suez Crisis demonstrated Washington prevailing diplomatically over its own Franco-British allies. Russia, lacking direct access to the open oceans, remained confined to an asymmetric posture centred on submarines. The most topical section concerns China. From being the workshop of the world, Beijing has built shipping companies, shipyards, and a navy second only to that of the United States, albeit still lagging behind in overall capability. Its strategy proceeds in concentric circles: control of the first island chain in the East and South China Seas alongside pressure on Taiwan, followed by the second island chain reaching out towards American possessions; the “String of Pearls” in the Indian Ocean, intersecting India’s sphere; the Djibouti base established in 2018, and potential future bases such as Walvis Bay. Support for a canal in Nicaragua, currently stalled, is viewed as an alternative to Panama. The author notes an American vulnerability: the Jones Act has rendered the United States merchant marine marginal in globalisation, whereas China dominates commercial shipping and shipbuilding. Seapower, Gagliano observes, is composite, and its elements multiply rather than merely add together: access to the sea, freedom of movement across sea lanes and chokepoints, a merchant fleet, and shipbuilding capacity. Still remaining to be contested are the Arctic, the Antarctic seas, and the deep seabed. His final observation concerns Italy, which—outside the era of the Maritime Republics—has failed to translate its geographical position into power, and consequently struggles to articulate an authoritative foreign policy capable of containing Turkish ambitions.
Consequences of the Events
Geopolitical Consequences
The overall picture shows great powers deferring decisions while middle powers seize upon the hiatus to redefine their alliances. Armenia is the clearest example: its suspension from the CSTO deprives Moscow of a formal partner in the Caucasus while Yerevan seeks backing in Brussels, Paris, and New Delhi. Central Asia is moving in the same direction: according to The Global Eye, delegations from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan met hundreds of US firms in Washington, aiming to sign agreements at the G20 summit in Miami. Regarding Iran, the same source describes a Trump administration that has shelved negotiations with Tehran in favour of naval and financial coercion, whereas InsideOver credits Ankara with maintaining diplomatic and intelligence channels to avert escalation: Turkey gains leverage precisely because Washington steps back from mediation. In US-China relations, CSIS characterises the 2025 Busan understanding as an unstable truce sustained by mutual deterrence, while Beijing, marking the anniversary of the birth of Sun Yat-sen (regarded as the father of modern China), reiterated the inevitability of reunification with Taiwan without invoking the use of force, even as it maintains military pressure in the Taiwan Strait. For Europe, the thesis advanced by Toni Capuozzo (who passed away yesterday, and whose great professionalism and intellectual honesty are fondly remembered) in InsideOver carries weight: Brussels risks having to submit to agreements negotiated elsewhere. This is a political judgement rather than an established fact. In the United States, Notizie Geopolitiche reports the 211-to-204 vote by which the House of Representatives referred the impeachment of Pete Hegseth to committee, closing the initiative in the current legislature without ruling on its merits. In Gaza, finally, ISPI interprets the management of time as a political instrument employed by Netanyahu within a finely balanced electoral landscape. Analisi Difesa observes that British support for Kyiv has remained consistent across Conservative and Labour governments, explaining this continuity through energy, industrial, and financial interests: post-Brexit, London leverages defence and intelligence to retain influence in Europe. Responsible Statecraft, featuring an essay by Stephen Kinzer on Project Aerodynamic, recalls instead the Cold War roots of intelligence cooperation between Washington and Ukrainian circles, though without proving operational continuity up to the present day.
Strategic Consequences
Strategic Consequences On the military plane, warfare is extending far beyond land frontlines. According to Shipmag, a drone strike reportedly hit the oil and port facilities of Ust-Luga on the Baltic; if the operational details are confirmed, they would demonstrate that unmanned aerial vehicles can strike enemy logistics far from the front, though the date, attribution, and extent of damage remain to be verified. Finnish authorities, reports gCaptain, detected an attack against a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea, without perpetrators or means being confirmed: attributing it to Ukraine would be premature. On the industrial front, Notizie Geopolitiche reports that London invested $150 million in a $700 million funding round for UForce (a leading company in military drones and defence), uniting the state, private capital, and asymmetric capabilities. The United Kingdom subsequently launched Atlantic Net, a £90 million initiative with Ocean Infinity (an Anglo-American world leader in marine robotics and seabed exploration), representing the first phase of Atlantic Bastion (a strategic Royal Navy programme established to create a hybrid naval force dedicated to anti-submarine warfare and the protection of subsea infrastructure in the North Atlantic, comprising autonomous platforms and acoustic sensors to track Russian submarines). Conventional forces, by contrast, reveal the strain of prolonged deployment: The National Interest suggests that the USS George H.W. Bush is approaching a full year of continuous deployment, while Navy Times, citing official records, documents reduced shore leave for sailors. On the doctrinal front, Formiche commemorates Nassiriya twenty-three years on and urges Italy to reorient its defence culture towards high-intensity warfare. Finally, The Global Eye views false bomb alarms in schools across Italy, Ireland, and Scotland as a potential hybrid warfare test—a hypothesis, however, lacking investigative confirmation. The Council on Foreign Relations places export controls on critical technologies within this same security logic, and InsideOver adds that social cohesion and institutional trust form part of national defence, as false alarms and disinformation exploit inflation and polarisation. This remains a political interpretation awaiting empirical substantiation.
Economic, Technological, Financial, and Energy Consequences
Fincantieri provides the clearest industrial benchmark. In the first nine months of 2026, according to Analisi Difesa, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 11 per cent to €511 million, with a margin of 7.7 per cent, while revenues declined by 1.8 per cent to €6.605 billion; total workload reached €72.6 billion, the order backlog stood at €44.7 billion, and net debt fell to €730 million. Growth is attributed to commercial shipbuilding and the subsea domain, while a Physical AI supply chain (taking artificial intelligence beyond screens and applying it directly to machinery, robotics, and real-world construction processes in shipyards) is being established alongside Poste Italiane and TIM. On the technological front, ISPI reports on the investigation into Nvidia: Jensen Huang has acknowledged an extramarital affair, while US authorities are examining whether Megaspeed (a Singapore-based cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure firm) facilitated Chinese access to restricted microchips, although nothing has yet been proven in court. The Council on Foreign Relations situates this episode within the broader race for semiconductors and artificial intelligence, where the effectiveness of export controls is increasingly questioned. CSIS observes that American tariffs have impacted Europe—exposed as it is to Chinese exports—more severely than anticipated. On the energy front, The Global Eye cites a Greek study on a 1,600 MW nuclear power plant with an estimated €4.5 billion impact on GDP, alongside a UN warning of additional European energy costs exceeding €100 billion—a figure requiring verification regarding source and methodology. Meanwhile, Shipmag highlights the exposure of Russian oil exports at Ust-Luga. Political risk thus translates into profit margins for shipyards, insurers, and carriers, and into higher costs for energy importers. Analisi Difesa notes that the reduction in Russian gas supplies has enhanced the strategic value of liquefied natural gas terminals and British financial services, while The Global Eye reports that energy agencies identify two obstacles to the transition: renewable generation capacity not yet connected to grids, and high financing costs for developing nations. The Global Eye also cites, on the sidelines of the Antalya proceedings, the voluntary global roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels presented by Brazil.
Maritime Consequences
Chokepoints dominate the strategic picture, as Gagliano recalls in drawing upon Mahan. In the Red Sea, the Med-Or report links Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb into a single nexus of vulnerability, while The Global Eye reports tanker incidents at Hormuz amid American naval pressure. In the Black Sea, Geopolitica.info describes attacks on merchant shipping and assesses the prospect of a European naval mission, constrained by coordination challenges, rules of engagement, and the Montreux Convention. Specific allegations regarding attacks and Russian losses require independent corroboration. In the Baltic, the incidents at Ust-Luga and involving the Russian warship shift surveillance priorities towards ports and subsea cables, while Atlantic Net addresses the very same requirement in the North Atlantic. Norway, writes Navy Lookout, seeks Type 26 frigates interchangeable with British vessels under the Lunna House Agreement (a landmark bilateral defence pact signed on 4 December 2025 between the United Kingdom and Norway providing for the integration of both nations’ navies and defence industries to patrol the North Atlantic and the Arctic with eight British and at least five Norwegian units); the same outlet reports the First Sea Lord’s denial that the Treasury is blocking frigate construction programmes. For the United States, the extended deployment of the aircraft carrier Bush and data on excessive operational tempo for embarked personnel indicate heightened leadership attention to deployment conditions, which simultaneous presence across multiple theatres exacerbates both in technical maintenance management and in crew endurance. Singapore, according to gCaptain, retains its global crown among maritime hubs—a position held since the inaugural 2015 edition—yet highlights the pronounced rise of Asia, which now occupies three of the top five spots. Rankings and criteria would benefit from greater precision. Finally, Notizie Geopolitiche reports that Panama is reasserting its sovereignty over the canal and that Buenos Aires is threatening British oil executives in the Falklands, with London prepared to turn to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea; actual sanctions have not been substantiated. Regarding the Panama Canal, the same source notes that the waterway is administered by the Panama Canal Authority and that its neutrality is safeguarded by international treaties. Gagliano further recalls that the Jones Act has left the United States lagging behind in commercial shipbuilding, whereas China dominates shipping and naval construction: the contest over sea lines of communication is equally fought in the shipyards.
Consequences for the Southern European Mediterranean countries
For Italy, the signals are twofold. Fincantieri closed the first nine months with rising margins and an order backlog of €44.7 billion, while the Med-Or report identifies naval protection, regional diplomacy, and subsea cable security as the core challenges for ports and industry, given that Suez and the Red Sea remain the primary gateway to the Mediterranean and Europe. Formiche, twenty-three years after Nassiriya, observes that stabilisation missions absorbed resources diverted from other capabilities, while The Global Eye reports false bomb alarms in Italian schools as well. Gagliano criticises Italy for failing to convert its maritime geography into an authoritative foreign policy capable of countering Turkey. For Greece, Turkey represents the immediate strategic reality: InsideOver credits Ankara with mediating between Washington and Tehran, enhancing its weight in the Levant, while Athens debates a return to nuclear power through an interministerial committee assessing technical, environmental, and economic aspects without operational decisions; the estimates cited by The Global Eye remain prospective. Should the hypothesis of deploying a European naval mission to the Black Sea materialise (assuming such a move is advisable in light of the Montreux Convention), the Italian and Greek navies could be involved, as both share common interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. For Spain, InsideOver reports the arrest of 14 individuals in an investigation by the Gijón court into the group Núcleo Nacional, which allegedly trained militants in Ukraine alongside the 12th Azov Brigade: these remain prosecutorial allegations rather than convictions. The Navy Lookout model for the Type 26 frigates—featuring shared spare parts, technical data, and maintenance—points Rome and Athens towards a pathway for integrating their respective fleets, an option that would require case-by-case assessment. For both Greece and Spain, energy dependence also weighs heavily: the additional costs flagged by the United Nations affect the entire European Union.
Conclusions
In the short term, attention focuses on three primary dossiers. The G20 summit in Miami marks the deadline set to finalise agreements between Washington and the Central Asian republics, while the Strait of Hormuz remains the most acute flashpoint: with US negotiations suspended, attacks on oil tankers are already a reality. On the Donbas front, meanwhile, developments will hinge on the outcome of the next round of talks and the trajectory of military operations on the ground. At a broader level, key developments to monitor include Armenia’s suspension from the CSTO, Asian summits addressing the Taiwan dossier, and the investigations into Nvidia and the Spanish group, which will inevitably follow the pace of judicial proceedings. For the nations of Europe’s southern flank—Italy, Greece, and Spain—there are three operational priorities: ensuring the security of port infrastructure and subsea cables, defining a European framework for a potential mission in the Black Sea in full compliance with the Montreux Convention, and establishing coordination with Ankara over crises in the Levant. Over the coming days, three indicators will serve as a litmus test: Moscow’s reaction to the Armenian move, the outcome of the Abu Dhabi talks, and tanker traffic data through Hormuz.
References
This summary has been prepared based on articles from various geopolitical and strategic analysis sources, including: Elisme, Center for Maritime Strategy, CIMSEC, Reuters, ShipMag, Navy Lookout, National Interest, Seapower Magazine, CSIS, RUSI, War on the Rocks, IISS, Responsible Statecraft, Foreign Affairs, Formiche.net, Il Sussidiario, Start Magazine, InsideOver, Notizie Geopolitiche, IARI, Dissipatio, Analisi Difesa, Jamestown Foundation, Atlantic Council, RAND Corporation.
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