The official start of the summer is June 20. This week, it seemed that almost everyone agreed that Joe Biden was losing the war waged by Yemen’s Houthi Rebels against Red Sea Shipping.
On Monday, Giorgio Cafiero, a Responsible Statecraft contributor, asked — rhetorically I am forced to assume — “Are Houthis winning the Red Sea?”
Cafiero wrote that “Yemen Ansarallah – commonly known as Houthis – began a drone and missile war last year against international shipping in the Red Sea as their way of supporting the Palestinians in Gaza.”
How are you doing?
Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa, told Cafiero that “clearly, there have been some damages [to Houthi-targets], but not to a significant degree; the Houthis may have suffered some losses but they still retain the ability to obstruct maritime shipping in the Red Sea.” The U.S./U.K. joint effort was a success. The joint U.S./U.K.
Biden’s lack of leadership is to blame for the humiliating performance of the two biggest naval powers in the past 300 years. CDR Salamander, a Navy milblogger on X, said yesterday that “we have 2,000 years of written records — remarkably consistent given the change in empires & technologies — of how to eliminate piracy.” The White House, however, “decided that they would ignore this and only implement part of the recipe while expecting the same results.”
U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged on Friday that “Houthi attack on commercial vessels in Red Sea caused a 90 percent drop in container shipping in the area between December to February.”
It’s not a small issue either. CNBC reported in January that “roughly 7 million barrels of crude and products transit daily the Red Sea, compared with 18 million barrels which transit the Strait of Hormuz.” Or, at least, it used to. According to a Reuters article, “Global crude and oil product shipments using the long route between Asia and the Middle East have increased by 47% since the attacks on vessels taking the shorter Red Sea route began.”
The Suez Canal, which was built to serve Western interests by Westerners, is now barely usable due to medieval pirates, who we were used to dealing with.
Biden’s incompetence has a far greater impact on strategic calculations than his economic impact, which is felt by our European allies more than we do in the U.S.
We do indeed have a CINC. What could he do if Beijing challenged our position in western Pacific?
Last year, U.S. Army Maj. Kyle Amonson and Coast Guard Capt. Dane Egli (ret.) published a paper examining “Beijing’s Calculus for Invading Taiwan by 2030” and concluded that “the PLA [Chinese military] will be prepared by 2027” and “will likely take steps to realize these ambitions by 2030.”
Indecisiveness against smaller foes such as the Houthis will invite aggression from larger enemies. Beijing is counting, watching and measuring Joe Biden’s indecision for four more years.
