The first thing it’s important to understand about the Red Sea is that very little traffic through it has a U. S. origin or destination. It is used primarily to ship goods to and from Europe not the United States. It does support some traffic to the United States from India. Why, then, are we involved in pursuing the Houthi pirates impeding traffic in the Red Sea at all? Simply put because
- To support our European allies and
- Historically, maintaining free transit of the seas has been considered a vital U. S. interest. Some have maintained it is a component of our grand strategy.
Now let’s turn to the editors of the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. naval forces are operating at a pace not seen since World War II as they try to block threat after threat. The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group on station in the area for months returned over the weekend, and the sea service says the ship group conducted more than 750 engagements while deployed. The strike group expended 135 Tomahawk missiles, premiere land attack weapons that the services haven’t been buying in sufficient quantities.
In other words, the U.S. is burning through missiles with no apparent larger plan to restore order to the region. The obvious answer is to punish the Iranians who arm the rebels, but the Biden Administration hasn’t.
I think the editors are mistaken and I’d like to explain why.
Stopping the Houthi attacks is well within our capability but we are choosing not to do so. We have the military capability of rendering the areas of Yemen from which the attacks are emanating unhabitable. I suspect the reason is that we have decided that the cost in civilian lives is not proportional to the military gain.
“We have the military capability of rendering the areas of Yemen from which the attacks are emanating unhabitable.”
Nukes? Otherwise I dont see how we do that.
Steve
I don’t think you need nukes, but it would be disproportionate in a sense.
Impose a tight naval blockade (inspect every ship that goes through so no electronics go through). Work with Oman and Saudi Arabia to impose a strict land blockade as well.
Eventually the Houthis will run out of microprocessors needed to power drones or missiles.
But the collateral damage on civilians, and likely American casualties from imposing such a blockade outweigh the possible benefits.
Just seems like a pretty large area to make uninhabitable without using nukes. It’s hilly and mountainous and lots of people live at sustenance level. If you are going to use conventional weapons it would take a lot, more than we have.
Steve
I doubt very much that the US can shut down the Houthis. We couldn’t defend Saudi and UAE oil infrastructure during that war, and the Houthis imposed a ceasefire on the US, Saudi, UAE coalition.
The Houthis have been attacking Israeli and Israeli bound shipping at ranges out to 600 miles, up the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean. They are getting reliable targeting information from someone. And their drones and cruise missiles are surprisingly effective.
The unexpected withdrawal of the Eisenhower strike group requires some explanation. It is rumored that the Eisenhower, itself, was struck by a drone, but I think it is more likely that the strike group ran out of air defense missiles, and needs rearming.
We are in a new era of warfare. Iran’s attack on Israel was successful. They struck two military bases. (A while back they successfully attacked one of our bases in Iraq.) Hezbollah is successfully attacking military installations all over northern Israel. Hezbollah actually ran drone surveillance missions over much of Israel, and then posted the recordings on the internet as a warning.
We had absolute air and sea supremacy and ground domination in the Vietnamese War, and we lost. We have nowhere near supremacy or even domination in any arena today. Both Russia and China are full peers in every arms category, except aircraft carriers, and they have technology superiority in a number weapons systems, especially radars, electronic warfare, and various drone, cruise, and ballistic missiles. Russia’s nuclear forces have been thoroughly upgraded, and ours are actually obsolete.
It is anyone’s guess how many trillions of dollars would be required to modernize our military, and that expenditure would not address the serious deficiencies in manpower quality (and quantity) that so greatly diminishes its fighting capability.
We need to demilitarize our foreign policy before we get into a war that would result in our defeat. In the looming war with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, the American homeland would be attacked, and there would be massive losses in our military and civilian infrastructure and in American lives, even if the war were limited to conventional weapons. The era of American dominance is over. Make peace or die.