Noah’s piece today about how the U.S. must restore deterrence against Iran is spot-on. He notes that Iran and its proxies have carried out nearly 100 attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since Hamas attacked Israel, and the Houthi movement in Yemen, which is Iran-backed, has been attacking commercial ships with missiles and drones.
Yemen is located on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, and it’s near one of the most vital yet dangerous spots on the map for international commerce. The Bab-el-Mandeb is the strait that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, which then opens to the Indian Ocean. The nearby countries are Yemen, Djibouti, Somalia, and Eritrea — all poor, unstable countries with potential or active violence.
Every day, massive, unarmed, slow-moving commercial vessels carrying containerized goods, oil, and other valuables pass through the Bab-el-Mandeb. They do so to use the Suez Canal, which shaves weeks off the journey from Asia to Europe or vice versa. The other options are going all the way around the southern tip of Africa or going around the world the other way through the Panama Canal.
These ships are sitting ducks for pirates or terrorists. If you’ve seen the movie Captain Phillips, you know what can happen in this part of the world. A relatively small group of armed men, if possessed of a will to do so, can take control of one of these commercial vessels quite easily. The crews of container ships and oil tankers have very dangerous jobs.
Standing between violence and global commerce is the U.S. Navy. Because of the global presence of U.S. naval vessels, Captain Phillips–style situations don’t happen very often. Shipping lines from all around the world ordinarily feel confident routing their ships through one of the world’s most unstable regions because of the deterrence the U.S. Navy provides.
Historians hundreds of years from now will look back on this fact as one of the greatest accomplishments of the United States. The U.S. took over the primary duty of securing global sea-trade routes from the United Kingdom after World War II. Modern containerization, which began in the 1950s, has made sea trade more important than it ever was when the British ruled the waves.
The current pause on international shipping through the Red Sea is a black eye for the U.S., and U.S. leaders should understand it as such.
One U.S. destroyer shot down 14 Houthi drones in the Red Sea on Saturday. It’s not like Yemen has a thriving arms industry; these weapons are from Iran. The Houthi movement is a sworn enemy of the United States, with “death to America” in its motto. It would love to strike a U.S. naval vessel if it has the chance.
The U.S. should not give it the chance. When a U.S. naval vessel was struck by Iran during the Tanker War in 1988, the U.S. retaliated by sinking about half of Iran’s navy in a single day. This situation is different, but the precedent is nonetheless clear: The U.S. can and should use overwhelming force to secure international commerce from violence.
Doing so does not require any major changes in U.S. policy. It does not require picking a winner in the Yemeni civil war. What the Houthis do in Yemen is, to some extent, a problem for Yemen. But attacking commercial vessels in international waters is a different thing entirely.
There are already British, French, and Japanese naval vessels in the region. The U.S. would have international support for restoring free navigation to the Red Sea. “For all the apprehension around preemptive military action in more jittery quarters, the wages of inaction are just as high if not higher,” Noah writes. Situations like this are why the U.S. has a global military.