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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1753 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 11, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Red Sea

Speaking of the Red Sea, things still look chaotic there. The US issued a “final warning” to the Houthis to stop attacking or face reprisal, which the Houthis immediately defied by attacking the next day. It’s been a week since then and it’s unclear to me if the west has escalated in any specific way.

Otherwise, tanker traffic still looks remarkably stable though the shipping behemoth Maesrk has recently put a pause on the route for their vessels though, despite the US sinking three Houthi vessels that attacked Maersk ships.

Don’t worry though, Sri Lanka has now announced they will join Operation Prosperity Guardian.

stop attacking or face appraisal

I think you meant "reprisal" rather than "appraisal"

haha i did, thank you

if the west has escalated in any specific way.

We now have an answer: https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-uk-coalition-strike-iran-backed-houthi-targets-yemen-spate-ship-attacks-red-sea

We sure do. It definitely feels like we're slipping more and more into a regional war, though maybe that's overly dramatic.

I don't think there will be something that looks like full-blown war, because there doesn't seem to be any western targets there for Houthis to strike beyond ships, and the US wouldn't go into a full scale invasion there, especially not in an election year. Some bombings would be enough to show Biden still has some cojones left, and I don't think it would go beyond that. More likely, there would be a repeat loop of what is already happening - Houthis attack some ships, the West does a dozen of warnings, then bombs something, rinse, repeat.

The US issued a “final warning” to the Houthis to stop attacking or face appraisal, which the Houthis immediately defied by attacking the next day.

Someone ELI5- the US, UK, Latin Europe, Israel, etc all want the straight open and to crush the houthis. All of them individually outgun the houthis by a lot and like 3/5 top navies in the world are literally in a formal alliance committed to keeping the straights open. There are major friendly bases located nearby for the US/UK.

Why haven’t the houthis gotten, well, anything? It would be one thing if stopping them turned out to be harder than it seemed but no one has tried. Why?

I don’t know if this is part of the calculation but Saudi oil infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to Iran made missiles/drones launched from Yemen. They have done some attacks in the past but if things really escalate then houthis have very real retaliation options

A few things:

  1. The media describes the Houthis as “rebels” but they control 85 percent of the urban parts of Yemen. The “legitimate government” is confined to some mountain and desert strongholds. For all practical purposes attacking the Houthis is like going to war with an actual country.
  2. Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Houthis for years with American assistance. It hasn’t done much. There’s a good chance this will escalate into an invasion and a lengthy ground campaign.
  3. The Houthis actually have pretty good weaponry from Iran. And possibly very good weaponry from Russia. No European leader wants to get one of their cruisers murked with hypersonic missiles and be politically on the hook for the deaths of 400 sailors.

The media describes the Houthis as “rebels” but they control 85 percent of the urban parts of Yemen. The “legitimate government” is confined to some mountain and desert strongholds. For all practical purposes attacking the Houthis is like going to war with an actual country.

This looks true, which I hadn't picked up on when I'd first skimmed wikipedia.

Where do you gather information for things like this?

This looks true, which I hadn't picked up on when I'd first skimmed wikipedia.

apparently wikipedia authors are anti-Houthi so they don't show it

A quick glance on "Yemen population density" and comparison with areas controlled by Houthis will do

I very strongly doubt that the Houthis have current top of the line equipment from Russia. The ability to hit a corvette or two I’ll buy, but they’ve been fighting Saudi Arabia, which does carpet bombing with precision munitions. Not actually evidence of having great long range strike capabilities.

For all practical purposes attacking the Houthis is like going to war with an actual country.

If anything, that seems to be rather good than bad for prosecuting the war. For somebody like the West, it's much better to have a war with an actual proper country than a bunch of vaguely defined rebels. It's much easier to pressure the country into making some kind of a deal - after hitting their soft points, which any country has aplenty - than hunting down every single last cave dweller in the desert, without even knowing if there are more or where they are. If they are like a country, they have offices, stores, ports, materials, etc. - all this can be hit and destroyed. The bigger the target, the easier it should be to strike it, not? And then, the carrot can be presented - if you stop the stupid shit, maybe we'll let you have your country and run it as you please.

No European leader wants to get one of their cruisers murked with hypersonic missiles

Not even Russia is dumb enough to give those guys something like that, and also it's not a magic wand - it needs to be used properly to strike a warship, and the likelihood of anybody there knowing how to do stuff like that is null. Russian "advisors" probably could pull it off but Russia has enough trouble to be actively involved in another war right now. They are buying weapons from places like Iran and North Korea, not selling them.

For somebody like the West, it's much better to have a war with an actual proper country than a bunch of vaguely defined rebels.

Wouldn't they need to have recognize Houthis as legitimate government to do so?

Not really, it just needs to have the same set of vulnerabilities as legitimate governments, or at least a sizeable subset of them.

IIRC the Biden administration was quite critical of the Saudi-Houthi war that mostly occured during the Trump administration, which was frequently decried as "genocide in Yemen" (I get the sense now this was largely from a crowd that started protesting in early October about violence against Palestinians) and actually managed to broker a ceasefire starting in 2022.

As it stands now, I sense there would be a lot of partisan (left) outcry about bombing a group waving flags that say "Death to America" who are also firing missiles at American ships. So, like the Obama administration in Syria, we're sending lots of "final warnings" and tutting sternly. Perhaps we'll launch a few missiles or bombs at some point, but it doesn't seem likely to impress the importance of Free Navigation on anyone watching.

Don’t worry though, Sri Lanka has now announced they will join Operation Prosperity Guardian.

A sensible decision, though a token one from my understanding of their naval prowess. Funnily enough, they're likely one of the nation's least affected by the closure of the Suez route, since even shipping taking the Horn usually passes by them. I would assume they still see negative effects from increased costs and decreased traffic.

Maybe they are useful as logistical support/base/place to store captured terrorists?

Or is it pure "hey, this is multinational coalition and not only USA"?

I would wager it's mostly optics, and that's not necessarily something to be too cynical about, the world showing a united front is reassuring, even if in the case of Sri Lanka it's more flag waving as better armed navies do the work.

As for detention facilities or the like, I haven't heard of any such arrangement, and I don't see why they'd be a good choice really. For terrorists, I assume there's closer places at hand that don't ask too many questions. Too out of the way for somewhere to dump economic migrants, and they're not notorious for sending illegal immigrants either.

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