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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.

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?

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.

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