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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?

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

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