The Red Sea won’t become a “no-go area.”
That’s according to UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, who spoke to the Sunday Times amid ongoing tension in the crucial waterway, where Iran’s ragtag Yemeni rebels are asserting themselves, ostensibly in defense of human rights in Gaza. Really, the Houthis are just stirring the proverbial pot. With Iran’s pet armies, it’s not quite rascality for the sake of it, but it may as well be. There’s a cause, but devilment is in many cases an end in itself.
“We can’t allow any maritime area to become a no-go area, particularly such a vital route,” Shapps said. “But wider than that, we need to promote a safer world.”
I doubt anyone would argue with that latter assessment, although some would undoubtedly note that historically speaking, UK foreign policy hasn’t always “promote[d] a safer world.”
Headed into the new year, there’s a pervasive sense of doom hanging over most geopolitical debates. Importantly, the perception of “more danger” among Westerners is in many respects a product of blissful ignorance and recency bias. From a global perspective, there was nothing especially peaceful and prosperous about the period we typically associate with peace and prosperity in advanced economies. The world’s everywhere and always a dangerous place. And it’s been that way from time immemorial.
The Houthis over the weekend fired anti-ship missiles into the Red Sea, according to US Central Command, which also said a US destroyer shot down four drones “originating from Houthi-controlled areas.” In addition, a Norwegian chemical tanker and an Indian-flagged oil tanker were attacked. On the Pentagon’s count, those incidents constituted the 14th and 15th attacks on commercial shipping by the Houthis since October 17. The UK Maritime Trade Operations likewise reported a series of incidents.
Last week, I suggested Houthi attacks on shipping lanes were unlikely to materially alter the macroeconomic picture. I still think that’s true. But the odds of a US strike on the group are plainly rising, and according to the Pentagon, Iran itself launched a drone at a chemical tanker operating in the Indian Ocean on Saturday.
The Liberia-flagged Chem Pluto was targeted by a kamikaze drone some 200 nautical miles off India’s coast. It’s Japanese-owned and Netherlands-operated. No one was killed, but all’s not well that ends well. “These dangerous provocations by Iran and their puppets must end,” Shapps insisted on Sunday, adding that the UK will ensure that attempts to disrupt trade are unsuccessful. The UK, he went on, has “bolstered [its] military assets in the region to respond.”
Fund managers — who in this context are a proxy for “markets” — aren’t concerned with any of this, or they’re anyway far less concerned than they were in November. The December vintage of BofA’s closely-watched Global Fund Manager survey saw geopolitics drop to the third spot on the “tail risk” list.
Note that geopolitics was number one in November. The share of survey respondents who identified “geopolitics worsen” as the biggest tail risk halved this month. The markets have no heart, as they say.
As of this writing, Iran hadn’t officially said anything about the incident in the Indian Ocean, but Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denied US allegations that Tehran’s actively encouraging the Houthis to attack vessels in the Red Sea. Those attacks, Amir-Abdollahian said, are the result of decisions made “completely” in Yemen. The Houthis are independently expressing their “support” for Gaza, he insisted.
That’s obviously ridiculous. And to be sure, Amir-Abdollahian doesn’t expect anyone to believe it. He reiterated that the Houthi attacks are likely to continue until there’s a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel lost 14 soldiers over just 48 hours in what Benjamin Netanyahu called “very difficult” days of fighting.
So far, at least 150 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground operation, more than double the number who died in seven weeks of fighting in 2014. The IDF is in the process of infiltrating Hamas’s tunnel network under Khan Younis. Daniel Hagari indicated over the weekend that in order to “thoroughly destroy” the underground burrows, Israeli troops will need to actually go down into them. If that sounds like a nightmare to you, you’re not wrong.
The death toll in Gaza now exceeds 20,000, which is to say one out of every 100 Gazans is dead since October 7. That’s an alarming statistic to put it politely. Impolitely, Israel risks losing all support from its allies, save perhaps the US which is now party to, and complicit in, a military campaign destined to live in infamy for the relative scope of civilian casualties.
Speaking to the press as he departed the White House for a holiday at Camp David, Joe Biden said he and Netanyahu had a “long talk.” “I did not ask for a ceasefire,” Biden said. Addressing his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu conceded that the war “is exacting a very heavy cost from [Israel].” “However, we have no choice but to continue to fight,” he added.
The US effort to organize a naval security operation for the Red Sea is faltering, with few other countries participating and some recently pulling out. Saudi won’t participate because it is worried about re-igniting hostilities with the Houthis, and anyway why not let the US do all the work? Other Arab countries won’t participate due to the optics of aligning with the US. Some NATO countries won’t participate, or are pulling out, due to – my speculation – the US’ purely defensive conception of the mission: naval ships as missile sponges, no offensive actions against the Houthi launchers. China won’t participate for obvious reasons.
The interesting thing is that the US is less affected by a blockade of the Red Sea than most. Ships from Asia have a direct route to US West Coast ports, no Suez Canal transit needed.
I think the pain to other countries isn’t yet at a point where there will be effective international cooperation here, and whoever is leading this for the US (likely State Dept not DoD) hasn’t yet accepted that passively providing target practice for Houthis/Iran isn’t a viable strategy.
Gaza death rate can be reduced if UN, Egypt, US, Israel can reach agreement over relief supplies into Gaza. I’m reading the sticking point is that the UN wants to handle inspection and distribution of supplies, which means Hamas will have some control over it, since the overlap between UNWRA and Hamas is considerable. The death toll won’t stop rising, though. Around a third of the 20,000 dead are Hamas fighters, and those deaths, at least, will continue apace.
John, As usual, reading between the lines of your remarks on Gaza leaves me a bit uncomfortable. Every account (including those of military historians and explosives experts) points to indiscriminate bombing of innocents and an entirely horrific population-relative pace of civilian casualties. I realize it’s not easy to concede what’s going on here and easier to pretend Israel is just targeting “terrorists,” but according to almost every account (besides those that emanate from the IDF), that simply isn’t the case. I know you’ve read all of the accounts I’m referring to. And you never explicitly deny them, but you seem to deny them implicitly. I really wish you wouldn’t do that. It’s tantamount to denying human suffering on a catastrophic scale.
I agree that between 10,000 and 15,000 civilians have been killed, between 5,000 and 10,000 Hamas fighters killed, and 2 million civilians suffering in conditions that are getting worse. I just don’t see how it stops soon.
Israel is not going to stop hunting Hamas (politically it cannot, whether led by the excreable Netanyahu or others). Hamas is not going to stop fighting from its tunnels and from among civilians (it has been preparing for this for a long time, and is, I think, not anywhere near surrender or collapse). The Arab countries are not going to evacuate civilians out of Gaza even temporarily (none of the governments want Palestinians and I believe most of them benefit from never-ending Israel/Palestinian war). The US is not going to force Israel to stop (with rocket attacks on Israel dwindling and thus the need for missile resupply much diminished, Israel can keep up the war with its own resources). Iran is not going to help end this (why would it?)
More trucks of relief supplies will probably enter Gaza, with the Israeli crossing now in use, but distribution will be chaotic since no-one really controls most of Gaza.)
The motivations and constraints of the parties simply do not align in a way that brings this to an imminent end. So it will continue. Lots of wars have gone on and on for years and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. I’ll guess this one will last months not years, and kill tens not hundreds of thousands.
I think back to the circumstances that allowed the Olso peace process to make the headway it did, thirty years ago. I don’t see those circumstances today. There is no Arafat for Israel to negotiate with, even if another Rabin emerges, and Biden has much bigger domestic and geopolitical problems to deal with.
Also, if I ever seem to be “rooting” for the IDF to win . . . well, the sooner that happens, the sooner the “acute phase” of this war ends. Granted there is no evident plan for what happens next. Hamas doesn’t seem to have had a plan for after 10/7, and Israel doesn’t seem to have one either. I imagine a sort of low level “chronic” war could go on for years.
JL – You might be better served to focus on what may happen next year if the DPP squeaks through with less than 50% of the popular vote. As seems likely.
That’s an example of the “bigger problems” the US has to deal with.
I don’t see this administration making a full court press for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, not with China/Taiwan and Russia/Ukraine to deal with – not to forget its an election year.
The odds of success are so low, at the moment, that it hardly makes sense to commit a lot of effort/political capital to it. In my opinion.