James Stavridis isn’t satisfied with the current pointless war against the Houthis and wants something more:
Four mariners dead. Two commercial ships sunk. One ship and 25 mariners held captive. Global supply chains distorted. Where is a strong military response to this high seas threat?
The U.S. and Britain have been waging a war against the Houthis for the past five months, and all that they have managed to accomplish is to boost Houthi recruiting, deepen anti-American sentiment among Yemenis, and waste limited resources. What “strong” response should the U.S. consider when its military action has so far proven to be useless? Escalation was the wrong way to handle the attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping at the start of the year, and further escalation is the wrong answer today. It should be obvious by now that the Houthis are not going to be bombed into stopping their attacks. If anything, the U.S.-led military campaign has played into their hands and benefited them politically without doing much to reduce their ability to launch more attacks.
Girgio Cafiero reviews the record of the campaign so far:
How much damage the strikes have inflicted on the Houthi war machine and its ability to continue attacking maritime targets is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, these operations, which have cost the U.S. some $1 billion according to a new intelligence report, have ultimately failed to deter Ansarallah, which continues firing missiles and drones at vessels off Yemen’s coast.
There is growing recognition that the military campaign against the Houthis is burning through limited stocks of munitions for no discernible gain. The Wall Street Journal reported last week:
U.S. officials worry that the conflict is simply not sustainable for the U.S. defense industrial base, already strained by the demands for weaponry from Ukraine and Israel.
“Their supply of weapons from Iran is cheap and highly sustainable, but ours is expensive, our supply chains are crunched, and our logistics tails are long,” said Emily Harding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We are playing whack-a-mole, and they are playing a long game.”
The U.S. often puts itself in this position by choosing to resort to force against local forces in pursuit of unrealistic goals. Our forces repeatedly play some version of whack-a-mole because there is no connection between the military action being taken and the ends that are being sought. In this case, the U.S. refuses to admit why the attacks on commercial shipping are happening, preferring to pretend that they have nothing to do with the war in Gaza. Supporters of the current war against the Houthis aren’t troubled by the fact that escalation has made the Red Sea much more dangerous and has made it even less attractive to shipping companies than it was before January.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
As I've said, the Axis of Resistance strategy is the same as the Russian strategy in Ukraine and against NATO: a war of attrition that neither Ukraine, nor the West, nor Israel can win.
In the case of the Ukraine conflict, it's because the West can't match Russian military production and the size and capabilities of the Russian army.
In the case of Israel, it's because 1) Israel is depending on the US, which has drained itself by sending everything to Ukraine and is still draining itself by sending stuff to Israel, which is going to run out sooner or later, and 2) Israel and the US can't actually hurt their enemies because they are underground in independent nations, and 3) Israel is actually outnumbered by its enemies and the US can't fix that because it can't send enough military power to Israel to offset that while still sending military power to Europe and Asia.
Re the latter: Nasrallah said first that Hezbollah has 100,000 troops, and now he's said he has more, and in addition there are another 100,000 troops from the rest of the Axis who will show up when needed. The Houthis alone have said they would supply 100,000 (although how they would get there is problematic since they'd had to march through Saudi Arabia, LOL.)
Also, the US doesn't have 100,000 troops to send to Lebanon. And US air and naval power failed before in Lebanon in the 1980's and it won't be any more effective now.
Will Israel use tactical nukes on Lebanon? Where? Do they know where Hezbollah is located in those freeway-sized tunnels? What is the blast range of a tactical nuke? How many can they drop to actually seriously affect Hezbollah operations? Do they want radioactive fallout landing in Israel? Doubtful answers to those questions…
It's not the same as dropping a nuke on Beirut or Tehran or Damascus – which is exactly why Hezbollah is essentially invulnerable unless the Israelis want to actually go into Lebanon and go into those tunnel. Since the Israelis are refusing to go into Hamas tunnels, I submit they won't be capable of doing it in Lebanon. So Hezbollah remains invulnerable.
And if the US sends a few thousand Marines to try that, they'll die in those tunnels just like Israeli soldiers died in the few Hamas tunnels they tried to enter.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, and Iran have learned the most effective form of warfare: guerrilla war underground. This is essentially unbeatable unless you are prepared to lose a lot of dead soldiers in hand-to-hand combat – or use lots of nerve gas (which is probably not hard to defend against depending on your underground construction and air filtering.)
Israel and the West can not win this. Like Ukraine vs Russia, it's physically impossible unless the Axis goes weak psychologically.
The Houthis need help fighting the Americans, Saudis and other people waging war against them.
This isn't difficult. Look at this administration. It is, possibly, the most incompetent administration in American history, making enemies of any who dare to follow their own priorities and policies, wasting vast resources on violence including but not limited to threats, intimidation, coups and outright occupation, proxy wars and more, to "resolve" conflicts all over the globe, planting seeds of future violence in every available place, all based on a galactic misapprehension about the nature of the planet they inhabit, a planet that has left them behind and furtively wishes they were gone.
4 freighters hit in Haifa yesterday plus one ship a few miles west of Haifa. Yemeni naval forces claim.
BTW – Yemen makes its own homegrown weapons. Little need to import.
Well said, Daniel Larison. It's astonishing how quickly some, like James Stavridis, rush to call for further escalation without considering the devastating consequences of continued military action. The facts are clear: the current campaign has only strengthened Houthi recruitment and anti-American sentiment, while depleting our resources. It's time to acknowledge that military force is not the solution and instead seek a diplomatic path forward. The Red Sea's security and global supply chains depend on it.
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