Why can’t the U.S. Navy and its allies stop the Houthis? This is the question that Foreign Policy asked in an analysis posted yesterday, but to which it failed to find an answer. “More than six months after the Houthi insurgent group in Yemen started seriously disrupting maritime traffic in the Red Sea, global shipping has had to come to terms with a new normal where delays, derangements, and higher costs are only getting worse,” FP says at the outset. “That is despite the efforts of the U.S., British, and European navies that have been on station the whole time attempting, without success, to neuter the Houthi threat and restore security for the commercial shipping.
“That the world’s premier navies appear to be struggling to subdue a band of insurgents raises painful questions about both the utility of sea power and the proficiency of the Western navies that are meant to carry the burden in any future showdown with a major rival such as China.”
