OPINIONS
Wed 17 Jan 2024 8:48 am - Jerusalem Time
The Houthis sink an arrow into the West’s Achilles’ heel
By David Ignatius
The White House has officially designated April as “Supply Chain Integrity Month.” Houthi rebels in Yemen and a dozen other players that can wreak havoc on global logistics don’t seem to have gotten the message.The Houthis are a tribal militia in a faraway country that many Americans couldn’t identify on a map. But they have the ability to disrupt world markets. For three months, they have been sending missiles and drones toward commercial cargo ships in the Red Sea — and, in the process, altering global shipping flows and insurance rates. Reuters reported on Tuesday that just in the past week, risk premiums for ships traveling the area had increased by more than 40 percent.
The Houthis have what might be called bottleneck power. They command the narrow passageway into the Red Sea, which allows them to sabotage a vulnerable point in the global supply chain. This ability to exploit chokepoints is an increasingly important but little-discussed weakness in the global economy — one that the United States, which boasts of its role as guarantor of freedom of navigation, seems almost powerless to prevent.
U.S. military threats didn’t deter the Houthis, who began firing missiles at cargo ships in November in a supposed protest against the war in Gaza. A U.S.-led coalition of more than 20 countries, hubristically called Prosperity Guardian, didn’t stop the attacks, either. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, two of the biggest global shipping companies, announced on Jan. 2 they would stop using the Red Sea route because of the Houthi missiles.
The United States and Britain finally took military action on Jan. 11, striking more than 60 Houthi targets with more than 100 precision bombs, and U.S. forces attacked again the next day. Even that didn’t stop the Houthis, who struck a U.S-owned cargo ship on Monday, drawing a retaliatory U.S. assault Tuesday against a Houthi missile-launching site.
The Houthis are masters of modern guerrilla war, exploiting the weak points of stronger powers. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates fought a war against them starting in 2014. The UAE gave up in 2020, and the Saudis agreed to a peace deal last year, which only seemed to embolden the Houthis. They are tough, patient fighters — supplied with weapons, training and intelligence by Iran — and they sit atop one of the world’s most strategic waterways.
Houthi leaders seem to understand that the deeper they draw the United States into conflict, the greater impact they have on the global economy. That’s the lesson of this undeclared war: The United States has overwhelming economic power. But perhaps because it is dependent on global trade and financial flows, it is especially vulnerable to economic attack by such seeming lightweights as the Houthis.
We’ve seen other bottleneck vulnerabilities during the past few years. A giant Panamanian-flagged cargo ship called the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021, obstructing more than 350 ships. The delicate thread of global commerce was beginning to unravel when the ship was finally refloated.
The war in Ukraine has been, in part, a battle to control access points and skew commerce. Russian control of the Black Sea allowed it, for a time, to halt Ukrainian grain shipments and spike global food prices — adding to inflation and, worse, threatening famine. Russia’s enemies, identity still unknown, sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022. Ukraine at least twice has attacked the Kerch Strait bridge that links Russia to occupied Crimea.
Paradoxically, the more dominant the United States has become economically, the more vulnerable it is to supply-chain attack. An early demonstration of that dependence was the 1974 Arab oil embargo, whose destabilizing effects persisted for much of the next decade. Today’s most precious resource is information, and the United States keeps leaping forward with new digital tools. But as cyber technology advances, so do the weapons of cyberwar.
A disturbing example of a U.S. strength that could become a weakness is our dominance of cloud computing — and growing reliance on it. A study to be published Wednesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace focuses on the risk that the theoretically invulnerable cloud could be disrupted by natural disasters, technology failure, human error or other unanticipated factors.
The study cites an estimate by two giant reinsurance companies that potential insurance losses in a cloud-dependent world could be 100 times those before cloud adoption.
The Carnegie study, outlined for me this week by Ariel Levite, one of its three authors, proposes that cloud providers and their clients should agree on “a framework to enhance resilience and trust.” Like giant financial institutions, cloud providers should face regular “stress tests” to see how they would cope with unexpected disasters, Levite explained.
The Biden administration, which took office amid the covid-19 pandemic, recognized the need to protect global supply chains. And the administration’s actions have reduced the United States’ vulnerability to outside disruptions.
But the bizarre little war off the coast of Yemen — and its big potential effect on global commerce — is a reminder of how fragile the logistical network remains. The grandees of the world economy who are gathering this week in Davos, Switzerland, for their annual celebration of globalization should keep an eye on the distant bottleneck at the Bab el-Mandeb, where the system seems very weak indeed.
Tags
MORE FROM OPINIONS
To the People of Israel, to the People of Palestine
Gershon Baskin and Samer Sinijlawi
When the bodies of dead become skeletons
op-ed - Al-Quds dot com
The Infant Aisha Al-Qassas' body freezes to death
Bahaa Rahal
Trump..the strong president
D. Naji Sadiq Sharab
The State of Zinco...
Hossam Abu Al-Nasr
Muffled breaths under the rubble!
Ibrahim Melhem
The biggest disaster in the world is happening in Gaza
op-ed - Al-Quds dot com
Partisan fanaticism...the biggest disaster threatening the Palestinian cause
Shadi Zamaareh
"Democrats"... and an analysis of the reasons for the defeat
James Zogby
Post-Assad Syria and its implications for the Palestinian issue
Firas Yaghi
The silence of the international community regarding the atrocities and the dogs that devour the bodies of the martyrs in Gaza
Dr. Al-Baqir Abdul Qayyum Ali
When occupation soldiers compete and brag about killing civilians
op-ed "AlQuds" dot com
Gaza's unprecedented pain
Hamada Faraana
An Israeli Order in the Middle East
Foreign Affairs
Changing Arab Societies - Adonis.. Once Again-
Almutawkel Taha
His Holiness Pope Francis and President Abbas: Men of Peace
Father Ibrahim Faltas, Deputy Custos of the Holy Land
Demolition everywhere
op-ed "AlQuds" dot com
Consensus is a mandatory approach to saving the national destiny
Jamal Zaqout
The Middle East has been changing since 1977, but it will return to being Arab
Hani Al Masry
The Price of American Retreat Why Washington Must Reject Isolationism and Embrace Primacy
Foreign Affairs
Share your opinion
The Houthis sink an arrow into the West’s Achilles’ heel