How the Houthis Outsmarted Washington
The Yemeni terrorist group has skillfully taken advantage of an overstretched U.S. Navy.
The Yemeni Houthis refuse to go away. Despite the efforts of the U.S. Navy and allies, a ragtag, rebel insurgent group has managed to keep one of the world’s most strategic waterways—the Red Sea—blocked for almost two years. The majority of maritime traffic has been forced to take the longer, more circuitous and expensive Cape of Good Hope route around the tip of Africa. Washington has failed to maintain maritime freedom in one of the world’s key maritime chokepoints.
The technological revolution in naval warfare brought by anti-ship missile systems and drones has handed a small rebel group the ability to cut off the Red Sea’s strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This continuing standoff carries dangerous implications for the United States as a global maritime power.
The first lesson is obviously technology. Drones and land-based missile systems can now take out surface warships hundreds or even thousands of miles away from littoral coastlines. The Houthis’ Red Sea attacks underscore the challenging situation in which the U.S. Navy finds itself. Already no longer the world’s largest navy—having ceded that position to China’s—the Navy is searching for new approaches to deal with drones and antiship missiles. Its legacy aircraft carriers and other warships, equipped with expensive and sophisticated manned aircraft and missile systems, have proven to be less than ideally suited for this new age of warfare. Evolving to counter these weapons is a process that could take years for the Navy and Congress to develop and refine.
The second lesson is that the Navy is over-stretched. It has been compelled to keep as many as two carrier battle groups tied down in the Red Sea area to fend off Houthi attacks against warships and commercial vessels. Despite those powerful forces, the Red Sea remains effectively blocked. Meanwhile, competing challenges in other parts of the world continue to demand the Navy’s attention, as well, mainly China. Immediately facing the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s 400-plus warships is the U.S. Pacific Fleet, consisting of about 200 ships.
It is highly doubtful that the Navy will ever be able to be as large as China’s navy. America’s aging shipyards do not have the production capacity. The Pacific Fleet’s core mission nonetheless is to defend U.S. treaty allies, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea, in any conflict with China. It must also be prepared to defend Taiwan even without a defense treaty commitment.
Besides China and the Houthis, the Navy also must be ready for Iran. Earlier this year, it was called upon to help defend Israel from waves of Iranian missile and drone attacks, even as it was also simultaneously fending off Houthis attacks in the Red Sea. A major attack by the Navy on Iran’s nuclear program may be imminent.
In the face of all these diverse challenges, the necessity of tying down one or more U.S. carrier battle groups in the Red Sea—to play expensive and dangerous whack-a-mole with Houthi missile and drone attacks—becomes a costly, and ultimately, an untenable, long-term proposition.
Likely realizing this, the Trump administration has just escalated the Houthis’ campaign, putting greater air power resources (including Air Force B2s) into a more offensively oriented effort to defeat the Houthis once and for all. Whether airpower alone will be sufficient to deliver a decisive victory remains to be seen. The early returns suggest that accelerated air power may not be enough. Despite the reported expenditure of over $1 billion in air munitions in just three weeks, Houthis’ Red Sea attacks have relentlessly continued. If air power cannot permanently silence the Houthis, Washington will have a tough decision to make.
One option is simply to withdraw from the Red Sea and leave it to European allies to continue to deal militarily with the Houthis. Western Europe, after all, is more dependent economically on access to the Red Sea transportation route than the United States. In addition, Washington’s European allies collectively have over 1000 warships at their disposal. Unlike the military situation on land in Europe, where NATO allies have less military capabilities to deal with Russia and Ukraine, their navies should be up to the job in the Red Sea, even if the U.S. Navy withdraws. No doubt this may have been what Vice President JD Vance had in mind when he recently critiqued the Europeans as “freeloaders” in the Red Sea campaign.
However, particularly in the wake of America’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, pulling the United States out of the fight would be the wrong message to send to Iran. It would be interpreted as another sign of U.S. strategic decline. Instead, the Trump administration’s decision to escalate signals that the United States remains committed to safeguarding the freedom of the seas in far-away places, even in situations where America’s economic interests are less impacted than those of allied nations.
In 1988, the United States did just that against Iran in Operation Praying Mantis after a U.S. frigate, the USS Samuel B Roberts, was damaged by an Iranian mine. In response, the United States attacked and sank Iranian warships and destroyed Iranian oil platforms in what was the largest action for the U.S. Navy since World War II.
While the Houthis have yet to hit a U.S. warship or manned aircraft, they keep trying. If air power alone cannot eliminate the threat, the United States may have to weigh further escalation, including potential naval quarantine and ground raids. The Houthis have put the United States into a strategic box, leaving no good options. Washington’s credibility cannot continue to afford an extended, stalemated draw. This is a conflict that the United States must resolve, or else pay the strategic consequences. The time may well come when Washington will have no other choice but to escalate further, or be forced to face another Afghanistan-like setback, this time at the hands of the Houthis.
Ramon Marks is a retired New York international lawyer and Vice Chair of Business Executives for National Security (BENS).
Image: Mariusz Bugno/ Shutterstock.com.