Biden Does Nothing As Iran-Backed Houthis Humiliate Us; U.S. Naval Deterrence Is Going, Going, Maybe Even Gone: A New Report Expounds on the Clear Lesson of Recent Houthi Attacks: America Isn’t Very Scary Anymore

Biden does nothing as Iran-backed Houthis humiliate us:

The world’s lone superpower has been unable to protect one of the most important commercial arteries on Earth from a band of Third World rebels.

Welcome to the latest humiliation of a Biden administration foreign policy premised on not being overly provocative toward our enemies.

Shipping companies have announced they are going to avoid the Red Sea and Bab-al-Mandab, a narrow strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, after a sustained campaign of attacks from Houthi fighters in Yemen.

This is a blow to freedom of navigation — one of the jewels of the US-led order — and a tremendous success for the Iranian-aligned Houthis, who have leveraged drones, missiles and attempted seizures of ships to gain the upper hand over the world’s foremost navy.

We are not talking about a backwater but a key passageway for East-West commerce.

Nearly 12% percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, including a prodigious amount of oil from the Persian Gulf.

Disrupting this trade allows the Houthis to have, in effect, global reach.

Insurance rates for shipping are going up, and companies are forswearing the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, that great shortcut connecting Europe and Asia.

Instead, they are adding significant time, and expense, to their journey by going around the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa.

Eventually, additional costs will be passed along to consumers.

In short, the Houthis are punching above their weight. —>READ MORE HERE

U.S. Naval Deterrence Is Going, Going, Maybe Even Gone:

A new report expounds on the clear lesson of recent Houthi attacks: America isn’t very scary anymore.

Recently the news broke that the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney had fended off several missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea. While Biden administration officials tried to frame the battle, for a battle it surely was, as the Carney’s defending nearby merchant ships, it seems clear that Iranian-supplied Houthis were targeting the Carney directly as well as the commercial ships it was accompanying.

This was only one of several recent assaults on American naval assets in the region. They have happened despite the presence of the Ford carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean and the Eisenhower strike group in the Gulf of Aden—a conventional level of naval deterrence that should have reduced aggressive activities by U.S. enemies. Instead, Iran attacked American ships and allies.

These events show that American naval deterrence is failing, and a recent report from the Sagamore Institute concludes that it could soon evaporate.

The report, “Measuring and Modeling Naval Presence,” models the effect of various ships and combinations of ships across a mix of maritime regions. The model pitted an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the U.S. Navy’s current utility platform of choice, against a People’s Liberation Army Navy Luyang III destroyer in several locations ranging from the high seas to the waters approaching the Taiwan Strait. It suggested that the deterrent value of American Navy ships operating in close proximity to a determined adversary has recently declined.

While the report said the American Navy currently maintains “presence dominance,” the ability to maintain its values and interests upon the high seas, it also indicates that the U.S. margin of naval leadership is shrinking and America could swiftly lose its ability to maintain mare liberum, the free sea. This would have huge negative implications for the global economic system, which depends on open seas to move 80% of the volume of the world’s $100 trillion global domestic product. —>READ MORE HERE

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