Blow the Houthis Out of the Water
CHARLES C. W. COOKE, National Review.
There’s only one logical way to deal with pirates.
Has there ever been a case for American military action as strong as the case for our hitting the Houthis? Pick an ideology or worldview at random, and you’ll find that the cap fits. The internationalists ought to be happy that the federal government is protecting trade. The nationalists ought to be happy that the federal government is retaliating against attacks on U.S. Navy assets. If consumer inflation is your preoccupation, this helps. If respect for the United States is your concern, this works out. If you want an interventionist government, you’ll like it by default. If you want a government that acts only in extremis, this counts. It is a self-evident, slam-dunk, literally-what-the-government-is-for sort of move. This is the bare minimum, the sine qua non, the foundation atop which all else is built. We have robust arguments in this country about what Washington, D.C., ought to do, but there is no useful conception of a national ministry that does not involve the protection of American ships. The federal government has engaged in this activity since the first Jefferson administration. There is no reason for it to let up now.
The New York Times reports that the Houthis have “disrupted” the “international shipping lanes in the Red Sea” for “months” on end, and, in particular, that they have attacked “shipping lanes connecting to the Suez Canal that are critical for global trade.” Even if American ships had not been targeted, this would represent a problem for the United States, which, since 1945, has taken over the indispensable role of global naval hegemon that, since 1805, had been played by the British Empire. It is tempting to imagine that the current state of the world is a permanent feature of the state of nature — or even that it was foreordained. It was not. Rather, our current system is the product of concrete choices. It is an overstatement to say that the world order between the Battle of Waterloo and the present day is primarily the result of Anglo-American naval preeminence, but it is not too much of an overstatement. The free movement of goods and people that so many of us take for granted is the direct consequence of a morally virtuous country being the most important player on the world stage. Put any other nation in that position — be it China, Russia, or even France — and things would look rather different. If the United States wishes to preserve the status quo — and it ought to, because it benefits immensely itself — it needs to intervene against its threats.
Suppose you dissent from that view. Even then, the brief is clear. The federal government exists to represent and to protect the United States on the world stage, and the Houthis present both a direct and indirect threat to that charge. They have attacked our ships — which is an act of war that the executive branch is permitted to respond to unilaterally. And they have attacked our economy — which, for once, is an infraction that is obviously covered by the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. As a result of the Houthis’ behavior, ships coming in and out of America have been forced to take expensive detours around southern Africa. This has caused delays, driven up the price of both imports and exports, and contributed to persistent inflation. Per one estimate, three quarters of all U.S. and U.K. vessels have been dissuaded from traversing the Red Sea since the Houthis’ attacks began, which has effectively rendered use of the Suez Canal as an occasional option rather than the default. If there is a circumstance in which the American military is more presumptively permitted to intervene at will, I’d like to hear it.
One can imagine a set of circumstances in which the American government might be forced simply to shrug its shoulders and lament its bad luck. Were a meteor to hit northeastern Egypt, for example, it would have no choice but to respond with a sigh. But we are talking here about pirates. Not an act of God, not a temporary inconvenience, not an insurmountable obstacle. Pirates. And what you do with pirates is: You kill them. There is no intellectual argument to the contrary. There is no charter or agreement or norm that contravenes that line. There is no on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-other-hand-that. There is civilization, and there is piracy, and those who side with the pirates in that fight are simply wrong. The logical progression here is a simple one: First, the United States says that it wishes to bring goods through a route that it’s permitted to transit; second, the pirates say that they intend to get in the way; and, third, the United States swiftly destroys the pirates. That President Trump has chosen this course of action is surprising only because his predecessor chose to dillydally. Sometimes, sending a gunboat is both the simplest and most righteous response. Blow them out of the water, lads.
