Make no mistake, this escalating crisis in the Red Sea could prove to be America’s Suez

The attention of the world has been focused on the bloody tragedy unfolding in the Gaza Strip, as well as on the near-two-year calamity in Ukraine.

But a perilous new blockage has lodged in the jugular vein of global trade: the Red Sea.

Unless it’s unblocked, the consequences could spell disaster for international economics — and for world peace.

Yesterday, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps warned Britain is considering launching airstrikes against the Houthi rebels disrupting shipping at the southern end of the Red Sea, causing chaos to global trade routes.

Such a move, in concert with the U.S., would mark a dramatic escalation in this deteriorating crisis.

For these events are not some sideshow to the conflicts in the Middle East and the Eurasian Steppe. They could prove 2024’s defining battle.

The problem exploded several weeks ago, when the Houthis, a bloodthirsty Yemeni militia armed by the mullahs of Iran, began launching missile and drone attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.

Some 40 per cent of Europe’s trade with Asia, and 12 per cent of all the world’s shipping traffic, passes through this critical route to the Suez Canal, meaning any disruption has a disproportionate effect on the global economy. 

(In 2021, when container ship Ever Given ran aground and blocked the canal for six days, the cost to international trade was £700 million per day.)

The Houthis, who overthrew Yemen’s UN-recognised government in 2014, launched their most recent attacks after Hamas’s October 7 atrocities and Israel’s heavy-handed response to them. The radical Shiite Houthis see Israel as their ‘ideal enemy’, embodying everything they hate.

Houthi leaders warned that any ships linked to Israel were ‘a legitimate target’ — and made good on that threat in November when their terrorists hijacked a British-owned, Israel-associated ship, the Galaxy Leader, that was travelling from Turkey to India.

In slick footage posted online, several masked Houthi fighters were seen landing on the ship’s deck by helicopter, brandishing automatic weapons and holding its crew — none of whom is thought to be Israeli — at gunpoint.

As Mr Shapps pointed out yesterday, similar attacks increased by 500 per cent in November and December.

On December 16, HMS Diamond fired a Sea Viper missile to destroy a Houthi attack drone: the first time in more than 30 years our Navy had shot down an aerial target.

The Houthis, meanwhile, have repeatedly fired at Western vessels, damaging a Norwegian tanker and also targeting French warships. Last month, the USS Carney downed four drones launched at commercial vessels by the Islamists, and just two days ago, the US navy sank three Houthi boats attempting to intercept a container ship, killing ten militants.

Iran has since sent its own warship to the Red Sea, risking an alarming clash with the U.S. or our Royal Navy.

Collectively, these skirmishes have had a swift effect.

Some 12 international shipping companies, including Maersk, MSC and France’s CMA CGM, have paused operations in the region, instead sending their ships on a journey 5,000 miles longer around the Cape of Good Hope.

The resulting disruption is likely to trigger sharp rises in the price of oil and other consumer goods, threatening a fresh bout of inflation in what is an election year in both Britain and the U.S.

That is why Western governments feel they must crush the Houthi piracy by any means.

Britain and the U.S. are said to be on the cusp of issuing a ‘verbal final warning’ to the Houthis, ordering them to stop their attacks or face direct military action. U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has already announced a naval coalition — dubbed ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ — to defend Red Sea shipping.

But if the Americans think they can smash the Houthis easily, they are deluded. The truth is that this conflict has a sinister resonance to the humiliating 1956 Suez Crisis.

To recap, back then, Egypt’s President Nasser suddenly nationalised the Suez Canal, threatening to choke Europe’s access to Middle Eastern oil. Britain and France — covertly helped by Israel — mounted an invasion of Egypt.

That show of force was intended to be a demonstration of technological superiority against an upstart. But Suez proved a fiasco, triggering a political crisis in Westminster, alienating our allies and marking the end of our status as a first-rank power.

There are reasons to be more pessimistic about the West’s prospects today.

First, the Houthis are no pushovers. Battle-hardened, they have been waging war for more than a decade against the Western and Saudi-backed government of Yemen. More than 100,000 fighters swell their ranks, and they have ballistic missiles and cheap but effective drones with which to cause mayhem.

Second, there’s the cost. The Houthis’ ‘suicide drones’ sell for just $2,000 each, and stocks are almost limitless. The missiles we use to destroy them cost around $2 million apiece.

The U.S. is now fighting proxy wars on two fronts: the Gaza Strip and Ukraine. Even the Pentagon’s vast budget of some $824 billion can’t arm Kyiv and Israel, let alone fight a new Middle Eastern war, and keep an eye on China, too.

Third, with the military quagmires of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia still fresh in the mind, there is no chance the U.S. will commit boots on the ground, which dramatically reduces the options.

Finally, it’s unlikely that a fleet of 19 ships can achieve much success in the region, even if it shells the Yemeni mainland to obliteration. The Saudis, armed and advised by the West, tried something similar, and the Houthis have fought them to a ceasefire.

So the allied Red Sea fleet and threats of air strikes are not a quick fix. Instead, like Britain’s ignominious efforts to seize back Suez in 1956 — the need to use them is a graphic illustration of the West’s overall weakness.

Nor can America walk away from the crisis. History shows that whenever a stabilising power such as Britain, France — or even the Roman Empire — withdraws from a theatre, the result is always more conflict and bloodshed.

Look at the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan following Western withdrawal in 2021, and at Iran’s descent into an impoverished basket case, run and ruined by the murderous ayatollahs, since the fall of the pro-Western Shah in 1979.

If the U.S., with all its power and might, is seen as unable to overwhelm a feeble militia like the Houthis, then another hostile power — such as China, which has a base in nearby Djibouti — might seize the moment to take its place as the world’s pre-eminent superpower. And that should concern us all.

After 1956, Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden’s wife, Clarissa, said she felt as though the Suez Canal was flowing through her drawing room. Britain’s role in international affairs had slipped away, taking her husband’s premiership with it.

The elderly President Biden may face a similar fate. He must act decisively — but can he succeed, or even just sustain a prolonged crisis?

As the new year dawns, my fear is we may be witnessing — in real time — the collapse of American power which has sheltered us for all our lives.

• Mark Almond is the director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford.