“Well, we didn’t see that one coming — the Houthis took us all by surprise,” a distinguished former security official muttered to me this week. In just under four months the Houthis have attacked 57 vessels in and around the Red Sea. They have disrupted waterways carrying 15 per cent of global trade and all but shut down the Suez Canal to major maritime traffic.
With relatively modest means and weaponry, the Houthis have shown the vulnerable nature of the world’s great shipping choke points — the narrow passages of sea easily blocked and where vessels and their crews can be hijacked and held to ransom.
The UK is particularly susceptible — three of the great choke points are on our doorstep: the Faroes Gap, the Straits of Denmark and the Dover Strait in the English Channel.
As a country that has to import roughly 50 per cent of its food, and a higher proportion of its energy requirement, it shouldn’t need the Houthis to remind us that we need to revise our strategic thinking against new variations of maritime threats.
The Houthi campaign opened with the hijacking of the Isle of Man-registered Galaxy Leader. It was seized by helicopter commandos and escorted to Al-Hudaydah, where the 25 member crew remain hostages. Last week, the British-registered freighter Rubymar was damaged by a missile exploding nearby, and is now sinking at the stern — the first to be crippled irreparably. American and British planes have carried out air strikes on Houthi bases inland — but with little effect so far. The adroitness of the Houthi deployment, concealment of bases and supply dumps, and ingenuity of guidance systems for drones and missiles, have taken Western allies by surprise.
The political rationale of the Houthi operation is convoluted. Ostensibly they are attacking pro-Israeli interests to get the fighting in Gaza to stop and aid delivered to the beleaguered Palestinians there. Though supplied by Iran, it is not clear that they are under orders from Tehran, nor how tight their alliance is with Hamas — and if so with what parts of Hamas, those of Gaza, Qatar or Beirut? The path to a negotiated peace for Gaza is unlikely to lead through Sana’a, the Yemen capital.
The message of the Houthis is plain and crude: major maritime choke points are at the mercy of determined maritime banditry
The message of the Houthi action is plain and crude. Many of the major maritime choke points are at the mercy of determined maritime banditry to block the channels.
The straits of Malacca and Sunda in Indonesia have long been a playground of outright commercial piracy, as has been the southern Red Sea and Bab-el-Mandeb to Somali pirates. Potentially it is a free-for-all for state, non-state and neo-state actors, like the Houthis, to cause excess damage.
Costs can run into the billions. One of the biggest bills was incurred by pure accident, however, when the 220,000-tonne monster freighter Ever Given became wedged in the Suez Canal on March 23, 2021, owing to adverse winds and mechanical failure. She stuck for six days at a cost to global trade of $9.6 billion a day, according to Lloyd’s List, with a tailback of 369 ships at the canal entrances. Ever Given eventually docked at Felixstowe four months’ late.
With the onset of global warming, the High Arctic has become the new arena of maritime choke points — as Vladimir Putin has not ceased to remind us, even in his recent major policy speech.
The opening of the notorious Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route across Russia and Europe mean that the journey from China to Europe can be reduced by 2,500 nautical miles, or 40 days sailing time for most super-freighters. Russia is building a fleet of new icebreakers and Canada currently deploys 18.
China, the premier power in maritime commerce in the IMF index, is acutely aware of its maritime constrictions. Just under 80 per cent of all China’s hydrocarbon imports pass through the pirate-plagued Strait of Malacca.
Britain, too, has a very big stake, being the fifth in the IMF ranking of world commercial maritime powers. Wiseacres from Geoffrey Chaucer to Walter Raleigh and Winston Churchill have been acutely aware of Britain’s maritime vulnerability — and potential. Chaucer’s wily merchant was a keen open-seas advocate, and “would that the sea were kept for anything betwixt Middleburgh and Orwell”.
With maritime commerce booming — from $4 trillion 20 years ago to more than $11 trillion, Britain needs to declare its hand and publish a new maritime strategy. It’s a national interest, not to say good national earner.
