Podcast

Sea Control 516 – U.S. Navy Alliances in the Cold War with Dr. Corbin Williamson

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By Jared Samuelson

Dr. Corbin Williamson joins the program to discuss his book, The U.S. Navy and its Cold War Alliances, 1945-1953. Corbin is a professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

Download Sea Control 516 – U.S. Navy Alliances in the Cold War with Dr. Corbin Williamson

Links

1. The US Navy and its Cold War Alliances, 1945-1953, by Corbin Williamson, University of Kansas Press, 2020. 

Jared Samuelson is Co-Host and Executive Producer of the Sea Control podcast. Contact him at Seacontrol@cimsec.org.

This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling.

Red Sea Topic Week

The Strategic Abuse of Maritime Security in the Red Sea

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Red Sea Topic Week

By Alexandru Cristian Hudișteanu

Global trade is the backbone of modern lifestyles and economies, with some 90 percent of trade being carried by sea. The non-maritime world has become more aware of the global shipping system’s importance during the supply chain troubles of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Suez Canal blockage of March 2021, and the recent grain challenges of the Black Sea. But the awareness of its importance has not necessarily been matched by a similar awareness of its need for protection. If one could traditionally look at maritime security as a stable state of affairs where stakeholders can conduct maritime business without fear, then this ideal helps highlight a different dimension to maritime security. It can become a token, a poker chip in the game of international power struggles.

In practice, maritime security is usually viewed from the lens of what disturbs it, based on an insecurity perspective. Most of the time this has to do with piracy and armed robbery at sea, illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing, illicit trafficking, and terrorism. All of these threats typically come from lightly equipped non-state actors. But the Houthis’ actions of recent months, targeted against shipping in the Red Sea, highlights a disruptive method of how to leverage maritime security in service of power struggles. Now we can consider maritime security from the perspective of who selectively grants it, under threat of force, and for self-serving ends.

The Houthis commenced a maritime insecurity campaign in the Bab el-Mandeb area. Their claimed reasoning for attacking the ships is rather simple. Actors that help Israel become legitimate targets in the Houthis’ eyes, with “help” being very broadly defined. But what is at play here is the transformation of maritime security into a bargaining chip, a token in a larger-stakes game the Houthis are playing at the expense of the global economy. Almost everyone is potentially drawn into this game given the complicated jurisdictions involved in shipping and the interconnected economies that are being affected. For every given ship at sea, the flag state jurisdiction, ownership of vessel, operating responsibilities, cargo ownership, crew nationalities, and maritime jurisdictions are highly variable. This mosaic offers a wide variety of pretexts for an opportunistic attacker. For every ship attacked by the Houthis, a large number of stakeholders are affected in various degrees. These consequences occur regardless of whether the vessel has much of a defensible connection to the Houthis’ ill-defined rules of engagement or concepts of target legitimacy.

Given the circumstances, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC, CMA-CGM, and Maersk (four out of the five largest container shipping companies) announced their unwillingness to sail their ships through the Red Sea for significant periods of time. Shipping traveling between Asia and Europe will have to instead pass by the Cape of Good Hope – adding an extra 3,200 nautical miles to the journey, or nine-days delay at 15 knots. This results in an increase in cost of about $2,300 dollars per container shipped from China, for a total of about $3,500 per container shipped. For those brave enough to still pass through the Red Sea threat area, their premiums increased considerably and the shipping companies added surcharges to account for the risk. To make matters worse, several protection and indemnity insurance companies now enforce “no liability clauses” in case of attacks by the Houthis. This incurs extra costs and time delays for the shipping that should pass through the Red Sea, an estimated 13 percent of the world trade by volume, to include 30 percent of the global container traffic, and 10 percent of the oil traded by sea.

One can assume the Houthis are well aware of the costs inflicted by their abuse against the global maritime system, endowing maritime security with value as a bargaining chip they could crudely trade for their interests. The Houthis’ true “hand” is unknown, in the sense the world does not know for how long and to what extent they are willing to threaten maritime security. The possible geopolitical gain for the Houthis may be unrelated to the actual effects of restoring maritime insecurity.

The growing opportunity to strategically abuse maritime security is being driven by two developments – the proliferation of unmanned systems, and the optimistic assumptions about maritime security that undergird the growing global dependence on maritime trade. The affordability and availability of weaponized unmanned systems is highlighting how capabilities that were once maintained by powerful states are now in the hands of more actors, especially less scrupulous ones. This challenge is magnified by how expensive countermeasures can be, which can require power projection assets and area defense capabilities that are much more expensive than the unmanned systems they are intercepting.

This type of maritime insecurity campaign also confers significant decision advantage to the abusers. While the Houthis can select when and what to attack, the defenders need to be alert at all times and be well-positioned to intercept drones and missiles on very short notice. If the defenders cannot definitively destroy or deter the underlying enabling capabilities, the abusers can have the advantage of deciding of when to stop or renew the maritime insecurity campaign at their convenience. Defending shipping lanes and protecting freedom of navigation under these circumstances is no easy feat. Persistent threats may warrant a credible deterrent presence in the area, which incurs significant cost and keeps assets locked into indefinite tasking.

Many stakeholders have operated with an underlying assumption that maritime security is a given and expanded their operations for years without regard for potentially serious disruptions. This underlying assumption now offers significant leverage to opportunistic actors like the Houthis, who can abuse maritime security with great effect. The highly interconnected nature of the global maritime system offers even local non-state actors numerous pressure points for influencing the global economy. This creates major demands for maritime domain awareness, presence operations, and international partnerships to ensure opportunistic actors cannot turn local maritime insecurity into global economic consequence for the sake of leverage.

The world should prepare to see similar abuses of maritime security. The Houthis have offered a blueprint for abusing maritime security to serve interests that have nothing to do with the maritime domain itself. How may the international community react if this situation multiplies, and especially if more powerful states start to employ similar methods? The sustainability of how we ensure maritime security may come under significant strain, potentially calling the bluff of numerous democratic navies who have long based their relevance on providing maritime security and protecting rules-based order at sea. The situation may become severe enough to where ensuring maritime security in blanket fashion might outweigh the costs of selective acquiesce. Interest in rules-based order make take a backseat to cold calculations of economics and politics, leading to compromises that may be increasingly willing to accept the loss of life at sea.

Alexandru Cristian Hudișteanu is a Romanian Naval Forces Officer current serving at the Maritime Security Centre of Excellence (MARSEC COE), in Istanbul, Türkiye.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the official views of NATO, the Romanian Naval Forces, or MARSEC COE.

Featured Image: Armed men stand on the beach as the Galaxy Leader commercial ship, seized by Yemen’s Houthis, is anchored off the coast of al-Salif, Yemen, December 5, 2023. (Photo via Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

Podcast

Sea Control 515 – A New Age of Naval Power with Dr. Alessio Patalano

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By Jared Samuelson

Dr. Alessio Patalano joins the program to discuss his article for TIME, “The New Age of Naval Power.” Alessio is a professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

Download Sea Control 515 – A New Age of Naval Power with Dr. Alessio Patalano

Links

1. “The New Age of Naval Power,” by Alessio Patalano, TIME, March 5, 2024.  

Jared Samuelson is Co-Host and Executive Producer of the Sea Control podcast. Contact him at Seacontrol@cimsec.org.

This episode was edited and produced by Jim Jarvie.

Red Sea Topic Week

Basing U.S. Ships in Nearby Waters to Counter Threats in the Red Sea

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Red Sea Topic Week

By Michael D. Purzycki

American missile strikes on Houthi forces threatening shipping in the Red Sea show the Navy’s importance in protecting one of the busiest trade routes on the planet. Aggression by Iran and its proxy forces throughout the Middle East shows no signs of abating. In light of this reality, the Navy’s workhorses, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, likely look forward to more action in the region as their construction continues thirty years on. Despite countering China in the Indo-Pacific becoming the primary focus of maritime strategy and deterring Russian aggression, the U.S. still benefits from maintaining a naval presence in the waters around the Arabian Peninsula.

Getting vessels to the Red Sea and other bodies of water east of the Suez Canal is resource- and time-consuming. For example, it takes approximately 20 days for an aircraft carrier homeported in San Diego to reach the Middle East. Moreover, any vessel from the Pacific Fleet deployed to the Middle East will not be available to protect American interests and allies in the western Pacific. Should China invade Taiwan and the U.S. find itself needing additional destroyers, America’s ability to patrol the Red Sea would be severely limited.

U.S. vessels can also sail from the East Coast, crossing the Atlantic and the Mediterranean before transiting through the Suez Canal; however, American access to the canal is not guaranteed. Egypt’s economy is far from stable. In March 2024, Egypt accepted a multibillion-dollar bailout from the International Monetary Fund to decrease its large national debt. Furthermore, despite being a longstanding U.S. ally receiving over $1B a year in aid from Washington, Egypt’s military is increasingly reliant on Russia for its weaponry. Meanwhile, a $28.5B surge of Chinese money in 2018 and 2019 made Egypt the number one Arab recipient of Chinese investment.

These factors make Egypt vulnerable to pressure from America’s rivals. For example, Egypt may face another wheat shortage, as it did in the early stages of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia could offer Egypt food aid in exchange for denying the U.S. access to the Suez Canal. Similarly, China could seek to pressure Egypt via “debt trap diplomacy,” placing the country deep in debt with the promise of relief if Cairo ceased being friendly to Washington. When sending vessels eastward through the canal, the U.S. Navy needs a backup plan.

The need for a U.S. naval presence in and around the Red Sea, combined with the uncertainty of America’s ability to regularly send vessels to that region, portends the basing of U.S. vessels in or around the Fifth Fleet area of responsibility. First, a willing host country must be found. While the Navy’s Task Force 59 demonstrated the ability of unmanned vessels to perform certain tasks in countering Iranian naval forces, the need to confront the Houthis, future Iranian proxies, or similar threats on land points to destroyers as the weapons of choice. Basing destroyers in the region rather than rotating them through would demonstrate the U.S. is committed to protecting global trade and confronting Iran’s threats to it, even as it sees the Indo-Pacific as the Navy’s primary theater in the coming years. It would also reduce transit times, increasing responsiveness while preserving hull service life.

The Navy need not be alone in basing forces in this part of the world. In a Brookings Institution paper, “How to Be a “Cheap Hawk” in the 2020s,” defense expert Michael O’Hanlon advocated basing U.S. Air Force tactical fighter squadrons in the Middle East, including Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. This would help the U.S. deter Iranian aggression without the burden of rotating Air Force F-15Es or F-35As to the Gulf from other regions, incurring significant logistical burdens with each rotation. The basing of naval vessels is complementary to this logic.

The deployment of U.S. destroyers to Naval Station Rota, Spain, for more than a decade provides an example of the value of a similar deployment east of Suez would bring. While their primary mission is missile defense, protecting NATO members against potential Russian attack, their proximity to North Africa and the Levant provides availability for contingency operations. For instance, they may perform missions similar to the anti-Houthi strikes, or to quell a resurgent Islamic State. Pleased with the capabilities provided by the arrangement, the Navy is increasing the number of destroyers based in Rota from four to six. The question of where American ships should be based is difficult to answer. Several possibilities present themselves, all of which have pros and cons. Perhaps the most glaring issue is that all the countries discussed below are within range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, some fitted with maritime seekers to target ships. While this is an issue worth considering, the benefits of nearby basing account for almost every contingency other than full-blown war in the region. Discussed below are four potential host countries.

United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.)

The U.A.E. has major ports potentially available for basing U.S. ships. For example, Jebel Ali is the Navy’s busiest foreign port. Political factors work in the Navy’s favor. The U.A.E. and Bahrain were among the first Arab countries to sign the Abraham Accords, ending their longstanding non-recognition of Israel. It is also part of I2U2, a multilateral partnership consisting of India, Israel, the U.A.E., and the U.S. While not primarily a security partnership, it can facilitate security cooperation between countries whose interests sometimes align.

Security may be an issue in the U.A.E., especially regarding China. The U.A.E. collaborated with China to provide domestic network services, acquire drones, and develop artificial intelligence systems. In 2021, China was forced to abandon constructing a major facility in the U.A.E. after the U.S. alleged that it had military purposes. Before the U.S. decided to base warships in U.A.E. ports, it would need to ensure the U.A.E. took strong measures to prevent China from compromising its utility.

Oman

Oman may offer the best geographical location. It is close enough to the Iranian coast and the Red Sea so that U.S. ships based there could quickly transit between them. Tying Oman to the U.S. through basing, and possibly with a major non-NATO ally status attached, could make up for the fact that Oman has refused to sign the Abraham Accords. Furthermore, the United Kingdom operates a major military presence in Oman, offering a chance to further Anglo-American cooperation on Middle East security threats.

On the other hand, Oman has worked for many years to maintain good relations with Iran and the U.S. It may refuse to be forced to choose between one or the other. The fact that the U.S. used Omani facilities does not mean that the interests of Omanis and Americans are aligned.

Kenya

If the U.S. is looking for a location more suitable for operations in the Red Sea than for countering Iran, Kenya would be a good choice. The country has the potential to be an important partner for the U.S. in and beyond Africa, and its international actions in recent years have frequently been conducive to American interests. In 2022, Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations gave a stirring condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine. More recently, Kenya signed a deal with Haiti to allow Kenyan police officers to serve as peacekeepers in the troubled Caribbean country. A presence in eastern Africa can also help the U.S. counter China in the western Indian Ocean. Also, as with Oman, the United Kingdom maintains a military presence in Kenya, which the U.S. could potentially build on for Anglo-American cooperation in Middle Eastern and Indo-Pacific security efforts.

A drawback is that Kenya is further away from the Red Sea than Oman. Thus, while basing destroyers there could help counter threats in the Red Sea, it may do little to help deter Iran in the Persian Gulf. Also, Nairobi may not want to place itself firmly in Washington’s corner, as there would still be times when it wanted to maintain good relations with Moscow and Beijing.

India

If the United States wants to make India a major partner in its efforts to balance China throughout the Indo-Pacific, basing U.S. ships on India’s western coast would help while offering a location to enter the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Red Sea. India is already a major U.S. defense partner, a status similar to a major non-NATO ally. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), of which India is a member, emerged in recent years as an important theater for security cooperation by powerful democracies to balance China. Tightening security cooperation while basing naval forces in southern Asia to counter Iranian threats nearby would be of great benefit.

There are several risks to this idea. India is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security forum that includes Russia and China. India probably does not want to stray too far from good relations with Russia, still a major arms supplier. It would also not want to pigeonhole itself as a U.S. ally, despite its worries about China’s rise threatening its interests. Also, France is pursuing major arms sales with India. Drawing India too close to the U.S. could threaten to scuttle the French deal, potentially repeating the kerfuffle over the AUKUS security partnership.

This is not an exhaustive list of possible host nations. While each of these suggested locations has drawbacks, unconventional thinking by the Navy is called for when confronting asymmetrical threats like the Houthis. The Indo-Pacific’s status as the major region of American maritime engagement does not mean the U.S. can afford to ignore the Red Sea. Finding ways to tackle both at once is a goal worth pursuing.

Michael D. Purzycki is an analyst, writer, and editor based in Arlington, Virginia. He has worked for the United States Navy, Marine Corps, and Army. The views expressed here are entirely his own.

Featured Image: The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun (DDG 103), top, operates in the Red Sea, May 1, 2023, while supporting the Department of State’s efforts to evacuate U.S. citizens and others from Sudan.

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.