"The Houthis Have Defeated the U.S. Navy," or, What is a Navy For?

A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper in London by former Royal Navy Commander Tom Sharpe was entitled “The Houthis Have Defeated the U.S. Navy.” If that is not correct, it is only because the U.S. Navy has been ordered not to fight.

Sharpe wrote that “The Houthis were not deterred” by the defensive U.S. and allied naval actions, which failed. He continued:

Emboldened by these failures, the Houthis have ramped up their attacks:
Since January, not only have the attacks steadily increased in number, they have diversified too. Drones and cruise missiles were accompanied by hijackings and ballistic missiles. April saw the first use of a surface drone and there has been a steady increase in this method since.
Recently the Houthis have started following up their attacks with small arms fire from fast boats and the last few weeks have seen the amount of attacks increase above what was an average of 2.5 a week.

Sharpe concludes that “Freedom of navigation is in the US Navy’s DNA – now is a bad time for the world’s most powerful navy to abandon that key principle.”

The importance of abandoning that “key principle” is hard to exaggerate because the U.S. Navy’s own definition of its role revolves precisely around it. As an article entitled “What is a Navy For” (in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute) put it, “The Navy’s primary purpose is to sustain friendly commerce by sea.” The U.S. Navy web site entitled “Who We Are” tells us this: 

Since 1775, America’s Navy has maintained freedom of the seas. Not only for our nation, but for our allies and strategic partners. We recruit, train, equip and organize to deliver combat-ready Naval forces while maintaining security and deterrence through sustained forward presence.

The Navy’s “Mission Statement” says “The United States is a maritime nation, and the U.S. Navy protects America at sea. Alongside our allies and partners, we defend freedom, preserve economic prosperity, and keep the seas open and free.”

And a look at the Pacific Command’s self-description yields a document entitled “Lawful Sea Control to Protect Sea Lines of Communication and Chokepoints.” For those who have forgotten their Mahan, it reminds readers that:

Sea lines of communication, or “SLOCs,” are the principal maritime routes between ports, as used for trade, military, or other purposes. SLOCs are, in a sense, maritime highways running through both open oceans and narrower maritime areas. A maritime “chokepoint” is a constricted marine passageway (usually between land areas, like a strait) that separates oceans and seas. Chokepoints are relatively narrow, heavily trafficked, and in some instances located in regions vulnerable to geopolitical instability….Protection of SLOCs and chokepoints is a critical aspect and purpose of sea control.

So it seems the U.S. Navy is clear about its role—about the importance of maintaining sea control and keeping the SLOCs open. The Navy isn’t seeking to abandon that role and there are many reports that it wishes to do more to defeat the Houthi attacks that close SLOCs and have decimated Suez Canal traffic. But it has not been given a green light by the White House, which seeks to avoid what it calls “escalation,” especially (one might guess) in the pre-election period. Thus we read an analysis like Commander Sharpe’s concluding that the Houthis have defeated the U.S. Navy.

As Sharpe says, for the United States to abandon its commitment to freedom of navigation is astonishing and dangerous. If we are unwilling to defend freedom of navigation against a weak enemy like the Houthis, what conclusion can the Chinese draw about our willingness to challenge the PLA Navy? And what conclusions can Iran draw about our willingness to challenge its aggression by proxy?

The Houthis are after all not exactly a major power. They are a minority clan in the backward, impoverished, and divided nation of Yemen. How is it, then, that they can create and shoot cruise missiles and build and arm fast boats? Of course they cannot; these are Iranian weapons. So the refusal of the United States to defeat the Houthis is actually an aspect of U.S. policy toward Iran, not U.S. policy toward Yemen. 

A thought experiment: instead of defending ships that are attacked by the Houthis, or trying to take out launch sites one by one, what if the United States told Iran that we would respond to further missile strikes by hitting targets in Iran, the supplier of the missiles? These are after all not really “Houthi missiles” at all; they are Iranian missiles being fired by an Iranian proxy. What if Iran were told that for every ship sunk by the Houthis, the United States (and, one hopes, its allies) would sink an Iranian ship?

I can hear the screeches now: this is escalation, this means war, this would create instability. But the instability comes from Iran’s aggression—its delivery of weaponry to Yemen with the intent that the weapons be fired to prevent innocent maritime activity and to attack U.S. and other naval vessels. That’s an act of war. Why is Iran allowed complete immunity?

Admiral Mahan, writing over a century ago, would have counseled a more active approach and knew the answer to “What Is A Navy For?” He would have wondered, as Commander Sharpe does, how the Houthis are permitted to defeat the U.S. Navy, interfere with the SLOCs, and end U.S. “sea control” in the Gulf region. Today’s U.S. Navy appears to get all this too. The apparent abandonment of these principles and roles by the United States government is a fateful decision that one must hope is reversed—by this administration in its waning months or by the next one.