Aden: Challenging the Status-Quo

Already going through the crucial transition period from the unipolar world of the New Order to today’s multipolar world of the revisionist powers of Russia, China and Iran, the war crisis between Yemen and the US-UK Strait of Aden is a turning point in lifting the post-war geopolitical balance with global geopolitical ramifications, a fact that will in the future be taught in university traditions of political and military history, centers and included in strategy textbooks.

The ongoing crisis in the Straits of Aden is directly linked to the Palestinian Question due to the war in the Gaza Strip. The move by Yemen’s decade-long de facto Houthi government based in the capital Sana’a to militarily strike Israeli-owned merchant ships plying the Straits is in solidarity with the Palestinians and prompted a military response by the US and Britain with bombing. Positions of the Houthis have been attacked in order deter of the Yemenis from further action. At the level of rhetoric, Washington and London accuse the Houthis of disrupting global navigation and are completely silent on the relationship between the Aden crisis and the Palestinian one.

The US is facing an unprecedented questioning of its power and its ability to control the Strait of Aden and the wider Middle East. Unlike Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan who were isolated and “ripe fruit” ready to fall due to isolation and years of financial sanctions against them, the Houthis are not alone. They are a key ally of the Palestinian Resistance Front which includes Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Iran. A key element of this front is the mutual support of its members and the enlarged front they are able to activate in the event of a regional escalation of the war in Palestine.

The aforementioned Islamic alliance has built a unified model of organization and action in the Middle East based on artillery power, on the basis of Iran’s weaponized ballistic program and their underground military facilities that effectively render the US Air Force ineffective. Despite repeated US airstrikes against Houthi positions, the Americans have failed to deter and weaken the Houthis who continue to respond with missile strikes against Israeli tanker interests and commercial cargo.

With their action, the Houthis openly challenge the British and American dominance of the Strait since 1917. They know that the US and its allies in the region do not have extensive ground forces in the Middle East, while their air superiority is not sufficient to impose their will on the ground. In the event of a regional escalation, the Americans will have to face an expanded front with coordinated action and overlap with the Houthis and their allies against American and Israeli targets in Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula. In such an eventuality the US Air Force would not be able to engage operationally over such a large area and multiple theaters of operations. And this without counting the Russians and the Chinese, who even have a military base in Djibouti.

For many, the change in the status quo in the Straits of Aden has begun and only immediate peace in the Palestinian area can slow down, or even stop, this change. If the war in Gaza does not stop, the accelerated change in control of the Straits may have dramatic implications for the security of not only the Straits but the entire Arabian Peninsula and more broadly to a degree and extent not seen by the world since 1917.