The Dumbest Arguments

 For some reason, foreign and military policy seems to engender the dumbest arguments. Yesterday, a multinational force struck Houthi missile sites, because they were striking at international shipping in the Red Sea. Remember "Stuck Ship" and how that created knock on effects in the entire global economy? Same shipping channel.

First, you get this typical Times bothsides nonsense. In this instance "the Middle East" largely refers to the Iranian coalition that would object if the US declared itself in favor of puppies and kittens. Really? Hamas and Hezbollah aren't fans of the US striking back at their ally? Unpossible! 

Yes, there is other, better coverage in the Times. Tellingly, you get bits like this:

Yahya Sarea, a Houthi spokesman, has said frequently that the group is attacking ships to protest the “killing, destruction and siege” in Gaza and to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The idea that striking at international shipping lanes would somehow alleviate the suffering in Gaza is nonsense. The entire point is to activate popular sentiment in the West that has become somewhat reflexively pro-Palestinian/Hamas. Hamas, need one  be reminded, is fucking awful. And, yes, Netanyahu's government is awful, too. But the idea that making a strike at a critical global shipping lane that could have an immediate and tangible effect on global inflation is going to help innocent Palestinians is simple bullshit.

We also have the reflexive, illogical and ahistorical "pacifist" left in the US, who will accuse Biden of getting us involved in a Middle Eastern war. As Josh Marshall has argued (and I completely agree) Biden's decision to get out of Afghanistan was bold, proper and necessary. Biden's foreign policy is clear-eyed and restrained. He's doing everything possible to keep us out of Middle Eastern wars and limit the expansion of the Gazan War. 

There's no doubt that the Houthi actions were designed to get the West, broadly speaking, involved in a shooting war. However, the Houthi will not be the first group to underestimate the military capabilities of the United States and NATO. We aren't putting boots on the ground in Yemen, but Houthi capacity to strike at shipping is going to collapse in short order.

Increasingly, we have to understand the current situation in the world as having, perhaps, four blocs. 

The first bloc is the "Liberal North." This is NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. You can add Ukraine and other various countries around the world who broadly subscribe the idea of the liberal order. These are democratic countries, for the most part, who actively want peace.

The second bloc runs through Moscow and Tehran. These are cultural and political reactionary regimes, committed to authoritarianism, illiberal cultural issues and anti-"Western" politics. Russia is launching Iranian drones at Ukraine and Russian mercenaries backed the Iranian-allied regime in Syrian. 

The third bloc are the largely unaligned, yet "West-skeptical" countries of the developing world. India is the primary locus of this bloc, but it runs through most of Africa and parts of Latin America. Their position is changeable, but anti-colonial politics makes open alliance with the Liberal North bloc difficult.

The fourth bloc is China, and there are ties with this bloc and the previous one. China has been flexing its economic muscle in Africa, in particular, and they have real influence there. China's problem is that their economy is still struggling, and they need a broader global economic recovery. These wars of choice by the Moscow/Tehran axis are not good for business, and the stark limits of Russian military prowess are on display in Ukraine. China also imports 60% of its oil, and they likely aren't keen on a broader Middle Eastern war either.

Finding a "day after" solution to the Gazan War is impossible with Netanyahu in power. However, there should be common ground between the Liberal North and China and her allies. Whether China would be willing or able to pull some strings in Moscow is very much in doubt. A collapse in oil shipments from the Gulf would help Moscow. However, building some sort of peace coalition with the Global North, the West-Skeptics and China needs to become the Biden Administration's new goal.