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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1159 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 18, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/19/yemen-houthis-claim-deadly-drone-attack-on-tel-aviv-israel

Yemen apparently got a drone through Israeli air defences yesterday, hitting an apartment building near the US embassy and killing one guy. The Houthis clearly don't mess around with these telegraphed, performative missile strikes like Iran, they get things done. I'm still somewhat surprised they've been able to block Suez transit. Since when was Yemen a major power?

The Israelis have vowed to strike back. Presumably they also have to do something about Hezbollah, which has forced evacuations from the north of Israel that continue to today. A few days ago it looked like the Israelis were about to go in on Hezbollah but nothing seems to have happened other than skirmishing. Hamas hasn't been destroyed, nor have the hostages been freed - Israel's war-objectives have not been achieved. Nor has Hamas destroyed Israel either, tbf. The three organizations seem to be slowly chipping away at Israel, wearing down resolve and trust in their government.

Apparently Arabs are good at fighting if their organization starts with 'H'.

I'm still somewhat surprised they've been able to block Suez transit. Since when was Yemen a major power?

Seems like at current levels of technology navies are just outmoded? A lot of fundamental issues are stacked against them. Sea and air based suicide drones are available to countries with very low levels of development. Missiles available at levels barely above that. On the other hand anti air is more costly to develop and operate.

We see this dynamic a lot in the Ukr-Rus war, modern western AA and the higher end Russian stuff can be overwhelmed with saturation attacks via mixed drones + missiles. At sea this problem is compounded given that you are even more limited when it comes to your supply of AA missiles and can't easily be resupplied. Also with the advances in surveillance there is no way to hide at sea. You are basically a floating AA with a limited supply of missiles sitting on a featureless plane. Seems like this dynamic will just get worse with computer vision and other basic AI features becoming more and more available which can overcome EW.

On the other hand when it comes to shutting down land based missiles and drones the task has become nearly impossible. They can be hidden from satellite and drone surveillance on land though this is more difficult than in the past, but the biggest problem is shutting down supply. There is no obvious "missile factory" or industrial supply chain that we can target or sanction because we've globalized industry which means parts can just be sourced from all over the place and the weapons pieced together on site or at a neighboring country and then shipped in bypassing sanctions. Again we see this with the sanctions failing when it came to Russia and the US looking like lunatics complaining about China exporting washing machines due to "dual use" components helping Russia's war. Navies just kinda suck now.

The only way to defeat the Houthis is to just starve the population until so many die that support for them either falls or the whole movement crumbles. Unfortunately that would be a war crime and millions of civilians would die, which is also what limited the joint UK-US action there. Plus nobody really wants to have to pacify Yemeni Shias afterwards which everyone knows would be an endless insurgency. Egypt doesn’t want to get involved because the people sympathize with Hamas anyway and the army faction don’t want to risk almost getting overthrown by the MB (ie Hamas’ affiliate) again, plus there was that whole failed war in the 60s that left long scars.

Israel’s war aims were fake PR goals for the plebs, nobody in the IDF believes that Islamist insurgency is going to be destroyed in Gaza, or that Hezbollah can be conventionally defeated without US boots on the ground. They can bomb South Beirut into a crater but 250k civilians would die, it’s unclear how deep the Hezb bunkers might go and they have now spread a lot of assets and senior leadership across Southern Lebanon so no decapitating strike is possible there either, plus the resulting attack on Tel Aviv would deal a big economic blow to Israel (whereas Lebanon is already and will remain a basket case) even if casualties were manageable, while Hezbollah doesn’t give a fuck about the Lebanese economy.

Judging by Vance and Trump’s extreme pro-Israel position so far, the Israelis seem to be trying to prolong this until January, after which they can provoke a big Hezb-Iranian attack and trigger some kind of US response.

I don't think the US has another Middle Eastern adventure in the tank at this point. Between Europe, Asia and the last 20 years they're tapped out. Trump might try but the end result will surely be another quagmire and Chinese hegemony. There is no CIPAC, China is much more likely to favour the oily lands and their pals in Tehran over their great rival's proxy.

If I were in charge of Israel, I'd start settling my conflicts quickly.

The only way to defeat the Houthis is to just starve the population until so many die that support for them either falls or the whole movement crumbles.

I've thought this for a while about both the Yemen war and everything about Palestine. If aid was cut off these states would not only starve, but they would be robbed of a significant source of income from what they skim off the top of aid shipments. To say nothing of the Iranian military aid mixed into the humanitarian aid.

We did worse to the Belgians in WW1, but now we can't lift a finger to protect our own interests.

Herbert Hoover and the United States averted the Belgian famine, there's no "we".

I'm still somewhat surprised they've been able to block Suez transit. Since when was Yemen a major power?

Since nobody did anything about it.

Like, seriously, I'm surprised they haven't been flattened.

More to the point- since when did it take a major power to block Suez transit?

The technology that the Houthis are using to disrupt shipping is not particularly advanced. Military drones are not the sole domain of great powers, and haven't been for nearly a decade. The technology is ubiquitous, and well within the capacity of small states, especially when backed/supplied by other states.

Sure, some goat herders with a steady stream of Iranian drones can shut the straight down. But major powers(US, India, Saudi, France) can also bomb them back into the Stone Age, which they aren’t doing.

Bomb who, the goat herders? Goat herders are already Stone Age tech levels.

Iran, in turn, is a power who is at nuclear breakout capacity, which is to say that by the time they could be bombed back to the stone age, doing so would not only be extremely expensive on multiple fronts- more expensive than the impact to the Suez Canal- but by the time it could be accomplished, the Mullahs would almost certain bite the bullet and produce nuclear weapons for use.

Wrecking some tents in the desert doesn’t really do anything except kill some teenaged boys(and probably a bunch of slaves, traders, etc), but I highly doubt these drones are launched from random meadows that they’re brought to on the back of a camel/Toyota tundra. Hangars, launchsites, maintenance facilities, fueling equipment- all that can be blown up to the point of ‘goat herders can’t shoot at ships anymore’.

Not really. Your conception of how much it takes to launch drones like the Houthis is probably way, way, way more than is actually required.

Drones may fly, but they require nothing even within the same magnitude of care or capital and infrastructure as, say, your average commercial airport. When your requirements are that small-scale and ubiquitous- a 'maintenance facility' for a cheapo drone can be as minimal as a tarp on sticks- well, those tents in the desert are your hangers, maintenance facilities, and fueling depots. And well, precision munitions are expensive, and tarps and basic building materials are really, really cheap.

And that's just the monetary cost.

Yeah the beauty of modern drone weapons is that pretty much any electronics hobbyist has more than enough skill and money to build and fly them. State-level weapons at individual-level prices.

Well the US and UK bombed various parts of Yemen, who knows whether it was decoys or anything important. They sent a bunch of escorts for Operation Prosperity Guardian, which seems to have effectively failed.

Frankly I’m starting to believe the conspiracy theories about the attack on the USS Eisenhower. I don’t put much stock in Houthi press releases, but the behavior of the US and EU navies is much more consistent with that story being true than not true.

What story is that?

The Houthis claim they hit the USS Eisenhower with a missile while it was patrolling the Red Sea, and damaged it pretty badly. The US Navy denies it, but the ship did have to abruptly leave the Red Sea for “repairs” a day after the Houthis made the claim. And there’s some evidence it had to be towed, and wasn’t moving under its own power.

Interesting. If true that would be a big blow to the idea that US aircraft carriers are nigh-invincible.

A squadron of Israeli F-35s have just bombed an oil depot on Yemen, likely in response to the Houthi attack on Tel-Aviv yesterday. The Houthi’s are promising further attacks in the coming days.

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