By Nirmal P. Acharya
Recently, US Defense Secretary Llyod Austin announced the formation of a 10-nation “multinational security initiative” to “escort” the Red Sea after the Houthi rebels carried out military strikes against Israeli ships and other shipping lines that are going to and from Israel.
The Houthis also nicknamed the “slipper Army”, are a non-governmental armed group in small Yemen, famous for fighting with slippers on their feet.
The vast majority of the world’s shipping lines have diverted to the Cape of Good Hope, which severely weakened Israel’s war capability and, by its side, the European economy following the pause of vessels crossing the Red Sea.
Britain, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the Seychelles have joined the convoy, the Pentagon said. But most of them immediately said they would send only three to five staff officers to the operation. The Seychelles, with an area of 455 square kilometers and a population of 91,000, is probably the size of our Thamel area in Kathmandu. What role can the Seychelles play in these 10 coalition forces?
This military action by the US will surely go down in history because it marks the decline of American military hegemony.
First, in the face of the active attack of the small Houthi armed forces, the US can only respond by “sending troops to escort” and is in a passive defensive position. The second is that the team following the US is too weak, lying flat and rotting without contributing. Third, bringing a small country like Seychelles, with a population of only 90,000 into the team can only let the world know that the US is just bluffing.
In the more than three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has bombed Yugoslavia, flattened Iraq, invaded Syria, occupied Afghanistan, and attacked whomever it wanted, but now it has shown its cowardice in the face of the tiny Houthis. Suffice it to say that the decline of this military supremacy has come rather quickly. The strongest military in the world has found yet another slipper army they can’t defeat.
The US, stuck in the Red Sea by the Houthis, will next be squeezed by greater forces in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It seems that the “Indo-Pacific strategy” can only be a rotten project. Then the MCC, as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy, is doomed.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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