By Charles C. W. Cooke
Monday, March 17, 2025
Has there ever been a case for American military action
as strong as the case for our hitting the Houthis? Pick an ideology or
worldview at random, and you’ll find that the cap fits. The internationalists
ought to be happy that the federal government is protecting trade. The
nationalists ought to be happy that the federal government is retaliating
against attacks on U.S. Navy assets. If consumer inflation is your
preoccupation, this helps. If respect for the United States is your concern,
this works out. If you want an interventionist government, you’ll like it by
default. If you want a government that acts only in extremis, this
counts. It is a self-evident, slam-dunk, literally-what-the-government-is-for
sort of move. This is the bare minimum, the sine qua non, the foundation atop
which all else is built. We have robust arguments in this country about what
Washington, D.C., ought to do, but there is no useful conception of a national
ministry that does not involve the protection of American ships. The federal
government has engaged in this activity since the first Jefferson
administration. There is no reason for it to let up now.
The New York Times reports that the Houthis have
“disrupted” the “international shipping lanes in the Red Sea” for “months” on
end, and, in particular, that they have attacked “shipping lanes connecting to
the Suez Canal that are critical for global trade.” Even if American ships had
not been targeted, this would represent a problem for the United States, which,
since 1945, has taken over the indispensable role of global naval hegemon that,
since 1805, had been played by the British Empire. It is tempting to imagine
that the current state of the world is a permanent feature of the state of
nature — or even that it was foreordained. It was not. Rather, our current
system is the product of concrete choices. It is an overstatement to say that
the world order between the Battle of Waterloo and the present day is primarily
the result of Anglo-American naval preeminence, but it is not too much
of an overstatement. The free movement of goods and people that so many of us
take for granted is the direct consequence of a morally virtuous country being
the most important player on the world stage. Put any other nation in that
position — be it China, Russia, or even France — and things would look rather
different. If the United States wishes to preserve the status quo — and it
ought to, because it benefits immensely itself — it needs to intervene against
its threats.
Suppose you dissent from that view. Even then, the brief
is clear. The federal government exists to represent and to protect the United
States on the world stage, and the Houthis present both a direct and indirect
threat to that charge. They have attacked our ships — which is an act of war
that the executive branch is permitted to respond to unilaterally. And they
have attacked our economy — which, for once, is an infraction that is obviously
covered by the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. As a result of the Houthis’
behavior, ships coming in and out of America have been forced to take expensive
detours around southern Africa. This has caused delays, driven up the price of
both imports and exports, and contributed to persistent inflation. Per one
estimate, three quarters of all U.S. and U.K. vessels have been
dissuaded from traversing the Red Sea since the Houthis’ attacks began, which
has effectively rendered use of the Suez Canal as an occasional option rather
than the default. If there is a circumstance in which the American military is
more presumptively permitted to intervene at will, I’d like to hear it.
One can imagine a set of circumstances in which the
American government might be forced simply to shrug its shoulders and lament
its bad luck. Were a meteor to hit northeastern Egypt, for example, it would
have no choice but to respond with a sigh. But we are talking here about pirates.
Not an act of God, not a temporary inconvenience, not an insurmountable
obstacle. Pirates. And what you do with pirates is: You kill them.
There is no intellectual argument to the contrary. There is no charter or
agreement or norm that contravenes that line. There is no on-the-one-hand-this,
on-the-other-hand-that. There is civilization, and there is piracy, and those
who side with the pirates in that fight are simply wrong. The logical
progression here is a simple one: First, the United States says that it wishes
to bring goods through a route that it’s permitted to transit; second, the
pirates say that they intend to get in the way; and, third, the United States
swiftly destroys the pirates. That President Trump has chosen this course of
action is surprising only because his predecessor chose to dillydally.
Sometimes, sending a gunboat is both the simplest and most righteous response.
Blow them out of the water, lads.
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