US Navy mounts escort service for vessels targeted by Iran-backed militia; Pyongyang fires off over new US sub

(Originally published Dec. 18 in “What in the World“) The U.S. continues to pursue peace by exerting greater military pressure against its foes.

On Sunday, a second U.S. nuclear submarine arrived in South Korea to deter further North Korean aggression. Pyongyang, regular readers may recall, began 2023 with a record number of missile tests. South Korea began suggesting that, if the U.S. didn’t provide greater nuclear protection, it might need to start developing a nuclear deterrent of its own. So Washington promised to park a nuclear sub in Korea. Pyongyang responded to the second sub’s arrival by promising to stop lobbing missiles into the Sea of Japan. Just kidding: it naturally used the arrival as the pretext for launching yet another missile to protest the sub’s arrival. Then today it followed that with the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is launching a maritime protection force in the Red Sea to deter mounting attacks against merchant vessels by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Apparently, sending two carrier groups to the Middle East to deter Iranian-backed militias from retaliating against Western interests for Israel’s war of revenge in Gaza for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel didn’t work. Instead, those two carrier groups only encouraged the militants to be, well, militant. Go figure. If you’re a militant, being militant is kind of your brand.

After first targeting U.S. Navy ships, then Israeli commercial vessels, the Houthis are now seemingly aiming their drones at any commercial vessel that happens to be passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait, where the Red Sea narrows and Yemen and Djibouti are separated by just 20km of water. On Saturday, the U.S. and U.K. navies said they shot down more than a dozen Houthi attack drones.

The new task force is meant to reassure shipping companies that they can continue to use the Suez Canal safely as a short-cut for trade between Europe and Asia. Many have begun sending vessels the long way around, via the Cape of Good Hope. The situation is so dire, and the economic consequences so severe, that the White House is considering launching attacks against the Houthis. And as part of the potential expansion of the war from Gaza to Syria, Iraq and now to Yemen, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier group has sailed out of the Persian Gulf and into the Gulf of Aden.

Anchors aweigh, my boys. But those caissons need to keep rolling along, too, from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. So while the Navy is engaging Iran’s proxies around the Middle East, the U.S. Army and Marines are preparing troops to fight China in Asia’s jungle terrain.