On Monday February 19th, the Yemeni group Ansar Allah reported that they had sunk a British cargo ship—the Rubymar—in the Red Sea. The missile strike on the Rubymar is a component of the Ansar Allah (commonly called the Houthis) naval campaign of solidarity piracy to pressure for an end to the Israeli genocide being committed against Palestinians.
The same day they also announced that in addition to sinking the freighter they downed a US MQ-9 Reaper drone aircraft. Actions like these, despite resulting in no deaths, have drawn the ire and exposed the frailty of the decaying empires of the west. For these soulless empires, the shipping of commodities is deemed of higher value than the lives of Palestinian children.
A few days later, in what could easily be passed off as Monty Pyton-esque satire, the British Broadcasting Corporation excitedly reported that the Rubymar had not been sunk. “Take that Houthis!” the Brits seemed to exclaim, revealing the wounded ego of the centuries-old monarchy. “There is nothing to see here, the empire is still in control.” Beyond the gotcha headline, the startling discovery was that though the ship was not sunk “yet”, the picture showed a ship half in the water, and the article quoted the vessel’s operator as stating that the severely damaged Rubymar was being towed to nearby Djibouti and that it could still sink.
With 70 percent of world cargo by value passing through maritime routes deemed “delicate” and “prone to disruption,” the ship of capitalism is a leaky vessel, hardly ship-shape in crisis prone waters.
The same could perhaps be said for the standing of imperial power of the west. If the empires of the United States and Kingdom have not yet sunk, they are clearly in decline. The actions of Ansar Allah, a relatively small military group that demonstrates its strength with videos of soldiers in matching hats crouching in the desert of one of the most resource-robbed countries in the world, demonstrate tremendous courage in taking on the world’s most powerful capitalist states.
Since Ansar Allah began targeting US, UK and other ships destined for Israeli ports, most of the world’s container ship carriers have diverted shipping to the much longer and costlier route around the southern cape of Africa. The impact has been profound, affecting an estimated 7 million barrels of oil, 15 percent of all world trade, and 40 percent of all global container shipping. The capitalist analysts from institutions like Deutsche Bank comment that these disruptions reflect “how delicate global supply chains are.” With 70 percent of world cargo by value passing through maritime routes deemed “delicate” and “prone to disruption,” the ship of capitalism is a leaky vessel, hardly ship-shape in crisis prone waters. But it drives on despite this, carried mercilessly forward by the “remorseless emperor”—to quote Melville’s Ahab—of profit.
Exposing the Imperial Paper Tiger
In a growing sign of imperial impotence, the valiant and disruptive actions of Ansar Allah are taking place under the very nose of the military might of the US and its allies. The routes to the Suez Canal flow through the 16 mile Bab-el-Mandeb, the “gates of lamentation.” More narrow than the British Channel, it is directly across the strait from Djibouti. Djibouti, a country with a population of just about a million people, is home to military bases of China, France, Japan, NATO, the EU, and houses Camp Lemonier, the largest US naval base in Africa. Lemonier is a colonial inheritance and was previously a military base of the French colonial domination of Djibouti. Additionally the US Navy’s busiest port of call in the world also sits in the region in Dubai’s port of Jebel Ali.1Laleh Khalili, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso 2020), 260
To protect access to oil and shipping, the US revamped its military focus on the region in 1983 with the creation of the US Central Command (USCENTCOM) and the expansion of permanent military bases and infrastructure around the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.2Khalili 258 The imperial maneuver came as part of counter-revolutionary efforts in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, wherein the US’s loyal gendarme, the Shah, was ousted from power. Prior to the revolution, Iran and the watchdog state of Israel helped secure US interests in the region. In 1980, Democratic President Jimmy Carter declared that any attempt to control the Persian Gulf—a long way away from the borders of the American state—was an “assault on the vital interest of the United States” to be “repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”3Quoted in Khalili 258
Yemen Defiant
And yet, even in the jackbooted shadow of US military might, the scrappy Yemeni fighters carry out regular attacks on US and UK freight and military vessels. In response to retaliatory airstrikes, massive demonstrations have filled Yemen’s streets defiantly declaring solidarity with Palestine and also taunting the actions of the world’s most powerful military, chanting “we don’t care, we don’t care, we don’t care, make it a world war, our heart longs for a rifle.” Last month Ansar Allah political bureau member Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti declared their willingness to fight till the end “even if the whole world comes together against us.” Rather than avoid conflict with the US, Al-Bukhaiti on January 28th stated that “we hope that the battle will be direct between us and the Americans” and that a US invasion “would be good for us.”
There is certainly a lot to be criticized in the conservative and repressive politics of Ansar Allah, and support for Palestine cannot be considered the sole motivation for their actions. Their role within Yemen is authoritarian and hardly progressive, and their movement is not one that should be given “communist coloring.” But their courageous defiance and willingness to take on US empire throws a wrench in the gears of global capitalism. In the context of most of the regional states’ criminal silence (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries et al), complicity in genocide (Egypt), or profound restraint (Iran and Hezbollah) while Israel massacres Palestinians, the actions in Yemen stand out and resonate throughout the region. In demonstrations in Egypt, revolutionaries chanted “They did it, Sanaa’s [capital of Yemen] grandchildren, They exposed the treachery of the collaborators.” This is counterposed, as the chant goes, to the inaction of the other countries internationally who “are in shame, fear and humiliation.”
The shame falls on almost every government in the world who at most have only mustered the courage to fill the marble halls of the UN with strong words, phrases, and empty resolutions while Palestinian children are blown apart. Even so, the decrepit ghouls of the US cannot even tolerate these gestures, as US delegates have routinely voted against and vetoed the numerous UN resolutions in favor of ceasefire and ending the slaughter. Biden’s mission to reinstitute the US back at the head of the world’s table appears to be losing its ideological hold. In the most recent vote for the Algerian-motivated resolution for a ceasefire the British could only muster an abstention. What kind of failing project abstains from a vote regarding genocide?
The craven nature of states like Britain is on full display. As Ansar Allah commander Sayyed Abdulmalik Badr El-Din Al-Houthi called out on February 22nd: “The British are implicated, harmed, foolish, and stupid for involving themselves in what does not concern them.”
Flagrant US Hypocrisy
What does concern the capitalist statesmen is the defense of profits. While the US claims it “can’t do anything” to stop Israel and only “works behind the scenes” to reign in the slaughter, Biden’s moved swiftly to cohere an intervention against Ansar Allah in the form of Operation Prosperity Guardian, aiming among other things to allow cars to be delivered to Israel. The abject hypocrisy of the US has been visible at every turn. The US claims to be “encouraging our allies to limit the many civilian casualties” at the same time it sells billions of dollars of weaponry to Israel. The White House assures us that it expresses “concern about overreach” while simultaneously circumventing congressional oversight to refill Zionist guns emptied into Palestinian families. Soulless US bureaucrats assure us they are doing all they can while they cut funding for the UNRWA aid organization providing critical lifelines for Palestinians in Gaza, guaranteeing famine and plague.
While the cash spigot flows unhindered to Israel, Biden claims basic domestic measures like relieving student debt or providing healthcare for all Americans are impossible. In an October interview with 60 Minutes, when asked if he thinks the US can afford more support for Israel, Biden cavalierly responded with outrage at the absurdity of the question. “We are the United States of America for god’s sake! the most powerful nation in this history of the world!”
In a further absurdly hypocritical move, the US military’s response to the sinking of the Rubymar has been to warn of—this is not a joke—the environmental impact due to the oil and fertilizer it was carrying. “The Houthis continue to demonstrate disregard for the regional impact of their indiscriminate attacks” USCENTCOM tweeted, “threatening the fishing industry, coastal communities, and imports of food supplies.” Statements like this are almost laughable in contrast with the US’s complete backing of the explicit genocide campaign being carried out by Israel.
Even in terms of a strict concern with the environment, the US has no ground to stand on. Never mind that the US Department of Defense is the world’s largest polluter, never mind that the shipping being protected is dominated by fossil fuels driving climate collapse, or that 20 percent of the US military’s annual operational emissions go towards protecting fossil fuel interests in the Gulf region. Never mind that emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, or that experts have warned that chemical warfare carried out on Gaza by the IOF will have a “long-term impact on the soil and crops” to “devastating” effect.
Rumbles in the Region
Ansar Allah’s sanctions administered on shipping complicit with Zionism have resulted in a new emphasis on ground transport routes from Dubai’s port traversing through the UAE, Saudia Arabia and Jordan into Israel. This new land-bridge was developed partially by an Israeli company named Trucknet and was modeled on food supply logistics created by the Israeli military. It is less an alternative for global trade but—as pointed out by one shipping company spokesperson—“a niche solution for shipments specifically to Israel.”
Empire in decline means the intensification and militarization of states and borders.
This attempt to circumvent the Ansar Allah humanitarian naval blockade has met opposition in Jordan. Jordan has seen demonstrations of historical size in solidarity with Palestine, resulting in December in the largest general strike in its history, shutting down the economy for Gaza. Multiple times in February, Jordanians have come out to disrupt and block the transport of goods into Israel, with hundreds forming a human chain in front of trucks on February 16. The Jordanian state has carried out mass arrests against these standing in solidarity against genocide.
Harbinger of Futures
In a recent piece in The Nation, Dylan Saba clarified the stakes of this moment succinctly:
What we are witnessing in Gaza—a resource-deprived, stateless population pushed to the absolute limits of desperation in a violent confrontation with an advanced military power intent on excluding as many noncitizens as possible—is as likely to be a vision into the future as a reminder of the past.
Amid climate, economic, and epidemiological crisis, US empire is in decline. But this is neither fatalism nor a sigh of relief. More conflict will sharpen among the capitalist states and more violence will be meted out to the oppressed and exploited. Empire in decline means the intensification and militarization of states and borders. The truism that workers have no country will be more profound at the same time that racism and nationalism will attempt to divide and scapegoat populations. Ravenous and glutinous sharks await in the waters.
But the heroic actions of the Yemeni pirates show a glimmer of another timeline, a past in which the sea provided a laboratory for the reshaping of world history. As Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker wrote in their classic history, The Many Headed Hydra:
The sailor’s hydrarchy was defeated in the 1720s, the hydra beheaded. But it would not die. The volatile, serpentine tradition of maritime radicalism would appear again and again in the decades to come, slithering quietly belowdecks, across the docks, and onto the shore, biding its time, then rearing its heads unexpectedly in mutinies, strikes, riots, urban insurrections, slave revolts, and revolutions.4Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many Headed Hydra. Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Beacon Press, 2000), p. 173.
We must sink empire. We must laugh in the face of their attempt to label us terrorists. We must seize their ships and dance on the decks of that which we claim like the Yemenis have done with Galaxy Leader. “The sea doesn’t belong to tyrants” the fictional Captain Nemo said. Neither does the earth. And yet the capitalist tyrants lay claim to them both. That claim must be broken and torn from their skeletal claws.
