Yemen borrows the “humanitarian sanctions” playbook
The Houthi blockade of the Red Sea echoes many aspects of the humanitarian interventions and economic sanctions favored by Washington.
“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7)
The war in Gaza has heated up in an entirely unexpected way. The Houthi movement in Sanaa, one of two competing governments in Yemen, has begun to attack ships passing through the Red Sea. Houthi spokesman Yahya Sare’e declared that all Israeli-linked shipping will be a “legitimate target” until the “horrific massacres, genocide, and siege against Palestinians” stop and humanitarian supplies are allowed into Gaza.
The attacks have caused major disruption to the global economy. Four of the five largest shipping firms in the world are now avoiding the Red Sea entirely, a route that normally carries 10% of global sea trade. The United States has assembled a military coalition to protect shipping. But Sanaa’s actions may have begun a dynamic that has no military solution. Malaysia announced sanctions banning Israeli ships from its own ports earlier this week.
Washington’s approach to the world for the past three decades has now been turned against the U.S.-led world order. On one hand, the Houthi logic on Palestine mirrors the Western “responsibility to protect” doctrine for humanitarian interventions. On the other hand, Sanaa’s actions have been so effective because they target many of the same vulnerable points — shipping and insurance — that U.S. economic sanctions do.
The United Nations adopted the “responsibility to protect” doctrine in 2005, creating a legal framework for the sort of “humanitarian interventions” that were popular after the Cold War ended. “If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations” from mass atrocities, the doctrine states, “the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter.” In other words, the principle of national sovereignty can be violated for higher principles of international law, like human rights and the taboo against genocide.
Washington has taken a more aggressive stance on its own “responsibility to protect.” Although the United States has intervened with UN approval in places like Bosnia and Libya, it has also made up its own justifications for military action in places like Kosovo, Iraq, and Syria. (It also overstepped its mandate in Libya, moving from a peacekeeping operation to a regime change war.) Civilians were at risk of genocide, the logic went, and the world’s most powerful military could not simply leave those people at the mercy of international bureaucrats or obstructionist powers.
Sanaa is operating under a similar rationale. Of course, attacking civilian vessels in international waters blatantly violates international law. However, Palestinians are suffering from far worse war crimes, and U.S. obstruction has prevented the United Nations from acting. If America can play the rogue hero cop, why can’t Yemen? A large part of the world, especially the Arab and Muslim world, considers Palestine a victim in need of intervention.
The Houthi movement is, of course, a cynical political actor with domestic reasons to play the hero. Well, so is the U.S. government. Plenty of people who mistrust American intentions still welcome American assistance. On the flipside, the governments that fought the Houthis in Yemen’s civil war are refusing to join a U.S.-led coalition to protect Red Sea shipping.
Although Sanaa has said that it will only target ships linked to Israel, the Houthi campaign has become a much broader threat to the global economy. Again, the “humanitarian” logic of the U.S.-led order has been turned against it. The United States often imposes financial sanctions that are carefully targeted on paper, and wreck entire economies in practice. Time after time, embargoed countries have suffered hunger and sickness while U.S. officials claim that their embargo does not legally affect food and medicine.
Much of the damage comes from sanctions’ effect on banking and insurance. Almost any international shipment in the world also requires a bank to process the payment and an insurer to protect the goods. Many firms refuse to handle transactions that touch sanctioned countries, in fear of accidentally breaking U.S. sanctions law, a phenomenon known as “over-compliance.” Even when companies do deal with these transactions, they often require additional time and money to deal with the legal risk.
Yemeni missiles and drones are having a similar deterrent effect in the Red Sea today. Insurance rates for shipments in that area flew through the roof after the first Houthi attacks. Whether or not a ship in the Red Sea is headed to Israel, it is embroiled in a “fluid situation” and taking on “unpredictable” risks, in the words of a British insurance official. Even as they insist that they have no quarrel with non-Israeli ships, the Houthis have made the Red Sea more trouble than it is worth, just like U.S. sanctions enforcers do the same to the food and medicine trade.
Ironically, a U.S. law meant to support Israel has also made it harder to avoid the global impacts of the blockade. The U.S. export amendments of 1977 ban companies from taking actions “to comply with, further, or support an unsanctioned foreign boycott,” primarily the Arab states’ boycotts of Israel. If a company appeals to the Houthis to protect its ships by promising to end shipments to Israel, it risks the ire of the U.S. Commerce Department. Israel can’t use the Red Sea? Then no one can.
Washington pushed “responsibility to protect” doctrine and built up its sanctions infrastructure at a time when it was the undisputed superpower. And the United States still has more influence over the United Nations and the global financial system than any rival. But U.S. rivals are increasingly confident — and increasingly cheeky — in their challenges.
The Houthi government, which is not even recognized by the United Nations, is unlikely to win international legal acceptance of its blockade. Other rivals can swing around far more weight. Russia tried to invent its own “responsibility to protect” ethnic Russians in Ukraine. China, which has kept its powder relatively dry, may yet try to inflict pain on its opponents using the same “humanitarian” norms that Washington cites.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of the “rules-based order” is a well-worn cliche. It was an easy, cheap diplomatic shot to take when the United States was the only game in town. Now the game has changed. Other people have the power to make hypocrisy hurt.
Very good analysis, I’m from Yemen & this is spot on.
Incredible comparative analysis here, Matthew. Well done and thought provoking!