Earlier it had been reported that in reaction to continued attacks on shipping " White House officials said they were working to create an international force to tamp down attacks"
There are those who saw the actions of the Maersk line as a direct reaction to Washington's decision not to respond with over whelming unilateral force. There has been a lot of speculation as to Washington's strategy.
Strategy is, at best, a strange beast. In the words of Sun Tzu "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
In the western tradition the belief is that governments (hopefully, but not necessarily, democratic in nature) determine war time strategy and then communicate it to the generals who then decide how to achieve the goals they have been given.
This belief is, necessarily, a myth.
In fact, just as military operations and tactics change in reaction to the enemies actions, strategy changes in the face of shifting political, economic and military circumstances. The same adaptable generals who can easily adjust to changes in enemy tactics can find it difficult to understand changes in direction from the political leadership. By the same token few politicians have much expertise in operational and tactical military matters.
In the end Strategy (at least in the western political/military sense) becomes a complicated dance between partners who are not really very good at it.
I do not believe that what we are seeing in relation the attacks by Houthis, and others, could be deemed as Strategy. What we are seeing is evolution.
The United States, having grown weary of their role as world policeman and having entered into a political/economic phase in their history where they do not believe they can afford that role, are stepping back. Consumed with internal politics and suspicious of a world they no longer recognize or understand they are leaving the post World War II order they created and which has for so long sustained global order and prosperity.
We are entering a new world. A world in which, almost alone among nations, the United States, since achieving energy self-sufficiency, does not need the rest of the world to survive. We are entering, perhaps re-entering, a period in world history when the complex global interconnections we have grown used to are no longer functioning.
In this world the United States, and with luck a few of their close neigbours, will be able to provide internally or through a combination of economic and military strength, most of the goods and services they need to survive, if not thrive. A world in which for a few favoured nations the situation is ,while perhaps not as good as it used to be, still demonstrably better then the status of other nation states which will neither thrive or, if worst comes to worst, survive.
The closing of the Red Sea to commercial traffic, and the response to it, are harbingers of the future.
