With the renewal of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, the international community no longer can afford to prioritize diplomatic virtue signaling over effective strategies, wrote Michael Rubin .
Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Middle Eastern countries, writing in Middle East Forum, added that “Draining Houthi supply and protecting shipping need not cost billions of dollars”.
For more than two decades, Rubin noticed, successive U.S. administrations have ignored the obvious solution. As someone who prides himself in breaking diplomatic constraints, it is time for President Donald Trump to embrace a simple and inexpensive solution and order Secretary of State Marco Rubio to draw up plans to help train and fund the Somaliland and Yemeni coast guards to secure Yemen’s 500-mile Gulf of Aden and red sea coastline and prevent weapons smugglers and terrorists.
Rubin concluded that “Delaying will only enable the Houthis and their terror partners to continue to arm and threaten hundreds of billions of dollars of international cargo”.