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Constrained by spending caps, Navy officials characterized this year's budget request as one full of "hard choices" where readiness was prioritized while taking risk in future capabilities. In reality, the risks are now and later.
The post The Navy Needs to Fix Its Cash Flow Problem to Grow the Fleet appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Over the last year, three of the four most powerful navies[1] in the world have suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of opponents with no navy at all. First, there's Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Until the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was regularly touted as a decisive factor in any conflict, capable not […]

What happens if the consumer decides not to buy an EV?It is this confusion that is partly being blamed for the slow-motion car crash now unfolding in EV sales, with industry figures published on Monday showing that their market share slipped from 19.7pc in December to just 14.7pc in January.That was after annual figures showed the proportion of car sales that were electric slipped from 16.6pc in 2022 to 16.5pc in 2023, the first time the EV segment has gone into reverse. The next stage is massive fines - as much as £15,000 per vehicle in fact: This requires 22pc of new cars sold this year to be ZEVs, rising to 28pc in 2025, 52pc in 2028 and 80pc by 2030. Manufacturers who fail to meet the targets must pay fines or cover shortfalls through an emissions trading scheme.The poor old manufacturers are left pushing on a string.The background logic here is what is stupid. We don't have to go far to find someone who'll tell us that what we buy is all determined by the Big Corporations. It's advertisin', innit? They brainwash us, right? That near all advertising is not "Buy this!" but is "Buy my this!" seems to escape. But here we've actually got a test. Do consumers rule or producers? We've also gone through this before. Producers were forced to lower the average CO2 emissions of their fleets. Rolls Royce, embedded within BMW, could do this. Bentley, within VW, as well. Aston Martin, selling only those sporting beasts, could not. Which is what gave us the Cygnet, about as silly a motoring idea as ever saw light of day and about as successful as the Ford Edsel. Which is where our stupidity diagnosis comes in. Those Rolls Royce minds in Whitehall have designed a grand plan To Save The Planet. And they've done it on the most basic misdiagnosis of who is the decision maker in an economy. It isn't the producers who shepherd the consumer sheep into buying whatever it is that is produced. It's the consumer making the decision. And if the consumer says no then that's that. This entire plan for EVs is based upon producer sovereignty. But that's not how the world works - consumer sovereignty is. And basing your grand plan To Save All Of Humanity on an incorrect piece of sub-Marxist wibble, well, that's really pretty stupid, isn't it.

A Houthi missile came within seconds of hitting an American destroyer in the Red Sea on Tuesday as U.S.-Houthi hostilities continue to escalate, according to CNN.
The USS Gravely shot down the missile with a rarely used defense system that only hits targets that have made it past longer range defenses, suggesting that other systems failed to stop it first. Previous Houthi strikes had been intercepted at least eight miles away from their target, while this attack reportedly came within a mile of the U.S. ship.
The incident is the first time the U.S. has ever had to use its close-range defenses to stop a cruise missile, according to Fox News.
So far, the Biden administration has stayed mum on how it would respond if a Houthi missile actually hit a U.S. vessel. But, as the Pentagon scales up strikes against targets in Yemen, the White House may be forced to make a decision sooner than it thinks.
American forces have shot down nearly 70 Houthi drones and 20 anti-ship missiles in recent months, according to the War Zone. The Houthis also now claim to be simultaneously firing multiple missiles at their target, raising the chances that one will make it through U.S. defenses.
And there is little reason to believe that the Houthis will stop their Red Sea blockade any time soon, especially if the Israeli war in Gaza continues apace. The militant group has dramatically bolstered its support within Yemen since it began the blockade, with some former enemies now handing over their weapons to the Houthis in a show of support. The group also seems to relish the chance to fight the U.S. directly after spending much of the last decade sparring with Washington via its Saudi proxy.
A successful strike with a cruise missile against a U.S. destroyer could do significant damage to the vessel, which costs roughly $2 billion to produce. Such an attack could also kill U.S. service members, a possibility that would dramatically raise the stakes of U.S. operations in the Red Sea.
A deadly strike by the Houthis would also boost hawkish voices advocating for decisive strikes against Iran and its proxies in the wake of the killing of three American soldiers in Jordan.
This helps to explain why many experts argue that the U.S. should simply stop fighting the Houthis. The Biden administration ought to "discontinue putting our fleet in harm's way for [a] tertiary interest," said Austin Dahmer, a national security adviser to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
Others have put it more bluntly. "Washington should start by recognizing that both its economic and national security interests are largely unaffected by Red Sea transit," wrote Michael DiMino — a former CIA analyst and current fellow at Defense Priorities — in an article for RS. "Any multi-billion-dollar effort to fight a war in Yemen would render no political, economic, or security benefits to the United States."
Meanwhile, lawmakers continue to express their frustration with the White House's insistence that it can fight the Houthis without authorization from Congress. The administration says its strikes are defensive and fall short of real war, which means there is no reason to get congressional approval to move forward. But that explanation has failed to satisfy many in Congress, as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told RS earlier this week.
"The Biden administration's pattern of engaging in offensive airstrikes without authorization and calling such actions defensive is a warped understanding of the interactions between the legislative and executive branch powers in war making," Lee said.

The V-22 Osprey flies like a bird and hovers like a bee. Furnished with rotors at the end of each wing, the aircraft takes off and lands like a helicopter but relies on its fixed wings to go the distance during flight. For this reason, some consider the Osprey the best of both worlds in aviation — others call it "the widow maker."Just a few weeks ago, three Marines died in an Osprey crash during a training exercise in Australia, bringing total fatalities involving the Osprey to over 50. And while there are certainly more dangerous aircraft out there (take the CH-53E helicopter, for example), what's striking about the Osprey is that since the aircraft became operational in 2007, most of the fatalities involving the aircraft have happened during training exercises, not active operations. Still, the Osprey isn't historically reliable when it comes to combat readiness. In fact, the program missed the boat on meeting its reliability rate goals in every year from 2011 to 2021 — despite taking its first flight in 1989. The aircraft didn't make its combat debut until 2007, having missed deployment to "Bosnia in 1995, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003." And for good reason — during the testing phase, the aircraft experienced four crashes resulting in 30 fatalities.Since then, the program has grappled with persistent design flaws, significantly increasing the program's costs. From 1986 to 2007 alone, the program's research, development, testing, and evaluation costs ballooned by over 200 percent. With rotors situated atop wings like tree branches, the Osprey requires serious horsepower to get moving. There are two engines to propel the rotors, lifting the aircraft for vertical takeoff and then thrusting the Osprey forward during flight. So as you can imagine with not one, but two rotors, the Osprey generates excessive wind on the ground.Its rotor downwash proved problematic in Iraq, during the Osprey's first deployment in 2007. In a desert environment, the pilots couldn't see anything! The Marine Corps ended up tasking CH-53E pilots with scouting out landing zones for the Ospreys — largely defeating the purpose of a helicopter/airplane hybrid.The issue of the Osprey's rotor blast persists. Not only does it impair pilot visibility, but it literally kicks soil into the aircraft's engines. In 2019, the Department of Defense Inspector General (IG) reported that the Osprey remains at risk of engine failure. Over nine years of attempts to redesign the Navy version of the aircraft and to prevent engine ingestion of natural materials have failed. The IG went so far as to state that redesign may not even "correct long-standing problems with the V-22."Besides the risks associated with the Osprey's rotor blast, the aircraft struggles with a troublesome gearbox. The faulty device can cause the engine clutch to slip, which unintentionally disengages one of the aircraft's proprotors — dually functioning as a rotor and propellor. A malfunctioning proprotor (even if only disengaged for a matter of moments) sends a lurch through the aircraft, throwing it off balance and causing it to nosedive.That's what happened last summer when five Marines died in an Osprey crash in California. An investigation into the crash recently revealed that there was nothing pilots could have done to prevent or respond to the issue. And while investigations into other recent Osprey crashes have not yet been released, it appears the gearbox issue played a role in several recent Osprey "mishaps." The Air Force grounded its V-22 fleet last summer because of the issue, and the Marine Corps and Navy have since followed suit, grounding an undisclosed number of Ospreys.The military has known about the gearbox and clutch problem since 2010, when an Air Force Osprey crash killed four people and injured many others. But as my colleague Mark Thompson has pointed out, this particular mechanical challenge greatly resembles those of older helicopters — the 67 UH-1 Huey and AH-1 Cobra in particular — which faced rotor issues that "killed hundreds of troops between 1967 and 1983."In the case of those aircraft, the rotors didn't just disengage, but in some cases separated from the aircraft entirely. With that terrifying imagery in mind, imagine watching the military blame a crash on pilots no longer around to defend themselves.Another through line between the Osprey, the Huey, the Cobra, and even the CH-53E is the tendency for the services to attribute mishaps to pilot error. Thompson notes that, in the 1980s, the Army produced a film to train and educate aviators on how to avoid the Cobra and Huey's rotor issues before eventually grounding the Huey and replacing parts in both aircraft to fix the issue. The tradition continues with the Marine Corps repeatedly blaming pilots for CH-53E and Osprey crashes, the latter of which prompted the late Walter Jones — who represented North Carolina's 3rd congressional district — to lead a 14-year-long crusade to clear the names of two pilots who died in a 2000 crash.Jones was ultimately successful in spite of the squadron commanders' mischaracterization of the V-22's true performance through incomplete and/or inaccurate readiness reports.Time will tell the true causes of the most recent Osprey crashes, but if history is any indication, there will be several contributing factors. The question now is how investigators will weigh them.Regardless, the effectiveness of the Osprey is more critical to investigate now than ever as the Army prepares to launch the V-280 Valor program, which is set to eventually replace the Army's fleet of Black Hawk helicopters.This new program, which could cost up to $70 billion in its lifetime, will supposedly help the Army prepare for a potential future war in the Pacific. There, issues of range could be a serious factor, so the V-280 Valor will employ a similar design as the V-22. But that means it will likely face the same sort of challenges and tradeoffs as the Osprey, like unreliability and expensive maintenance needs.

We think we've got this argument correct here. It has to be only think because the outcome is so absurd as to make us think that we might not be right. But if we are then we seem to have entered the era of insanity over subsidies. So, the ferry to the Scilly Isles. A new one or three is/are needed. The company that wishes to buy them, which runs the ferry service, applied for a subsidy so as to engage the services of a British shipyard to build them: First, they spent years trying to unlock the required £50 million in state aid from the Levelling Up fund, which would have necessitated ordering a ship from a British dockyard.That didn't turn up so instead they adopted Plan B: But their application failed, so instead the company took a £33 million loan from NatWest and put out a tender to build one new passenger ferry and two freight vessels. In September, it selected the giant French shipbuilder Piriou to complete the contract.OK, seems reasonable enough to us. Yes, we are against such subsidies and yet we're also old enough, long in the tooth enough, to know that they are going to happen in something like shipbuilding. But if the subsidy isn't offered then obviously Plan B:In a letter published last week, but sent before Christmas, Shapps expressed his anger to Robert Francis, chairman of the Isles of Scilly council. The defence secretary, who also doubles as the government's shipbuilding tsar, criticised the ISSG for not picking a UK shipbuilder (he did not name Harland & Wolff directly) to build its new fleet.The idea that we have a shipbuilding Tsar seems a little Romanov to us (perhaps noting that that didn't turn out to be a very good governance system) but it's the insistence that is being made here that really confuses. You cannot have the subsidy which would necessitate - and also cover the extra costs of - using a British shipyard but you must use a British shipyard anyway? The ferry company is an independent one, quoted on the London Stock Exchange no less. And a minister thinks it right to bully - even insist - in this manner? There's something about storming the Winter Palace that sounds like a useful solution there. But now the lunacy: He also expressed his concern that the company was planning to increase fares to help cover the costs of the new fleet. A one-way ticket — currently advertised at £83.90 — may hit £100 as a result.The minister is stating that the more expensive, British, shipyard must - sorry, should - be used and the argument being used in support of this contention is the price rises that would result from using the cheaper, non-British option? Yes, we know, politics doesn't have to be logical, usually isn't. But really, you must use the more expensive supplier to reduce consumer costs? How about we try for a politics that isn't actively insane? That this is all about the Scilly Isles (yes, it is pronounced that way) is just icing on that cake.

A V-22 Osprey crashed during a training exercise in Australia on Sunday, killing three Marines and leaving an additional five in critical condition. The accident is the third deadly crash including an Osprey since 2022.


The tragic incident has reinvigorated debate over the Osprey, which has been plagued by controversy since its prototype was first adopted during the Reagan administration. The aircraft's unique "tiltrotor" design, which allows it to take off like a helicopter and fly like a plane, has often led to cost overruns and safety issues in its two decades in service.


"It's probably time to retire the Osprey and look at a new tiltrotor/VTOL option for the Joint Force," said Michael DiMino, a fellow at Defense Priorities.


"I'd never step foot in one of these things," wrote military analyst and Air Force veteran Patrick Fox in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.


The cause of the crash is "under investigation," according to a press release from the Marine Corps's rotational force in Darwin, Australia, where the crash occurred. The V-22 was "transporting troops during a routine training exercise," the statement noted.


The Air Force briefly grounded its entire Osprey fleet last year following a string of engine malfunctions that led to crashes or near misses. The Marines and Navy also grounded an "undisclosed number" of their V-22s last year while they tried to repair a component that had helped cause the malfunctions, according to Defense News.


The rash of V-22 crashes is part of a trend of increased U.S. military plane accidents in recent years. A 2020 congressional report, which found that 198 soldiers and civilians had died in crashes since 2014, argued that the increase in accidents was primarily due to weak safety oversight and a years-long drop in average flight hours for military pilots, which has left them less prepared to react to rare but potentially disastrous mechanical issues.


Flight hours have continued to decrease in the intervening years, a problem caused in part by the Pentagon's focus on purchasing big-ticket items while skimping on maintenance costs for existing platforms.


Poor record-keeping and inventory practices have only worsened maintenance issues. As the Government Accountability Office noted in May, weapons maker Lockheed Martin has lost over 2 million spare parts for the F-35 fighter jet since 2018, further driving up the plane's costs while also driving down flight hours. But the military continues to argue that the F-35 program is a necessary and effective replacement for America's previous generation of fighter planes.


It should perhaps be no surprise, then, that the Pentagon has already set its sights on a shiny new tiltrotor aircraft. The Department of Defense announced last year that it would replace the Black Hawk helicopter — one of the military's primary workhorses for moving people and cargo — with the V-280, a tiltrotor aircraft that strongly resembles the V-22. It remains to be seen whether it will finally fix the problems that have plagued the Osprey.

If you have not been paying attention, our government has decided that all electric vehicles are the solution to the climate problem. At least as long as they are made in the US with union labor and benefits. California has committed to banning the sale of anything else. In today's post, a few tidbits from my daily WSJ reading on the subject. From Holman Jenkins on electric cars:  If the goal were to reduce emissions, the world would impose a carbon tax. Then what kind of EVs would we get? Not Teslas but hybrids like Toyota's Prius. "A wheelbarrow full of rare earths and lithium can power either one [battery-powered car] or over 90 hybrids, but, uh, that fact seems to be lost on policymakers," a California dealer recently emailed me.[Note: that wheelbarrow of rare earths comes from multiple truckloads of actual rocks. Also see original for links.] ...The same battery minerals in one Tesla can theoretically supply 37 times as much emissions reduction when distributed over a fleet of Priuses.This is a shock only to those who weren't paying attention. It certainly isn't lost on government. Chris Atkinson, the Ohio State University sustainable transportation guru whose slogan I've cited before—"the best use of a battery is in a hybrid"—was a key official in the Obama Energy Department.Our policies don't exist to incentivize carbon reduction, they exist to lure affluent Americans to make space in their garages for oversized, luxurious EVs so Tesla can report a profit and so other automakers can rack up smaller losses on the "compliance" vehicles they create in obedience to government mandates.Actually, I vote GMC's 9,000 lb, 1,000 hp. 0-60 in 3 seconds $110,000 electric Hummer the prize for most conspicuous mis-use of Chinese lithium and its associated carbon emissions.  Tesla's new "cyber truck" comes close. I can't wait to see those driving around Palo Alto. Mining the required minerals produces emissions. Keeping the battery charged produces emissions. Jenkins is a pretty good economist. There is supply and demand:  Only if a great deal of gasoline-based driving is displaced would there be net reduction in CO2. But who says any gasoline-based driving is being displaced? When government ladles out tax breaks for EVs, when wealthy consumers splurge on a car that burns electrons instead of gasoline, they simply leave more gasoline available for someone else to consume at a lower price.Stop just a minute and digest this one, if you have not already. If you use less gas, someone else uses more. EV subsidies just shift who uses the gas. The same supply just goes somewhere else. One has to subsidize electrics so much that the price of gas goes down, permanently, so that it's not worth bringing out of the ground. And the price and demand are global. Lower prices encourage Indians and Africans to finally get cheap gas powered cars.  This may be a secret to you, the public. It's not to economists.Well, some economists. Alas my beloved profession is as open to virtue signaling as everyone else so I don't see a loud "stop subsidizing battery only EVs and banning everything else" from economists. The problem here is the problem with any plan to subsidize our way to emissions reduction. Humans are perfectly capable of consuming both renewable and dirty energy in ever-growing quantities if the price is right. The emissions data prove as much....By incorporating carbon taxes into its tax systems, global society might at least slow the rate of CO2 emissions while simultaneously improving the efficiency of its tax codes. It still seemed unlikely, but it wasn't clear why. After all, politicians enact plenty of taxes. Governments have been advised for decades to adopt consumption taxes as a way to fund their welfare states without destroying the possibility of growth. Cramming a lot into one delicious column, Jenkins wonders at human nature: How to explain, along the way, the coevolution of the climate empty gesture with climate rhetoric that increasingly shouts the unfounded claim that climate change threatens human survival? I explain it this way: When it became clear nobody was going to do anything about climate change, it became safe to engage in hysterical rhetoric about climate change....As David Burge put it (thanks to an anonymous colleague for this delicious tidbit)"To help poor children, I am going to launch flaming accordions into the Grand Canyon.""That's stupid.""WHY DO YOU HATE POOR CHILDREN?"Climate change is real. Climate change matters. Addressing it is expensive. Other environmental problems clamor for resources too. Europe has stopped growing, and the US is headed the same way. We don't have trillions to waste. California as always leads the way on the beau geste: ... in California, ... drayage trucks, which carry containerized cargo to and from ports and rail centers, face a looming deadline. The state will require any new drayage trucks added to fleets starting next year to run on electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. California also plans to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars, pickup trucks and SUVs by 2035 and require all new medium- and heavy-duty truck sales be zero-emissions by 2036. ... Trucks represent 6% of the vehicles on California's roads, but a quarter of the state's on-road greenhouse-gas emissions,.... California plans to spend $1.7 billion for medium- and heavy-duty infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles by 2026.$1.7 billion, for state-provided "infrastructure," on top of the costs to industries... for a benefit of...?  The central problem: How are they going to recharge those trucks? [Truck operators] They position trucks near highways, rail or ports, not available power. As fleets add trucks they may need to draw an additional 6 to 8 megawatts of power or more. "That's about 1,000 homes," said Steve Powell, chief executive of utility Southern California Edison. "We may need a new substation or something like that and a line to be built." It has not been built, and the truck deadline is now. So what do operators do?  A mobile charging system in California runs on natural gas. PHOTO: PROLOGIS MOBILITY, from Wall Street JournalSouthern California Edison has come across some fleets powering chargers using diesel generators...so that new EV trucks don't sit unused. Another solution: more batteries. [Pacific Drayage Services President] Gillis is installing a system of chargers paired with battery storage. It can discharge power to trucks even during times of grid stress. The battery storage itself can recharge at a time of day when electricity prices are the cheapest. There is an important point here on just how many batteries are needed for the "transition."  Don't just count the batteries in the trucks. Count the batteries in the charging stations too. And the utility. Even California knows that it does no good to electrify and then power the grid with coal and natural gas. The plan is for solar and wind electricity, but that needs utility scale battery backup. A week or more of power. The sources of my last post only added up the batteries needed for the cars. That's too low by many multiples.  He is also hedging—Gillis tripled his usual order of new diesel trucks from 30 to 100, which will arrive by year-end, just beating the deadline before California phases them out.I get the idea. Build it and they will come. Put the trucks in place now, so what if at huge cost, and so what if we burn coal to power them. Then when solar and wind and utility scale storage arrive, the users will be there. But trucks don't last that long. By 20 years when all that infrastructure finally has its permits, today's electric trucks will be long gone. Covering Kerry's trip to China, a reminder that climate is all about how China and India develop, not which car San Franciscans use to drive up to Tahoe. The Climate Action Tracker says that between 2015 and 2022 China's greenhouse gas emissions increased nearly 12%, while U.S. emissions declined some 5%. China's methane emissions rose about 3% from 2015 to 2021, the latest year with good data, while the U.S. cut them by 5%.... China's "coal production reached record levels in 2022 for the second year running," and "coal is set to remain the backbone" of China's energy system. No kidding: Between 2020 and 2022, China added some 113 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. The entire world managed to retire some 187 gigawatts of coal plants between 2017 and 2022.As of January China had some 306 coal-fired power stations proposed, permitted or under construction, according to Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit that tracks worldwide coal-fired power projects of 30 megawatts or more. When finished those plants would generate some 366 gigawatts, or about 68% of the world's total coal capacity under development.As of April China also had 180 new coal mines or mine expansions proposed, permitted or under construction, the nonprofit reported.In a lovely article  Aatish Taseer reminds us there are 1.3 billion people in India (as well as 1.4 billion in China). It's hot, just like it is in Texas. When they reach middle income, they will want air conditioning, just like in Texas. This doesn't make the virtue-signaling tour because there is no easy answer. If China and India don't think they can grow based on solar, wind, and nuclear, just what can we do about it? Send more diplomats? It does not help that the US is now deciding to "disengage" and fight some sort of battle for economic supremacy via industrial policy trade restrictions and tariffs. Even Taiwan on a silver platter isn't going to get China to change. Even if the US shuts down, de-growths, and goes back to subsistence farming, China will spew CO2. I guess the argument is go first to establish a moral example. But if that moral example is obviously self-defeating, pointless, and just money down ratholes to entrenched interests, I doubt it will shame China to much action. A carbon tax, and a Manhattan project to drive down the cost of nuclear would make a whole lot more sense.  (Half the Manhattan project is technical, the other half is to rewrite the regulatory rule book on a wartime schedule.) Think what you could do with the trillion or so dollars going to various subsidies and mandates. Update Read "Old Eagle Eye" excellent July 19 comment below. Boiling it all down to a nutshell, our policy path now is going to produce energy with a lot more materials -- rocks, steel, concrete, batteries, aluminum, carbon fibre -- and energy to produce those materials, relative to fossil fuels or nuclear. Producing those materials also produces more carbon now, with a hoped for savings later.  That the 1970s environmental movement ends up with a huge increase in making stuff from rocks, rather than a service-oriented economy with small impact power, first natural gas and then nuclear, and a light touch upon the earth, is a bit of a paradox.   Also, in addition to spending our trillion dollars and industrial policy wonks on making nuclear cheap and abundant, if a warming climate really is an economic and environmental problem, and given the current policy path is both ineffective and hugely expensive, why should we not even speak or research geoengineering? It's not ideal, but nothing is ideal. 

Last month, the U.S. announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, a naval coalition aimed at deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Bahrain was the only Arab nation to join. The reasons why — and why other U.S. allies and partners in the region did not — should be of interest to us.Many countries have valid concerns about the Gaza war's further regionalization. The Houthis say they are targeting commercial vessels that are Israeli owned or heading for Israeli ports with missile and drone strikes, and have already hijacked a ship. They vow to continue these attacks until Israel agrees to a ceasefire.The U.S. has been thwarting most of these attacks with their naval-based missile defenses.Much is at stake economically with the Red Sea's security crisis. Separating the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa is the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which links the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. Roughly 30 percent of all global containers transit the Bab el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal, as does about 12 percent of all world trade. But since the Houthi attacks in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden began in October, major shipping carriers have stopped transiting the Suez Canal and have re-routed their vessels around Africa, threatening consumer prices hikes. This disruption to Red Sea trade can seriously harm economies across Europe, which were already contracting before this crisis.Operation Prosperity GuardianThat Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which were the two main states in the Arab military coalition that began fighting the Houthis in 2015, did not join Operation Prosperity Guardian is quite significant. Also notable is the fact that Egypt, a major Arab country with a 930-mile Red Sea coast, refused to join, too. Most Arab states avoided formally joining Operation Prosperity Guardian for several reasons. First, Arab societies are so enraged about Israel's indiscriminate bombing, forced starvation, and displacement of millions of Palestinians in Gaza, that the governments in the region do not want to be seen as complicit by openly siding with Washington, which is clearly funding and arming Israel's operations.Second, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member-states — particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE — want to avoid actions that could trigger a resumption of Houthi attacks on their energy and civilian infrastructure or further destabilize the Red Sea, where many of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 projects exist. Third, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi fear that joining this security initiative could upset their détentes with Tehran, which sponsors the Houthi movement.Bahrain's Unique PositionBahrain, which the George W. Bush Administration recognized as a Major non-NATO Ally in 2002, made a different calculation. An important factor to keep in mind is that Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. Also, Bahrain and the U.S. signed the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement, a strategic security and economic pact, in September."Bahrain has long perceived an existential threat from Iran that shapes its security stance, so by providing a home for U.S. assets, Bahrain gains protection and relevance which is another layer beyond the security protection it receives from Saudi Arabia and the UAE," said Steven Wright, an associate professor of international relations at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, in an interview with Responsible Statecraft."Other GCC members seem to have more complex calculations: for Saudi Arabia and UAE, existing efforts to climb down tensions with Iran explains their position," he added.Joseph A. Kéchichian, a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, noted that Bahrain, which has a single guided missile frigate and two smaller guided missile ships called corvettes, has not sent these assets to join the task force, at least not yet."Manama's contribution may be similar to Amsterdam's and Canberra's, as The Netherlands and Australia announced that they would send military personnel, but no vessels," he said. "Yet, because Bahrain is the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, as well as the home of the Combined Maritime Forces that coordinate coalition operations in the area, it makes sense for the kingdom to join if only to provide and receive information of actual maneuvers."He suggested that other Gulf Cooperation Coalition (GCC) members would be sharing information vis-a-vis the new task force, although it is unclear how that would occur. "As far as it is known, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which could have deployed naval vessels, opted to stay out of Operation Prosperity Guardian because they disagreed with its narrow objectives," added Kéchichian.Post-Oct. 7 Blowback in BahrainHaving normalized with Israel in 2020, Bahrain has been in an awkward position since October 7. When it comes to relations with Israel, there is a major divide between the Bahraini leadership and its citizenry. This divide has deepened amid the Gaza war.As Gaza's Palestinian death toll steadily rises, Bahraini authorities must contend with increased risks of blowback at home given how unpopular the Abraham Accords are with Bahraini citizens across the country's political spectrum and among diverse civil society groups. As Human Rights Watch recently documented, Bahraini authorities have used oppressive tactics to repress Palestine solidarity protestors across the country."The Al Khalifa monarchy has proven adept historically at subduing dissent through a variety of tools. It seems clear that Bahrain has calculated that involvement in the Abraham Accords serves its overall economic, foreign policy and security interests despite criticism," offered Wright."The bottom line is that the economic perks and U.S. backing is outweighing public opinion objections from its domestic political groups," said Wright.Courtney Freer, a fellow at Emory University, noted to RS that Bahrain's elected lower house of parliament issued a statement in November claiming that the country's ambassador had left Israel and that economic ties between the two states had been severed."It is worth noting that this language is coming from a primarily loyalist parliament, which suggests that such feelings of animosity towards Israel are not just associated with opposition parties, which, in turn, may make it more difficult to ignore," said Freer. "Notably, citizens have become involved in pro-Palestinian protests, and so there is anger, but it is uncertain whether this anger will be translated into political risk for the regime."Bahrain's diplomatic relations with Israel and military alliance with the U.S. may subject the archipelago kingdom to blowback from Iran-aligned actors in the region. But Bahrain abrogating the Abraham Accords or fundamentally changing its relationship with Washington is highly unlikely. Ultimately, Bahrain's leadership seems to assess that such risks of blowback are worth the benefits of normalized relations with Israel and American support."The Al Khalifa monarchy has proven adept at managing domestic dissent through various means, so the risks from Iran within this context will be viewed as manageable. Any public concerns over cooperation with Israel/U.S. is unlikely to seriously challenge its stability and at most is likely to be limited in scale," Wright said."Basically, Bahrain is seeking to be relevant to the U.S. by backing its counter-Houthi maritime initiative," he added. "This allows it to further cement its relationship with both the U.S. and also Israel, given that this is part of an approach to counter Houthi and Iranian geopolitical reach."

Update 8/23, 5:40 p.m. ET: Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin was on board the plane that crashed in Russia on Wednesday, adding that "all on board were killed."





Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian private militia group known as the Wagner Group, was reportedly killed in a plane that crashed in Russia on Wednesday. Russia's emergency ministry said that all 10 people on the aircraft died, including seven passengers and three pilots, though it did not immediately confirm whether Prigozhin had been on board.


Russian officials have said that a man with Prigozhin's name was among the passengers on the flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg. NBC News' Richard Engel noted on Twitter that a Wagner-affiliated Telegram group claimed that a second plane attributed to Prigozhin's fleet landed safely at Ostafyevo Airport.


According to the Financial Times, "The aircraft, an Embraer Legacy, was the same that Prigozhin had regularly used to travel around Russia and as far away as Africa, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24."


Wagner-affiliated Telegram accounts have claimed that the plane was shot down by Russian air defenses.


"We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised," wrote Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, on Twitter.


The Wagner group chief has been in the headlines this year for his involvement in the war in Ukraine and his disputes with leadership in Russia, which culminated in his group's aborted "march on Moscow" earlier this summer.


As The Quincy Institute's George Beebe and Anatol Lieven noted in May, Wagner had "gained new prestige after taking the lead in the bloody and long-drawn-out, but ultimately successful battle for the town of Bakhmut." The leader of the mercenary group, however, quickly soured on leadership in Moscow.


"Prigozhin has long been critical of Russia's military leadership, complaining publicly about its incompetence and corruption, and contrasting its purported passivity and incompetence to what he portrays as Wagner's patriotism and bravery in defending the motherland's interests in Ukraine, Syria, and beyond," Beebe and Lieven wrote, about month before the short-lived mutiny.


"But his recent interview on the internet channel Telegram marks a drastic escalation and extension of his long-standing attacks (...) He is now attacking the entire conduct of the war in Ukraine and declaring its results to date to have been a disastrous failure."


On today's events, Lieven said there will be "a very widespread assumption that he was assassinated, on the orders either of President Putin himself, or of Prigozhin's long-standing enemies within the Russian military, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov." Lieven adds:



We will probably never know for sure the truth behind the crash of Prigozhin's plane, but the assumption of an assassination will be strengthened by the fact that on the same day, it has been announced that air force chief General Sergei Surovikin has been fired. Surovikin was close to Prigozhin, and though he appeared in public during the Wagner mutiny to appeal to the Russian military to remain loyal to the state, ever since then he has been kept out of public view and — it has been assumed — in detention.






Prigozhin had largely left the public eye after ending his revolt attempt and striking a deal with Putin, in which he agreed to relocate his fighters to Belarus. The mercenary head has reportedly been spotted in Belarus and Russia since then, but he apparently re-emerged on video for the first time on Monday, suggesting he was in Africa, as part of an effort to "Wagner in recent years has deployed thousands of its troops in at least five different countries across the continent. The mercenary group has been accused of being involved in massacres and other human rights abuses in Mali and elsewhere.


The Russian media outlet Sirena pointed out that Prigozhin was falsely reported to have been among the dead in an October 2019 plane crash in Congo before eventually resurfacing.

Slovakia has been a solid supporter of its neighbor, Ukraine. It has supported Kyiv diplomatically in the UN, EU, and NATO. They were one of the first countries to provide military aid to Ukraine.Moreover, Slovakia has sent Ukraine ammunition, surface-to-air missiles, and helicopters. Along with Poland, they were the first country to transfer fighter jets — their entire fleet of retired MiG-29 fighters — and they were the first country to send an air defense system, the only S-300 air defense system they had.But on September 30, Robert Fico and his leftist-populist Smer-SSD party won 23% of the vote in the parliamentary elections on a platform that included the promise that if his party "enters government, we will not send a single round of ammunition to Ukraine." If SMER-SSD is able to create a majority coalition Fico will be Slovakia's prime minister for the third time. He resigned his last term in 2018 after the murder of a journalist who was reporting alleged ties between organized crime and government officials.The Progressive Slovakia party came in second with about 17% of the vote, followed by the Hlas party with 14.7%. Hlas split off from Smer in 2020, and its leader, Peter Pellegrini, has suggested that he leans toward supporting Fico. Pellegrini has said that Slovakia "had nothing left to donate" to Ukraine, but that Slovakia should continue manufacturing and shipping ammunition to Ukraine.Fico doubled down on Ukraine Sunday, saying his position "has not changed." He then explained that "People in Slovakia have bigger problems than Ukraine." He added that he is "prepared to help Ukraine in a humanitarian way … we are prepared to help with the reconstruction of the state. But you know our opinion on arming Ukraine."In addition to no longer arming Ukraine, Fico promised to "do everything" in his power to start peace talks to end the war. He also opposes EU sanctions on Russia and Ukraine joining NATO. Fico has also attributed blame equally to the political West and Ukraine for starting the war.Meanwhile, Poland has been, perhaps, the strongest supporter of Ukraine. It has given Ukraine about a third of its own weapons — about $4 billion worth — and been the major transit point for the movement of other NATO countries' weapons into Ukraine. It has been a forceful supporter of Ukraine's bids for more advanced weapons and for membership in NATO.But a dispute over the export of Ukrainian grain has exposed the fragility of that partnership. The fragility was irritated by Poland's annoyance over what it sees as Ukraine's unwillingness to confront a nationalist past that was hostile to Poland. In July, the Polish parliament adopted a resolution that includes "recognition of guilt" by Ukraine for the Volhynian massacre — anti-Polish ethnic cleansings conducted by Ukrainian nationalists in German occupied Poland through the summer of 1943. According to the resolution, "Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation, which representatives of both nations have been building for years, should also include an admission of guilt and perpetuation of the memory of the victims of World War II." Meanwhile, Canadian officials had to apologize last week for paying tribute to a Ukrainian Canadian World War II veteran who was later revealed to be a member of the Nazi German Waffen-SS's Galizien Division. Poland's ambassador to Ukraine later told Canadian CTV News that "this is a person who participated in an organization that was targeting Poles, was committing mass murders of Poles, not only the military personnel but also civilians."But it is the recent grain dispute that threatens to tear the fragile relationship. Ukraine has accused Poland of abandoning them by restricting the import of Ukrainian grain to protect Polish farmers and markets. Poland shot back that Ukraine needs to be "more grateful" and suggested that Kiev "should start to appreciate the role that Poland has played for Ukraine in the past months and years." Ukraine then responded by calling in the Polish ambassador to Ukraine, a diplomatic maneuver Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said "should not have happened," calling it "a mistake . . . given the huge support Poland has provided to Ukraine."The row grew worse when, in his speech to the UN General Assembly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Poland of betraying Ukraine and abetting Russia, complaining that "some in Europe play out solidarity in a political theatre – making thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact, they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor."That accusation, together with Ukraine's taking Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia to the World Trade Organization over their import ban on Ukrainian grain, pushed Morawiecki to announce that Poland is "no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons," though they would honor the arms agreements they already have with Ukraine and permit other countries to ship their arms to Ukraine through Poland.The last of the three countries that Ukraine has filed a complaint against with the WTO, Hungary, has also recently joined Poland and Slovakia in widening the crack in NATO. Hungary was the originator of the Eastern European fissure, refusing to send weapons to Ukraine, advocating peace talks as a solution to the war, and criticizing sanctions on Russia. But that widened on September 25 when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced an end of support for Ukraine in international affairs. Orban's government is upset with Ukraine over a law that restricts the use of minority languages in Ukraine. Hungary claims that this law violates the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine to use Hungarian, especially in education. "They want to transform [Hungarian schools] into Ukrainian schools and if that does not work they want to close them," Orban said before adding that "We do not support Ukraine in any issue in the international scene until it restores the laws that guarantee the rights of Hungarians."Fico's election could put Slovakia in a triumvirate of countries with Poland and Hungary that all share borders with Ukraine, that all are members of NATO and that all, to a degree that remains to be seen, are widening the crack within NATO on its stance on the war in Ukraine.

UPDATE 3/1: The motion to discharge Paul's resolution failed in the Senate last night by a vote of 13-79. Nine Democrats and four Republicans supported the measure. "Unfortunately, history prepared us for Senator Paul's joint resolution of disapproval to fail. Congress has never passed a joint resolution of disapproval to stop an arms sale in part because they would need a veto-proof majority in both chambers in order to override a presidential veto," Jonathan Ellis Allen, a research associate at the Cato Institute, told RS after the vote. "Absent a major change in arms sale policy that requires Congress to vote to approve – rather than disapprove – each sale, the president will continue to have the power to use weapons transfers as a tool of foreign policy with little oversight from Congress."Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) plans to force a vote as early as today on a resolution that would prohibit the sale of F-16 fighter jets and other military supplies to Turkey — a $23 billion package that the Biden administration approved last month.Paul's opposition to the sale is a result of concerns over Ankara's record of alleged human rights abuses domestically, and what Paul says is destabilizing and dangerous behavior in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, as well as a pattern of acting against the rule of law and U.S. interests. The senator first introduced the resolution on February 7."Turkey's President praised Hamas as a 'liberation group,' Turkey's military fired at our troops in Syria, and Turkey's police imprison those who dare to criticize the leader. That doesn't sound like the actions of an 'ally' deserving of $23 billion worth of American firepower," Paul said in a statement provided to RS. As three scholars from the Cato Institute explained in an op-ed late last year, Washington has continued to send valuable aid to Turkey while simultaneously squandering any leverage it has in the relationship."The U.S. will continue to send weapons and security assistance to its NATO ally, in part with the hope that such reassurances and arms sales will provide the U.S. with leverage over Turkey," wrote Jordan Cohen, Jonathan Ellis Allen, and Nardine Mosaad. " Unfortunately, U.S. support for Turkey does the opposite of providing leverage and simultaneously hurts American security while destabilizing a region that Washington seems unable to ignore." The State Department announced the sale of $23 billion of 40 F-16s, along with the necessary tools to modernize its 79 fighter jets from its current fleet after 20 months of negotiations that centered around welcoming Sweden into NATO. While the Biden administration said in July 2023 that it would move forward with the sale following signals from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would approve Sweden's membership, Congress demanded more concrete steps before they green-lighted the sale. In January, Erdogan signed the documents that officially ratified Sweden's NATO ascension — later that day, the State Department notified Congress that it had approved the sale.The parliament in Hungary, the final holdout on Stockholm's looming admittance to NATO, voted to approve their membership on Monday. In the past, other senators have expressed concern over Erdogan's authoritarian tendencies and Turkey's foreign policy. "My approval of Turkey's request to purchase F-16 aircraft has been contingent on Turkish approval of Sweden's NATO membership. But make no mistake: This was not a decision I came to lightly," Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in January. "While Turkey plays a critical role in the region as a NATO ally, there is an urgent need for improvement on its human rights record, including the unjust imprisonment of journalists and civil society leaders, better cooperation on holding Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine, and on lowering the temperature in its rhetoric about the Middle East," Cardin added.Congress has never successfully used a joint resolution of disapproval to block a proposed arms sale. Passing such a measure would require getting through both chambers of Congress and securing a veto-proof majority in the Senate. Reporting from when the State Department announced the deal in January indicated that there was not sufficient support in Congress to block the deal.

The chickens continue to come home to roost over
Bossier City's profligacy of the past three decades as its agenda of government
as economic development machine through interventions into the local economy with
taxpayer dollars cascade from failure to failure.

Recently, headlines
about how the city has squandered wealth and opportunity have focused on the
duplicative Walter O. Bigby Carriageway and provision of expensive recreation
for a tiny minority of city residents or for non-residents while discouraging other
residents from using these facilities. But while these come from relatively
recent poor decisions, there are some huge expenses with little payoff in the
past often forgotten.

At over
$65 million in cost, the Brookshire
Grocery Arena has turned into a perennial money-loser. Since its opening in
2000, it had only three years where it turned a profit, the last in 2006. Its
total losses through 2022 have been a startling $9.655 million. And while some
of its desperate boosters (echoing arguments made about the millions of dollars
going into city park facilities restricted to out-of-towner use) claim it can
make that up through taxes paid by visitors to arena events, it's laughable
that non-residents to arena events during their trips could have bought in the
city goods worth $386.2 million, the break-even point.

Almost two decades ago, the city built at its own
expense a parking garage for the oft-troubled Louisiana Boardwalk Outlets that
struggles to maintain occupancy and especially with tenants that can contribute
significantly to the tax base (as reflected in the name change that added "Outlets"
as upscale tenants have fled resulting in a different strategy to lease the
one-third empty property). Politicians back then crowed about how a commercial boom
that would attract out-of-town visitors would cause city coffers to overflow,
as justification for their gift. Originally built for $160 million, its latest
sale in 2022 netted just $30.5 million. That means, on an
inflation-adjusted basis, the garage – which at $21.5 million should have been
built by the developer, not essentially as a gift by the city – cost $3 million
more than the worth of the entire property today. (The nearby property built
first but technically not connected to the Boardwalk, Bass Pro Shops, has it
own parking lot.)

A few years later, in conjunction with the state
and parish the city went in with the Cyber Innovation Center that
gradually would expand from it into the National Cyber Research Park. The city
threw in $35 million then a few million more since, and as part of that talked
about as many as 10,000
high-paying jobs coming to the area as a result of the CIC presence.
Instead, only a fraction of that number work near it, and the economic impact
of the entire arrangement has come overwhelmingly from the nearby NCRP tenants,
who except for infrastructure used their own resources to install their presences.
As with the arena, the CIC never has come close to paying itself off, and its presence
only peripherally has had anything to do with attracting NCRP business.

All three of these were examples of government venture
capitalism, in building something that non-government entities should have pursued
but didn't because the costs exceeded the benefits. Still, elected officials
let themselves get sucked into these bad deals, and Bossier Citians have paid
for it ever since: in the huge initial outlays, the interest costs, and
supplemental costs that far outstrip tax collections attributable to these. But
rather than admit defeat, the city continues to allow citizens to lose money on
these.

Yet it has decided to throw in the towel on a much
smaller similar item. Late last year, the city announced it wanted to dispose
of its two alternative fuel stations, and at the Bossier City Council's Feb. 13 meeting at the
request of Republican Councilor Brian Hammons
an update was delivered about this. City Attorney Richard Ray said an appraisal
on these has been completed, but also expressed doubts about whether the
properties even could be sold at appraised values.

Those values likely will come in under $4.4
million. That represents the amount the city anticipated drawing from its Riverboat
Capital Projects Fund in 2010 and 2011 to build the pair of compressed natural
gas stations. Web records available don't lay out a precise cost or how much
was added over the years.

That story is a rinse and repeat of the government-as-economic-engine
ideology that has been a mainstay of the two graybeards who have been on the
Council from the time of the building of the arena, Democrat Bubba Williams
and no party Jeff Darby,
plus Republican David
Montgomery who joined just after the arena opened. With the Haynesville
Shale booming, the city
argued this would lead to lower fuel expenditures as well as be more
environmentally-friendly, even though conversions and new vehicles cost roughly
$7,000 more per vehicle than running with conventional gasoline.

Naturally, the bet didn't pan out and after paying
extra for dozens of such vehicles since the first station began operating in
2010, they've been cycled back out of the city fleet, making the stations obsolete
for the purposes of the city. Nor does it appear that this made a positive contribution
to city finances. Since then, the stations have a bookkeeping profit of
$160,000, with the first nine years in positive territory seven of them. But since
2017 they've recorded a deficit every year through 2022 with the three largest
in 2020-22.

That may well understate the case. The city's
annual Comprehensive
Annual Financial Report doesn't distinguish whether the sales and purchases
include compressed natural gas delivered into city vehicles. The $843,389 sales
figure of 2022 implies $2,311 average daily sales, or at an average of $2.49 a
gallon (in Louisiana
in Jan., 2022) coming out to 928 gallons sold a day or just over 50 vehicles
a day filling their tanks. That seems like a high number if only non-city vehicles,
and in accounting terms it would be much more difficult to parse out those
numbers, so commingled in all of that likely are city fuel costs. Throw in the
several hundred thousands of extra dollars spent on CNG-capable vehicles and although
normally CNG prices are lower it burns through quicker so fuel price
differentials over the years would matter, but probably it ended up with the
CNG vehicles costing more to operate over their lifespans.

So, the experiment probably cost extra taxpayer
dollars, but that's par for the course for Bossier City ever since the casinos
showed up. At least there's some belated recognition to cut losses in this
case, with selling that should extend to the white elephants the arena and CIC,
although with the parking garage there needs to be monetization if possible. It's
just another example of how Bossier City has mismanaged itself out of hundreds
of millions of dollars over the past quarter-century, if presenting a smaller lesson,
and the pity of it is the likes of Darby, Montgomery, and Williams who have presided
over this decline still remain in office, unrepentant and who likely would make
the same mistakes all over again if voters will let them.

Senator Lindsey Graham had two options walking into the Doha Forum in Qatar this weekend: find a way to triangulate his full-throated support for Netanyahu policies in Israel for the largely Palestinian-supportive Muslim audience Sunday, or wave his own flag without reservation. He went with the latter.The South Carolina Republican made it clear he was no stranger to the region — he touted a long friendship with his host the Emir of Qatar and lauded the kingdom's role as international mediator and host to America's Fifth Fleet. But he didn't bat an eye to tell this audience — thousands of Muslims assembled from across the Gulf and the broader Middle East, plus attendees from Global South nations and Europe — that the U.S. veto of the ceasefire was one of the few things he thought the Biden Administration got right."President Biden ...You have risen to the occasion after October the seventh," he said, addressing the audience Sunday. "I have a world of difference with President Biden on many things. But when he vetoed the ceasefire resolution, he did the right thing and let me tell you why. Every ceasefire Hamas has ever entered has been broken and we're not going to do a ceasefire until hostages begin to be released like promised and would give the Israeli military the time and space they need to make sure that Hamas ceases to be a threat to Israel and the Palestinian people.""So as a Republican, I am standing behind President Biden's decision, (against) that resolution and the one that comes next." The audience, at all times polite, sat stone faced.He also said the only way there will be peace in the Middle East will be to get Iran — the real culprit. And the only way to start building a state for Palestine ith the Israel-Saudi deal the icing on the cake."I pledge in front of the world to help President Biden secure the votes in the United States Senate to make it possible for Saudi Arabia to have a defense agreement with us, which would then make it possible for Saudi Arabia, to recognize Israel," he declared. "Before the world I pledge my support, to help reconstruct a new Palestine but none of this is possible until you have a less corrupt younger Palestinian Authority, replacing the one we have. And a Hamas can no longer wreak havoc on Israel, on their own people."That potential U.S.-brokered Israel-Saudi deal have been deemed all but dead after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Graham contended that aside from hating Jews, Hamas launched the attacks to kill any hope for that deal to go forward. Observers have come to similar conclusions — that the so-called Abraham Accords had left the Palestinians on the cutting room floor, inciting anger among the militant elements in Gaza. But unlike Graham, these critics' hold that the agreements are the problem — that regional leaders' shouldn't have allowed Israel to shunt the peace process to the side in the first place.Not only did Graham ignore this fatal flaw of the agreements, he reveled in his own blind spots, choosing to ignore any culpability of the Netanyahu government over the decades leading to the violence and what appears today, an endless bombardment and on-the-ground military operation in Gaza with chances for further talks between the two sides dwindling by the hour. Instead, he appeared to blame Iran for everything."The biggest fear of the Ayatollah is that the Arab world, in conjunction with Israel, marches toward the light away from the darkness. (Iran hates) the idea that everybody in this room can find a way to work with Israel and live with Israel where everybody makes money and can live in peace. Because let me tell you, their agenda is different than yours. So I believe we cannot let Iran win."He said he was committed to a two-state solution, and if there was any moment in his talk where he put any responsibility on Israel it was this: "I'm going to Israel soon and here's what I'm telling Israeli friends — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, none of these Arab countries can help you. Unless you make a commitment for a two state solution. ...To my friends in Israel the best thing you can do to beat Iran is to give the Palestinians a life where they're not dependent upon terrorist organizations that they can live and work and be prosperous." How Israelis could get there, from here, was not explained by Lindsey Graham, or whether he honestly thought that was possible given the "hell on earth" Gaza is becoming today. But we know he doesn't believe that the civilian crisis on the ground now will reduce the chances for peace tomorrow, because of the way he reacted to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's remarks earlier this month. Austin said "the lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat."To which Graham responded:"Strategic defeat would be inflaming the Palestinians? They're already inflamed," Graham continued. "They're taught from the time they're born to hate the Jews and to kill them. They're taught math: If you have 10 Jews and kill six, how many would you have left?"

Since November, the Houthis in Yemen have launched scores of missile and drone attacks on vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the southern Red Sea in reaction to the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza. Ansarallah, the dominant Houthi militia, also hijacked the Japanese-operated and partly Israeli-owned Galaxy Leader on November 19.On December 19, the Pentagon responded by establishing Operation Prosperity Guardian, a mostly Western security initiative aimed at deterring the Houthis from disrupting shipping near the Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow straight separating Yemen from the Horn of Africa. About 30 percent of all global containers and approximately 12 percent of world trade transit the Bab el-Mandeb.Yet Operation Prosperity Guardian failed to deter Ansarallah from continuing its missile and drone strikes. The group has said consistently that these attacks on vessels off Yemen's coast will end if and only when Israel ceases its attacks on Gaza. Rather than using U.S. leverage to persuade the Israeli government to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, the Biden administration, along with the UK, has carried out over the past week a series of airstrikes against Houthi targets across Yemen while continuing to supply Israel with bombs and other weaponry to continue its Gaza campaign. The Pentagon was keen to emphasize that this month's U.S.-UK strikes against Ansarallah targets in Yemen took place outside Operation Prosperity Guardian's framework.These strikes, the first direct U.S. military intervention against the Houthis since October 2016, are escalating regional tensions in ways that are unsettling Washington's closest Arab allies and partners in the Persian Gulf.Apart from Bahrain, which joined Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands in playing nonoperational roles in these American-British strikes, the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have refused to participate. And most of them have expressed concern about Washington and London's escalation. Even before January 11, when the first wave of strikes took place, some Gulf Arab officials warned explicitly against such military action.During a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on January 7, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani made clear his concerns. "We never see a military action as a resolution," he asserted, adding that protecting shipping lanes through "diplomatic means" would be the "best way possible." Nine days later, while addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sheikh Mohammed warned that military strikes against the Houthis would fail to contain Ansarallah's operations. "We need to address the central issue, which is Gaza, in order to get everything else defused... If we are just focusing on the symptoms and not treating the real issues, [solutions] will be temporary," he said.Shortly after the U.S.-UK strikes, Kuwait also expressed "grave concern and keen interest in the developments in the Red Sea region following the attacks that targeted sites in Yemen."As for Oman, which has often served as a key mediator and geopolitical balancer in the region, its foreign ministry declared that Muscat "can only condemn the use of military action by friendly countries" and warned that the U.S.-UK strikes risk worsening the Middle East's perilous situation. "We denounce the resort to military action by [Western] allies while Israel persists in its brutal war without accountability," read a statement from the ministry.Saudi Arabia's high stakesBut the GCC member most concerned about the escalating tensions in the Gulf of Aden, southern Red Sea, and Yemen is likely Saudi Arabia. Late last year, Riyadh asked the Biden administration to show restraint when responding to Ansarallah's attacks on vessels off Yemen's coast. After the U.S. and UK strikes began, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for "avoiding escalation" while noting that Riyadh was monitoring events with "great concern."In an interview with RS, Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, explained that "[t]his statement indicates Saudi efforts to encourage de-escalation and at the same time to ensure its short- and medium-term diplomatic interests by signaling its concern to all the parties involved, including the U.S. and Britain.""The Saudis are concerned and for good reason," according to Aziz Alghashian, a fellow at Lancaster University in Britain. "The Saudi ruling elite want to avoid being caught in the middle of regional and international conflicts," he told RS.Among other things, the Saudis want their nearly two-year-old truce with the Houthis to be preserved. The kingdom is also determined to ensure that the Saudi-Iranian détente, that was mediated by Oman, Iraq, and China last March, remains on track. The view from Riyadh is that the U.S.-UK military intervention in Yemen threatens to undermine both interests."The Saudi concern is that attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and U.S. and UK attacks on Yemen bring Iran and the Houthis closer together and that Iran [will] become more directly involved in Houthi [operations]," according to Kamrava. "By attacking Yemen, the U.S. and UK have already escalated the Gaza war beyond Palestine. Saudi Arabia would want to do whatever it can to contain a further escalation as it may spill over into its own borders and to result in a radicalization of domestic political sensibilities."The Saudi leadership recognizes that the kingdom would be in a much more vulnerable position if the ongoing regional crisis were unfolding during the 2016-20 period, when tensions between Riyadh and Tehran were sky high. Due to their recent détente, the kingdom perceives the Iranian threat to the kingdom as far more manageable. "The escalation of regional tension due to the war on Gaza and the subsequent escalation of tensions in the Red Sea are examples of why the Saudi-Iranian normalization deal struck last March is strategically [valuable to Riyadh]," said Alghashian.Ultimately, with Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, better known as MbS, at the helm, the Saudi leadership wants to prioritize its Vision 2030 — the kingdom's ambitious economic diversification agenda. A successful Vision 2030 requires stability in Saudi Arabia and its neighborhood. It's within this context that the Saudi government renormalized diplomatic relations with Iran last year, embraced opportunities for rapprochement with Qatar and Turkey in 2021/22, and engaged the Houthis in talks about a permanent truce.With NEOM, a futuristic metropolis, and other Vision 2030 projects based along Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, officials in Riyadh are gravely concerned about how the Gaza war, the related Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and U.S.-UK retaliation could destabilize this body of water and the surrounding territory. Further escalation by any of the parties is a scenario that the Saudi government wants to avoid at all costs.To ensure that Ansarallah does not resume its attacks against Saudi Arabia, Riyadh has tried to distance itself from this month's U.S.-UK military strikes in Yemen. However, given Manama's participation, however nominal, in Washington and London's attacks on Houthi targets, as well as its normalized relationship with Israel, the possibility that the Houthis may retaliate by targeting the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, can't be dismissed. Given the extent to which protecting Bahrain's national security has been a high priority for Saudi Arabia and the other GCC states, such a scenario risks serious damage to Riyadh's interests.As Kamrava observed, targeting U.S. interests on the Arabian Peninsula by the Houthis, or "some of the loose grouplets within them," could constitute an "extremely dangerous development and a conflagration that would be difficult to contain."