By
Othon A. Leon
Africa-Press – Eritrea. The Red Sea, particularly the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, has evolved as one of the world’s most hazardous maritime routes. Since late 2023, attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on commercial shipping have hampered global trade, forcing massive vessel rerouting around Africa, raising insurance prices (up to 1% of a ship’s value according to Marsh Maclennan, the world’s largest broker), and escalating regional tensions. While these assaults are motivated by the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, they also represent a larger strategic pattern: the weaponization of maritime chokepoints by both state and non-state actors.
The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council offers a comprehensive analytical framework for understanding this phenomenon in its Global Foresight 2025 study. One of its most essential cautions is that “critical infrastructure, including maritime routes and undersea cables, will increasingly be targeted as part of hybrid conflict strategies.” Hybrid conflict infers a level of covert and deniable actions, including sabotage. These authors argue that the most effective response to the Red Sea situation is a regional diplomatic initiative led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Limited military efforts and unilateral Western pressure have proved ineffective. Without a strong regional diplomatic framework, the Red Sea issue risks becoming a replicable model of geopolitical pressure, spreading to other chokepoints worldwide.
Implications of the Red Sea Crisis
Since 2015, the Houthi movement, a Zaidi Shia faction backed by Iran, has occupied significant parts of northern Yemen. Initially engaging in a civil war against the Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition that supported Yemen’s internationally recognized government, the Houthis have reinvented themselves on the world scene as anti-imperialist defenders of Palestinian rights. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October 2023, they have begun attacking ships supposedly affiliated with Israel, the United States, or the UK. Their acts swiftly escalated into indiscriminate attacks on worldwide commercial vessels travelling across the Red Sea.
The economic consequences have been significant. Major shipping firms, including Maersk, MSC, and CMA CGM, rerouted their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks and millions of dollars to each voyage. Insurance premiums for Red Sea transits have risen. The Suez Canal, a significant source of revenue for Egypt, experienced a decline in traffic of more than 40% in early 2024. The geopolitical costs were equally substantial: the Red Sea became a live-fire zone for the first time in decades, with US and UK naval forces hitting Houthi targets in Yemen as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian.
However, as the Global Foresight 2025 research shows, military deterrence is unlikely to prevent the strategic use of infrastructure as a political tool. The study warns, “Even when not state-sponsored, small actors can wield disproportionate influence by disrupting key nodes in global trade.” The Houthis serve as a prime example of this pattern: low-cost, asymmetric warfare resulting in high-cost disruption and limited high-cost responses by modern militaries who find themselves responding to cheap drones with expensive ordnance.
A Foreseen but Underestimated Risk of the Weaponization of Chokepoints
The Red Sea issue should not be viewed as an isolated incident but rather as a manifestation of a growing worldwide concern. According to the Atlantic Council’s poll data, 40% of foresight experts anticipate a major power confrontation would occur before 2035, possibly involving non-state proxies. The report presents the concept of “snow leopards”, underappreciated hazards with great impact potential. One such vulnerability is the susceptibility of marine and digital infrastructure to sabotage. Although the report focuses on undersea cables and digital infrastructure, its rationale also applies to maritime chokepoints: political ambitions can hijack these key corridors in ways that classic military models do not anticipate.
As the Red Sea incident indicates, disrupting a chokepoint does not require the involvement of a state actor. The Houthis’ ability to target warships with drones and missiles was underestimated since it did not fit into the traditional threat matrix. However, it corresponds closely to what the Atlantic Council refers to as the “blurring of lines between conventional and unconventional threats.”
What makes this tendency especially concerning is its replicability. If the Houthis succeed in affecting global trade flows, other organizations, like Somali pirates and militant forces in the South China Sea, may follow suit. Thus, the strategic risk is systemic rather than regional. This can be seen as part of what US strategist Andrew Krepinevich refers to as the ‘democratization of violence.’
The Failure of Western-Centric Deterrence and the Rise of Regional Responsibility
The US and UK attacks on Houthi locations in early 2024 were aimed at reestablishing deterrence. However, by mid-2025, the attacks had failed to deter Houthi actions. This finding supports another trend identified in the Global Foresight 2025 report: a deteriorating sense of US diplomatic leadership. According to the study, only 24% of experts anticipate that the United States will maintain its global diplomatic power by 2035, a significant decrease from prior years.
This decline of Western legitimacy leaves a gap in crisis management that regional powers must fill. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have both strategic and political stakes in the Red Sea corridor. Egypt is primarily reliant on Suez Canal income; Saudi Arabia has invested billions in Red Sea tourism and logistics; and the UAE seeks naval dominance from the Gulf to the Horn of Africa.
A regional diplomatic initiative would have legitimacy, making it harder for Iran to denounce it as foreign imperialism. It provides neutral ground for backchannel diplomacy between Iran and its competitors, possibly through Oman, now seen as a discreet mediator in Gulf matters.
Blueprint for Maritime Diplomacy in the Red Sea
What would an effective diplomatic strategy look like?
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Sudan form the Red Sea Maritime Security Forum. The African Union, Arab League, and UN would serve as observers. This forum would coordinate threat assessments, incident response, and joint naval patrols. Precedents include the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—created during the Iran/Iraq War—both of which have established channels for security communication among enemies.
Mediators, such as Oman or Iraq, can facilitate indirect negotiations with the Houthis and Iran. While direct engagement with the Houthis is problematic, any long-term solution must include them. Diplomacy does create legitimacy; it implies strategic necessity. Despite strong opposition, the 2015 nuclear talks with Iran set a good example for dealing with challenging actors when the stakes are high.
Economic and humanitarian incentives include port rebuilding funding for Yemen, fuel subsidies, and humanitarian corridors. These could be contingent on a verified end to attacks, carried out by regional mediators trusted by all sides.
Multilateral organizations, like the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), can play a role in strengthening legal frameworks for commercial routes. These organizations can give legitimacy, expertise, and dispute resolution methods, limiting the incentive for unilateral action.
These efforts are aligned with the Global Foresight 2025 report, which emphasizes multilateral diplomacy as the most effective instrument for dealing with hybrid threats. “No state alone can stabilize a contested chokepoint; only layered, multinational cooperation offers lasting resilience,” the paper says. A regional diplomatic framework would create legitimacy, decrease tensions, foster long-term agreements, and convey a message that regional actors are committed to protecting marine commerce.
Limitations and Counterarguments
Skeptics may argue that diplomacy will struggle to address ideologically motivated actors such as the Houthis or that Iran benefits from proxy upheaval and has little incentive to curb its proxies. Regional rivalries, for instance, such as those between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Nile or Saudi Arabia and Qatar, could undermine unity and delay action.
Nonetheless, these impediments do not contradict diplomatic methods; instead, they underscore the importance of adaptable and multilayered approaches. Nevertheless, while diplomacy is often messy, its utility is its adaptability and practicality in preventing conflict. Confidence-building measures (CBMs), such as joint training exercises, intelligence sharing on piracy, or even non-binding standards of behavior, could be used as initial steps. Multitrack diplomacy, including religious leaders, civil society, and shipping companies, could supplement state-led initiatives and foster greater consensus.
Another limitation is enforcement. Any agreement is at risk of collapse unless it is supervised by legitimate third parties and held accountable. Multilateral institutions might assist by using satellite tracking, naval inspections, and economic sanctions to guarantee compliance and penalize backsliding.
The Global Foresight 2025 cautions that “the cost of inaction is not stagnation but the normalization of coercive disruption.” Choosing not to respond diplomatically may be a strategic form of patience. It may also encourage other actors to adopt Houthi methods in other chokepoints, ranging from the Strait of Hormuz to the Taiwan Strait.
The Stakes of Inaction
The Red Sea crisis highlights a significant shift in global power dynamics and conflict behavior. Strategic competition is no longer limited to war battles; it also encompasses trade, infrastructure, and maritime logistics. The Houthis’ attacks on shipping lanes are more than just a regional nuisance; they foreshadow a new era of hybrid conflict in which chokepoints become pressure points for global chaos.
The Global Foresight 2025 warns that future threats will emerge from silent disruptions in the global supply chain, rather than official declarations of war—a tendency already seen in the Red Sea.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE must respond to the diplomatic vacuum not only as local players but also as global guardians of trade stability. They possess the regional legitimacy, strategic interest, and diplomatic networks to lead. They could create a new paradigm for marine crisis diplomacy, one that is preventive, inclusive, and based on long-term cooperation, with the support of multilateral institutions and flexible conversation structures.
If the Red Sea becomes the norm for how trade conflicts play out, the global economy will face asymmetric upheaval. Diplomacy offers the only alternative to chokepoints, which can be transformed from targets of weakness into regional resilience.
*David Oliver is a geopolitical strategy expert and the founder of Minerva Group. You can follow him on his Substack, The Ultima Ratio. He is pursuing a master’s degree in international relations and War Studies at King’s College London.
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