Abhijit Bhattacharyya | Wars move West to East: Ukraine, Gaza to Red Sea

True to this, the twenty-first century began with a classic war waged by a Western coalition of 40-plus developed nations (International Security Assistance Force), far from their own territory, in distant Asia’s Iraq and Afghanistan, smashing humans like animals for 20 long years, yet ending with the ludicrous fiasco of an ignominious retreat from Kabul without victory in August 2021.

The West’s intra-Europe conflict again erupted (somewhat unexpectedly) in February 2022 with Russia and Ukraine engaged in a savage battle over land, on European soil itself. As the 23-month Second Crimea War rages unabated between Moscow and Kyiv, no one in Europe is prepared to face Second World War-type conflicts of close physical combat and millions of dead bodies.

Another deadlier war front, fraught with far-reaching ramifications, however, has opened in the East Mediterranean Sea over three months ago, in early October 2023, between the overbearing but militarily powerful Jewish state and a non-state actor, the Hamas terrorist group which had grabbed administrative control of Gaza Strip of Palestinian territory, thereby shifting the stage of bloodbath away from the West and closer to the East.

Just over a month later again, the conflict has spread farther East in November 2023, with the United States and its allies in direct line of fire, with the Houthis and other ragtag non-state terrorist actors using basic weapons of unusual effectiveness in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and its vicinity. The US Navy, Britain’s Royal Navy and others, including the Indian Navy, are engaged in warding off attacks on commercial shipping on key trade routes with missiles and drones, presenting a new, deadly challenge not only to the West but to India as well. How can this be tackled?

To understand the shifting of the raging wars from Europe to the Levant, the Horn of Africa and the Persian Gulf, and the sea routes to South Asia, let’s recapitulate few salient features of the unfolding scenario East of Suez. First, examine the psyche of the terrorists. Just as the West, before and after the Second World War, wanted to wage conflicts far from its soil; the 400-year-long Western imperialism’s suppression, oppression, loot and killings have made a wide section of Easterners follow the same strategy-- to take their battles to the soil of the West. Remember the attacks on America on September 11, 2001, and the flurry of headline-hitting terror strikes in major Western capitals, including London 2005? Today, all these non-state terror actors (Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc) are resorting to violent killings to re-ignite the fire to harm global routes to finance, fuel, food and factory products.

The moot point is this: how are the Houthis operating overnight with such ferocity? The answer lies in long-term planning and preparation. Just as nation-states prepare for conflicts through their established war institutions, so did the Houthis start with the help of allies like Iran, who face a common enemy. The enemy, undeniably, is the West.

Contextually, let’s put the clock back 17 years to January/February 2007. Jane’s Navy International had reported that “China has become an anti-ship missile powerhouse”. Beijing soon shared its technology with Iran, with the United States being their common adversary. In due course, with the US-led West’s propensity for “sanctions” against many powers, the proliferation of anti-ship missiles was an inevitable fallout. Things obviously went from bad to worse as the means to settle scores by the poorer East with the mighty West were now at hand.

While the West may not be unhappy as the zone of conflict shifts towards the East’s soil and waters, but these conflicts will now adversely affect its trade and profits as commercial shipping faces attacks and expensive detours. Thus, the gradual transfer of the West’s wars, from the Black Sea to the Arabian Sea through the Mediterranean, is a global bad omen. What began as “normal” war between two European nation-states has transformed into a conflict of non-state terrorists versus a muscular Levant nation-state which now heads towards the creation of another powerful coalition of Western nations, taking on the invisible and desperate,

kamikaze-inspired poor adversary on a mission in the ocean to destroy the West. The key challenge for the West’s formidable navies in Eastern waters is the protection and survival of their warships and merchant vessels from the unconventional and asymmetric attacks by minnows. Today, it’s not ship-versus-ship or submarine-versus-aircraft-carrier or ship-borne ballistic missiles attacking landlocked Afghanistan or maritime reconnaissance aircraft on anti-submarine warfare missions. The stage was set over 56 years ago in the Levant itself when the Israeli destroyer Eilat was sunk on October 21, 1967 by Egyptian missile-craft, thereby showing what small vessels armed with missiles and determined men can do to radically shift the naval balance. Later, in April-June 1982, the Falklands war again upset the Royal Navy ops plan when two modern destroyers were sunk by Argentina’s French-made Exocet sea-skimming anti-ship missiles.

The world of warfare has moved on since. And, along with conventional wars, there are other types of warriors and belligerents. It may not be enough to be big to be effective. Russia is believed to have a powerful military, but this has not been effective enough to prevail decisively over the much smaller Ukraine. The 23-month-long war has been more pain than gain for both nations. In the Middle East, Israel’s powerful army has killed over 26,000 Palestinians in the Gaza ground war, while Hamas fighters killed over 1,300 Israelis and took hundreds hostage; yet neither side can see an end to the conflict anytime soon.

Could the wars launched in Europe and the Middle East spread farther in Asia? That only time can tell, but the West is quite desperate to avert any more Armageddon on its soil for fear of extinction.