The bad news? The Iranians are still shooting at foreign cargo vessels plying the Persian Gulf. The good news? The latest instance doesn't involve a U.S.-flagged ship. Which really isn't good news, either:
On Thursday, CNN reported that Iran has again engaged in provocative and destabilizing behavior in the Gulf. According to reports, five Iranian gunboats approached a Singapore-flagged cargo vessel in the Persian Gulf and fired warning shots across its bow.
That vessel reportedly than engaged in emergency maneuvers, turned away from an international shipping lane, and escaped into the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates. “At that point, there’s a lot of drama here, the UAE sent three of its cargo vessels out to protect the ship that was now in its national waters, and the Iranian’s turned back,” CNN security reporter Barbara Starr reported.
So, free from having to worry about U.S. intervention, the mullahs feel free to prey on any shipping that enters what they consider to be their territorial waters, a claim that no country other than Obamerikastan recognizes. And this little caper ran the risk of igniting open hostilities between Iran and the UAE.
Yes, the Iranians retreated. But remember what this is: more envelope-pushing, and another attempt to lure U.S. naval forces into the Persian Gulf where Iranian anti-ship missiles can destroy them. But more likely sooner than later, we will have to engage in that confrontation if only to reassert naval supremacy and assert the freedom of the seas on which the global economy depends:
The strength of American hegemony is best measured by the freedom with which commercial vessels navigate international shipping lanes unimpeded. As the nation best equipped to project power abroad and which enjoys near monopoly control over the waves, only the United States can guarantee global free transit. To attack a trade ship is a direct threat to American interests and the geopolitical order.
What’s more, the feeble American response to an Iranian attack on a nation’s vessel that Washington is treaty-bound to protect almost guaranteed that Iran would again engage in this kind of provocation. Eventually, those nations involved in global trade will no longer leave their security up to chance when transiting through the Persian Gulf. Eventually, the world will no longer rely on a lethargic United States to provide protection and will ensure their trade vessels have an armed accompaniment.
And then matters will be out of our hands - as, in fact, they already are, as we see the Saudi-led Sunni coalition battling Iranian proxies in Yemen even as the U.S. serves as the mullahs' air force in Iraq.
It bears repeating the vast difference in global stability between the past seventy years of post-World War II American benevolent global hegemony and twenty years of American isolationism that preceded, and led directly to, that war. If we are engaged in the world - to a degree, yes, as the global policeman - regional bad actors are deterred, the seas are clear, and the planetary economy can safely, confidently, and peacefully function. If we withdraw from the world, as we did in the 1920s and 1930s, and even effectively turn on our erstwhile friends and ally ourselves with regional bad actors like Russia, Red China, Iran, etc., the latter will see no obstacle to the attainment of their regional ambitions, and will be encouraged to raise those ambitions to a global scale. And the world will spin out of control into chaos and war. And unlike eighty years ago, it will include weapons of mass destruction.
And recall how America got dragged into the last global shooting war: a sneak attack. Only the next time, it won't just be a couple of conventional airstrikes on a U.S. naval base.
History, in short, is repeating itself. And that's why we are rapidly running out of it.
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