The EU has given up on the world outside its borders

The threat posed by the Houthis is obvious even in Brussels, but once again the EU is its own worst enemy

Source - Daily Telegraph - 23/01/24

As so often in the past, British and American forces are back in action together, this time against the Houthis, who are trying to cut off shipping in the Red Sea.

Anglo-American strikes from sea and air are backed by our traditional allies Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with support from Bahrain. But the only European Union member state to participate in Operation Prosperity Guardian is The Netherlands. From Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Rome and Madrid there is nothing but sullen indifference. Even the Germans, initially on side, seem to have fallen silent.

Yet it is the EU that has most to gain from keeping open one of the world’s most important trade arteries. Already the costly re-routing of shipping in response to Houthi drone, missile and seaborne attacks is driving up consumer prices across Europe.

The threat posed by the Houthis is obvious even in Brussels, but once again the EU is its own worst enemy. The Eurocrats combine antipathy towards Anglo-American sea power with timidity towards the Arab world.

Instead of joining the US-led naval task force, France, Germany and Italy have decided to organise their own mission under the EU flag. But this operation, code-named ASPIDES, has yet to be agreed on, let alone dispatched. While EU politicians and bureaucrats agonise, the Royal Navy and the RAF are actively helping the US to degrade Houthi missile batteries supplied by Iran.

As we have seen before in the Middle East, timing is everything. We must act quickly to interdict the Houthi threat before it can escalate. But there is no chance of the European operation getting underway speedily.

Even if the EU mission ever actually leaves harbour, there are grave doubts about what its rules of engagement would permit it to do. No wonder the Dutch, who share our proud naval traditions, preferred to join Operation Prosperity Guardian.

The truth is that the EU has never succeeded in creating a military force of any size or within a reasonable time frame. As an institution, it is painfully slow to react to global threats. Europe’s grandest panjandrum, President Emmanuel Macron, notoriously dismissed Nato as “brain dead”. Yet the Atlantic alliance has stood the test of time, while the much-touted European Army has remained no more than a Napoleonic fantasy.

Ukraine and Israel have just reminded us of the brutal realities of war. Last Monday alone 24 Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza, while in two years Ukraine has suffered an estimated 300,000 casualties, according to Nato. Such sacrifices require courage and patriotism. Does anyone believe that Europeans are ready to die for the sake of the EU?

There is a lesson here for Europeans that they will almost certainly have to learn the hard way yet again. Three times in the last 110 years, the United States has intervened to save mainland Europe from tyranny: twice in world wars and again in the Cold War.

Now our Continent again faces lethal threats, which have exposed the woeful lack of military preparedness of Nato’s European pillar. A second Trump presidency would put the alliance itself in peril – especially if a more isolationist administration had its suspicions confirmed by EU inaction.

Hence the present naval action in the Red Sea has acquired an additional significance as a test of European resolve. It is not too late for the French, Italians and Germans to rethink their stance and join the Dutch in lending their naval assets – several of which are already in the region – to Operation Prosperity Guardian.

In their pursuit of a totalitarian Islamist dictatorship in Yemen, the Houthis have outdone even the Taliban, trampling over human rights and even reimposing slavery. Up to half a million people have died so far in the civil war that this murderous brood has unleashed in one of the poorest countries on earth.

From the EU perspective, the fact that the Houthis represent a peculiarly vile form of Islamofascism ought to help the bureaucrats in Brussels to overcome their distaste for cooperating with post-Brexit Britain.

Yet the far-Left Irish MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly are not alone in defending the Houthis and denouncing the Anglo-American operation. 

As long as too many politicians in the EU care more about posturing than about preserving freedom, the task of policing the high seas will remain predominantly a matter for the English-speaking peoples.