If someone calls themselves a navalists but does not have a map/chart – preferably a globe – in ready visual access in their office, then they are not a navalist.
Geography ALWAYS matters. People, politics, philosophies, even empires come and go, but on a human timescale, geography is always there.
A choke point is a choke point. Distance is time. Access is both an advantage and a vulnerability. Relative importance may shift its center of gravity from one point of the globe to the other over time, the land and sea remains.
All Sailors know the Bab al-Mandab and everyone following the events of the last two decades knows Yemen, but what about its islands?
History seems to be returning to the waterless island of Perim, aka Mayyun Island;
A mysterious air base is being built on a volcanic island off Yemen that sits in one of the world’s crucial maritime chokepoints for both energy shipments and commercial cargo.
While no country has claimed the Mayun Island air base in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, shipping traffic associated with a prior attempt to build a massive runway across the 5.6-kilometer (3.5 mile)-long island years ago links back to the United Arab Emirates.
You can see the mark history has left as Perim was important, forgotten and remembered again. Old abandoned ports and villages, derelict airfields from wars both hot and cold.
Look at what grows now.
There is significant danger here. Comfortable theories from the pampered think tanks and faculty lounges in DC and Europe have been tut-tuting the ongoing war in Yemen. We may not like the conflict, but the Houthi are not our friends – they are Iran’s friends. The Arab armies fighting them are doing the work for us to keep Iran from expanding to even more influence. It isn’t pretty, but it is necessary.
We need to be careful and keep an eye on the larger picture.
If I say, “improving isolated but militarily important islands for military advantage” and you don’t think, “People’s Republic of China” – then you are not thinking right.
How does this possibly connect to Perim? Through UAE;
U.S. spy agencies in recent weeks watched as two planes belonging to China’s People’s Liberation Army landed at an airport in the United Arab Emirates and unloaded crates of undetermined materiel, according to U.S. officials who have seen the intelligence.
The transport flights, along with other signs of nascent security cooperation between Beijing and the U.A.E., a major U.S. ally in the Gulf region, have alarmed U.S. officials and cast fresh uncertainty over a multibillion-dollar sale of advanced U.S. weapons to the Emirates, the officials said.
UAE will get the support it needs, from who she needs to, to underwrite her national security requirements as she sees fit.
Do we want to give China another opening with almost no effort? If I were the Chinese, I would already have a very lucrative offer on the table for UAE.
That airfield looks sexy, and with some “help” and “upgrading” would be a nice addition to the carrier pier at Djibouti.
