At the height of enthusiasm for globalization in the 1990s, many policymakers convinced themselves that the benefits of a more connected world would encourage potential spoilers to accept a stable international order. At the time, the actions of key actors in business and politics that triggered moments of extreme disruption were written off as anomalies whose impact could quickly be contained. Even now, in the face of shocks as momentous as Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine or Hamas’ recent attack on Israel, many commentators remain hopeful that the economic logic of globalization can encourage actors fueling conflict to moderate their behavior.
This lingering complacency over the attractive power of globalization was also visible in the recent shock over attacks by Yemen’s Houthi movement on merchant shipping in the Red Sea. With the help of military aid from Iran, the Houthis have managed to seize most of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa, and the crucial seaport of Hodeidah. Nevertheless, until recently, many observers believed that economic pressures might eventually encourage restraint among the Houthi leadership.
Yet within days of the Israeli army’s assault on Gaza in response to Hamas’ attack, the Houthis began targeting freighters supposedly linked to Israeli interests in what they claim is a pressure campaign to help the Palestinian people. In response, the U.S. has organized a multinational naval task force to safeguard commercial shipping through the approach to the Suez Canal; a U.S. Navy helicopter just sank three Houthi speedboats, killing 10 Houthis on board, in coming to the defense of a vessel they were trying to board. Even India has dispatched naval vessels to the Red Sea. The risk of escalation is now palpable.
That the Houthi movement would eventually acquire the military power to paralyze a sea route crucial to the globalized economy would have seemed improbable when it was founded in 1992. Led by members of the Houthi tribe who hoped to revive the Zaidi branch of Shiite Islam that underpinned the social order in northern Yemen, the movement was radicalized by repression from the autocratic regime of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and its Saudi backers suspicious of grassroots religious activism. In the civil wars that swept over Yemen after the 2011 popular uprising that ultimately toppled Saleh in February 2012, the pressures the Houthis faced from rivals backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates encouraged them to seek further help from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, and its network of regional proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Throughout their rise, the Houthis displayed ruthless pragmatism in their quest for dominance of the territories once ruled by Zaidi imamates. In the aftermath of the 2011 uprising, the Houthis were willing to work with civil society activists, tribal groups and—in a reversal of alliances—even with the deposed Saleh in their quest to expand their control, even though they did not share the same political goals. When faced with an external military intervention led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to halt their advance toward the southern port of Aden in 2015, the Houthis further downplayed their sectarian ideology and portrayed their campaign as a patriotic war against external powers.
Over the past year, after a series of short-term truces and amid flagging interest in Riyadh for continuing the war, the Houthis have made diplomatic overtures toward the Saudis, fueling hopes among more optimistic observers that the movement might be seeking more stable relations with the outside world. Faced with the need to pay public sector salaries as well as Iran’s own efforts to improve relations with Riyadh, the Houthis had strong incentives to seek peace with the Saudis to secure financial aid as well as oil and gas export revenues. Despite occasional flare-ups of fighting, the abandonment of large-scale drone and missile attacks on Saudi infrastructure seemed to indicate that the need to revive the economy could lead the Houthis to accept the institutional and legal foundations of globalization.
As the Houthi’s attacks on Red Sea shipping escalated, the extent to which they reflect ideological dynamics within the movement that override concerns over economic advantage has become visible.
This explains why so many outside observers were caught off-guard by the speed with which the movement opted for confrontation with global powers in response to events in Gaza. Though links with Tehran’s network of proxies meant that a robust response in solidarity with Hamas was expected, Houthi leaders opted for confrontation that made conflict with a combined task force of U.S. and European navies inevitable. With every major shipping firm diverting its vessels away from the Red Sea and insurance rates skyrocketing for the few commercial vessels still willing to dock at Hodeidah, the specter of confrontation with the U.S., Europeans and perhaps even India has led to further deterioration of conditions for those living under Houthi rule.
Given a course of action that seems so irrational in economic terms, some observers initially assumed that the Houthis were pursuing confrontation at the behest of their allies in the IRGC, Hezbollah and Hamas. But it’s improbable that the Houthis only moved at the behest of external actors; Hamas is currently struggling to survive brutal Israeli attacks in Gaza, while the IRGC and Hezbollah are balancing military operations in support of Hamas with efforts to avoid wider escalation that could disrupt their position in Lebanon. Rather, as the Houthi attacks escalated, the extent to which they reflect ideological dynamics within the Houthi movement that override concerns over economic advantage has become visible.
With their own mix of Zaidi sectarian revivalism, Yemeni nationalism and even hints of irredentism toward Saudi and Omani territory once ruled by the Zaidi imamate, the Houthis consolidated their own distinct belief system before they developed closer ties with Iran. Though the Houthi’s motto—“God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam”—is modeled on Iranian rhetoric, the movement’s hostility toward external powers and deep antisemitism was already present before the IRGC’s assistance reshaped its military structures. While Hezbollah in Lebanon was closely intertwined with Iranian religious networks from the start of its existence, the Houthis had their own distinct movement in place long before they became part of Iran’s “Resistance Axis.”
As a result, there is a strong likelihood that rather than being pushed toward radical action by external partners, the Houthis were instead driven to it through their own particular strategic logic. To an external audience in the West and Middle East, the Houthis can now present themselves as the most uncompromising defenders of the Palestinian cause, willing to take risks that even Hezbollah and the IRGC have shied away from. Moreover, Houthi leaders may believe they can intimidate the Saudi government into making further concessions in talks to end the civil war. And within Yemen, the audacity of their attacks on global shipping have reasserted Houthi claims to being the most uncompromising defenders of Yemeni sovereignty against a hostile world, while highlighting the weakness and timidity of the Houthis’ domestic opponents.
Seen from the perspective of an ideology that is steeped in hatred of Jews and other outsiders, it would therefore have been surprising if the Houthis had not struck a blow against Israel and other states that are the central antagonists of their belief system. But the speed with which the Houthis ditched a path toward greater economic stability in favor of ideological purism, and the sheer relentlessness of the attacks in the Red Sea, contain worrying indications about Yemen’s future as well as a wider warning about the stability of an international order underpinned by globalization. In both cases, complacency among policymakers about how far a more connected world can change the calculus of armed actors shaped by militaristic and xenophobic ideologies has the potential to lead to further strategic blunders.
When it comes to the Houthis themselves, it is crucial for analysts and diplomats to pay attention to how these ideological dynamics may ultimately shape their strategic trajectory. A movement willing to risk direct confrontation with several great powers over a relatively distant conflict between Israel and Hamas is unlikely to prioritize economic concerns over goals that are even more deeply embedded in its ideological worldview.
On a broader level, shocks like the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, the assault on Ukraine by the Russian army and the fracturing of Sudan should dispel any remaining complacency over the irreversibility of globalization. In most conflicts over the past three decades, the economic advantages of a more connected world were not enough to override nationalist or sectarian fixations that shaped the worldview of state and nonstate actors with the military means to pursue them. If a more open world is to lead to lasting liberty and prosperity, then there must be no illusions over how quickly such gains can be destroyed by those that have more to gain from chaos than from peace.
Alexander Clarkson is a lecturer in European studies at King’s College London. His research explores the impact that transnational diaspora communities have had on the politics of Germany and Europe after 1945 as well as how the militarization of the European Union’s border system has affected its relationships with neighboring states. His weekly WPR column appears every Wednesday.