Welcome back to the Two Navy Guys Debrief, the (mostly) weekly forum where we look at a national security issue and how we have explored that topic in our fiction.
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Last week, we talked about a decade of co-writing and our plans for 2024. This week, our column is about a side effect of writing about national security issues for that long: Déjà vu.
Take our very first book, a thriller called Weapons of Mass Deception, written way back in 2014. The main antagonist in the book is…wait for it…Iran.
That’s right, in our 2014 novel, Iran uses a proxy (Hezbollah) to try to attack the US.
In 2024, ten years later and in real life, Iran is backing the Houthis in Yemen to attack shipping in the Red Sea.
As the saying goes, same s&$t, different day. Like we said, déjà vu.
But if we step back from this comparison between fact and fiction, we see another link in this unfolding situation with the Houthis that we try to bring out in our novels.
War is not an inevitable stop on the road of history. Rather, it is a series of small escalations that lead to larger and more consequential choices—choices made by our leaders.
With each escalation, the stakes get higher, especially once lives are on the line. The choices are more consequential. It becomes more difficult to stop the War Train.
In the study of history, this phenomenon is called the Thucydides Trap. Without trying to turn this column into a term paper, here’s what that term means according to historian Graham Allison:
Thucydides's Trap refers to the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power... the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception.1
The theory is most commonly applied to the US and China, but it applies to the current situation in the Middle East as well. Here’s a (vastly oversimplified) summary:
Hamas (backed by Iran) launches a brutal attack on Israel, killing thousands. Israel responds with an extensive and deadly air bombing campaign in Gaza that kills tens of thousands of civilians. Meanwhile, Hezbollah (backed by Iran) tries to open up a new front on Israel’s north. Israel escalates again by assassinating a Hamas leader on Lebanese soil. Finally, we get to Yemen. Houthis (backed by Iran) open up a campaign to attack shipping in the Red Sea, putting pressure on the rest of the world to respond.
What do all these flareup have in common? Iran, obviously. While Iran can claim they did not carry out these attacks, they certainly armed, trained and encouraged proxies all over the Middle East to do so. In the terms of the Thucydides Trap we referenced above, Iran is trying to create “structural stress” on the existing regional power structure.
And it’s working! As inhumane as the Hamas attacks were on October 7th, Israel’s attacks on civilians has not helped their cause.
In the case of Yemen, Iran’s longterm investment in the Houthis is paying off in a major way. The Houthi movement, after nearly ten years of war with Saudi Arabia, now controls most of the country of Yemen. That includes the coastline along the Red Sea.
About 15% of world shipping traffic goes through the Suez Canal every year, which works out to some 19,000 ships annually.2
In order to get to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal at the top of the Red Sea, ships need to pass through the Bab-el-Mandeb at the bottom of the Red Sea. (Incidentally, Bab-el-Mandeb translates to “Gate of Grief.” Long live irony.)
The Bab-el-Mandeb is a chokepoint. Only 26 kilometers wide, shipping traffic is limited to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound traffic.3 On one side of the chokepoint is Djibouti, on the other is Yemen. Modern-day Yemen is teeming with war-hardened Houthis, well-armed by the Iranians.
We want to pause here and remind everyone that we write fiction, specifically anti-war fiction. In every one of our novels, the main goal of the protagonist is to STOP the war from happening, or if things are getting out of control, limit the scope of the war.
Preventing (fictional) global war is the prize for us, the reward in the box of Cracker Jack. (Yes, we are well aware how that reference dates us.) It is the reason why we write these kinds of books.
You see, we don’t believe in the Thucydides Trap. War is not inevitable.
The reason for our bedrock belief is in our training. You know who else doesn’t believe in the inevitability of war?
The United States and our allies. Right now, the US is doing everything possible to not allow violence to escalate in the Middle East.
Take the Houthi situation, for example. The attacks by the Iranian proxy started in mid-November. The US and her allies are providing escorts and air defenses against Houthi attacks through a coalition called Operation Prosperity Guardian which includes “Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, Bahrain, the Seychelles, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Norway as partners in the effort.”
[Side Note: 10 countries declined to be named publicly as part of the operation. Missing from the public list is China, who more than any other country on the planet uses the Suez Canal for shipping, and Saudi Arabia, which fought a 10-year war with Yemen. Are they silent partners in the coalition?]
For the past two months, the US had been warning Yemen to stop the attacks. Then, just as we finished writing this column, the US led targeted attacks on the Houthi “missile, radar, and drone capabilities, which have played an essential role in their attacks on shipping in international waters, said a senior administration official.”4
A calculated escalation? Yes.
Will it work? Who knows. Time will tell.
Thucydides is not destiny. There is not some giant on-off switch on a wall in the Halls of Power labeled WAR.
War is a choice. When events happen that threaten the national security of a country, leaders are faced with a series of options ranging from messy to catastrophic. We rely on those leaders—the ones we elected, if you’re lucky enough to live in a liberal democracy—to choose the least bad option and execute to the best of their ability.
That’s real life. It’s messy and run by imperfect human beings who sometimes make bad choices.
And us? We have the best job of all. We get to write fiction about the one that got away. We write about the war that DIDN’T happen.
The countdown to Covert Action, Book 5 of the Command and Control series, has begun. Longtime reader and reviewer David Taylor has some opinions about art imitating life…
I’ve come to view each new release in the Command-and-Control series by David Bruns and J.R. Olson as a glimpse into the near future. While these stories are well crafted fiction, it seems elements of each of the stories turns up in the news – after the fact. Of late I’ve begun to wonder if this pair of authors has gained access to the same time machine or prognostication device Orwell seems to have had in 1949.
As always, thanks to David and to all our readers who take the time to leave a review on one of our books. It really is the highest compliment you can pay us.
You can find out more about the setting for Covert Action in this recent column:
Be happy. Stay healthy. Read (or listen to) a book.
As always, thanks for being a supporter –
David & JR, AKA the Two Navy Guys
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reuters.com/world/middle-east/suez-disruption-new-inflation-risk-horizon-2023-12-19
Sharp-eyed readers will recall that we used this exact scenario in the Persian Guf in the opening chapters of Command and Control.
I think there could be some small wars among the countries in the middle east, without western countries getting involved. We will almost sit back and watch some of them destroy themselves, especially if it's Iran.