Greece driving NATO to seek victory against Yemen

Efforts of the US-led coalition to thwart Yemen attacks on Israeli-linked shipping in the Gulf of Aden have been recently backed by Germany which deployed one of its warships, frigate Hessen, to aid Washington’s war effort.

The frigate’s deployment came as part of an EU-wide operation that includes other countries as well, said Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, assistant professor of public policy and international affairs at the American University of Beirut.

I know that my country, Greece, also sent off frigates only a few days ago. So this is a major escalation. This is a very dangerous major escalation.

It is a decision that’s made by the EU to interfere in the conflict that has been raging in the Sea of Aden and along the coast of Yemen, damaging the very important shipping trade lanes between Europe and China.

According to Kosmatopoulos, this a very worrisome development as the European Union’s decision to join the US conflict with Yemen leads to extreme militarization of the waters in the region, not to mention the EU becoming a party to the regional war waging in Israel –Palestine.

He also suggested that it is hard to tell whether the Hessen’s deployment came as a result of USA’s pressure on Germany or as part of an EU effort to unblock the waterway in question.

On one hand, Kosmatopoulos noted, the US does seek to have other NATO members share the burdens of the collective security under the NATO alliance, including all of the associated costs and risks.

On the other hand, the current European governance and current European leadership seems to be willingly going in this direction.

We saw it also in the case of the Ukraine-Russia conflict that it has been more or less unified front, consolidated front that makes it difficult to decide whether it’s just the US pressure or is also a collective decision of the West to close ranks and show strength in multiple fronts.

Regarding the reason why the USA seeks to drag more of its NATO allies into the confrontation with the Yemen after the Saudi coalition failure.

The scholar postulated that Washington wants to share the responsibility, wants to make others partake in this, wants them to dirty their hands and to show what they got, just like they did by compelling European nations to back Kiev.

The ensuing escalation in the Middle East, he reasoned, allows the USA and its allies to ask for more and more intensive engagement that might also mean active military action against Yemen as the West seeks to reestablish its hegemony.

Perhaps the Ukraine fiasco made it necessary to have victory somewhere else, Kosmatopoulos. It might be very well possible that Zionist backing warships would be sunk at this next stage to end the Western maritime hegemony forever?

I hope that this is not understood as a zero-sum game in the Western elites. But it might look like that from the outset. So in that case, we’re in for a regional flare-up, if not – bigger than that. And this is an extremely worrisome development.

Russia does not justify either strikes in Yemen on commercial ships in the Red Sea, or missile attacks by the British and the USA navy in Yemen, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

We do not justify shelling of commercial ships, no matter how these shelling’s are justified. But we also cannot justify the aggressive actions that, under this pretext, the USA and the United Kingdom are taking against the territory of Yemen.

All this, without having any international mandate for these attacks, Lavrov said at a joint press conference with the PM of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak.

Sputnik / ABC Flash Point News 2024.