Naval Impotence in the Bab el-Mandeb

When Houthi forces launched strikes against Riyadh's international airport, leaving 14 dead and over 300 injured, the fragility of Middle Eastern trade routes became glaringly obvious once more. For European economies that depend heavily on energy passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the security of these maritime choke points is not an abstract exercise in diplomacy. Yet, the European Union's attempt to project power through its Aspides naval mission reads like a study in administrative helplessness.

High Representative Kaja Kallas issued an urgent appeal to European capitals in mid-September, asking for additional warships and air assets to secure the corridor. Her benchmark for credibility was straightforward: the mission requires at least ten active vessels to properly escort commercial shipping. What the European foreign policy apparatus received in return highlights the profound disconnect between Brussels' rhetoric and actual military readiness.

Only two countries stepped forward with pledges, and both offers illustrate the hollow nature of current European defence commitments. The Netherlands offered a frigate restricted to an associate role focused strictly on information gathering. Belgium promised to dispatch the Leopold I, one of its two frigates, but with a catch: the vessel is currently sidelined by technical failures and cannot deploy until next year. Meanwhile, other capitals preferred to keep their remaining naval assets tied down in the Baltic and Black Seas, leaving the EU's flagship maritime operation operating on a rotating skeleton crew supplied primarily by Italy and Greece.

This reluctance is not merely a matter of political will; it reflects a systemic capability deficit that the EU machine has long attempted to gloss over. Rome, which has had to deploy its own frigates to escort national merchant vessels and has provided radar and air defence hardware to Gulf allies, made it clear through Defence Minister Guido Crosetto that it would expand its commitment only if other member states matched the effort.

The internal diagnoses within the bloc offer little comfort. According to the confidential Annual Defence Readiness Report 2026, European naval forces suffer from critical structural gaps that planned capital investments will fail to resolve before 2030 at the earliest. The EU machine excels at framing security initiatives on paper, but when exposed to real-world operational demands, its institutional machinery functions primarily to cover for national shortfalls rather than solve them.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com