The Red Sea shipping lane is currently operating under a protocol known as Selective Interdiction, a process so perfectly calibrated to achieve exactly nothing that it has, by accident, become the most efficient diplomatic channel in the region. The protocol was designed in a series of meetings held between 2023 and 2024, in rooms with poor acoustics and a shortage of chairs, by representatives from the International Maritime Organisation, the European Union’s External Action Service, a few national navies who had recently acquired new frigates and were looking for somewhere to test them, and one man from Saudi Arabia who had accidentally walked in looking for the washroom and stayed because he was hungry and the coffee was free.

Each participant entered the room with a clear, self-evident objective: the EU wanted to appear concerned without actually doing anything that might disrupt their own supply chains; the navies wanted to demonstrate resolve without firing a shot, because firing a shot would require reporting it, and reporting it would require briefing ministers, and briefing ministers would require explaining why the shot had been fired, and no one wanted to explain that; Iran wanted to show strength without triggering a full-scale conflict it wasn’t quite ready for; Israel wanted to demonstrate resilience without escalating to a ground invasion, which would have required more boots, more budget allocations, and possibly a new Ministry of Boots; and the Houthis wanted to be taken seriously without actually having to stop firing missiles, because stopping would have meant admitting they had been wrong all along, and they had been wrong for years, and the psychological toll of that realisation would have been catastrophic.

The outcome of these meetings was the Selective Interdiction protocol: any vessel bound for Israeli ports must first submit a form, in triplicate, in triplicate, in triplicate, stating not only its cargo, destination, and nationality, but also the name of its captain’s favourite childhood pet, the colour of the first ship it ever saw, and whether it considers itself technically in compliance with international law at this precise moment. The form must be submitted seventy-two hours before arrival, but the form is only available in Arabic, Hebrew, English, and Microsoft Word 97 compatibility mode - a combination that, statistically, produces a 99.7% failure rate in form completion.

The navies, meanwhile, have been instructed to monitor the lane, which they do by sailing up and down it in a figure of eight, occasionally broadcasting vague radio messages in Morse code that translate as “We are here. We are monitoring. We are not sure what we are monitoring, but we are doing it very seriously.” They have also been told to interdict suspicious vessels, which they do by pulling alongside them and asking, in a very friendly tone, whether they might perhaps consider turning back, or at least lowering their flag for a moment to allow the inspecting officer to check the colour. Most ships, having read the form, choose instead to turn back of their own volition, which the navies log as a successful interdiction, and which the shipping companies log as a delay, and which the insurance companies log as “force majeure,” which is Latin for “someone else’s problem, but we’ll still charge you extra for it.”

The system is not broken - it is working exactly as designed. The problem is that it was designed to prevent ships from reaching ports, and instead it has produced a system in which ships do reach ports, but only after an average of seventeen days of waiting, during which time the crew must complete not one, not two, but three separate forms, each of which contradicts the others in a way that is both legally precise and utterly meaningless. The Houthis, meanwhile, continue to fire missiles, but only at empty containers or derelict vessels that have already been abandoned at sea, which they locate with remarkable accuracy by consulting the very same shipping manifests the navies are supposed to be interdicting. This has led to a curious situation in which the missiles are more reliable than the paperwork, and the Houthis, in their enthusiasm, have accidentally become the most effective customs officials in the Red Sea - they do not inspect cargo, they simply ask for the manifest and then, if it looks suspicious, fire a warning shot into the void, which is to say, into the space between the ship and the next port, which is where most of the cargo was already going in any case.

The Committee for Red Sea Stability - a body that has met twelve times and produced no resolutions, only a new colour scheme for its letterheads - has declared the situation “under control,” which is the diplomatic equivalent of saying a house fire is “under control” because the fire brigade have arrived and are now standing around in a circle, nodding gravely, while the house burns. The Committee’s latest communiqué, released yesterday, states that “all parties are committed to de-escalation,” which is true, in the same way that two people standing on opposite sides of a narrow bridge, both refusing to step aside, are committed to not falling in - they are not committed to crossing.

The real breakthrough, as always, came not from the committee, but from the people who had been trying to get things done all along: the ship captains, who have quietly begun routing through the Gulf of Aden instead, even though it adds three days to the journey, because at least there the forms are in a single language - English, with a footnote in Somali - and the pirates, having modernised their operations, now accept credit cards and offer loyalty points. The result is that shipping times have increased, premiums have risen, and global supply chains are under strain - but no one has been hurt, no ports have been closed, and the Committee for Red Sea Stability has not had to cancel a single meeting.

This is not a flaw in the system. This is the system. The Committee Problem, in its purest form: intelligent people, each acting perfectly reasonably, producing an outcome that serves no purpose at all - except, perhaps, to keep everyone busy enough that no one notices how little has been achieved. And if you ask them about it, they will nod slowly, thank you for your concern, and send you a form in triplicate, in triplicate, in triplicate.