Weaponising the Supply Chain: Yemen's Blockade and the Contradictions of Maritime Logistics Capital

Abstract This paper examines the 2023–2025 naval blockade imposed by Yemen in the Red Sea. It argues that the blockade's success in disrupting global trade stemmed from the potent confluence of asymmetric military tactics and the structural vulnerabilities inherent within global maritime logistics capitalism. The pursuit of efficiency through carrier consolidation, vessel gigantism, and just‐in‐time scheduling has created a brittle, hyper‐concentrated system with minimal slack, concentrating risk at infrastructural chokepoints such as deepwater ports and mega‐hubs. By examining the interplay between Yemen's blockade against the genocide in Gaza and its targeting of these logistical frailties, this paper contributes to critical geographies of infrastructure and logistics. It demonstrates how the very architecture of global capital circulation can become a terrain of effective struggle for non‐state actors, revealing the central contradiction between capital's drive for logistical efficiency and its systemic vulnerability to disruption.