Biden's Dangerous Yemen Blunder

A military intervention launched to run interference for a campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass starvation is about as bad as it gets.

As we have feared, the U.S. and U.K. are preparing to launch attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen in the coming hours:

Britain and the US are poised to launch strikes against Houthi military targets in Yemen, as the leader of the rebel group promises to respond to any assault with fresh attacks on shipping in the Red Sea [bold mine-DL].

The president will reportedly announce the strikes tonight. This will be the latest in a string of bad decisions from Biden in the Middle East. Biden’s dangerous Yemen blunder will put the truce in Yemen at risk, and it could end up leading to a wider regional conflict. At best, the president is setting up U.S. forces at sea to play the role of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria where they are periodically attacked by drones and missiles and then they launch reprisals with no end in sight. Each new round of “restoring deterrence” will fail, and there will be another series of airstrikes to “restore” it again.

It is likely that this will escalate a manageable nuisance into a sustained shooting war against the de facto government of much of Yemen. The U.S. and U.K. have no plausible way to “win” such a conflict, and they are almost certainly underestimating both Houthi capabilities and determination. To make matters worse, all of this is being done to support an atrocious Israeli military campaign that has already killed tens of thousands of people, most of of whom were innocent civilians. A military intervention launched to run interference for a campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass starvation is about as bad as it gets.

The official justification for the strikes will be to protect commercial shipping and to ensure freedom of navigation, but this action will do neither of those things. No one can explain how these strikes could possibly solve or even manage the problem with attacks on commercial shipping. There is every reason to expect dangers to shipping and to U.S. forces to increase significantly in the wake of any attack on Yemeni targets. Very few ships will risk moving through an active war zone, so the increased risk will be for nothing. The Houthis will probably also get a significant domestic political boost from their defiance of the U.S., so the conflict will have the added effect of helping them to strengthen their grip on power.

Alexandra Stark made a strong case against escalation in Foreign Affairs today:

It is hard to see how airstrikes would deter Houthi attacks now when they have failed to do so over the past decade. Airstrikes against Houthi targets might marginally erode the Houthis’ ability to launch missiles and drones, but it will be much harder to effectively target and eradicate the Houthis’ small, cheap manned and unmanned boats.

The best way for the U.S. to end the Houthi attacks is to push for an end to the war in Gaza. Deescalation in one conflict could prevent the other from intensifying. Unfortunately, it seems that the Biden administration will choose pointless military action to show that they are “doing something” about the problem. Like so many other interventions, this seems much more likely to make the original problem worse while creating a host of new difficulties.