Don't Intervene in Yemen

Striking directly at the Houthis isn’t the only terrible idea on Yemen policy that hawks are pushing these days.

The phenomenally stupid idea of attacking the Houthis is getting more support:

Saudi Arabia is among a number of Middle Eastern countries telling the West they back strikes against the Houthis in Yemen whose attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have diminished commercial traffic in the vital waterway.

If this report is true, this is just evidence that the Saudi government is back to its old reckless tricks. One might have thought that almost nine years of failed intervention in Yemen would have been enough to sour Riyadh on more military action there, but it seems that the crown prince and his advisers refuse to learn anything. U.S. attacks on Yemen will be dangerous not only for American interests, but they will also backfire on other U.S. clients in the region, especially if they are seen as supporting the attacks.

The Times article includes this bit of absurd spin:

Any action against the rebels in Yemen would coincide with attempts by the United States to prevent the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas spreading to the rest of the region.

If the U.S. takes military action against the Houthis in response to their attacks on commercial vessels, it will be among those spreading the war to the rest of the region. Military action against Yemen won’t “coincide” with attempts to prevent the war from spreading. It will cancel out those attempts and render them irrelevant. Attacking the Houthis would be a dramatic escalation in response to what should be a manageable problem. It will not solve the problem, it will further destabilize the region, and it could very well spark a larger conflict that extends beyond Yemen and its immediate vicinity.

Striking directly at the Houthis isn’t the only terrible idea on Yemen policy that hawks are pushing these days. Kenneth Pollack and Katherine Zimmerman took to the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal to urge the U.S. to throw military support behind the ramshackle Yemeni government. In addition to engaging in some insane revisionism that “Washington recoiled when the Saudis and Emiratis intervened in Yemen” (there was almost no opposition from any quarter and there was broad bipartisan support in D.C. for the intervention when it started), they insist that the U.S. has to back the same illegitimate, unrepresentative government that has struggled to regain power for almost a decade.

This would be a serious mistake for several reasons. The U.S. shouldn’t commit resources to a failed cause. The recognized Yemeni government has little to no legitimacy in most of Yemen. In the north, it is perceived as a puppet of the Saudis, and in the south UAE-backed forces have no loyalty to it. Backing this government with military assistance would just underscore their puppet status. As in so many other conflicts over the years, Washington’s close embrace would be a major political liability in a country where our government is understandably reviled.

The current leadership of the recognized government is weak and internally divided. As the International Crisis Group’s Veena Ali-Khan explained last year, the presidential leadership council (PLC) “does not govern as a single entity.” The council was a Saudi creation, and it remains heavily dependent on the Saudi government. The members of the council “tread cautiously, fearing that Riyadh may replace them at any time.” This is the government that the U.S. is supposed to start arming? It’s a bad joke.

Giving military support to this government would be a waste of resources at best. It’s not as if their patrons have lacked for U.S. backing. Throwing more weapons into the mix in Yemen will not gain the U.S. anything, but it will erode and possibly destroy the truce. Undermining the truce is probably the biggest gift that the U.S. could give the Houthis, since they have relied on the war to consolidate power.

The threat to shipping would go away if the war in Gaza ends. The solution is to press the Israeli government to halt its campaign and to lift the siege. That is what the U.S. should be doing anyway for the sake of the people of Gaza and for its own interests. The U.S. has a much better chance of succeeding at that than it would in coercing the Houthis to yield or in mucking around in Yemeni politics. The U.S. shouldn’t wage a stupid war in Yemen and it shouldn’t try stoking Yemen’s internal conflict, either. The best way forward is to use U.S. influence to rein in the Israeli government and put a stop to this atrocious war.