No, Don't 'Take the Fight' to the Houthis

Escalation against the Houthis is a phenomenally stupid idea.

Steven Cook wants to have a new war with Yemen:

As a result, if the United States wants to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and its environs, it is going to have to take the fight directly to the Houthis.

Escalation against the Houthis is a phenomenally stupid idea. For one thing, turning a nuisance into a full-blown war will not secure shipping through the Red Sea. It will interrupt commercial shipping even more. If shipping companies are nervous about being shot at with drones and missiles now, they will absolutely refuse to send their ships through an active war zone. The problem that the military action is ostensibly meant to solve will become ten times worse.

In addition to the direct risks to U.S. ships and personnel that escalation would involve, “taking the fight” to the Houthis would be a waste of limited military resources at a time when the U.S. is already overstretched. Escalating against the Houthis could lead to their resumption of attacks on Saudi and Emirati territory and a breakdown of the truce in Yemen that has largely held for the better part of two years. The Houthis might respond to U.S. attacks by striking at energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, and they have already demonstrated that they can do considerable damage to Saudi oil installations in the past.

Cook claims that reluctance to fight the Houthis is the result of “overlearning” lessons from the past, but there is no evidence that he has learned anything from the last twenty years of failed U.S. policies. Three of the biggest recurring errors that the U.S. makes in the Middle East are exaggerating the importance of an issue to the U.S., resorting to force too quickly, and failing to think through the consequences of using force. Cook repeats all three errors.

He says that “disrupting or destroying the Houthis’ ability to disrupt shipping is hardly akin to the overambitious policies of the past aimed at regime change and remaking of societies.” It’s true that this would be different from a regime change war or a nation-building project, but that doesn’t mean that it makes any sense. Cook makes no effort to show that this is an achievable goal or that it will be worth the likely cost. One might think that the failure to dislodge and defeat the Houthis after almost nine years of foreign armed intervention would factor into Cook’s thinking about the feasibility of the war he is agitating for, but it doesn’t.

The only thing worse than U.S. backing for the Saudi coalition’s war on Yemen would be for the U.S. to start bombing Yemen with its own forces. Our government has already done too much harm to that country, and it is obscene to suggest doing more in the name of “freedom of navigation.” Cook’s argument is the definition of brain-dead do-somethingism, and it should be rejected.