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“Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?”
It was a simple question, delivered directly to President Biden this afternoon. The president delivered a response that ought to be the epitaph for the period of non-Pax Americana we’ve been living through since the fall of the Soviet Union.
“Well, when you say, ‘working’ — are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.”
Biden wasn’t lying. On Thursday, the U.S. led
another round of airstrikes in Yemen. “U.S. Central Command forces
conducted strikes on two Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into
the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch,” CENTCOM posted on X.
Doubling down on things that haven’t worked, the Biden administration
also announced new sanctions on the Houthis, the de facto government in
Yemen, along with a new “specially designated global terrorist” label,
which makes it difficult for the Houthis to engage in global
transactions.
The designation badly undermines
the Saudi-Yemen peace talks and threatens to exacerbate the ongoing
humanitarian crisis in Yemen. It also doesn’t make sense: Yemen has been
bombed and sanctioned on and off for years, through three presidencies
and counting, and the only result has been famine and disease, not a
more pliant posture toward the United States or its allies in the
region.
In fact, the Houthis emerged from the conflict stronger than before, a point highlighted by Ben Rhodes
recently. The Houthis have not been stellar when it comes to governing,
to say the least, and getting into another conflict with the United
States lets them off the hook for that, and boosts their popularity both
domestically and in the region.
There’s zero reason to think these sanctions or these airstrikes will
get them to stop their blockade of shipping. It’s amazing to see Biden
admit it. “Glad POTUS agrees with me that the strikes are not working.
Next time come to Congress instead of McGurk,” Rep. Ro Khanna said on X, referring to Brett McGurk, the Mideast envoy who has overseen this catastrophe yet has somehow still retained his job.
The way the sanctions are being rolled out has its own story behind
it. I joined a background briefing the State Department hosted on the
new sanctions, and the transcript is now available.
I wanted to highlight one part. From a senior administration official:
“This [terror] destination will take effect 30 days from now to allow us
to ensure robust humanitarian carveouts are in place so our action
targets the Houthis and not the people of Yemen. We are rolling out, as
we take this action, unprecedented carveouts and licenses to help
prevent adverse impacts on the Yemeni people. The people of Yemen
should not pay for the price – pay the price for the actions of the
Houthis.”
The State Department has always insisted, against all evidence and common sense, that U.S. sanctions do not harm civilian populations.
Yet here is the State Department saying it is adding “unprecedented
carveouts” to mitigate the harm of these sanctions to regular people.
They said they’ll monitor how effectively they immunize people from harm
and re-evaluate down the road. But think about what an admission that
is: Why are these “unprecedented carveouts” needed if typical sanctions
don’t actually harm civilians?
That State is waiting 30 days to implement the sanctions is also
noteworthy. The Houthis have said they will cease all attacks on
shipping if Israel ceases its attack on Gaza. The U.S., too, has said it
wants the Israeli attack on Gaza to wind down. But this 30-day delay
suggests the U.S. is not at all confident this attack is winding down
anytime soon. In fact, the bombing as described by people inside Gaza
seems only to be getting fiercer, with disease and starvation spreading,
driven by the Israeli refusal to allow in sufficient aid. |