[Salon] It's Time to End Biden's Yemen War

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/its-time-to-end-bidens-yemen-war?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=73370&post_id=148725113&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=210kv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

It's Time to End Biden's Yemen War

The U.S. should admit failure and stop wasting its time and energy on an unnecessary war.

Daniel Larison 9/10/24

Hal Brands is annoyed that the U.S. isn’t making its illegal, pointless war in Yemen even more destructive:

The core issue is that Washington has hesitated to take stronger measures — such as sinking the Iranian intelligence ship that supports the Houthis, or targeting the infrastructure that sustains their rule within Yemen — for fear of inflaming a tense regional situation.

That approach has limited the near-term risk of escalation, but allowed Tehran and the Houthis to keep the showdown simmering at their preferred temperature. It also reflects the underlying fatigue of a US military that lacks enough cruise missiles, laser-guided bombs, strike aircraft and warships to prosecute the campaign more aggressively without compromising its readiness for conflicts elsewhere.

The real problem with this war is that the U.S. and its allies have been trying to compel the Houthis through a bombing campaign that could not realistically succeed. The U.S. chose to escalate the conflict in January without having any idea of how it would achieve its stated goals. Now it is stuck with an ongoing conflict that it isn’t winning but that it refuses to end out of pride and stubbornness. Further escalation would destabilize the region more and expose more U.S. forces to attack, but it would not solve the main problem that the war has never been worth fighting.

Bombing Yemen has not made the Red Sea safer for commercial shipping, and there was no way that it could have done that. It was obvious from the outset that escalation would only increase the danger to commercial vessels while ignoring the original reason for the Houthi attacks. The administration has been pretending all year that the Houthi attacks and Gaza aren’t connected, and that has led to the current failed policy.

There are resource constraints that limit what the U.S. is willing to do, but it’s not as if the bombing campaign would have worked if it had been more aggressive for all these months. The Houthis have welcomed direct conflict with the U.S., and a more intense bombing campaign would not have forced them to give in to Washington’s demands. U.S. bombing has served only to strengthen the Houthis’ determination to continue, so why would more of it lead to a different result?

Burning through limited munitions stocks in the name of “doing something” is foolish. It would be ridiculous to expend even larger numbers of weapons in pursuit of the same unreachable goal. The war has already tied up a significant portion of the Navy on a futile mission. Clearly the answer is not that the U.S. should commit even more forces and resources. The U.S. should admit failure and stop wasting its time and energy on an unnecessary war.

As Brands admits, the effect of Houthi attacks on global trade has not been that great. There was no pressing need to wage this war. It was Biden’s choice to wage it, and he made the wrong call. The next president will have the opportunity to change course, but I don’t have much confidence that either candidate will do that.

The smartest thing that a new administration could do in this case is to halt the strikes, get U.S. ships out of harm’s way, and insist on an end to the war in Gaza by using all the leverage that the U.S. can muster. As long as the war in Gaza is allowed to drag on, it is going to continue fueling other conflicts in the region. If the U.S. wants to resolve the issue in the Red Sea, it has to rein in its client and stop the slaughter and starvation in Gaza. That is the most straightforward way to calm things down and restore some measure of stability, and it is also much cheaper and more efficient than lobbing missiles into Yemen for months on end.It's Time to End Biden's Yemen War