Soon after the US president Donald Trump ordered attacks on Yemen’s Houthis ‘to free up shipping lanes’, about 31 people were killed in the region. The question is: are these attacks actually aimed at Houthis and to free up shipping lanes? Yes and no.
To get a grip on the nature and rationale of these attacks, a wee digression is called for here. If we rewind only a few days and take a detour to Ukraine and Russia, the answer may fall into perspective.
The interregnum between talks between Russia, the US and Ukraine, Zelensky’s White House visit, and then talks again were filled with, one, a barrage of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia, Russia’s huge advances and military gains in Kursk, and so on. These were the prelude and interlude to talks. What was the point? To gain a firmer hand or position in the negotiations over a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia mediated by the US. Now what relevance does this have over US attacks on Houthis? Do they actually mean anything?
Yes. Everything.
In the ‘fog of war’, battlefield wins or losses determine the nature, scope and tenor of negotiations in a given militarized conflict. What is the relevance to Yemen’s Houthis? It may be pertinent to mention here that these attacks come after the decapitation of Hezbollah by Iran and the attendant attacks on Lebanon. And as this essay goes to press, the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel looks increasingly tenuous.
Delineation of these issues or themes may cut to the heart of the matter: given that Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon are seen as the ‘axis of resistance’ by Iran, the real target appears to be Iran itself. Why? One, Iran appeared to be ‘recalcitrant’ to nuclear talks suggested implicitly (and maybe behind the scenes) by the US. Two, US president Donald Trump has stated a policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran. Here’s then where the attacks on Houthis come into play. It appears to be a prelude to denuding Iran of what the country thinks of as its ‘outer security perimeter’ and putting pressure on the country.
Will this pressure work? No one knows. Is this a good policy? No. Why? Because pressure, control and aggression work- but only up to a point. Then, to use a phrase from economics, ‘diminishing returns’ set in and there is also the matter of public disaffection. The US might be banking on the Shiite-Sunni schism and the fact of Iran’s Shiite nature and its isolation in the sunni world because of this schism. That is, if Iran is pressured by whatever means there will be no disaffection in the broader Muslim world because Iran is Shiite. Plus with respect to internal security of the West, there will be no repercussions because Iran has ‘zero strike capability’ within the West- unlike ISIS or Al-Qaeda remnants which gyrate to a particular interpretation of Sunni Islam. In this schema, the US would deem attacks on Houthis as kosher and the fallout minimalist — if not zero. But this is bad policy.
While it is a given that hard power, force and strike capacity are both constants and variables in a given politico-strategic mix but hem in a given country too much, then things go into the domain of the ‘unknown unknown’.This assumes salience against the backdrop of a multi-polar or tri-polar world where other powers are also asserting themselves and the US is also retrenching. These cross cutting themes then create a security problematique whose nature can take any shape and form. If the real name of the game is to bring Iran to the negotiating table, the US must ‘man up’. What does this mean? It means taking into consideration the legitimate security needs and interests of Iran and other players in the region and then engaging in diplomacy that is not zero sum. This would require diplomatic insight, finesse and subtlety and a robust understating of the region’s history, dynamics and other relevant parameters and equations. The starting point toward this, for Donald Trump would be to understand in very clear terms the ‘(dis)utility of force’, its diminishing returns and other allied issues. For Trump to gain a handle on this, it would be desirable to see that while force is a necessary concomitant to diplomacy but ultimately Clausewitz dictum that , War is a continuation of politics by other means must be inverted to ‘All war is bad politics’.
- Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
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