No, Don’t ‘Take the Fight’ to the Houthis

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.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.