Author: Daniel Larison

The illegal and pointless U.S. war in Yemen continues:

The U.S. and the United Kingdom conducted a series of strikes at 18 Houthi targets at eight different locations inside Yemen Saturday, part of a continuing effort to fight back against the Iran-backed group that has continued to attack commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea.

The U.S. and Britain have been waging war in Yemen for the last six weeks. U.S. forces have been engaged in hostilities with the de facto government of a large part of another country without Congressional debate or authorization. The war they are fighting seems unlikely to end anytime soon. The Houthis have not been discouraged from further attacks. On the contrary, missile and drone attacks have increased and expanded since the U.S. launched its illegal campaign in January. The Red Sea is more dangerous for commercial shipping than it was, and the Houthi leadership seems to be more determined than ever to continue their attacks.

Continue reading “Another Pointless Round of Bombing in Yemen”

The U.S. used its veto at the UN Security Council for the third time in this war to block a call for an immediate ceasefire:

The U.S. vetoed an Algerian proposal at the United Nations Security Council that called for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, saying that a cessation of hostilities without securing the release of hostages in Hamas’s captivity would only prolong the conflict.

The U.S. circulated a draft resolution ahead of the vote calling, instead, for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza “as soon as practicable” and in tandem with the release of all hostages taken on Oct. 7, as the Biden administration increasingly clashes with the Israeli government over the conduct of the war.

Continue reading “Another Indefensible US Veto at the United Nations”

There’s a lot that could be said about Gen. McKenzie’s op-ed defending a continued U.S. military presence in Syria and Iraq, but these claims are clearly untrue:

In the end, American troops are in Syria and Iraq to prevent ISIS from being able to attack our homeland. By leaving, we could give them the time and space to re-establish a caliphate, increasing our risk at home.

Continue reading “US Forces Should Have Left Iraq and Syria Years Ago”

Michael Wahid Hanna calls on the U.S. to avert further catastrophe in Gaza:

It is hard to imagine things getting worse, but an assault on Rafah would up the ante. The US is the only power that can stop it. To do so, it will have to exert a degree of pressure it has so far been reluctant to apply.

Hanna is right, and I said something similar in my column this week. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has no intention of doing anything to discourage an Israeli ground assault on Rafah. Politico reported yesterday that multiple administration officials said that “no reprimand plans are in the works, meaning Israeli forces could enter the city and harm civilians without facing American consequences.”

Continue reading “‘Unfathomable Catastrophe’ Looms in Gaza”

Paul Poast is half-right in his assessment of Biden’s foreign policy:

To put it bluntly, the Biden administration’s approach to foreign policy is realpolitik from top to bottom. This isn’t necessarily bad. A realpolitik approach to foreign policy enables Biden to do what he can in the face of constrained U.S. capability. Liberal hegemony is easy when it’s easy to be a hegemon. But when it’s not, ideological purity is often sacrificed for the sake of national interests.

Poast gets the cynicism of Biden’s foreign policy right, but he underrates the importance of the president’s ideological framing of the conflicts that the U.S. is supporting. It’s true that “the protection of democracy doesn’t appear to be driving Biden’s foreign policy in practice,” as Poast says, but Biden does wrap up the same old hegemonist status quo in that packaging. For Biden, “defending democracy” is a convenient way to distinguish himself from the strongman-admiring Trump rhetorically and also pose as democracy’s global champion without having to act differently from the way that his predecessors, including Trump, acted on the world stage.

Continue reading “The Cynicism of Biden’s ‘Defense’ of Democracy”

Hal Brands repeats a very popular lie about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East:

Every recent president gets their Middle Eastern war, whether they want it or not. Since Ronald Reagan’s time, each administration has engaged in at least one significant military conflict in the region. Even presidents who wanted nothing more than to escape the Middle East were, almost ineluctably, dragged back in. Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn.

Every time that the U.S. has involved itself in wars in the Middle East, it has done so by choice. There was no vital interest that compelled the U.S. to send troops to Lebanon or to support Iraq in its war with Iran. The U.S. then chose to intervene to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, and then it chose to keep a significant military presence in the region after the war. Clinton’s military operations in Iraq were relatively minor, but they were far from being obligatory.

Continue reading “The US Has Never Been ‘Dragged’ Into the Middle East”