Author: Daniel Larison

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The U.N.’s humanitarian chief described the “catastrophic” conditions that exist in Yemen today:

In a speech read by UN director of humanitarian operations John Ging, Lowcock said that 8.4 million Yemenis “are severely food insecure” and about 400,000 children under the age of 5 “are so severely malnourished they are 10 times likelier to die without treatment than their healthy peers.”

Yemen’s crisis is by far the worst in the world just by the sheer numbers affected and the severity of the conditions, and it is made even more so by the fact that the crisis could be quickly alleviated if the coalition halted its bombing campaign and lifted its blockade. If Yemen were allowed to resume normal commerce with the outside world and a sustained relief effort were made, the most dire, worst-case scenarios could be averted. That won’t help the tens of thousands who have already perished from preventable causes, but it could still preserve the lives of millions at risk of dying from starvation and preventable disease.

Continue reading “The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen Keeps Getting Worse”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The International Rescue Committee dismisses the Saudi-led coalition’s “aid” plan for Yemen:

“The name in itself is misleading: it is neither comprehensive, nor particularly humanitarian,” said Amanda Catanzano, senior policy and advocacy director at the International Rescue Committee. “The Saudi-led coalition is offering to fund a response to address the impact of a crisis it helped to create. The acute crisis in Yemen needs more than what appears to be a logistical operations plan, with token gestures of humanitarian aid.”

As the IRC press release notes, the “aid” plan fails to do many of the things necessary for relieving the suffering of Yemen’s civilian population. First and most important, it fails to end the blockade that has done so much to create the disaster engulfing the country:

The severity of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen demands that all ports – including and especially Hodeidah and Saleef – remain permanently open. YCHO only extends the current 30-day window allowing access to Hodeidah for another 30 days, which makes little to no difference on the ground. If the Saudis were serious about addressing the humanitarian crisis, the most valuable step they could take would be to lift the blockade, permanently, which they and the international community should do without delay.

Of course, the Saudis and their allies are not serious about addressing the humanitarian crisis, because they caused it and have no interest in ending it. However, they want the rest of the world to think otherwise. Their “aid” plan was created to give the impression that they are doing something to remedy the catastrophe they have caused, but it simply isn’t true. This is why credulous reporting about Saudi “aid” efforts is so harmful to the cause of responding effectively to the humanitarian crisis.

The IRC press release concludes:

“A meaningful response to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis requires more access – not less. At best, this plan would shrink access and introduce new inefficiencies that would slow the response and keep aid from the neediest Yemenis, including the over 8 million on the brink of starvation,” said Catanzano. “At worst, it would dangerously politicize humanitarian aid by placing far too much control over the response in the hands of an active party to the conflict.”

The Saudi-led coalition continues its effort to starve Yemen into submission. It needs to be called out and condemned for that, and the U.S. and their other Western patrons need to pressure the Saudis and their allies to lift the blockade fully and permanently.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter. This article is reprinted fromThe American Conservativewith permission.

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Rex Tillerson makes for depressing reading:

Margaret Brennan: What is the carrot that you’re dangling for North Korea to convince them to talk?

Rex Tillerson: We’re not using a carrot to convince them to talk. We’re using large sticks [bold mine-DL]. And that is what they need to understand. This pressure campaign is putting – is having its bite on North Korea, its revenue streams. It’s having a bite on its military programs.

Margaret Brennan: But to say full denuclearization, why would they agree to give up something they’ve already got that they think is an insurance policy?

Rex Tillerson: Because it buys them nothing [bold mine-DL]. It buys them more of being the hermit kingdom, isolated, isolated from the world diplomatically, isolated from the world economically.

Each of these answers is troubling, and taken together they show how hopeless the administration’s policy towards North Korea is. The U.S. is expecting North Korea to give up something that is clearly extremely important to them, but it is offering them absolutely nothing in exchange. There is something about dealing with “rogue” states that causes people in our government to shut off their ability to reason. If our positions were reversed and we were the ones being put under “maximum pressure” to force us to give up our nuclear deterrent, would we respond to increasing pressure by caving or by doing whatever we could to keep building up the thing that our adversary wants to eliminate? It would obviously be the latter. If North Korea is given no incentives to do something, and faces only more and more pressure unless it capitulates, it is a virtual certainty that their government will dig in its heels and concede nothing.

As if that weren’t bad enough, our officials can’t or won’t even acknowledge that North Korea gets something out of refusing to give up their nuclear weapons and missile programs. They get to keep what they have already built, and they retain an ability to use these weapons that they didn’t possess a little over a decade ago. If they consider having such a deterrent to be essential to their regime’s survival (and we have good reason to believe that this is what they think), refusing to denuclearize has almost inestimable worth to them. If our top government officials don’t understand that or can’t admit it publicly, we’re in much bigger trouble than I thought.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter. This article is reprinted fromThe American Conservativewith permission.

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Mike Pence confirmed again that the administration’s idea of “talking” to North Korea doesn’t mean anything:

Vice President Mike Pence told Axios’ Mike Allen on Wednesday President Trump “always believes in talking [with North Korea], but talking is not negotiating.”

He said nothing will change with North Korea until they give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons [bold mine-DL]. He said they must “completely, verifiably, and completely abandon” its missile programs, and “only then can we consider any change in posture by the United States or the international community.”

The administration’s maximalism may feel satisfying, but it has no chance of reducing tensions or getting North Korea to agree to anything. The insistence that North Korea abandon these programs is as unrealistic as can be. It is not just that North Korea has already invested considerable resources in these programs and would be reluctant to dismantle everything they already have, but they also believe these programs to be essential to their security. Just as our government would not budge on something that it considered vitally important, theirs is not going to budge. More pressure and threats will just make them cling to these programs that much more tightly.

Continue reading “Daniel Larison: Maximalist Demands Won’t Change North Korean Behavior”