Photo: Osamah Abdulrahman/AP
President Donald Trump launched massive airstrikes on Yemen over the weekend, with a reported toll of 53 people killed and around 100 injured. The salvo marked a revival of a full-fledged unauthorized war by the U.S. against one of the poorest countries in the world.
Framed by the U.S. as a move to protect crucial Red Sea shipping lanes, the illegal escalation is a shift from the retaliatory strikes of the Biden administration to what appears to be the return to a full-scale regime change war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unequivocal in declaring that the U.S. would be playing policeman to the world.
Trump is barreling toward more bloodshed in the Middle East.
“We’re doing the world a favor by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping,” he said.
The escalation makes for awkward politics in America. Trump ran on ending wars, emphasizing his desire to avoid new wars in his inaugural address. In turn, his “America First” loyalists — whatever their motives — are cheering his deal-making with the aim of ending the war in Ukraine.
Yet the administration now barreling toward more bloodshed in the Middle East, where both Trump and Joe Biden have let brutal allies run amok while trying to extricate the U.S. itself from regional conflicts. Now the Trump administration is pushing an explicitly deeper and more involved intervention in Yemen.
In an interview on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Rubio said the airstrikes are not “a message” or a “one-off” and will continue until the U.S. has gotten rid of the Houthis, the Yemeni rebel group that took control of large swaths of the country a decade ago.
“That’s the mission here, and it will continue until that’s carried out,” Rubio said. “That never happened before, the Biden administration didn’t do that. All the Biden administration would do is they would respond to an attack.”
Risking a Regional War
Escalating the Yemen war could set off precisely the kind of regional Middle East conflict that Trump has long said he wants to avoid. And the Yemen war seems likely to escalate further. Experts are saying that it is expected that the U.S.-backed proxy forces in Yemen are likely to restart their ground operations against the Houthis — proxies that will almost certainly be receiving U.S. intelligence and other support.
That risk of a full-blown regional conflict too is growing, as Trump himself threatens Iran, a major backer of the Houthi movement and a prime enemy of the U.S.’s top allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The Yemen war has in various iterations been part of that larger proxy war. The Houthis’ opposition in early phases of the civil war were forces from and backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. That conflict slowed down precipitously only when U.S. neglect turned into a Chinese-brokered peace deal.
Today, the Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes were set off by Israel’s brutal attack on Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. When there was a ceasefire and humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, the Houthis followed through with their commitment to stop attacking commercial ships.
In Washington, the revived Yemen war could also create an awkward situation for Democrats. Previously, Democratic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the war hadn’t swept the party but was a growing force. During Trump’s first term, Democrats were vocally against the U.S. supporting the Saudi-led coalition that was bombing Yemen and passed the Yemen war powers resolution in both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support.
Once Biden started his tit-for-tat retaliations against the Houthis amid Israel’s war on Gaza, however, many Democrats backed off their opposition to the Yemen war. Now, Democrats have a choice: They can rally their caucus against Trump’s reckless escalation and take a stance for more restrained foreign policy, or they can back the president’s reinvigoration of the idea of being the world’s policeman.
