The editors of the Wall Street Journal are skeptical of the Biden Administration’s policy with respect to the Middle East, at least in terms of its early returns:
The Biden team seems to have hoped that “recalibrating†the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has fought the 2015 Houthi takeover in neighboring Yemen, would draw down the war there. The Houthis have other ideas. In early February the State Department said it would reverse the group’s designation as a terrorist organization, but days later it had to release a statement that it was “deeply troubled by continued Houthi attacks.â€
The attacks have persisted and now Foggy Bottom’s language is more direct: “The United States strongly condemns the Houthis’ attacks on population centers in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, February 27,†State said on Sunday. “We call on the Houthis to end these egregious attacks.â€
But why would the Houthis listen, when the U.S. has legitimized them with a sanctions reprieve in return for nothing, and when it broadcasts a strategy of accommodating their patrons in Tehran? Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is on the defensive as Washington downgrades the alliance and restricts arms sales.
I need to take care in my next comments to avoid being guilty of what I’m criticizing but I believe that the Biden Administration has bad assumptions about human behavior, foreign policy, and the U. S. place in the world. Although we did not cause the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, U. S. fingerprints are all over it. And the problems don’t pertain merely to Yemen but extend to Afghanistan, Syria, and everywhere else we’re employing similar tactics.
How do we know against whom to deploy drone attacks? It would be nice to believe its via satellite imaging or some other form of automated information gathering but I’d bet a shiny new dime that targets are mostly identified via human intelligence and most of that is provided by local governments. I’d also bet that those local governments don’t make tidy distinctions between terrorists and their political enemies.
In Yemen I believe that for the last 15 years we’ve been propping up a government that doesn’t have a great deal of popular support and going after its political enemies in the name of counter-terrorism. That hasn’t caused an uprising but has contributed to it. I don’t agree with the WSJ editors that the Houthis are merely proxies for the Iranians. I think it’s nearly the opposite: a homegrown opposition to the Yemeni government has gained support from Iran because it was attacked by Saudi Arabia not the other way around.
Similarly, in Afghanistan our counter-insurgency operations have been almost entirely misplaced. People who oppose the corrupt Afghan government we support are driven into the arms of the Taliban. The only way to win this game is not to play. That was also my criticism of paying bounties for information on terrorists in Afghanistan. How do you distinguish between actual Al Qaeda or Taliban and people your informants just don’t like including people who oppose the Kabul government? You don’t. You rely on your human informants.
In Syria despite our best efforts the Allawite government just wouldn’t cooperate. They stubbornly resisted our attempts to set up an Islamist Sunni government so we perversely supported Al Qaeda and DAESH in the name of human rights. When we reversed course and stopped providing support to people hate us just because they hate the Syrian government, too, it allowed the Syrian government with the assistance of the Russians to prevail against terrorists who had Saudi support and the Turks. The Israelis, who hate the Syrian government for many reasons including its resistance to the establishment of a Greater Israel, hope the civil war continues in Syria indefinitely.
Let me just sum up by saying let’s not overestimate the U. S. role. We didn’t cause these conflicts but we’re not helping to quell them much, either, and our efforts are all too frequently having perverse outcomes.
