There Are Good Reasons to Attack the Houthis

but deterrence isn’t one of them. When I first heard that the United States and United Kingdom forces had struck Houthi positions in Yemen, my first reaction was not unlike the one that Farea al-Muslimi expresses at Chatham House:

The air strikes are highly unlikely to have a significant impact on Houthi military capabilities, especially their maritime operations.

The Houthis are far more savvy, prepared, and well-equipped than many Western commentators realize. They are highly experienced in waging war after years of brutal conflict, involving direct confrontation with Saudi Arabia and a lot of supporting and capacity building from Iran through the years.

and

Regardless, an anti-Israel/US stance is fundamental to Houthi ideology and their leadership will have calculated, correctly, that a Western attack on Yemen will only increase local and regional support for their efforts. The US and UK will more than ever be perceived by a majority in the Middle East as outright allies of Israel in a broader regional conflict.

The question that has not been considered sufficiently is what the U. S. and Britain are trying to achieve with the strikes? It strikes me as a politically motivated response and an instance of the “politician’s syllogism”:

• Something must be done.
• X is something.
• Do X.

Far from deterring the Houthis it will probably encourage them to more and greater attacks on Red Sea shipping and sympathizers in the Gulf region will be happy to donate to their cause to enable them to do it.

That’s not to say that I don’t think the Houthis can be deterred. They can. I just think they can’t be deterred using the approach we appear to be using and that the strategies that would deter them would be widely characterized as war crimes, both domestically and internationally. For example, if we conducted air, land, and see operations in Yemen with the objective of finding Houthi leaders and killing them and their families, that would probably deter them.

What I think we’re actually accomplishing is deterring ourselves or, as someone waggishly observed, we’ve just spent $47 million destroying a couple of thousand dollars worth of drones; good job!

What are reasonable military objectives for strikes against Houthi positions?

• Degrade their ability to carry out attacks. The means they are using are so darned cheap that will be darned hard to do.
• Take out command and control centers. Frankly, I doubt they actually have anything we could reasonably call command and control centers. I strongly suspect this is more like using missiles to take out criminal gangs.
• We could attack Iranian command and control centers. That would reasonably be considered a major escalation and might not stop the Houthis from carrying out attacks, see above. The Iranians aren’t the only ones providing financial support to the Houthis.

Let’s turn this around. What are the Houthis trying to accomplish by attacking Red Sea shipping? I suggest it is probably to show that they can and to provoke military responses. They’ve been successful. To counter that we need to cut off their supplies of military equipment and money. Failing that our attacks are counter-productive if anything.