Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why Are We Backing the Saudi Campaign in Yemen?
Two weeks ago, I ventured a prediction:
Anyway, how do I bet what little I have left on “Saudis screw this up big time within two weeks? I’ll bet it all. I need the money.
The prediction was correct–that was an easy one–but I regret the insensate tone, not least because this is now yet another humanitarian catastrophe. UN estimates suggest 100,000 people have been displaced. It’s easy to dismiss Yemen as a perennially benighted hellhole, but kids who were born in Yemen have committed no other crime:
The chaos in Yemen, now the scene of some of the most chaotic fighting in the Middle East, has left civilians — noncombatants, both locals and foreigners — caught in the crossfire.
Those trying to escape the violence, either by leaving their homes or by leaving the country altogether, have been flung into a vortex of fear, fatigue, flight and death.
Explosions shattered windows in Sanaa, the country’s capital. The fighting has killed hundreds of people in less than two weeks.
At least 74 children are known to have been killed and 44 children maimed since the fighting began on March 26, UNICEF said Monday in a statement. That did not include the children reportedly killed Tuesday in Maitam.
US policy is to deliver weapons to the Saudis:
The United States said on Tuesday that it was expediting deliveries of weapons to Saudi Arabia, a sign of the Obama administration’s deepening involvement in the Saudi military offensive against the Houthi movement in Yemen.
And Saudi policy, it seems, is to bomb relentlessly. To what end? Can you imagine achieving any desirable goal in these circumstances through air power alone? So far, and predictably, it has been serving only to create chaos, from which A.Q.A.P. is greatly profiting:
AQAP already demonstrated its reach this year with what it calls “the blessed battle of Paris,” the attack on the office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last winter. The group trained the killers and claimed credit for financing the operation. It credited al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahri for selecting the target. The Paris attack inspired others a month later in Copenhagen against other individuals who had satirized the Prophet Muhammad.
AQAP was behind the December 2009 attempt to blow up a passenger jet flying from Amsterdam to Detroit and a series of plots to send explosives to destroy aircraft in the United States. The group has a cadre of experienced bomb-makers.
The longer the war in Yemen continues, which could be a long time, the more al-Qaeda will benefit. It will carry out terror attacks on the Zaydis and the Saudis both. It has underground cadres in the kingdom that Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef tries to unmask. He has been very successful in doing so, but it’s a constant battle.
Why are we backing this? The answer, it seems, is “Why not?“
“If you ask why we’re backing this, beyond the fact that the Saudis are allies and have been allies for a long time, the answer you’re going to get from most people—if they were being honest—is that we weren’t going to be able to stop it,” said an American defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was discussing internal government deliberations.
“If the Saudis were willing to step in, the thinking was that they should be encouraged,” the official said. “We were not going to send our military, that’s for certain.”
The unstated logic of our policy, I assume, is to reassure the Saudis that our negotiations with Teheran don’t entail a lack of commitment to Saudi defense. (That it is highly unlikely to serve even Saudi ends–and may well end up destabilizing the Kingdom–seems to be of little concern here, but it should be.) So in other words, we’re again at war without any declaration of it, with no clear statement of our aims, no strategy, and no rationale beyond, “The Saudis are stepping in, which should be encouraged.”
The United States had no plan in place for evacuating its own citizens, and is now recommending that they try to hitch a ride out with Indian citizens:
On Monday, India rescued more than 1,000 people by plane and ship, the second time in two days that such a large number have been brought out since Saudi Arabia launched air strikes against Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen on March 26. India has been asked by 26 nations – including the United States – to help get their citizens out of the conflict zone.
Does our policy seem to you wise?
Published in Foreign Policy, General
Miss Claire, I hope the comment can do all this work for you. If I can help with such things, I am pleased to do so. But the difference of views is also to do with the fact that you have an audience who expects your views to inluence them, whereas I do not, & therefore am only concerned with the relation between foreign policy & the American way of life as Americans live it. To put it differently, you are a somebody, but I am a nobody. Anonymity allows for a kind of comprehensive view…
I think we are agreed on the peculiar powers of America. We disagree on the being, to talk like the ancients. I look at Americans with the detachment of a stranger & with the kind of familiarity of a student of politcs–one cannot admire great achievements or think political freedom better than the alternative without a certain affection for & interest in the causes of freedom & the free people themselves…
From this perspective, I see clearly & rather like the Olympian carelessness with which Americans carry themselves in this wide vale of tears which is our world. At the same time, if you read political philosophers, they will tell you the civil peace is the object of politics & the highest achievement & the standard by which we judge good things in this world. They talk as if justice is the guiding light. But if you read historians, they will tell you worldwide war is the object of politics, the achievement of peace depends on chance as much as human powers & doing the best in your circumstances is the standard, looking to necessity, not justice. Americans are philosophers, let’s say, not historians. They do not believe war is the nature of this world. They believe peace is natural. Foreign policy & domestic policy are very different, therefore. They tend to exaggerate this distinction even as you seem to me to rather diminish it.
Of course, my clarity on these matters may be fantastic rather than the plain fruit of keen observation. I need not flatter myself & people tend to help me here by refraining from flattery themselves. You have an experience in these things that I lack, so I leave to your judgment my observations & my own thoughts. I think you are very American, & I see you have trouble reconciling the American opinion about justice & peace with what you know about the vale of tears. I am confident you will achieve some worthwhile insight with this struggle.
I think you are looking for a way, to talk like philosophers or poets, to speak meaningfully about chaos & order to people who take order for granted, & yet have powers that bring chaos in their wake. There is something fearful about America, too, after all. I do not know I have anything serious to say about what you can do for other people–your various excellences at your chosen job are for yourself & your audience to judge–but I am pleased to see you are trying to understand yourself, & in that case I may be able to say something meaningful.
I think that your concern with foreign affairs, looking here only at American politics, is threefold. First is the presidency, the political purpose of which is so misunderstood today. Americans do politics either by voting for things, which manages endless debates, which presuppose peace & order–or by appointing one man, when a job needs to be done, as opposed to creating agreement, when chaos is arising. The presidency defends American peace from what the great lady called the conservative bent of the facts of life. Second is the Senate, which is designed to orchestrate the public discourse on foreign policy–to help public sentiment form when it matters & dissipate otherwise. The Senators are supposed to speechify, so that people are instructed & have at the same time a cause to react, perhaps in annoyance at people who presume to know better… Third comes the strange fact of freedom or political equality–Americans have an affection for it & an interest in spreading it worldwide. Humanity & justice are somehow protected by the American people, whatever America’s political blunders, so long as the Americans are not debased or destroyed. People sometimes talk about Western civilization or about America as a superpower or such things. But the truth is America is civilization & there is nothing else in our world that is civilization, as was once true of Rome. This is a human doing, what Americans call a fact–& it depends on the American people, not merely on the institutions of American politics. So that when Americans lose hope–remember the 70’s–the world endures incredible troubles, which seem to come without cause & seem therefore unexplainable. But the cause is plain–it is in America.
These three different concerns are hard to put together. When it is done, or nearly, people merely see that it works & that the work is mostly good. That is what Reagan did, which is why he is so strange, people look to him, whether they admire him or loathe him, because he seems to stand in the center of events of which he is neither the cause nor the master, & yet there he is. America trusted him in a way people themselves find it hard to understand or reproduce afterward. The world paid attention to him in a way many resent or would like to stop…
Americans need to hear what you have to say; you need to speak more in their way. It is exactly a problem of showing them that you care, & so could & should they. You are both like & unlike them, & both cause both attraction & a strange reluctance, as Shakespeare might say. The being & the powers are the way we look at things. But in politics, being an American gives you certain powers aside from your own powers. The spectacle of an American concerned with foreign affairs in a careful, long-lived manner is itself of importance. There is a lot to say, yet I have said too much as it is. I hope this helps or at least amuses you.
I leave you with my best wishes.
My wife commented on this while we were driving to San Antonio this weekend. We drove 7 hours, across Louisiana and Texas and in that time we crossed one political boundary (the state line) and the only change was that in Texas the speed limit was 75 MPH.
My wife is from Singapore. 1 hour in any direction is 30 minutes into a different country.
You live (and have lived) in a place where you cannot drive in one direction for 7 hours and not cross cultural, political, ethnic and international boundaries. Relations between countries matter to you because of your scholarship AND proximity.
The strategic depth provided by 2 oceans and the relative homogeneity of the US give average Americans the headspace to exclude international affairs from their list of actual worries. No other country has that.
Again I find myself agreeing with you on this. We are an exceptional Imperial Power in that we are not seeking to control territory as colonies but liberate people so as to create viable markets for our goods/services in exchange for theirs. When you say that we have a mission, it is true. The problem with that now is that we are being led by a man whose administration is stacked full of people who do not look at the US as the force of good in the world, and so when we engage in these missions they are half hearted, ill conceived, and in the end extremely wasteful in terms of treasure and lives. Until we can have leaders who are consistently Nationalist, in a sense, under taking these missions is a fool’s errand.
If I may take a crack at this, “foreign policy” typically always falls in the middle or at the end of levels of importance for the American People because it is usually the least felt in their personal lives. Let me try it this way, when taxes are raised or benefits cut, individuals feel that immediately. When treaties are agreed to or bungled, it usually takes a while to reach the average American citizen. Sadly, most of Americans cannot connect the dots between the relationship between domestic and foreign policy. More people should read Henry R. Nau’s book “At Home Abroad” and start to connect these dots.
I really do think we are on the same page here, at least in terms of our foreign policy outlook. We might quibble over the details, but I really think that we are thinking about the same things and trying as hard as we can to convey these thoughts to others. It’s not an easy task.
This is an excellent point. Since I still carry a bit of the 19th Century notion of the different states as separate countries I can relate to what Instugator is saying. I had this conversation a few weeks ago with colleagues at work about Southern Culture. The US has within it different cultures that are separated, still, by boundaries, much like Europe. We all may be under the jurisdiction of the federal government but there is absolutely nothing culturally that is the same between New York state and Texas, or Alabama and Washington state. The dialects are different, the attitudes, food, everything is different. And these differences lend a bit to how each state interacts with one another. An example? Well you didn’t see Rick Perry going to Southern States advocating that small businesses move to Texas. You saw him going into states where the relationship between the state government and businesses were completely different than what you find in the South.
Let me cross-examine your evidence. Your dialects mean nothing if your example is the relationship between gov’t & business–that’s politics, not patois. That’s not culture, it’s law & law-making & law-enforcement. At the same time, if Texans are willing to die for the sake of people in California–& I assume something like the reciprocal is true, although I suppose Southern men are the core of the military class–you have nothing in common with Europe. & if Americans across the country were shocked out of their boots when 9/11 happened & next day they clogged up recruitment centers, you have nothing to do with Europeans who do not care to fight for their own dead & living, much less for their neighbors. Look to the important things first, look to culture or what have you later.
Yes. Five of them for one deserter. And perhaps a tidy sum; jury’s out on that.
Well, the evidence from the first eight of those 15 years was pretty good. And from the last seven pretty appalling. It isn’t as though the democrats supported any of it past about September 25, 2001. We have seen that great things can be done, great and good things. And America voted against that. America voted for ISIS.
The House of Saud doesn’t exactly need to run for office. You know what happens when Saudi commoners get cheesed at the Inbred Clown Posse? They bomb America, and then Saud gets reinforced.
Zabulhammad or whatever his name is over there just can’t lose. Have a Derka day!
The exception to what?
I couldn’t disagree more. This is the classic narcissism of small differences. If I’m on a crowded train from Calcutta to Bangalore and there’s another American on it–from New York, Texas, Alabama, or Washington–I guarantee you we will find each other and find a great deal in common.
This is a simple test, but it works 100 percent of the time. Results like that are not often to be found in the social sciences, if ever.
Sorry, BDB—editing error. I think I was saying “the exception to the common practice of criticizing what our leaders are doing, without positing any reasonable alternatives—and “kill them all, let God sort them out” isn’t reasonable.
So I’ll sign you up in advance for not liking my program of not sending more Americans to die for gains that will be squandered by the next communist usurper to come along? Of allowing the American people to wallow in the horror of their votes for ISIS despite clear warnings for a decade? Of forsaking counterinsurgency as a method because the military cannot trust the general population to even bother themselves about it?
Sorry, we’re just going to have to find a way to salve our consciences without sending more Americans off to die for nothing.
Feh.
Yes, partly it’s just a matter of geography.
I don’t think Americans are less interested in the world than other people. Most people are vastly more interested in their own countries than others. It’s quite normal to be interested in one’s own family, city, state, etc. American governance is organized around the idea that this is normal.
What’s abnormal is to have American power and influence. We have it–whether we want it or not–and should we abdicate it, it would be much better to do it consciously and in full awareness of what we and the world would lose.
I see the United States as a historically unique superpower with a mission; I truly do believe it is unlike any other imperial power in history, and must play a global role.
Hey! Me too! (And I, too, have met Americans abroad in unlikely places—back in the early 80s, traveling through Yugoslavia I was able to pick out the American from a crowd of European students on a train…because he was black. Wouldn’t work today, but it was pretty cool then!)
Some respect for the difficulties of the office is required. But no one gets passes. You do not seem to have any respect for the difference between waking up one morning to the worst Americans have faced since at least Pearl Harbor & rising in politics with an eye on the presidency & running for the office in full knowledge of the wars.
Titus—I don’t know enough to be able to evaluate Obama’s record in the M.E. I don’t doubt that you know more. FWIW, I’m not giving Obama a pass or Bush an indictment, I’m trying to be respectful of the difficulties of the office no matter who is holding it, especially in what seems to me to be an extraordinarily complicated and historically thankless part of the job.
What should Obama have done, given the conditions under which he came into office? Was there a good solution to the problems in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, ones that anyone with any sense or virtue might have spotted, ones reasonably compatible with the desires of the American people and the will of the Congress?
I’m willing to believe that Obama genuinely imagined that he would be able to do a better job of negotiating peaceful solutions among the peoples of the M.E. than Bush had done, and that in this, he was wrong. Everyone seems to come into office thinking they’ve got the solution, and everyone pretty much fails. Would McCain or (later) Romney have been —obviously! self-evidently! better when it came to dealing with all these thorny questions, or would we just be more merciful in our judgement of them? Those are real, not rhetorical questions, reflective of my own ignorance.
I’m not sure I understand this—clarify?
Iraq: He should have negotiated a Status of Forces Agreement that permitted a more long term American military presence in order to continue the mil to mil and military to civil engagement.
Afghanistan: He should have adopted the medium to low risk surge numbers proposed by his commander on the ground (the low risk surge was 80K, medium risk was 40K and the high risk option was 25K troops. P. Obama gave him 30K meaning he deliberately chose to place troops and mission at high risk.) He should not have announced a timetable for withdrawal.
Egypt: He should not have thrown Mubarak under the bus – but given that he should not have squawked when Sisi and the military deposed the Muslim Brotherhood.
Iran: He should have supported the Green Revolution – that alone would have placed him in a better negotiation position regarding Iranian pursuit of the bomb.
Libya: There was no reason to bypass Congress and bomb Libya on his own. He should have ensured the capability to conduct a Non-Combatant Emergency Operation (NEO).
He is given a pass by the Washington Press corps – he could do anything and not be criticized by them – ANY of the foregoing would have been in his purview and been accepted.
Great response, and a sound plan, Instugator. I agree entirely.
Instead we have an incredibly stupid and destructive situation, made worse at every turn.
Thanks, Instugator—that’s exactly what I was asking for!
Much of the discussion about the Middle East is based upon the assumption of a degree of control and foresight that is probably impossible. I think that there are some certainties that have to be acknowledged:
1) The middle east is a mess and has been one for well over a century. Oil wealth and Cold War Realpolitik imposed a period of apparent peace, but the underlying disorder was always going to reappear.
2) There is going to be a major conflict in the Middle East and there is nothing we can do about it. The problems are intractable.
3) When the conflict arises, the global energy supply is going to be threatened and the humanitarian cost will be atrocious.
4) Our (American) influence is limited by our ability to project and sustain power.
There are undoubtedly more, but these will do for examples. Given that unavoidable conflicts are rarely improved by deferring them, it may be best to let nature take its course and do our best to direct the situation toward some sort of acceptable outcome. Our advantages at this time are that all of the parties are relatively weak, none of them are nuclear, and we have a well established presence in the area if we need to assert some sort of control to keep the oil flowing. It has always seemed to me that this approach was an unstated but likely aspect of the Bush II policy. Dropping Saddam Hussein removed the weakest party in a decaying balance of power that has allowed things to progress toward a new order. If the Saudis can be used to destabilize the Ayatollahs that would be a huge improvement. The humanitarian cost would be huge, but it was always going to be.
I know this is late, and probably won’t generate a reply, but you are absolutely correct in your cross-examination. While I would argue that Law and Politics are mere outcroppings of culture, I would not disagree that what you say about the willingness for folks in Alabama to lay down their lives to defend folks in California puts a bit of a hurdle in front of my argument. But that mere fact alone is not enough to dispel the notion that Alabama has a drastically different culture than California within the overall realm of “Americanism.” And to buttress this, I refer you back to the politics of the two states. The politics reflects a certain mindset about the relationship between the people and the state. That mindset is the offspring of cultural distinctions. Culture is the important thing.
This could be more the product of subcultures being surrounded by completely different cultures. Now try your test on a train from London to Lincolnshire and see how far it gets you. Unless the Americans speak to you or wear something that distinguishes them as American, you probably would never know.
I think this should be the new word on Miss Claire’s conversations–you’ll get an answer, but you might not like it!
The fact I bring up is enough to teach all of us that Americans are American first & have what you so quaintly call cultures second. The mere fact is puzzling: Why should Americans, whom no one compels to die this way or any other, volunteer? I do not say that this thing is the only thing that matters, or that it is self-evident. It requires that we think seriously, how could this be, this that we have seen & on which we agree: The doings of anonymous, private American citizens, who come forth spontaneously, & who do the unthinkable in service to America, not their own little place, which they naturally know better & love better or with more familiarity, at least. But even when these men return, wrapped in the flag, their families grieved by a terrible, unnatural loss–yet Americans do not then decide to abandon America or the arms by which she is defended. Far from it, those dead give Americans an unusual pride, a sense of dignity–something to which they look up & to which they wish to live up, even if that is impossible or unlikely. Those dead men are not hidden away or sent unspoken from the living, but in fact they are honored. I cannot see how the depth of that feeling & the justice of the cause which it serves could be less important than any culture. When it comes to saying, for what shall we die, what has such a claim on us that we should relinquish all good things known to us, there are these Americans who speak for the people, perhaps not loudly, but in a way that, though not always warlike, is always indomitable.
The cultures cannot possibly be so important or so different, if the different cultures come to this common thing on the most important question, about life & death, without which law degenerates into the policy talk of weakling wonks or the mindless bureaucracy one sees among the well-heeled among the European races.
They are not that different. You used the word dialect – when I think you meant accent plus assorted idiom.
My wife speaks the Teochew dialect of Chinese (along with Mandarin, Hokkien, and Cantonese) For all intents and purposes, they might as well be different languages. There are no word/concept overlaps. The only thing they share is the same written language – but the words for each character are different sounds. She once told me the same phrase in Mandarin as well as Teochew and then asked me to tell her the differences – it has to do with the specific sounds, but also the delivery volume.
In the US we get folks in the upper northeast telling us “wicked” – which means the Alabama version of “Awesome”. Completely different level of differences. Some of our food is different, but the vast majority of food selection in the US is the same. Folks in Louisiana don’t eat gumbo (gumbeaux) to the exclusion of other American foods and neither do the folks in California.
We are not that different.