Follow us on social

Houthis

The US military's anti-Houthi campaign still isn't working

American forces play whack-a-mole in the Red Sea while the Biden administration ignores addressing the conflict's origins

Analysis | Middle East

For more than nine months, the United States has been engaged in an open-ended — and congressionally unauthorized — military campaign against Yemen’s Houthi movement. Citing Israel’s war in Gaza as their primary motive, Yemen’s Houthis began attacking shipping vessels transiting the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait in November 2023. In response, Washington launched a retaliatory campaign in the hopes of stopping such attacks, constituting what U.S. Navy officials describe as the most intense running sea battle the United States has faced since World War II.

The problem, however, is that it’s not working.

Washington’s approach to the Houthis is the epitome of strategic malpractice. It won’t work, costs too much, jeopardizes the lives of American servicemembers stationed in the region to protect primarily foreign vessels, and risks further destabilizing Yemen as well as the broader region. Moreover, though the Houthis maintain their own unique incentives, Washington’s refusal to acknowledge Israel’s war in Gaza as the original catalyst of the Houthis’ attacks prevents any hopes of stopping these attacks in the Red Sea. Washington should immediately end its military activity against the Houthis, press European and Asian states to take a more proactive role in protecting their own shipping vessels, and stop subsidizing Israel’s war in Gaza in the hopes of deescalating rising tensions across the Middle East.

There are three main problems with Washington’s current Houthi strategy.

First, it is devoid of concrete and achievable political objectives while burdening American taxpayers with inordinate costs. Since November 2023, the Houthis have conducted roughly 200 drone and missile attacks targeting commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea, sinking two vessels and killing at least three sailors. In turn, the United States reached for its usual Middle East playbook — military force — spearheading Operation Prosperity Guardian in December 2023, and Operation Poseidon Archer in January 2024.

According to U.S. officials, these efforts are meant to “restore deterrence.” The United States has already shot down over 150 Houthi drones and missiles. Compared to the Houthis’ missiles and drones — each costing around $2,000— the U.S. Navy’s missiles used to shoot down these projectiles cost American taxpayers millions of dollars. So far, Washington has spent over $1 billion on munitions to strike the Houthis and intercept incoming missiles and drones.

Yet, these efforts have failed to deter the Houthis, nor are they likely to. Put simply, they see the benefits of conducting these attacks — namely, the political benefit of brandishing their defense of the Palestinian cause — as far outweighing the costs being imposed by the United States. In fact, the majority of the attacks perpetrated by the Houthis happened after the United States and its partners began their retaliatory campaign, showing plainly that U.S. efforts have failed to deter further violence.

The U.S. is also unlikely to considerably degrade the Houthi’s capabilities to the point that they can no longer attack vessels transiting the Red Sea. After nearly 10 years of fighting against Saudi-led forces — supported by the United States — they have proven adept at the “shoot and scoot” method of combat and their weapons are cheap, highly mobile, and dispersed across Yemen.

What’s ironic is that U.S. officials recognize the disconnect between this military campaign and its ostensible political aims.

Rear Admiral George Wikoff, the U.S. Naval commander in charge of Operation Prosperity Guardian, noted in February that the group “has not been deterred.” In August, Wikoff explained a solution to this conflict “is not going to come at the end of a weapons system.” But President Biden best summed up this disconnect when asked about U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis: “Are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”

Though the Houthis’ attacks have disrupted global shipping and freedom of navigation through the Red Sea, America’s tit-for-tat military engagement has not resolved this issue. Commercial shipping traffic through the Red Sea has decreased considerably as a result of the Houthis’ attacks. There has been a significant effort to re-route these vessels — the majority of which are bound for Europe — which has led to increased shipping costs and some delays, namely for European vessels and consumers.

However, this does not constitute a death knell for the global economy. The greatest impact has been on the profit margins of certain companies due to higher fuel costs and increased insurance premiums. But America’s military campaign is arguably making the situation worse, fueling the conflict and resulting in more ships coming under fire from the Houthis.

Moreover, safeguarding these sea lanes is, as the Pentagon acknowledges, “an international problem that requires an international solution,” not the sole responsibility of the American taxpayer. Washington would be wise to recognize this, and should instead press European and Asian states to take a more proactive role in defending Red Sea shipping, given that they have more vessels transiting these waters than the U.S.

Second, continued military exchanges between the United States and the Houthis risks further destabilizing an already war-torn Yemen.

The brutal Saudi-UAE campaign in Yemen — supported by the United States — quickly devoured the country, killing more than 377,000 people and producing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. After nine years of ruinous war, the conflict in Yemen has largely been at a standstill, primarily due to the inability of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to defeat the Houthis and fractures among anti-Houthi forces in Yemen.

In April 2022, the U.N. mediated a two-month ceasefire between the parties and, despite having formally expired, the truce has largely held, with both sides reaping the benefits in avoiding a resurgence of fighting: Saudi Arabia desires a swift exit from a war it has lost, while the Houthis wish to consolidate their position in Yemen as the country’s preeminent political and military force.

However, the Houthis used the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attacks to challenge Israel and the United States amid growing international outcry over the war in Gaza. This has allowed the Houthis to further consolidate their image as the face of the Yemeni state, while also deflecting criticism away from their own autocratic rule.

U.N.-led discussions to end this disastrous conflict are now at a standstill, hindered by ongoing military exchanges between the United States and the Houthis. Continued U.S. military action against the group risks jeopardizing the fragile, tacit, truce between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis while also threatening to compound Yemen’s economic and humanitarian crisis.

Finally, the conflict between the United States and the Houthis risks exacerbating growing regional tensions, pushing the Middle East toward region-wide war. In the almost 11 months since Israel’s war in Gaza began, the Middle East has seen a surge in military escalation stretching across the region. Current hostilities between the Houthis and the United States are rooted in this context.

Like the rest of the region, the conflict with the Houthis continues to worsen. In July, the Houthis successfully fired a drone from Yemen that impacted an apartment building near the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv, killing at least one person and injuring several others. In response, a squadron of Israeli F-15s and F-35s struck Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Hodeidah port, killing six dockworkers and injuring dozens.

With no end in sight to the war in Gaza and fears of regional war growing, Yemen has the potential to be a significant flashpoint in such a conflict. If the goal of the United States is to persuade the Houthis into stopping their attacks and avoid being sucked into another regional war, military force is extremely unlikely to achieve these objectives.

There are no vital U.S. national interests at stake in Yemen that justify this level of American military involvement, or the billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money being squandered. Instead, the best option is for Washington to end its aimless tit-for-tat exchanges with the Houthis and recognize that its emphatic embrace of Israel’s war in Gaza is destabilizing the broader region to the detriment of U.S. interests. A ceasefire in Gaza holds the best chance of ending, or at least considerably suppressing, the attacks by Houthis as well as rising tensions across the Middle East.


Fighters recruited into the Houthis as part of a mobilization campaign they have initiated recently, parade to show solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen August 24, 2024. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Analysis | Middle East
American Special Operations
Top image credit: (shutterstock/FabrikaSimf)

American cult: Why our special ops need a reset

Military Industrial Complex

This article is the latest installment in our Quincy Institute/Responsible Statecraft project series highlighting the writing and reporting of U.S. military veterans. Click here for more information.

America’s post-9/11 conflicts have left indelible imprints on our society and our military. In some cases, these changes were so gradual that few noticed the change, except as snapshots in time.

keep readingShow less
Recep Tayyip Erdogan Benjamin Netanyahu
Top photo credit: President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Shutterstock/ Mustafa Kirazli) and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Salty View/Shutterstock)
Is Turkey's big break with Israel for real?

Why Israel is now turning its sights on Turkey

Middle East

As the distribution of power shifts in the region, with Iran losing relative power and Israel and Turkey emerging on top, an intensified rivalry between Tel Aviv and Ankara is not a question of if, but how. It is not a question of whether they choose the rivalry, but how they choose to react to it: through confrontation or peaceful management.

As I describe in Treacherous Alliance, a similar situation emerged after the end of the Cold War: The collapse of the Soviet Union dramatically changed the global distribution of power, and the defeat of Saddam's Iraq in the Persian Gulf War reshuffled the regional geopolitical deck. A nascent bipolar regional structure took shape with Iran and Israel emerging as the two main powers with no effective buffer between them (since Iraq had been defeated). The Israelis acted on this first, inverting the strategy that had guided them for the previous decades: The Doctrine of the Periphery. According to this doctrine, Israel would build alliances with the non-Arab states in its periphery (Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia) to balance the Arab powers in its vicinity (Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, respectively).

keep readingShow less
Havana, Cuba
Top Image Credit: Havana, Cuba, 2019. (CLWphoto/Shutterstock)

Trump lifted sanctions on Syria. Now do Cuba.

North America

President Trump’s new National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) on Cuba, announced on June 30, reaffirms the policy of sanctions and hostility he articulated at the start of his first term in office. In fact, the new NSPM is almost identical to the old one.

The policy’s stated purpose is to “improve human rights, encourage the rule of law, foster free markets and free enterprise, and promote democracy” by restricting financial flows to the Cuban government. It reaffirms Trump’s support for the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which explicitly requires regime change — that Cuba become a multiparty democracy with a free market economy (among other conditions) before the U.S. embargo will be lifted.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.