The Senate is now leaning toward ending U.S. participation in the Saudi-United-Arab-Emirates-led war in Yemen. I believe that the Senate has the authority to do this, but I also believe that course of action would be a terrible mistake, doing more harm than good to the civilians who have been suffering through the conflict.
I know that sounds odd. After all, tens of thousands have starved to death or died in the fighting since 2015. So it’s understandable that senators want to end to the Saudi campaign against Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen. They believe that pulling American support will put immense pressure on Riyadh to accept a rapid cease fire.
But the problem is that the senators are wrong. If the U.S. pulls its functional support for the Saudi alliance, two negative consequences will immediately follow. First, the Saudis will lose all the inhibitions about accurate targeting of Houthi formations that American intervention has forced. Second, Riyadh will lose interest in energetic efforts by Washington to reach a durable cease fire.
Both of those developments will be disastrous for Yemeni civilians. For a start, the only reason the Saudis are now moving toward a cease fire is the Trump administration’s pressure. Trump has earned Saudi trust and their corresponding deference on issues negatively affecting America: in this case, the human suffering of the Yemeni civil war.
The Saudis have not suddenly woken up and realized that the war is causing too much suffering without adequate prospect of strategic gain. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sees Yemen as a defining battleground in an existential fight against Iran. With Iran repeatedly firing ballistic missiles at Riyadh and helping assassinate erstwhile Saudi allies, it is ludicrous to think the prince would cease his war effort absent the present mix of major U.S. pressure and resolute U.S. support.
And if you want to understand how a U.S. withdrawal of military support would affect the Saudi war effort, look no further than President Bashar Assad’s Syria. The Saudi coalition has far more advanced weapons platforms than the Syrians, but it lacks the integrated command and control, intelligence, targeting, communications, and logistical skill to employ its military effectively. The U.S. has been absolutely critical in filling in the gaps in these areas.
And although the Saudis are still too capricious with their use of force, American guidance has helped them target Houthi formations rather than entire city blocks with a few Houthis somewhere inside those blocks. Again, motivated by their historic, cultural, and theological blood feud with Iran, the Saudis would care little about killing thousands more civilians if they believed it might win the war. America is the only check on them at this moment. And, as demonstrated by the Saudi suspension of operations around the port of Hodeidah, that check has held.
None of this is palatable for a democracy like ours. We want our world to be without wars. But reality sometimes sucks. And the simple reality of the Yemeni civil war is that it would be, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it on Wednesday, “a hell of a lot worse” were the U.S. disengaged from it. Yes, Pompeo exaggerates the degree to which Saudi Arabia is a constructive, stable partner for the U.S. in the broader Middle East. Still, he is right on the fundamental issue: that the U.S. needs a Saudi Arabia that is modernizing and stable.
If we want a cease-fire that restrains Iran as well as serving the Yemeni people, we need to stay engaged with the Saudis. In the end, the Senate’s looming action would only decorate Yemen with more civilian blood.
