Is the Trump Administration Sinking into a Yemen Quagmire?
Daniel R. DePetris
Security, Middle East
The civil war in Yemen could cause political complications for Donald Trump.
When President Donald Trump tapped former Gen. James Mattis to be his secretary of defense, I had the same feeling as so many other people inside and outside of Washington, DC: relief. Finally, there would be an adult in the room who knew how to navigate the treacherous national-security bureaucracy and someone who had actually dealt with foreign military and political leaders as a representative of the United States—unlike many on the White House staff.
But even good picks like Mattis can be too quick on the trigger and too prone to action without considering the second, third and fourth-tier impacts. Secretary Mattis and the Trump administration are in the process of potentially making a horrendous mistake of epic proportions in Yemen.
Trump officials are debating whether or not to increase U.S. military assistance to the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebellion in Yemen. Per the Washington Post, Secretary Mattis sent a memo to National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster making the case for additional U.S. intelligence support for a UAE-backed operation to reclaim the Yemeni port of Hodeida. This recommendation comes on top of a decision that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made several weeks ago to resume U.S. arms shipments to the Royal Saudi Air Force, which has been performing bombing runs over Yemen for the past two years. The National Security Council is reportedly scheduled to discuss Mattis’s memo this week.
The principals—and ultimately the president—should put the memo in the shredder.
Yemen Is Already a Humanitarian Catastrophe
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