The Houthi offensive in Yemen is a transformational opportunity — for the United States. It provides Washington, at long last, with a way to demonstrate to the powers of the Middle East that there is no alternative to American support, a reality that Washington should impress across Eurasia. The Trump administration should therefore act with strategic patience, while preparing for a coalition intervention in Yemen. Indeed, the New Middle East requires that the Houthi threat be eliminated, the Gulf States finally wedded into an American-led coalition, and America’s allies reminded that the United States is a powerful, unmatched partner.
The Houthi movement is the result of an evolutionary contest sparked by the Global War on Terror. The United States waged a remarkably successful tactical-level military campaign against al-Qaeda in particular, alongside other predominantly Sunni Jihadist groups, throughout the 2000s, using a combination of increasingly exquisite intelligence, high loiter-time drones, and Special Operations Forces to grind down these organizations during and independently of counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reaction in the 2010s was the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an entity that formally claimed the mantle of statehood and sought to control territory. This model, however, met an even more rapid end, with the United States underpinning a truly global coalition to destroy the self-declared Islamic Caliphate.
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