Yemen

Misunderstanding Wars in Yemen, Vietnam, and Yemen Once Again By J. Dana Stuster, NSN Policy Analyst April 6, 2015 | Foreign Policy There’s an moment in the 2003 documentary The Fog of War in which former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara lays out what he got wrong in Vietnam. “We saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War,” he says. “Not what they [the Vietnamese] saw it as: a civil war.” I thought of that the other day as I listened to Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, talking about the Saudi intervention in Yemen. “This is treated as a sectarian battle between Iran-backed Shia and Saudi Arabia-backed Sunnis, but really when you look at the essence of Yemen’s… Read More ›

Understanding the Crisis in Yemen March 27, 2015 With Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi facing a Houthi offensive against his refuge in Aden earlier this week, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Sunni-majority nations launched a military intervention to push back the Houthis’ gains and restore Hadi’s government to Sanaa. Though the United States is not responsible for Yemen’s recent decline, it has for too long emphasized counterterrorism at the expense of political and economic concerns. Going forward, it should look to deescalate the conflict and restart the country’s political transition – the best way to bring Yemen the stability it needs to confront its many challenges. There are ways the United States can do that within the Saudi-led coalition, to which the United… Read More ›

How Regional Power Struggles Stoke Yemen’s Conflict By Brian Katulis, NSN Board of Directors Chair March 26, 2015 | Wall Street Journal For all the complaints from the Middle East about the Obama administration’s reticence to involve itself deeply in conflicts such as those in Syria and Yemen, nations in the region act on their own when motivated. Saudi military intervention in Yemen‘s civil war–actually a joint effort by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain–underscores a broader struggle for power that is accelerating the collapse of states across the Middle East. The key question now is whether regional actions will lead to stability or further turmoil. At its core, Yemen’s conflict is an internal struggle for power between long-competing factions. But in the past year it has taken on dimensions… Read More ›

What Comes Next in Yemen January 23, 2015 Yemen entered a new political crisis this week as President Abdu Rabu Mansur Hadi and his Prime Minister and cabinet announced their resignation rather than comply with demands from the country’s Houthi Movement. The collapse of the government makes it unclear who – if anyone – is in charge of the country; some factions within Yemen are trying to exploit the new political vacuum, and the situation has far reaching effects for U.S. counterterrorism operations and the geopolitics of the region. However, alarmist claims that the country is collapsing into a terrorist state are wildly overblown – Yemen faces an uncertain future that will be decided by disputing factions that may turn violent, but this does not… Read More ›