/ world today news/ On Monday, the United States and Great Britain launched another round of strikes against the Houthi rebels after the Yemen-based group continued to disrupt international trade in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza. Since January 11, the United States has launched eight strikes against the Houthis.
When President Joe Biden initially began striking the Houthis, his administration argued that the strikes were constitutionally permissible and strategically justified, designed both to thwart immediate threats and to establish a deterrent effect.
A little less than two weeks later, the Biden administration is telling the American public to calm down and prepare for a longer and more sustained campaign against the Houthi rebels.
The open admission of plans for such a crusade, however, raises significant questions about the constitutionality of the president’s actions and his administration’s broader Middle East strategy.
Administration officials, who spoke to The Washington Post on condition of anonymity, told The Post that the administration is gravitating toward a longer-term strategy to erode the insurgents’ capacity to disrupt international trade.
“We are aware of who the Houthis are and what their worldview is,” one of the unnamed high-ranking officials told the Post.
“So we’re not sure they’re going to stop right away, but we’re certainly trying to degrade and destroy their capacity.”
Last week, The American Conservative highlighted the administration’s attempt to shift the target posts for this intervention.
After the first round of US strikes against the Houthi rebels on January 11, the US and partner countries have appropriated the rhetoric of deterrence and de-escalation.
A statement by the US and the UK, joined by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea, claimed:
“These precision strikes were intended to disrupt and reduce the capabilities the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of international seafarers in one of the world’s most critical waterways.”
“Our goal remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea,” the statement added.
“But let our message be clear: We will not hesitate to protect life and protect the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats.”
The Biden administration can claim that its actions in the Middle East are intended to deter further Houthi attacks and de-escalate the situation all it wants, but that doesn’t make it right.
While deterrence aims to prevent unwanted action by a force, the Biden administration appears to be pursuing “perfection” in Yemen, which is an effort to pressure an actor to change its behavior through the use of force.
As Will Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research, recently told TAC, “Deterrence is when you signal that you will do X if the other party does Y.”
“Instead, it’s a form of resistance. The goal is to force the opponent to do something you want them to do.”
Rather than be deterred, the Houthis vowed to continue their Red Sea campaign. In one of the cases, the Houthi rebels damaged with a ballistic missile a merchant ship sailing under the Maltese flag and owned by Greece.
However, administration officials continued to talk out of both sides of their mouths. “We didn’t say when we started our attacks that they would end once and for all,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an address to the World Economic Forum last week.
“We have to guard against and be alert to the possibility that instead of actually going toward de-escalation, we’re on a path to escalation that we have to manage,” Sullivan added.
The doublespeak continued after Monday’s strikes. On Monday, the US and the UK, backed by Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, struck eight different Houthi targets in Yemen.
The sites included an underground storage facility and others “related to the Houthis’ missile and aerial surveillance capabilities,” according to the joint statement by the participating forces.
Although the strikes were “intended to disrupt and reduce the capabilities the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent seafarers,” the states acknowledged that they had done little to change the Houthis’ behavior, given the “series of from the illegal, dangerous and destabilizing actions of the Houthis since our coalition strikes on January 11th”. The statement ended in the same way as the previous statement:
Our goal remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea, but let us reiterate our warning to the Houthi leadership:
“We will not hesitate to protect human life and the free flow of trade on one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats.”
The president’s comments were more direct: “Are the Houthis stopping you? No,” Biden told a group of reporters.
“Will they continue? Yes.”
While acknowledging the shift in the Biden administration’s approach to mail, anonymous administration officials still framed the president’s actions in the language of deterrence.
The Washington Post article, which paraphrased the officials, said the administration is seeking to “provide enough of a deterrent so that risk-averse shipping companies can resume sending ships through the region’s waterways.”
Officials also told the Post that while the administration is taking a long-term view, they don’t expect the counter-Houthi operations to last years, like other recent U.S. incursions into the Middle East.
However, administration officials acknowledged that they could not provide an indication of when the Houthis’ capacity would be adequately reduced or an approximate date for the end of the Biden administration’s hostilities.
“It is impossible to predict exactly what will happen and certainly not [да се предвидят] future operations,” claimed one of the employees.
“We are not trying to defeat the Houthis. We have no appetite to invade Yemen,” an unnamed diplomat told the Post.
“The appetite is to reduce their ability to carry out these kinds of attacks going forward, and that includes hitting the infrastructure that enables these kinds of attacks and targeting their capabilities at a higher level.”
Yet U.S. officials did not initially expect the interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria to last years, much less decades, when they began — and that raised eyebrows in Washington.
“The Biden administration’s strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen demonstrate why Congress must seriously reconsider the outdated AUMF,” Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said in a written statement to TAC.
“They also demonstrate the dangers of Congress’ continued denial of war powers.”
On Tuesday, Lee signed a letter to Biden in which he, along with senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Todd Young of Pennsylvania and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, challenged the constitutionality of the president’s actions.
While the senators acknowledged that Biden has the authority “to protect American personnel and military assets from attacks and impending attacks” and possibly “to protect American merchant shipping,” the quartet argued that “most ships transiting the Red Sea are not American ships , which raises questions about the extent to which these powers can be exercised”.
“The administration has stated that strikes against Houthi targets to date have not deterred and will not deter Houthi attacks, suggesting that we are in the midst of an ongoing regional conflict that carries the risk of escalation,” the letter continued.
“We have long advocated for considered procedures and congressional authorization for decisions that place service members in harm’s way overseas. There is currently no congressional authorization for US offensive military action against the Houthis.”
The senators also noted that Biden had “submitted only one notification to Congress under the War Powers Act despite having conducted several rounds of strikes against Houthi targets,” and demanded “a written explanation of the legal authority” the president used to justify previous or future strikes against the Houthi rebels.
“The Biden administration is falsely claiming that it can legally deploy troops to hostilities and engage in uncontested offensive strikes simply by notifying Congress afterward,” Lee told TAC.
“If this administration wants to engage in a long-term campaign in Yemen, it must make the case to Congress and obtain specific authorization as required by the Constitution.”
“Given what the administration itself says, we are well beyond pure defense,” Ruger wrote in an email to TAC.
“If we were truly following our constitutional intent in foreign policy, it would be long past time for President Biden to address Congress with a request to authorize the use of force and for Congress to have a serious debate about this policy.”
Retired Colonel Douglas McGregor, editor at The American Conservative, commented to TAC via email: “Americans live in a post-constitutional government.”
McGregor added, “Since 2001, no one in the House or Senate has debated the constitutionality of presidential military action. The War Powers Act has never been implemented.”
If the administration had cared about the constitutionality of the attack on the Houthis, things would have been done much differently, McGregor suggests.
“Since the Houthis’ actions do not pose an immediate threat to the United States or the American people, the use of force would seem to require congressional approval. (This is not an emergency),” McGregor explained.
“However, the American electorate shows no signs of caring about what’s going on, and Congress is ready, as always, to defer to the executive branch.”
If Congress wants to change its cowardly course of action, it “must vote to immediately freeze funding for US military operations and forces in the region until the president makes his case for action,” McGregor says.
“The Founders wisely placed military power in the hands of Congress so that the people’s representatives could debate the best way forward, understand the costs and benefits of alternative approaches, and unite the country behind a military policy if it is necessary to satisfy our national interests. interests,” Ruger said.
“But instead, the Biden administration wants to act on its own,” he added, “so they shouldn’t be surprised if the policy fails, and the people will have only themselves to blame.”
“The narrative has no bearing on the facts,” McGregor said. “
The goal is to incite Iran to attack American forces, thereby providing a pretext for war with Iran.”
Translation: SM
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