Tag: houthis
Stevenson’s army, September 24
– Turkey approved Sweden in NATO; Hungary still needs to act.
– Republican Senators fight over border & Ukraine, shows weakened McConnell
– Some Senators question Biden authority to attack Houthis [My view: President has authority & precedents for Red Sea operations, not for defense of Israel]
– Taiwan Caucus group goes to Taiwan.
– WOTR writer sees corruption in Chinese rocket forces
– Scottish prof says AI is already changing the battlefield
– WSJ says US sees new threats in West Africa
– Deja vu: Heritage supports Jimmy Carter’s road-mobile ICBM plan
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My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 23
-Politico reports attacks on Houthis.
-Defense Priorities analyzes the options.
– Fred Kaplan is encouraged by emerging Gaza peace plan.
– RollCall sees Palestinian aid as an issue.
-Semafor says Israel want 2km no man’s land in Gaza
– Iran hawks Gerecht and Takeyh say Iran doesn’t want a war
– NYT worries about tipping point in Mideast conflicts
– FP’s Steve Walt says in terms of foreign policy, it doesn’t matter whether Trump or Biden wins
– New reports on Trump on Ukraine and Trump on Taiwan [from Politico’s China Watcher:
TRUMP WON’T COMMIT TO TAIWAN’S DEFENSE: The likely Republican candidate in the November U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump, refused to commit to a U.S. defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion attempt.
Publicly declaring his position on Taiwan’s defense would put him in “very bad negotiating position” with Beijing, Trump said in a Fox News interview on Sunday. Trump laced those comments with complaints about the self-governing island’s dominance of the global semiconductor supply chain. “Taiwan did take all of our chip business … they took our business away. We should have stopped them. We should have taxed them. We should have tariffed them,” Trump said.
Lawfare summarizes new cyber laws.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 21
OK, so you don’t have to wait for the broadsheets. Here are some stories, already online, that will be on front pages tomorrow.
– US is working with Arab governments on a master plan to end the Gaza war, as both Axios and WSJ report.
– WSJ also reports that US intelligence says Israel has destroyed only 20-30% of Hamas forces.
-WaPo says US plans long campaign against Houthis.
– Politico says Houthis expect new weapons from Iran.
– NYT reports growing doubts about US in Taiwan.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 19
There’s other news, but I want to draw your attention to an excellent piece in NYT on what Congress knew about the Manhattan Project to build atomic weapons. It’s detailed, accurate, and includes links to several important documents. Sadly, I don’t see it anywhere on the NYT website, but I knew it existed because I saw it in the printed paper.
Reporter Catie Edmondson shows that at least 7 members of Congress knew key details, including the $800 million initial funding, because Secretary of War Stimson had briefed them. Speaker Sam Rayburn told others “trust me,” and they did. Edmondson doesn’t mention that wartime appropriations bills were lump sum measures, with very few line items, so most details of military spending were known only to a few members. I see this as proof that there was knowledge and accountability, despite the necessary secrecy.
[Be sure to read the Rayburn interview with Forrest Pogue, which has several stories about how Rayburn operated.]
– FP has more details about the Houthi terrorist designation.
– FT says Arab nations have a plan to recognize Israel in return for a Palestinian state
– WSJ assesses Iran’s military capabilities.
– Semafor says some of Speaker Johnson’s problems come because he “talks like a lawyer”
– Lawfare ponders sources of JCS Chairman’s power
– DIA released report on Iranian UAVs in Ukraine
– It now looks as if Speaker Johnson, talking with Trump, wants to prevent a border security bill [so the GOP has the issue] and avoid any votes on Ukraine [where GOP is divided] Unclear how many GOP Senators agree with that strategy.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 18
– Pakistan has struck back at Iran.
– US has made special terrorist designation of Houthis. Note the legal nuances.
– New Taiwan leader says he’ll stick to status quo.
– US pressures Israel on Gaza electronics
– WSJ says US plans for Mideast aren’t gathering support
-Kevin Drum says the Fed is doing business differently
– SAIS prof Hal Brands assesses US support for Ukraine
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Avoiding the slippery slope to the wider war
Hizbollah and Israel are trading tit for tat attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border. The Houthis in Yemen are attacking shipping in the Red Sea. The US and UK have raided Houthi military assets. Shia “popular mobilization forces” (PMFs) are attacking US facilities in Iraq and US forces are occasionally responding. Iran has launched missiles into Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil, targeting the house of the US Consul General. Even added altogether it won’t amount to the 1000 deaths required to designate something a “war,” but we are clearly on the slippery slope to the long-feared wider war in the Middle East.
Iran is benefiting
This should not be welcome in the US. Ukraine is already absorbing vast quanitities of US military supplies. Deterring China from attacking Taiwan is stretching not only logistics but also US naval operations. Israel’s war on Gaza is requiring enormous amounts of US and European materiel, without any prospect of improving US security.
But the enemy gets a vote. Iran may not be directing all of what Hizbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and the Iraqi PMFs are doing. But Tehran has supplied the means and resistance ideology that motivates them all. Iran is hoping to force the US out of the region. So far, that isn’t working. The US has deployed additional naval and other assets to the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Tehran is enriching more uranium and moving closer to nuclear weapons capability. No more than a few weeks would be required for Iran to construct an atomic weapon, assuming its scientists have already done the necessary designs, experimented with the required conventional explosives, and acquired the needed non-fissile material.
My former dean, Eliot Cohen, argues that the way to prevent the wider war is to levy a devastating attack on the Houthis, rather than the well-calculated proportional one the Biden Administration has so far administered. I’m not sure he is wrong, but it will take a more reckless president than Biden to pursue that course. That is something neither Eliot nor I would welcome.
Regaining advantage
The US needs somehow to regain a more advantageous position in order to shape the course of events. The place to start is Gaza. Biden should end the war there by reading the riot act to Prime Minister Netanyahu: no more weapons if the killing of civilians continues at anything like previous pace.
A pause in the large-scale attacks on Gaza would give the Israelis an opportunity to unseat the unpopular Netanyahu and put in his place a government that prioritizes the fate of the hostages, humanitarian conditions inside Gaza, and negotiations with the Palestinians. Such a government would also continue targeted raids on Hamas leadership and militants who participated in the October 7 attack on Israel. But it would end the disproportionate bombing of civilian areas and open Gaza up to both commercial and humanitarian shipment of goods and services.
Such a pause would give diplomats an opportunity to pursue the possibility of an agreement between Lebanon and Israel on outstanding, but relatively minor, border issues, thus depriving Hizbollah of a major rallying cry. It would also relieve pressure on Iraq to evict American bases. As for the Houthis, they have proven resilient. No quick blow is going to make them go away. We are in for a long effort to deprive them of the military capabilitiues they have amassed in recent years.
Good fortune
We should count our blessings. China is in economic trouble and in no position to attack Taiwan anytime soon. The Taiwanese election yesterday of a pro-independence leader will provoke lots of Beijing rhetoric, and many planes crossing the Taiwan Strait median line, but no actual military attack.
Moscow has celebrated the European and American blockage of assistance to Ukraine, but we can hope that is temporary. It is vital that Kyiv get whatever it needs to chase Russian forces from all of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. That alone would greatly enhance American leverage worldwide.
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