A slew of terrorist plans, mostly failed in the execution, have been traced to a group operating in Yemen – al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. World attention is focused on Yemen and also on the United States, as a response is expected. Proximity to oil resources, Iran’s involvement in the country, and several other factors (geopolitical and humanitarian) assure a response – thoughtful and effective or not.

Interventionist Rationales
A host of reasons for increasing the US presence in Yemen are surfacing in policy making circles and the general public. Foremost among them is that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is linked to the Detroit plane incident, the Fort Hood shootings, an assassination attempt in Denmark, and another attempt on Secretary of State Clinton.

Yemen is close to oil fields and shipping lanes. Iran is backing the Huthi rebellion that straddles the Saudi-Yemeni frontier, which is part of a Shia revival that threatens to destabilize the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq, especially in oil-producing countries with oppressed Shia minorities. Islamist tribes in Yemen have kith and kin in Saudi Arabia who see the House of Saud and its Wahabbist clerics as western puppets and defilers of Islam. Prompt action, then, is seen vital to US national security

American idealists see Yemenis in desperate political and economic straits. Their economy is weak; oil revenue (never strong) is diminishing; the state is unable to deliver services; and drought hangs over the country. This will strengthen American humanitarian concerns and lead to different but no less important calls for intervention. Over the last century or more, geopolitics and humanitarianism have been the yin and yang of American interventionism in many parts of the world, from Cuba to Afghanistan. Yemen offers another dual justification.

Non-Interventionist Rationales
At present, calls for further intervention in Yemen are not strong. Escalation will have several adverse effects. A larger US/western presence will further destabilize the government in Sana’a by making its reliance on western powers more apparent – and repugnant – to much of the population. Indeed, President Saleh has stated as much recently and his assessment should not be lost in the West.

There is risk of increasing Islamist ardor among tribes on both sides of the frontier with Saudi Arabia from which support for the 1979 siege of Mecca came and upon which many Saudi national guard units are based (and from which the bin Laden family came).

The US would further enmesh itself in the Saudi-Iranian struggle for mastery in the Gulf region – a conflict in which the US is already engaged, whether it realizes it or not, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

A greater presence in Yemen would lead to numerous compassionate reports of suffering people that would make further escalation, or at least nation-building and mission creep, almost irresistible.

More troops will greatly strengthen the perception in the Islamic world that the US is seeking to dominate the Middle East. This perception is one upon which the al Qaeda movement is based and with which it garners financial support and new recruits from Morocco to Indonesia.

The US can counter al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula without greater involvement. Though largely unnoticed, the US has had military and intelligence personnel in Yemen since at least 2002 when a Predator drone flown from Djibouti killed a key al Qaeda figure thought responsible for the attack on the USS Cole two years earlier in the port of Aden. Similar strikes can be carried out with the present numbers and from ships offshore. The Saudi military can attack al Qaeda targets, as they have already attacked Huthi insurgents inside Yemen. The US can best achieve its goals by working, as inconspicuously as possible, with Saudi and other regional military and intelligence forces to target al Qaeda leaders and win over tribal allegiances through aid programs.

US escalation will only aggravate the Saudi-Iranian dimension to the Yemeni conflict and increase the risk of fighting elsewhere in the region. Countries in the Gulf region have, over the years, been skillful in containing the Saudi-Iranian conflict, and today their mediations can be used to ease the Sunni-Shia aspect of Yemen’s troubles. All of them have large Shia populations and none has any interest in seeing al Qaeda further ensconce itself in the region. The most effective response to Yemen will likely come from regional powers with local knowledge, not distant ones without it.

~ ©2010 Brian M. Downing

Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.  He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.