The Devil You Know
Here’s an interesting point from Michael Crowley:
If you’ll recall one of the big foreign policy nightmares circa 2005-2006 was the possibility that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would lead to a destabilizing proxy war between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. We stuck around and that didn’t happen. But we may now be getting it anyway… in Yemen.
What I think is most interesting about this is the kind of magnetic pull that worst-case scenarios exercise over an ongoing American military operation. With a lot of political capital already invested in the Iraq War, and well over 100,000 American soldiers in the field, the prospect of an Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy war emerging from a post-withdrawal Iraq was taken to be a valid reason for indefinitely continuing the war. But shift the scenario down the road a bit to Yemen, and suddenly it’s not such a big deal. An interesting story, sure. Possibly an unfolding human tragedy. Something to our eyes on. But nobody’s talking about sending 120,000 guys with guns to Yemen to keep the peace.
16 Responses to “The Devil You Know”
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November 13th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
What do you mean “we,” Kemosabe?
November 13th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Come on, you know that will be Kristol’s next column…
And even if not, people certainly would be advocating it if:
A) Yemen had anywhere near the oil reserves that Iraq does
B) We were not already over-committed in 2 other countries
November 13th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
What’s the Russian word for irony?
November 13th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
The fact that Iraq sits atop the world’s fourth largest store of proven oil reserves seems to warrant a greater effort at ensuring that country’s political stability, over and above whatever concern we might afford Yemen.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Hmm…but now that you mention it…
November 13th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
link
November 13th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
But nobody’s talking about sending 120,000 guys with guns to Yemen to keep the peace.
AEI report on the grave threat of Al Qaeda in Yemen in 3… 2…
November 13th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
“What’s the Russian word for irony?”
I don’t think they have one. Their existence is irony. They are powerful and destructive to anyone else, but feeding themselves is a problem. Their people might fare better if they attacked themselves. And that’s irony.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
And if you really want to know Russia, I’d recommend Andrew Meier’s Black Earth. As ugly as it is, it’s more optimistic than reality would dictate. There’s a real problem in Russia that he doesn’t address. It’s the collapse of trust. Economies are based on trust. The trust that if I buy a bunch of coal, you’ll deliver the coal. Doesn’t work that way now in Russia. And that’s not good. The last thing this world needs is a bunch of angry Russians.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Give it 48 hours or so …
November 13th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
As for Yemen, the Yemeni will always fight the Saudis. When the Sun runs out, they’ll still be fighting. And neither of them even knows what they fight over. It’s just their nature. It’s a pity they can’t both lose, but they’ll try anyway.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
And unless it spills over to block Gulf oil shipments, the world could hardly care. Kinda like Afghanistan pre 9-11, it was a dirty shame about the endless fighting, but who wants to get involved?
November 13th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Hmmmmmmmmm…….what does Iraq have what Yemen doesn’t……hmmmmmm…thinking real hard here Matt, help me out here.
And I’m not talking about peach or apricot orchards.
Fun Fact: There have been proxy wars in Yemen before with Egypt and Syria facing off against Saudi Arabia and Pakistan back during the Nasser years. I think the Pakistani and Egyptian air forces even had some dogfights over Yemen.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
OK, what’s the Arabic word for irony?
But now many analysts say they fear that the offensive could backfire, drawing Saudi Arabia into a quagmire in a mountainous tribal area and possibly even luring foreign fighters to join the rebels.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
One must – this week – always mention blood for oil in the context of Peter Galbraith, our liberal alchemist making Iraqi and American blood into his oil fortune! And he – in his sweet, ultra humanitarian way – wrote many a piece about withdrawing from Iraq in 2006 – but at the same time breaking the place up. American soldiers, in his scenario, would just be protecting – Kurdistan. Where he happened to have his 5 percent stake in a Kurdish oilfield, which he is suing over, claiming that the stake is worth 100 million dollars.
This is how the policymakers think. This is what animates them. They are dead souls.
November 14th, 2009 at 6:33 am
What I find most interesting, is the fact that this is being portrayed as some kind of Saudi-Iran-proxy war. For sure, the Saudi’s are in it, as they always have been, and perhaps the Iranians find it worth the effort, but ofcourse, there is more in Yemen than some international geopolitical powerplay -after all, there was a civil war a decade ago and once it was two countries-, or, as they seem to say in America, ‘all politics is local’. It seems a lot of people want the problems to be of apocalyptic proportions, giant battles, great fights of thunder, while it for the most part it’s probably ‘just’ some tribal dispute over power, influence or even discrimination.