American Institute: How could the United States have prevented the Yemen war.. and what lessons should it learn?

The Houthis, a small armed group from Yemen, have successfully disrupted global maritime trade through the Red Sea, raising the cost of goods worldwide and reducing global GDP, including in the United States.

There’s not much the United States can do about it. The United States is fighting the Houthis in what officials have called the largest naval battle since World War II, but the Houthi threat is only growing.

It's an important time to ask how we got here.

While the United States has few good options now, it could have helped prevent the war that brought the Houthis to power and devastated Yemen. Doing so would have been much easier and less costly than fighting the current Houthi threat. So why has the United States failed to do so?

In a new research paper, “How Could the United States Have Prevented the Yemen War?” researcher Alison Minor identifies three opportunities between 2011 and 2015 when she argues the United States could have prevented or mitigated the Yemen war.

It described specific policy actions that the United States could have taken during this period, with a clear focus on the limitations on U.S. influence within Yemen and within the U.S. policy space.

Yemen is a compelling case study for two reasons: First, the United States had a strong interest in preventing war and was able to do so; indeed, in 2015, when the war broke out, dozens of policymakers published a public letter acknowledging the failure of U.S. policy, including President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.

secondly , Yemen is one of a growing number of “internationalized” wars—internal wars involving significant international involvement—that have proven particularly destabilizing and difficult to resolve.

missed opportunities

Researcher Allison Minor believes that the United States had three windows of opportunity to prevent or mitigate the Yemen war between 2011 and 2015:

According to the researcher, the United States could have used sanctions and travel bans to secure stronger terms on former Yemeni President/dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh after a popular protest movement backed by the military ousted him from power in 2011. This would have prevented him from supporting the Houthis to overthrow Yemen’s political transition.

Notable events: The United States, led by senior White House officials, backed a transitional agreement that would allow Saleh to remain in Yemen, remain at the head of the country's dominant political party, and keep the billions he amassed while in power.

Causal chains and unrealistic assumptions: In the absence of Saleh’s support, it is highly unlikely that the Houthis would be able to seize the capital or any other important territory. Saleh was extremely vulnerable to sanctions and travel bans in the summer of 2011, and the United States, in coordination with Saudi Arabia, could credibly threaten these measures to secure Saleh’s cooperation on stricter terms (e.g., exile) that would have severely constrained his ability to support the Houthis.

Why did the United States fail to seize the opportunity?

Senior White House officials were aware that Saleh posed a serious threat to the transition, but were reluctant to take actions that would disrupt the United States’ top-priority counterterrorism activities (Saleh family members continued to oversee counterterrorism forces in Yemen).

Moreover, securing regional and international support for imposing tougher terms on Saleh required strong U.S. diplomatic leadership at a time when senior U.S. policymakers were preoccupied with dealing with instability across the Middle East.

The United States could have used its considerable influence on former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi to dissuade him from pursuing an “unrealistic plan” for a future federal Yemeni state that put him in direct conflict with the Houthis after they took control of the capital, a conflict that eventually led to the outbreak of war. But in the end, the United States was unable to make any progress.

Hadi pushed a federal plan that "deliberately sought to erode the Houthis' political and economic power," despite the fact that Hadi lacked the power to enforce such a plan. The Houthis responded by placing Hadi and his government under house arrest in January 2015. After Hadi fled, the Saudi-led coalition launched a major military campaign against the Houthis.

Causal chains and counterfactual assumptions

After taking control of the capital in September, the Houthis gradually consolidated their control over government institutions, but they were reluctant to overthrow the government, as doing so would jeopardize the legitimacy of the government they effectively controlled.

Had the United States pushed Hadi to pursue a more workable plan, Yemen could have avoided a major escalation and preserved space for UN-led negotiations to reach a new political equilibrium.

While this scenario would have formalized Houthi authority within the government, the pre-war political space would have allowed for significant constraints on Houthi power and behavior.

Why did the United States fail to seize the opportunity?

The United States should have clearly recognized that Hadi would lose in a confrontation with the Houthis, especially by September 2014, when the Houthis took the capital “with almost no resistance.” Yet the United States failed to update its assumptions about the Houthis and the state of the transition process, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

The White House could have made its support for the Saudi-led military campaign conditional on the Saudis defining a credible end goal and a path to negotiations. While the United States could not prevent war at this point, such an approach could have facilitated an early transition to negotiations, significantly limiting the scope and duration of the conflict.

Observed events

The United States has given unconditional support to the Saudi campaign, backing a UN Security Council resolution calling for the Houthis’ full surrender, which has complicated UN-led negotiation efforts for years.

Causal Chains and Counterfactual Assumptions: Saudi Arabia’s reliance on U.S. diplomatic and military support gave the United States leverage to shape Saudi approaches and objectives, especially before it announced the campaign.

The insufficient high-level attention and bandwidth allocated to Yemen, even during periods of crisis, has exacerbated the resilience challenge by undermining decisive U.S. political action.

At no point did U.S. policymakers find an easy opportunity to prevent the Yemen war. To take advantage of these fleeting opportunities, officials had to accept hard realities, make compromises, and quickly mobilize resources.

The United States' ability to prevent conflict has always depended on American policy decisions, not on how Washington uses individual foreign policy tools such as foreign aid.

Overcoming these systemic barriers to preventive action and seizing opportunities requires major reforms to raise the level of conflict prevention and make policymaking in countries at risk of conflict more adaptive and responsive.

Source: Brookings Institution - Translation: Yemen Youth Net