The Yemen dilemma: what would Mr Bush have done? (The National)
The rhetoric is different, but there has been more continuity than change in US foreign policy from George Bush’s second term to Barack Obama’s first.
The US is leaving Iraq on the terms laid down by Mr Bush’s Status of Forces Agreement with the Baghdad government. Mr Obama has opted for a troop surge in Afghanistan, just as Mr Bush would surely have done. Having accepted “no, but” as Israel’s answer to his settlement-freeze demand, Mr Obama is pursuing his predecessor’s policy of propping up the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and a hypothetical peace process while condoning Israel’s chokehold on Gaza and trying to marginalise Hamas. So while “What would George Bush have done?” may seem like an odd place to start in discussing Mr Obama’s options over al Qa’eda in Yemen, the truth is that his positions on the key strategic challenges after a year in office are remarkably similar to those adopted by the man before. An attack on America creates massive public and political pressure on its leaders to “do something”, and US officials have spoken of the need for “visible” military action. Yemen has, of course, long been a centre of jihadist militancy: al Qa’eda suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole there in October 2000, killing 17 American sailors. A number of Yemenis have been involved in the movement over the years, and around 100 were held at Guantanamo.But it is also an exceedingly complex country gripped by grinding poverty, facing an imminent water crisis, in which the central government is as weak as tribal confederations are strong, and it is wracked by two separatist insurgencies unrelated to al Qa’eda. The number of al Qa’eda operatives said to be based in Yemen has typically been put at less than 300, but the government has begun claiming that there are more than 1,000. The president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a US ally, wants more US military and financial support on the basis of Yemen’s importance to Washington’s counter-terrorism goals. Mr Saleh’s government likes to portray the insurgencies waged by the Shi’ite Houthis in the north and the southern separatists as somehow linked to al Qa’eda, and he also courts US support by insisting that the Houthis are proxy warriors for Iran. Mr Obama had promised assistance even before the airline plot. Yemeni forces launched two air strikes on al Qa’eda facilities on December 17 and December 24, almost certainly aided covertly by US military and intelligence assets, and American special forces are already operating in Yemen. Still, Mr Saleh’s government is more concerned by the twin insurgencies in the north and south, and the deeply anti-American streak in the population makes any visible US military presence a dangerous prospect both for the Americans and for Mr Saleh. The al Qa’eda attacks are, of course, deliberate provocation to goad the Americans into retaliation that would both amplify the movement’s significance beyond its real strength, and generate an anti-American backlash. This pattern began in the summer of 1998, when al Qa’eda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In response, Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile barrage on Afghanistan and against the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical company in Khartoum, on suspicion that it was producing chemical munitions (it wasn’t). Not only did the hi-tech fusillade fail to hurt al Qa’eda, it boosted Osama bin Laden’s standing by making him appear far more significant than he really was. In addition, relying on remote-control warfare made the US look weak in the eyes of the very audience it was trying to impress. Mr Obama is unlikely to go to war in Yemen, if for no other reason than that dealing with the resurgent Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan has forced him to vastly increase troop commitments there. Even Mr Bush was chastened by his failure to prevail in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by his final years in office was reaching out to Iran – the third pillar of his “Axis of Evil” – for co-operation in both theatres. It was at this time that Mr Bush appointed the cool-headed realist Robert Gates as his defence secretary; Mr Gates remains at the Pentagon, and has emerged as an influential adviser. During the recent White House review of whether to send reinforcements to Afghanistan, Mr Gates publicly cautioned that expanding the US “footprint” would fuel the Taliban insurgency against a perceived occupation. His recognition that the very presence of American troops in a Muslim country spurs resistance suggests that Washington has learnt a lesson that will deter it from establishing a visible troop presence in Yemen. Technological advances in US remote-warfare capability give Mr Obama options that were unavailable to Mr Clinton in 1998. Starting on a remote highway in Yemen in 2002, the US has demonstrated that missiles fired from remote-control drone aircraft offer a low-cost (in political and financial terms) method of eliminating al Qa’eda suspects. The threat from Yemen will probably be handled more like Pakistan today than Afghanistan in 2001. Even then, the “drone wars” of North Waziristan have not been waged without a significant backlash in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The danger confronting Mr Obama in Yemen is that even a smaller American “footprint” can sometimes trigger political landmines. The National
The question is whether he will respond to the attempted bombing of a US airliner over Detroit by a Nigerian trained by al Qa’eda in Yemen with a military campaign like that launched by Mr Bush in Afghanistan after 9/11.
Mr Obama is unlikely to repeat that mistake. But what of Mr Bush’s example of invading Afghanistan? Mr Saleh is an ally, so there would be no regime change, but like the mission in Afghanistan it would inevitably require propping up a weak government in the midst of a complex civil war, at the risk of provoking a nationalist backlash.
