Joe Biden has called for the U.S. to end its support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Many beg to differ, as here: “Should the US Support Saudi Arabia’s Intervention in Yemen?,” by Eric Bordenkircher, Algemeiner, October 21, 2020:
The Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is mistaken to call for an end to US support and involvement in Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. Biden fails to recognize the linkage of issues in the Middle East. The former vice president is promoting an arguably more destructive and potentially more dangerous policy….
Biden’s position on Yemen looks to redeem the image of the United States as a just, principled, and compassionate nation. He will extract US forces and terminate support for a little understood, deadly, and destructive Middle East conflict. It is an electorally popular position. The optics and actors (i.e. Saudi Arabia) of the conflict make it easy to condemn. It appears to be low-hanging fruit….
Joe Biden either ignores or has simply forgotten the significance of US involvement in Yemen. Saudi security concerns, nuclear proliferation, and the US-Saudi alliance are inextricably linked. Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, noted this to The Atlantic in 2015: “The protection that we provide as [the Gulf countries’] partner is a far greater deterrent that they could ever hope to achieve by developing their own nuclear stockpile.”…
If the U.S. withdraws support for the Saudi war against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, Riyadh – now uncertain of American protection against Iran and its nuclear project – would hasten to create its own nuclear deterrent. This would be dangerous enough, but might also create an arms race in the Middle East, the most volatile region in the world.
The complete termination of US support and involvement in Yemen will trigger two outcomes. The Saudi government will question future American commitments to their security. The Biden campaign forgets that Saudi Arabia must continue to live in the same neighborhood with Iran. Iran is relentless in asserting a presence and/or leverage throughout the Middle East. One Saudi weapons deal with the US is insufficient for alleviating Saudi fears.
Iran, despite its economic distress, has been boasting of its advances in home-grown weaponry, especially in precision-guided ballistic missiles, and in anti-missile defense systems. It has successfully attacked Saudi oil processing installations at Abqaiq and Khurais (the Houthis claimed responsibility, but the West, and the Saudis, are convinced the missiles came from Iran). Iran is a direct threat to the Saudis. The Islamic Republic has not only been lobbing missiles at Saudi oil installations, but has been constructing a network of proxies and allies from the Gulf to the Mediterranean.. Iran been relentlessly creating a “Shi’a crescent” that includes the Houthis in Yemen, the Iran-backed Shi’a militias in Iraq, Assad’s Alawite-led army in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This “Shi’a crescent” fills the Gulf Arabs, and especially Saudi Arabia, with dread. Riyadh also fears Iran’s appeal both to the restive Shi’a minority inside Saudi Arabia — more than four million Shi’a live in the Eastern Province, where all of the country’s oil is produced — and to the Shi’a majority (60%) in Bahrain, who have already risen once in revolt against their Sunni ruler before being suppressed by Saudi and Pakistani troops.
If Biden withdraws support – weapons, logistics, intelligence – for the Saudis in Yemen, Riyadh is almost certain to begin its own nuclear project, as it has already suggested it will do. Won’t other countries in the region, likely including Iraq and Egypt, want to follow suit? What would that mean for the security of the oilfields, if a Saudi-Iran war – both possessing nuclear weapons — were to break out? And what are the implications for the security of Israel, if three or four Muslim Arab states manage to produce nuclear weapons? The U.S. ought to be reassuring Saudi Arabia of its support in Yemen against an Iranian proxy, rather than threatening, as Biden advocates, to withdraw it.
Saudi Arabia is an ally helping, in Yemen, to block militarily the regional ambitions of Iran, which is the mortal enemy not only of Saudi Arbia, but of both the U.S. (the Great Satan) and Israel (the Little Satan). We don’t have to like the Saudi regime – we can deplore its murder of Jamal Khashoggi and its human rights record –in order to recognize its usefulness in the war against Iran. If the Houthis were to win in Yemen, this would give Iran a military foothold right along the Saudis’ southern border and, as well, an outpost at the entry to the Red Sea, allowing it to threaten Israel’s maritime traffic to Asia.
Biden needs to rethink his ill-considered plan to withdraw American support for the Saudis in Yemen. It could lead to a Houthi – which is the same thing as an Iranian – victory in Yemen. It would likely lead the Saudis, if convinced that they can no longer count on their American ally, to begin a nuclear project of their own, worrisome in itself and even more worrisome if it were to cause other Arab states to follow suit. Saudi Arabia is very far from being what we would wish an ally to be – just as the Soviet Union, which we backed to the hilt in the Second World War, was hardly the ideal ally – but right now we should stick by the Saudis in Yemen, persuade Riyadh to postpone any nuclear ambitions, and encourage Saudi Arabia to improve its human rights record, which remains abysmal. Israel, having carefully weighed the pros and cons, continues to collaborate on security matters with Saudi Arabia against Iran. So should we.
mortimer says
If the Shi’ites in Yemen are not held in fear, they will be aided by Iran to create continued unrest along the border.
Walter Sieruk says
What Joe Biden say may be what Joe Biden means or doesn’t mean . For example to his left wing audience he says that he will ban fracking. and he also tells them as president ,he will defund the police .
Other times speaking in front of an audience who are moderates and some conservatives mixed together Biden that that he will support fracking and will support the police force.
Depending on the audience Biden is speaking to he will change his “promises” for his election for President this coming November. So Joe Biden is a politician who speaks out both sided of his mouth.
Joe Biden shouldn’t be in the White House , he should be in a senior retirement community designed for assisted living.
To explain this in another way, Joe Biden couldn’t even run a laundromat .,so how much less would Biden be a competent Chief Executive of the United States of America.
curious george says
“This is the most consequential election in a long long time, and the character of the country in my view is literally on the ballot. What kind of country are we going to be four more years of George, uh, George, uh …”
https://www.wnd.com/2020/10/now-joe-biden-cant-even-remember-president/
Cornelius says
Whenever I read one of Hugh’s latest columns, particularly about the contenders in the US election campaign, I find myself wondering how someone so erudite, so intellectual, so cultured…..how such a man can readily articulate his support for Donald Trump to his polite-society friends and acquaintances? I’m not nearly so gifted in the way of words, and I find myself squirming more than a bit….typically agreeing whole-heartedly with my interlocutors about the pronounced personality defects of the President, expressing for example my incredulity and revulsion at his performance in the 1st debate, conceding my inability to watch him make a fool of himself at press conferences….and on and on. I then lament that it is indeed painful and embarrassing to have to support such a character, but I always come back to policy, which is where – other than his fiscal profligacy, the President is usually dead-on.
In the unlikely event some of you are unaware of him, Victor Davis Hanson, the brilliant classicist scholar who wrote ‘The Case for Trump’, I’ve noticed over time that he has his own distinct methodology. In a speech or interview, he usually makes an initial, brief reference to Trump’s personality defects (or at the very least, to the publics’ justifiable concerns about them),….and then moves right along to the important questions of policy. His insights and expositions are often brilliant; the man is a first-rate intellect….and he single-handedly refutes the assertion of the President’s most vocal detractors that the only people who could possibly support him are knuckle-dragging, conservative bigots who are still living in the stone age.
Hugh, if you wanted to share anything at all about your methods of disputation when it comes to justifying your support for Trump to your liberal/centrist friends/family, I think we’d all be fascinated.
Oldschool says
Four years ago I might have felt some of what you are expressing here vis-a-vis Trump. Now, four years later, I am forced to admit that he has done an incredibly good job. He has, above all, resisted what would have been a temptation to nearly every other politician out there to use the virus attack and the riots to seize and centralize power at the top. He has wisely left governors and mayors to make their mistakes or make the right calls. He shows an understanding of federalism which has escaped most Americans, not to mention politicians. He has managed to broker peace in Kosovo and among Israel and its adversaries in the tinderbox of the Middle East. He has been forging a strong alliance with nations in East Asia to help control the aggressions of China. His policies have benefited the economy. As to the first debate, that was hopelessly botched from the get-go by Chris Wallace and Biden fared no better. No one can help him any longer. Your elitist-style picking on Trump and characterizing his supporters as “knuckle-dragging conservative bigots” pretty much gives you away. Are you Joe Scarborough using an alias here? Clearly you pretend to be concerned about conservative principles and decorum, but in fact what you are is a pretentious leftist – which means you don’t understand any kind of relations, personal or international. I might have wished on a star for a William Buckley type conservative intellectual but Buckley couldn’t get elected mayor of New York when he ran. If you want effete, impractical, pseudo-intellectuals who spout the Iliad in the original Greek, go to the UK. It is dysfunctional, its people are regressing into slavery, it has no influence on the world stage – in fact, it is no longer capable of being a force for good or evil. It barely still exists. But probably you can find the kinds of leaders you prefer there. Go look up Boris. Or maybe Jeremy Corbin is more your type. Maybe you like Macron? He’s sure a success. I wonder how his revision of the religion of Islam is working for him. I’d say, taken altogether, and compared with whatever is out there on the current market for world leaders, Trump doesn’t look half bad. Considering he got everything done during the first 3 years during an impeachment process run by sore losers who didn’t have a case to make. Or maybe YOU want to run.
Cornelius says
Your powers of observation are obviously quite limited. For example…..
>Your elitist-style picking on Trump and characterizing his supporters as “knuckle-dragging conservative bigots” pretty much gives you away.
Now read this carefully what I actually wrote…
>[Victor Davis Hanson] single-handedly refutes the assertion of the President’s most vocal detractors that the only people who could possibly support him are knuckle-dragging, conservative bigots who are still living in the stone age.
Can you grasp how clearly you mischaracterized my point?….or are you that thick?
E T says
“or are you that thick”? and you are speaking about the personality defects of the President!
Charlie in NY says
A Saudi-Israel rapprochement is seemingly inevitable no matter the US election outcome. If Trump wins a second term, the Saudis will move forward because it will be in support of US policy that assists Saudi sovereignty. If Biden wins, the Saudis will move forward as an act of existential imperative. In the first case, the Saudis will still be able to pay lip service to Palestinian “cause”. In the second case, they will simply have to cut the ungrateful Palestinians loose for the greater good of saving themselves.
curious george says
A great day for America!
Amy Coney Barrett has been confirmed by the Senate to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
52-48
James Lincoln says
??????????
John says
So, Biden now backs Yemen Terrorists such as the Charlie Hebdo Terrorists who trained in Yemen,as did the Jihad recruits from the Al-Noor mosque in New Zealand that j Ardern wants the World to forget.As Biden will fill his Government with islamic TERRORIST Supporters spreading even more ISLAMOPHILIA if he wins Government thus trying to Destroy Civilization as we know it. TRAITOR to all Civilisations and every single Serviceman and Woman both Past and Present.
Art says
Joe Biden says what he is told to say when it comes to foreign policy. Unless there is cash involved Joe doesn’t even know where most of these countries are.
Biden is being spoon fed because he lacks the intelligence to do this himself. What people are calling gaffs have been going on for over 30 years, they existed in 87-88 when he first ran for President and they’ve never stopped. He was picked so there was no chance of the VP overshadowing Obama. Nobody in the DNC wanted him to run or he’d have had Obama support from day one. The DNC had nobody groomed because they didn’t expect there to be another Presidential election after Hillary took the White House. They’d have abandoned overseas troops and activated whatever they had set up in the wings, possibly using Islamic Jihadists for part of the control.
James Lincoln says
Art says:
“The DNC had nobody groomed because they didn’t expect there to be another Presidential election after Hillary took the White House.”
An interesting angle – I never thought about it in quite that way…
E T says
Joe Biden has an ad that states we are all going to be one big happy family, does that include Canadians? Will I get a chance to go to China and come home a billionaire and make 183,000 dollars a month?
I believe President Trump will win a landslide. Joe Biden wants no border, no wall and perhaps no USA at all.
Vote in person. (and just to give fodder to the loons, vote often. Lol)
gravenimage says
Biden Would End U.S. Support For Saudis In Yemen
……………..
Jihad terrorists on both sides here…