If there’s one thing my time at LSE studying asymmetric war taught me, it’s that we must learn from history or be doomed to repeat it. The recent CENTCOM press release regarding operations against the Houthi forces is very concerning as a virtual carbon copy of the exact mistakes that led us into the quagmire of Vietnam. Frankly, it’s worse because we should know better by now.
When I look at their statistics and claims, I’m transported back to the military briefings I read from the late 1960s. They were called “Five O’Clock Follies” for good reason—saccharin press conferences filled with optimistic assessments that bore little resemblance to ground reality. Today’s claims are just as divorced from strategic reality as they were back then.
The Metrics Mirage: From Vietnam to Yemen
What strikes me so forcefully about the current situation is how we’ve regressed to the same flawed thinking that characterized our approach in Southeast Asia. The parallels are not just concerning—they’re downright alarming.
Vietnam Era Mistake
Current CENTCOM Approach
Why It’s Worse Today
Body counts as measure of success
“Killed hundreds of Houthi fighters”
We know from Vietnam that attrition metrics don’t translate to strategic victory
Bombing statistics (“X tons dropped”)
“Struck over 800 targets”
We’ve replaced tonnage with target counts, but it’s the same meaningless metric
Gulf of Tonkin incident (unverified claims)
Unilateral reporting with no independent verification
After decades of lessons about the need for transparency, we’re back to “trust us”
Using the same generic terminology that obscures actual operational impact
Blaming outside powers (Soviet Union, China)
“Iran undoubtedly continues to provide support”
Still failing to understand local motivations and resilience
Bombing reduction = success narrative
“Missile launches dropped by 69%”
Sophisticated adversaries adapt tactics, and even improve accuracy, rather than give up objectives
Endless escalation without clear endgame
“Continue to ratchet up the pressure”
Repeating open-ended commitment despite historical evidence of its failure
Minimizing civilian impact
“Minimizing risk to civilians”
Claims without evidence or monitoring, despite better technology for verification
Missing the Strategic Forest for the Tactical Trees
What disturbs me most is that we’ve had fifty years to internalize the lessons of Vietnam. We spent decades analyzing where we went wrong. Military brass, let alone academics in history departments, sponge up these lessons. Yet here we are, seeing the same fundamental errors in strategic thinking.
The press release’s emphasis on percentages of reduction in missile launches is particularly troubling. The release tosses out a “69% drop in ballistic missile launches” and “55% decrease in drone attacks” as meaningful. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean any reduction in actual damage or successful strikes. During Vietnam, the U.S. often emphasized metrics like “body counts” or “bombing tonnage” that didn’t translate to any strategic gain.
As any basic reader of Vietnam War 101 could tell you, guerrilla forces adapt. When America dramatically interdicted the Ho Chi Minh Trail in one sector, supplies easily moved through another. When North Vietnam’s ports were pummeled with bombs, the logistics dispersed as should have been expected. The Houthis will do the same, and already have given how the Saudis thoroughly bombed them for years.
Attributing Houthi capabilities solely to Iranian backing echoes Vietnam-era assertions that any localized adversaries had to be merely a puppet of China/USSR, grossly underestimating factors and motivations. A fixation on bogus military metrics obscures political reality, like the makeup room for men fiasco glowing up in Hegseth’s face. He literally posted the following statement to deflect attention from him spending so much time and money on his makeup routines:
We should have installed tampon machines in every men’s bathroom at DoD…
In Vietnam, we could win nearly every battle on paper yet lose the whole damn war because we oversimplified us/them and then failed to understand the obvious political dimensions of conflict. Today’s CENTCOM press release shows we’re still thinking in terms of hair gel and eyeliner (appearances of bombs dropped) rather than meaningful political objectives achieved and measured on the ground. I’m reminded particularly of when the USAF claimed it was so successful it had destroyed more trucks than had ever existed in Vietnam.
The notion that destroying a port facility will “impact Houthi ability to conduct operations” misunderstands asymmetric warfare in the same way we misunderstood it in Vietnam, the same way the Italians misunderstood it in Ethiopia. Determined adversaries adapt, improvise, and overcome.
The Way Forward
If we’re serious about not repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, we need to fundamentally rethink our approach. This means:
Realistic assessments that acknowledge failures, not just known limitations of military power against a politically motivated adversary
Transparency about clear goals and measured outcomes, with allies and independent verification, rather than open-ended commitments
Understanding that bombing campaigns alone never, ever defeated determined insurgencies
In Vietnam, we kept doubling down on failed strategies, believing that just a little more force, a little more bombing, would turn the tide. It never did. I fear we’re on the same path again, but this time with Pete “dirty lines” Hegseth kitting out makeup rooms without the excuse of ignorance. This time, we should know better.
Analysis of Insider Data Poisoning Attacks on U.S. Citizen Registries
Bureaucratic Erasure History
From an historical perspective, the current administration’s leaked policy of classifying living people as “deceased” in federal databases represents a troubling evolution in what scholar Achille Mbembe termed “necropolitics” – the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die.
Wa syo’lukasa pebwe
Umwime wa pita
[He left his footprint on the stone
He himself passed on]
Lamba proverb, Zambia
What distinguishes this particular implementation is its distinctive integration of database manipulation and corruption as a mechanism of state control.
Throughout modern history, states have employed various administrative techniques to render populations controllable, removable, or invisible. The Nazi regime’s systematic revocation of Jewish citizenship through the Nuremberg Laws, South Africa’s Bantustan policies, or Myanmar’s denial of Rohingya recognition all employed bureaucratic mechanisms to erase legal personhood. However, the deliberate falsification of mortality status within federal databases represents a novel permutation of these historical precedents.
The Trump administration is moving the immigrants’ names and legally obtained social security numbers to a database that federal officials normally use to track the deceased, according to the two people familiar with the moves and their ramifications.
Integrity Breach of Death Registration Data
What merits particular scholarly attention is how a federal administration policy of lying and poisoning databases fundamentally corrupts integrity of vital statistics essential to living. Death registration systems were established for legitimate demographic, statistical, and administrative purposes – not as tools of denying freedoms to the living. By intentionally introducing false mortality data, the administration has compromised the fundamental integrity of these formerly trusted systems.
The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits…
This represents a profound breach of data integrity principles that should concern not only migration scholars but also those studying public administration and information systems ethics and security. The deliberate contamination of vital centralized databases with known false entries violates core principles of data governance and raises serious questions about administrative ethics and the rule of law.
It also begs the greater questions of redundancy, federation and disaster recovery when data integrity is breached by insider attacks. Financial institutions are well-versed in sophisticated inside threats attacking integrity of centralized systems and data, with decades of criminal investigations to draw from. Can the lessons be translated directly to federal government systems under attack?
Jurisdictional Arbitrage of El Salvador Detention
The administration’s policy of financing migrant detention in El Salvador warrants similar integrity breach examination through the lens of what legal scholars seem to call a “jurisdictional arbitrage” – strategic exploitation of “crossing” boundaries to evade accountability. Physically transferring people from America to detention facilities in El Salvador, irrespective of their nationality, while simultaneously declaring them “dead” in federal systems, the Trump family has constructed a fog of extra-judicial detention with little to no integrity. Anyone can disappear for any reason and have no way to be rescued, not least of all because there was insufficient explanation of who they are and how they disappeared without any validation.
This arrangement allows American authorities to exercise de facto control over targeted, or even mistaken, lives while maintaining a fiction of non-responsibility, with “know nothing” and “who me” denials. Historical parallels might include various colonial powers’ use of extraterritorial detention to circumvent domestic legal constraints – though the additional element of administrative “death” by database breach represents an unprecedented innovation.
Immutability Flaws as Intentional Design
Perhaps most revealing from a systems analysis perspective is the exploitation of asymmetric administrative processes. Government systems are meticulously designed with clear procedures for declaring individuals deceased, but deliberately lack efficient mechanisms for reversing such determinations. This asymmetry is not incidental but rather reflects the historical development of bureaucratic systems optimized for unidirectional administrative actions.
The exploitation of this structural asymmetry demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of administrative vulnerabilities. By triggering a one-way administrative process, authorities have effectively created a form of bureaucratic event horizon – a point beyond which administrative reversal becomes practically impossible for the affected individuals.
Implications for Democratic Forces Defending National Security
This convergence of database manipulation, extraterritorial detention, and exploitation of administrative asymmetries represents a concerning development in the history of state control over mobile populations. When established administrative systems are repurposed in ways that fundamentally contradict their intended function, we observe not merely a policy shift but a potential erosion of administrative integrity that underpins democratic governance.
What we are witnessing now can be appropriately termed “digital genocide” – a novel twist to oppression where the state doesn’t merely physically eliminate populations but erases their very existence within administrative reality by polluting centralized data. Declaring living persons “dead” in federal databases enacts a form of bureaucratic violence that effectively eliminates individuals from the social and legal fabric, foreshadowing a physical extermination. This represents a sophisticated evolution in necropolitical techniques – one that achieves many of the objectives of traditional genocide through purely administrative means to initiate the destructive goals.
National security experts including historians would do well to document this moment carefully, as it may represent a significant inflection point in how states manipulate technologies to control citizenship registries for oppressive aims. The digital “death” of Americans through a death registry manipulation attack foreshadows more expansive applications of these techniques, with implications extending far beyond immediate policy debates and into clear parallels with historical precursors to systemically planned concentration camps and genocide.
Ryback’s “Worse Than Signalgate” analysis in The Atlantic of the Zimmermann Telegram affair represents the kind of simplistic, great-man historiography that we’ve spent decades trying to eradicate from serious historical discourse.
The article’s framing of the incident as mere diplomatic bungling rather than a calculated intelligence operation is not merely incomplete—it’s intellectually dishonest.
Let me be perfectly clear: The Zimmermann Telegram was not primarily a story of German incompetence, but rather of British intelligence brilliance in a targeted campaign to neutralize pro-German sympathies in America, particularly those held by influential figures like President Wilson and industrialist Henry Ford.
For those unfamiliar with this pivotal event: In January 1917, German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann sent an encrypted message proposing that Mexico join Germany against the United States if America entered World War I. Germany promised to help Mexico recover territories lost to the U.S. (Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona) and suggested Mexico invite Japan to join this alliance. British intelligence intercepted and decoded this message, then strategically released it to the American public through the press in February 1917. The telegram’s content was so incendiary that it helped overcome Wilson’s resistance to war, despite his previous stance against intervention. What Ryback fails to grasp is that this was not simply a German diplomatic blunder, but a calculated British intelligence operation designed to circumvent pro-German American leadership.
Nigel de Grey, in Room 40 Old Building, was one of the first British officers to partially decrypt the Zimmermann Telegram. William Montgomery then completed the decryption and verified its authenticity, which led Admiral Sir Reginald “Blinker” Hall to devise a cunning plan for public exposure.
It would be like today decoding a Putin memo that revealed Russia interfered with the Presidential election to put Trump in office, is behind the NRA pushing guns even as mass murders spread, and funds campaigns to get Texas and California to secede. Or perhaps even more shrewdly, points out the heated campaign to transfer corporations and manufacturing to Texas is foreshadowing of a Russian campaign for Texas to secede like Brexit.
Ryback’s article conveniently omits there was an extensive German sabotage campaign on American soil—over 40 documented bombing incidents between 1914 and 1917, including the Black Tom explosion that damaged the Statue of Liberty. Wilson’s administration consistently intentionally misdirected blame toward leftists, anarchists, and labor agitators while knowing full well that German agents were the actual perpetrators.
The July 1916 Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco serves as a perfect example of this deliberate misdirection, with local labor leaders Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings falsely imprisoned while clear ties to German involvement was suppressed.
What makes Wilson’s denialism all the more egregious is that ordinary Americans were acutely aware of the wave of suspicious fires, explosions, and acts of sabotage sweeping the nation. Newspapers from coast to coast reported on these “accidents” at munitions plants, shipping facilities, and infrastructure targets. The pattern was unmistakable to anyone paying attention – a veritable domestic Holocaust of German-orchestrated destruction.
While Americans buried their dead following the Black Tom explosion and the Kingsland munitions plant fire, Wilson’s administration continued its calculated misdirection campaign, attributing these acts to labor unrest or simple industrial accidents. This deliberate obfuscation occurred even as federal investigators privately compiled evidence of German involvement.
When British intelligence finally bypassed Wilson with the Zimmermann Telegram revelation, it wasn’t just exposing German intentions—it was circumventing an American president who had systematically lied to his own citizenry about clear and present dangers on American soil.
Ford’s pro-German involvement is particularly egregious in its omission. Far from being a mere “isolationist,” Ford was actively operating as anti-American, accepting millions in German funds while failing to deliver promised agricultural equipment, as harshly pointed out by congressional rebukes.
His anti-Semitic publications aligned with and promoted German propaganda aims (Hitler and Goebbels both credited Ford for influencing them). His opposition to American entry into the war wasn’t simply isolationism or pacifism but part of a broader ideological position that actively worked to undermine American principles and security interests.
Wilson himself had campaigned on keeping America out of war, implicitly to aid German militant aims, and maintained back-channel communications with German officials well into 1917.
The British intelligence operation around the Zimmermann Telegram therefore must be understood in full context as a sophisticated psychological operation targeting the American public directly, deliberately circumventing high profile pro-German sympathizers even ones in positions of oligarchial power.
Room 40’s work wasn’t merely clever codebreaking; it was a masterful influence operation that recognized the power of public opinion over elite preferences in American politics.
A simple illustration of German military plans destroyed Henry Ford and Woodrow Wilson attempts to keep America aligned with Germany.
Ryback’s framing of Zimmermann as merely delusional misses the obvious wider German strategy of global destabilization—from their support of Irish republicans to their activation of terror networks in British India. The telegram was but one component within a sophisticated global strategy, far from incompetent, that the British correctly identified and countered.
This breezy Atlantic article offers a superficial, decontextualized history that contributes unnecessary flap and noise to a proper understanding of highly skilled intelligence operations, directed public opinion manipulation, or the genuine complexity of Ford and Wilson’s toxic false neutrality. They weren’t neutral, they were actively and directly harming Americans.
The incongruity in Wilson’s leadership – reluctance to confront foreign threats while eagerly suppressing domestic groups – is the cruel understated aspect of his presidency that complicates any conventional narrative of Wilson as principled.
His hesitation to directly condemn German actions, even after American ships were sunk, contrasts sharply with his administration’s swift and brutal responses to perceived domestic threats.
Wilson’s administration was remarkably aggressive in suppressing leftist political movements. The Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 were used to imprison hundreds of labor activists, socialists, and anti-war protesters. Eugene V. Debs, who had received nearly a million votes as the Socialist Party presidential candidate, was sentenced to 10 years in prison essentially for giving an anti-war speech.
And yes, Wilson’s racial policies were particularly devastating. His administration resegregated federal offices that had been integrated since Reconstruction. He screened “Birth of a Nation” at the White House, effectively endorsing its racist narrative and helping fuel the revival of the KKK.
The 1919 Elaine Massacre is a perfect example. When Black sharecroppers in Arkansas organized to demand fair payment for their cotton, white mobs attacked them. Rather than protecting these American citizens being attacked for exercising their rights, the Army was deployed by Wilson to attack them further, resulting in the shooting deaths of hundreds of Black Americans by federal troops.
This pattern reveals a deeply troubling aspect of Wilson’s worldview when the Zimmerman telegram landed. The President seemed far more willing to extend understanding and restraint to certain powers, even hostile ones, than to extend basic constitutional protections to Black Americans or his political opponents at home.
Technical Appendix: The British Room 40 Operation in Detail
I’ve called the British intelligence operation clever, but let me elaborate on why this characterization is warranted. While a Zimmermann Telegram brought the power of the public in the United States to bear down on the deeply racist and corrupted President Wilson and his cronies, the British had managed this all without blowing their operation. Room 40 didn’t just see the message and decode it, they used simple espionage theater to keep their war-winning methods a secret.
Double Intercept: both an original high-strength cracked cipher version and a weakened known-vulnerable copy from Mexico were used. The latter “internal” communication between America and Mexico gave the British a cover story for how and where they “found” it.
Deception by Omission: The Americans were told a true story about American officials caught working on the side of Germany (which meant against America), yet were not told that German communications had been cracked.
Protected Assets: Keeping Room 40 a secret meant the British preserved a massive intelligence edge for the rest of the war, similar to how Polish intelligence cracked the Nazi Enigma in WWII and yet are rarely if ever credited properly even to this day.
Let the Enemy Fall Into It: The telegram’s authenticity was confirmed by Zimmermann, unaware of British methods.
Although the codebreaking unit in Room 40 had cracked and validated Germany’s top diplomatic cipher, they couldn’t let the Germans find out and shut down a critical intelligence stream. The telegram from Germany to Mexico proposing an alliance against the U.S. needed another path as a plausible origin story.
August 5, 1914 — British cable ship HMTS Alert was ordered by Admiralty to cut Germany’s five undersea telegraph cables, just one day after declaration of war. These were the major transatlantic cables that connected Germany directly to North America and other global regions. Notably, Germany saw America secretly as an ally against Britain and thus switched communications to its “neutral” lines, which meant even using American diplomatic channels on the American cables. That’s exactly where British intelligence was listening.
January 16, 1917 — Zimmermann’s telegram routes from Berlin to the German ambassador in Washington DC, via the U.S. diplomatic cables that it believed to be secure from the British because American. British intelligence intercept this message and decipher it, realizing important value.
February 1–3, 1917 — British agents quietly obtain a second version of the telegram that had been forwarded from Washington DC to Mexico City, due to a less secure cipher widely known to be compromised. Germany also angrily announces that it will immediately resume unrestricted submarine warfare to sink passenger ships, prompting President Wilson to declare to the Senate that he is totally surprised by such a thing and waiting to see any evidence of “actual overt acts” of harm.
I cannot bring myself to believe that [Germany] will indeed pay no regard to the ancient friendship between their people and our own or to the solemn obligations which have been exchanged between them, and destroy American ships, and take the lives of American citizens in the wilful prosecution of the ruthless naval program they have announced their intention to adopt. Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.
Immediately, German U-boats attacked and sank the Housatonic, and then three days later attacked and sank the 470-ft passenger ship SS California off the Irish coast, killing nearly 50 people in just 10 minutes. Yet again, for at least the second year, Wilson’s calculated and cruel inaction leaves American blood on his hands. On the 12th the schooner Lyman M. Law is sunk.
February 19, 1917 — Britain’s Admiral Hall presents the Zimmerman telegram to U.S. officials, explaining it had been discovered in Mexico coming from American diplomatic channels.
March 1, 1917 — Unable to continue pretending it has a “neutral” role while allowing years of German attacks killing Americans, alarms about the telegram are rising, and the British propel the news all the way into U.S. newspaper headlines.
March 3, 1917 — Zimmermann inexplicably confirms the telegram’s authenticity, removing all doubt in the public eye.
March 12, 1917 — steamship Algonquin is sunk, followed four days later by the sinking of the US steamship Vigilancia without warning, killing 15 (including six Americans), and soon after the sinking of the US oil tanker Healdton, killing 21 (including seven Americans).
April 6, 1917 — unable to waffle and wiggle any longer, having knowingly allowed horrible attacks on Americans to run unanswered for years, Wilson finally is compelled by public outrage to declare war on Germany.
The Atlantic article fundamentally misses that the Zimmermann event represented a meticulously planned intelligence operation by Britain’s top talent, who embedded a public sentiment campaign within a seemingly neutral document while secretly preserving their ability to continue decoding German communications.
This wasn’t simply German incompetence meeting British luck—it was strategic calculation meeting strategic counter-calculation, a far more nuanced and historically significant interaction. In fact, the deep and careful British intelligence work was so effective that, even a century later, some historians still appear to be confused. They portray Zimmermann as incompetent rather than someone with reasonable expectations of ongoing American sympathy through the toxicity of an extremist pro-German President Wilson—even for Germany’s own territorial ambitions (a historical parallel with differently disturbing modern echoes, like how Trump serves Russia today).
The splashy and reckless bombing campaign against the Houthis has stretched into months with an American price tag approaching $1 billion.
It’s one of the most inefficient military campaigns in history, with little to no results of any significance. We’re in fact witnessing a very familiar historical pattern: a superpower exhausting itself against an entrenched insurgency that simply refuses to break. This is something well-known by the 1970s although obviously some still refuse to give up comic-book fictional narratives about death from above.
The Houthis, described ominously by some intelligence as “the honey badgers of resistance,” appear to be not just surviving American strikes, but potentially benefiting immensely from them.
Bombing Has a History of Diminishing Returns
The historical record of even constant flyovers against determined insurgencies underground is dismal:
Vietnam?
Despite dropping more bombs than in all of World War II, including the heavily publicized Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Linebacker campaigns, America couldn’t break North Vietnam’s will. The Vietnamese moved underground, dispersed their forces, and rebuilt infrastructure as quickly as it was destroyed. Each bombing raid revealed American intelligence without permanently degrading Vietnamese capabilities.
Korea?
Three years of intensive bombing failed to break North Korean resolve. More bombs dropped than all of WWII… The country simply moved critical infrastructure underground and dispersed its forces, emerging stronger and more determined. To this day the country has almost no light pollution at night.
Ethiopia?
When the Soviet Union conducted bombing campaigns against insurgents in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s, they only hardened resistance and drove recruitment for rebel forces. Eritreans not only grew in power they defeated the Ethiopians, one of the oldest air forces in the world.
Afghanistan?
Two decades of air campaigns yielded little strategic advantage against the Taliban, who simply waited out each bombing campaign before returning to their previous positions.
Iraq?
America’s extensive “shock and awe” bombing campaign of 2003 created impressive visuals but failed to break Iraqi resistance. Instead, it dispersed forces and drove them underground, setting the stage for years of insurgency. Despite complete air superiority, the US couldn’t bomb its way to stability – it required years of counterinsurgency ground operations.
Lebanon?
Israel’s 2006 air campaign against Hezbollah was expected to cripple the organization within days. Instead, after 34 days and over 7,000 air strikes, Hezbollah emerged with its command structure intact and enhanced regional legitimacy. The campaign actually strengthened Hezbollah’s position politically while depleting Israel’s precision munitions.
Libya?
The 2011 NATO bombing campaign initially appeared successful in removing Gaddafi, but it created a power vacuum that insurgent groups quickly filled. Air power alone couldn’t establish political stability, and the country plunged into ongoing factional conflict despite complete NATO air dominance.
And, of coruse, Yemen?
Before the US campaign, Saudi Arabia conducted years of intensive bombing in Yemen beginning in 2015, deploying some of the most sophisticated aircraft and munitions in the world with unlimited budget. Despite a sustained air campaign, the Houthis not only survived but expanded their territorial control and missile capabilities. The Saudi air campaign cost billions while strengthening rather than weakening their adversary.
Which brings us to today.
Why Bombing Fails With Insurgencies
The Houthis must have a copy of the tried and true insurgent playbook that has frustrated big bombers for decades:
Dispersal and hardening: Critical assets are scattered and protected, often underground, limiting the damage from any single strike.
Intelligence asymmetry: Every bombing run reveals what the US knows, while yielding little new intelligence in return. The Houthis gain valuable information about American surveillance capabilities with each attack.
Resource depletion: The US burns through expensive precision munitions while the Houthis conserve their resources for opportune moments.
Narrative advantage: Each bombing campaign reinforces the Houthis’ David versus Goliath recruitment propaganda, potentially aiding troops and strengthening resolve.
Strategic patience: The Houthis have survived bombardment for years — they’re prepared to absorb punishment and outlast foreign interventions.
America Staring at the Sun
In pursuing this air campaign, America is effectively depleting its stockpiles of precision munitions for little to no benefit. Worse, it’s revealing its intelligence capabilities rapidly, blowing up any advantage it may have once held. Exhausting supplies, stations, airframes and personnel diminishes any readiness for actual need, burning down savings with minimal strategic return as if efficiency doesn’t even matter. All that waste and useless action in fact strengthens the Houthis’ legitimacy in the eyes of their supporters, throwing the whole thing upside down. In fact, increased shipping traffic through the Red Sea – celebrated as a success metric – may actually mask a surge in Houthi rearmament and resupply operations, much like increased truck traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail during Vietnam signaled expanded North Vietnamese logistics rather than American success. We risk misreading our own metrics, where apparent “victories” actually indicate strategic failure.
Ground Truth is Truth
History has consistently shown that air power tends to exaggerate itself yet alone rarely achieves decisive strategic objectives against determined insurgencies.
…the only times I’ve ever seen the Houthis go to the negotiating table or compromise has been when they’ve been threatened with the realistic prospect of defeat on the ground.
World War II was ultimately won on the ground in Europe, with air power as support. The Pacific theater required island-hopping ground campaigns alongside naval and air operations. The Japanese didn’t even register the nuclear bombs, because all attention was focused on Soviet advances through Manchuria–surrender came quickly after just days of Stalin’s ground offensive, and had little to nothing to do with American bombs (a truth opposite of how WWII is taught in American schools). Even the much-touted air campaign against Serbia in the 1990s only succeeded when combined with credible ground threats.
Getting Grounded
If American policymakers are serious about neutralizing the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping, which I doubt anyone is at this point, they face some basic choices. They would have to acknowledge the inherent limitations of air power and develop a comprehensive strategy. Not going to happen. They would have to accept that complete elimination of the threat may not be possible without extremely high costs. Not going to happen. And they would have to contemplate diplomatic initiatives with regional partners who have more direct leverage. Never.
While the U.S. overplays its hand and weakens itself by the day, the Houthis will likely continue to absorb the blows while adapting and waiting out America’s expensive display of ineffective force. As they’ve demonstrated like other groups through decades of conflict, they take a high-altitude punch, get back up, and keep fighting with renewed strength.
With each passing day and over a billion dollars allegedly flushed down an empty hole, America weakens its position while strengthening the narrative of those it seeks to defeat. The honey badgers of Yemen may indeed be laughing at the loose-lips of Hegseth, because they watch the world’s most expensive military only hurt itself as it sloppily throws axes at its own shadows.
