It has received little attention on the campaign trail, but the next U.S. president will face high-stakes decisions about America’s open-ended military engagements around the world that risk turning into a new wave of “forever wars,” which suck up security and economic resources indefinitely.
The military campaigns in Somalia, Syria and Yemen have mostly been drowned out by the much more publicized Israel-Iran proxy war in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine war. Both have offered key contrasts between Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Analysts say that American operations across the Middle East and Africa have been largely absent from the national discourse this election season. Neither Mr. Trump nor Ms. Harris has clarified what they would do about the conflicts if elected.
“In terms of what pressure they’ll face to do anything one way or the other, I think that pressure is going to be quite weak if nothing changes,” said Andrew Payne, a lecturer in foreign policy at City St. George’s, University of London, who studies the politics of U.S. foreign policy.
“None of these conflicts are on the radar of the average American voter,” he said in an interview. “As a result of that, neither candidate has articulated a clear position on them.”
Murky road ahead in Yemen
The next president will likely feel pressure to scale back, at some point, expensive U.S. counterterrorism campaigns in the Middle East and Africa. It’s in line with the broader push by U.S. policymakers of both parties to dedicate more military assets to the Pacific, the world’s most dynamic economic region where an increasingly powerful and aggressive communist China poses what virtually all observers agree is the single greatest challenge to America and its allies in the 21st century.
At the same time, each of the hostile groups in question — Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the terrorist organizations of the Islamic State in Syria and al-Shabab in Somalia — pose threats to U.S. interests and could fuel significant violence and regional instability if left unchecked.
The U.S.-led bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen has undoubtedly received more attention than other ongoing American military operations. That U.S. engagement, which has no clear metrics for success and no clear timetable, is a piece of the broader conflict between the U.S. and Israel and Iran and its proxy network across the Middle East. The Pentagon in January launched its air campaign against the Houthis, who began targeting international commercial ships with missiles and drones shortly after Hamas, another Iran-allied militant group, launched its Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
The Biden administration has embraced a leading and perhaps irreplaceable role as the leader of a coalition ensuring that commercial ship traffic can safely sail through the Red Sea and other regional waterways. If the Houthis continue to try to attack those ships, it’s not clear how or when the Pentagon and its military allies can wind down the mission in Yemen without a significant impact on the global economy.
The operation is also exceedingly expensive. No exact figures are available for how much the U.S. has spent battling the Houthis, but it’s widely thought to be in the billions of dollars.
Ms. Harris, by virtue of serving as vice president in a Biden administration that began the Houthi bombing campaign, presumably backs the effort to at least some degree. She hasn’t articulated whether she would ramp up that operation if elected president or seek to wind it down.
Mr. Trump earlier this year framed the mission as another war that could have been avoided with better U.S. leadership.
“So, let me get this straight. We’re dropping bombs all over the Middle East, AGAIN! … Now we have wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Yemen, but no ‘war’ on our southern border,” he said in a Truth Social post in January.
As president, Mr. Trump went aggressively after the Islamic State group and officially designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization. President Biden rescinded that designation shortly after taking office. He said it impeded a negotiated end to Yemen’s bloody civil war, though the administration subsequently labeled the rebel forces a “specially designated global terrorist group.” Houthi leaders say they began the military campaign against Red Sea shipping in solidarity with Palestinian Hamas fighters battling Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Under the next administration, the U.S. could accelerate its bombings of the Houthis to put additional pressure on Iran, the Houthis’ chief patron, and to show support for Israel. The Houthis have directly targeted Israel with drones and missiles on multiple occasions.
No matter who wins the election on Tuesday, some foreign policy specialists say the next administration can and should exert much more pressure on the rebel group.
“Look at the Houthis of Yemen. This is a terrorist group backed by Iran. Instead of shooting the archers, we’ve been shooting the arrows,” Clifford D. May, founder and president of the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently told The Washington Times’ “Threat Status” podcast.”
“We can’t deter or defeat the Houthis with the American military? Now, I would argue it’s not a matter of capabilities. It’s a matter of will,” he said. “We haven’t been willing to do it.”
For Mr. Trump, at least, the path of U.S. campaigns in Somalia and Syria is easier to envision. As president, Mr. Trump pulled American troops out of Somalia, where they had been backing a weak central government in Mogadishu in its fight against al-Shabab, a terrorist network loyal to al Qaeda.
Mr. Biden sent about 500 U.S. troops back to Somalia in 2022, and the U.S. counterterrorism mission against al-Shabab has continued in the years since.
That operation has no clear end date, though Mr. Trump could seek to end it. It’s unclear what Ms. Harris might do, though her position as sitting vice president suggests that she at least tacitly supported the decision to send back troops and continue counterterrorism operations in Somalia.
The future of the roughly 900 U.S. troops in Syria could be even clearer under a second Trump term. In his first term, Mr. Trump twice tried to withdraw all forces from the country, where the U.S. maintains a presence to battle the Islamic State. Russian forces and Iran-backed militias are also active in Syria, adding geopolitical complications to the equation.
The Syria conflict remains very much a hot war. U.S. fighter planes struck some Islamic State group camps in Syria this week, killing as many as 35 militants, officials at U.S. Central Command said Wednesday.
The airstrikes in the desert of central Syria on Monday evening targeted multiple locations and senior leaders of the group. The attacks followed several joint operations with Iraqi forces against ISIS militants in Iraq.
Mr. Trump’s desire to withdraw from Syria failed during his first term. Leaders in the Pentagon and some influential figures in the Republican Party persuaded the administration to shift its plans for a full withdrawal. Mr. Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, argued recently that the leadership at the Defense Department essentially ignored Mr. Trump’s direct orders.
Mr. Vance said opposition to Mr. Trump over American military engagements in the region, including in Syria, is a central reason why some former military leaders who served under the previous administration have been vocal in their criticism of Mr. Trump during this election cycle.
“They were wrong about the quagmire in Afghanistan. They were wrong about Syria. They were wrong about everything, and now they’re coming after Donald Trump because he actually has a realistic and cautious foreign policy,” Mr. Vance told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
He said retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for much of Mr. Trump’s first term in office, “disobeyed Trump’s direct orders on troop deployments in Syria.”
Mr. Payne, the City St. George’s, University of London analyst, said Mr. Trump may have learned from that experience.
“I think Trump would probably be more wise to that now,” he said. “He would potentially come with a stronger game plan, a stronger determination to overcome that. I think on Harris’ side, it’s a bit more of an open question, actually.”
Under Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, the U.S. in September announced that its anti-ISIS mission in Iraq would wind down over the next year, though the new approach is not expected to directly affect the American troop deployment in neighboring Syria.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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