The Disturbing Situation in Yemen

There's ongoing U.S. bombing campaign in response to terror attacks. We assess what's going on, why, and whether the U.S. response is correct.

Tensions between the United States and Iran continue to simmer, and the troubling events going on in Yemen are the most visible manifestation. A bombing campaign, started under the previous White House, and continuing under President Trump is taking place.

It’s a vexed and troubling situation that I want to unpack. My objective here is to break down what’s happening (as I best understand it), what’s at stake, put it in the larger geopolitical context, set all of that against timeless Catholic Just War principles and then reach a conclusion.

What’s Happening

U.S. shipping (and that of other countries) are under attack by Houthi terrorists that are backed by Iran, and operating out of Yemen. This has been going on consistently for over a year at least.

The attacks stopped with the Israel-Hamas ceasefire that President Trump negotiated just as he entered office ten weeks ago. But with that ceasefire recently broken, Houthi attacks have resumed. As have U.S. counterattacks.

A war of words has begun between President Trump and Iran, with many of us fervently hoping that this will be a repeat of North Korea 2017—where Trump first escalated the rhetoric, but as a prelude to a diplomatic breakthrough.

The Stakes

Yemen is situated on the Red Sea, at a point where ships must pass through to get to the Suez Canal. To avoid Suez, ships must instead go around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. You can see the difference on the map below. The increase in shipping time and cost has an impact on supply chains and inflation. At present, 3 percent of U.S. trade goes through Suez.

The Global Context

You can’t separate this from the geo-political rumblings going on that President Trump is trying to react to. Russia is an ally of Iran. As noted above, the terrorist attacks are linked to Hamas’ war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.

European governments, whom we are trying to get on board to end the war in Ukraine, are heavily dependent on the trade routes that go through Suez. And while the connection to Suez isn’t direct, Trump is working on strengthening the U.S. position in Greenland (perhaps even outright buying it from Denmark) for the purpose of protecting other key shipping routes.

Freedom of the seas has always been considered a vital interest for nations, from the days when the British Empire’s Royal Navy policed the shipping lanes, to today. And the Suez Canal has been seen as an important U.S. interest, going back to Dwight Eisenhower’s intervention there in 1956. Whether that interest is vital enough to justify our current actions is another matter (which we’ll get to), but it is an interest with longstanding historical roots.

Authentic Fairness

In breaking this down, I don’t want to fall into the factionalist trap of acting like foreign adventurism conducted by Trump is fine, but the same intervention by Biden (or whomever ran things in the last White House) is wrong.

But there’s a flip side to fairness—I also don’t want to go out of my way to criticize Trumps, or blow disagreement out of proportion, simply for the sake of proving a lack of bias.

To that end, I decided to test myself and revisited a video I did in January 2024, when this Yemen bombing campaign first began. Obviously, Biden was president then (with the actual decision-makers still unknown). I said the following:

“As much I distrust this White House, both their competence and their motivation, this one isn’t completely outrageous.”

I believed that then with Biden. I believe that today with Trump.

But I also said this:

“I don’t want to go off half-cocked over another foreign war…but I am concerned about another foreign war.”

I had a concerned skepticism about this Yemen bombing campaign back then with Biden. I have a concerned skepticism about it today with Trump.

The Benefit of the Doubt

While holding a consistency in principles from president to president is necessary, it’s also important to point out that some political leaders earn your benefit of the doubt in gray areas (which are always sizeable in these foreign crises), and others don’t.

Who gets the benefit of the doubt in gray areas and who doesn’t is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. While I think anyone who gave Biden this benefit is nuts, people can have reasonable differences on doing so with Trump (or anyone else who has been president and not been a dementia patient). Even many people who voted for Trump might not just casually give him that benefit.

After all, some voters might have opted for Trump simply because, unlike his predecessor, he stays awake past 3 PM, and unlike his opponent in the last election, he isn’t a cackling moron that often seems to be intoxicated in public. The fact Trump cleared that historically low bar doesn’t automatically entitle him to everyone’s benefit of the doubt on matters of war and peace.

But Trump has the benefit of the doubt from me, at least on foreign policy. The successes of his first term, from the detente with North Korea to the Abraham Accords in the Middle East, to negotiating the end of the Afghan War to the historic levels of non-intervention abroad, have given me a willingness to simply let him cook, as uncomfortable as that can be when the rhetoric starts to escalate.

I also accept that he inherited this bombing campaign, he did not initiate it. While that does not automatically justify its continuation, I trust that fair-minded people can see the difficult position a Commander-in-Chief gets put in when he steps into a world that’s ablaze.

All of this is the long way of saying that while I am skeptical of this campaign and trying to maintain a consistent application of principle, I’m also not going to throw Trump under the bus for trying to deal with a complex situation he didn’t create.

With that in place—the situation, the stakes, the context, and how my own biases may or may not impact what you’re about to read, let’s evaluate this Yemen campaign the way we should all foreign conflicts—through the prism of Just War Doctrine.

Just War Principles

The Catechism of the Catholic Church lays out the criteria for a war to be just. The answers to these questions are subjective—people who agree on the principles can disagree on their assessment of each particular point. But however, you come down, all of the criteria must be met

Just War principles are in bold. My comments on the application to the Yemen situation are what follows

The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.
Our ships are being attacked. We’re attacking the people that did it. I think this principle is very obviously being met.

All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
Now we start getting to the gray area. Could something be done to re-establish the ceasefire through diplomatic channels (i.e., pressure on Israel)? Given that this is 3 percent of U.S. trade, could our ships be rerouted to the Cape of Good Hope without undue economic burden? Or would giving the terrorists that win be an unacceptable cost that would invite other attacks elsewhere? Ambiguity abounds here.

There must be serious prospects of success.
It’s easy to assume, given U.S. military power, that we can check this box. But there are gray areas here too. Defeating guerilla-style terrorist attacks isn’t easy. It takes more than military muscle. It takes political will. That means public support for a sustained campaign has to be there. That doesn’t exist in the United States right now. I’m not saying this principle isn’t met—just that, again, there’s a whole lot of gray.

The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. the power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
So long as the campaign stays in its current form, which is strikes on the Houthis, this criteria is being met. But wars are known to escalate. Will this lead to a major strike directly on Iran? If so, what’s the fallout from that?

Furthermore, given that this only impacts 3 percent of U.S. trade, is it really worth risking the escalation? I understand you have to hit back after an attack, but at what point does the cost become too high given what’s really at stake?

The Question of Authority

Every time the U.S. gets involved somewhere overseas, I ask this question, and I’m going to keep asking it here—where is Congress? The Constitution couldn’t possibly be clearer—it takes a majority in the House (218 votes) and a two-thirds vote in the Senate (67) to declare war.

We haven’t had a declaration of war in the United States since Pearl Harbor, although there were “authorizations” before the First Gulf War and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Suffice it to say, we’ve had a lot more military actions overseas besides that, from long-term wars like Korea and Vietnam, to short-term operations in Panama and Grenada, to the stationing of “peacekeeping” troops in Lebanon and Bosnia.

When is Congress going to reclaim its legitimate constitutional authority? This is an issue that transcends whoever is president. It’s something we’ve just gotten used to in the post-WW2 era and it should stop.

Not only would this give the House and Senate their rightful say, it would also protect the president—there wouldn’t be room for Congressmen and Senators to second-guess after the fact if they were on record having voted to declare war in the first place.

Which, of course, is why they’re in no hurry to do their constitutional duty. It’s easier to have staged town halls griping about Elon Musk.

So, until that bigger picture constitutional problem changes, these decisions will continue to be made exclusively by the president.

If I Had Trump’s Ear

Let’s play a game and pretend that any of us got a chance to make our case to the president. Let’s just imagine Trump sitting in the Oval Office, sipping his diet Coke, and saying to us “What do you think?” And you can’t hide behind gray areas and benefits of the doubt, you have to give your view.

I would tell him it’s time to call off the dogs. We’ve hit back in response to our ships being attacked. But Europe depends on the Suez Canal for shipping far more than we do. These are the same European governments that are hindering Trump’s efforts to make the peace with Russia. Europe, from Paris to London to Brussels, is obviously spoiling for a fight. We can’t stop them, but we can insist that they fight their own battles. Suez and Yemen are more their battle than ours.

I’d tell the president that he’s doing so many of the right things in resetting our position in the global order, from distancing himself from Ukraine to focusing on Greenland and Panama, to restructuring our trade policy to encourage investment in the U.S. and even further reduce our dependence on shipping routes halfway around the world. Don’t let all those positive steps get bogged down over a bombing campaign that could too-easily escalate into something more serious.

Yes, there are justifications for the Yemen campaign. The United States didn’t provoke it, Trump inherited it and he’s only been in office for 10 weeks trying to wind this global mess down. I further understand that a temporary escalation for the sake of ultimately ending an inherited war isn’t unprecedented (Nixon did it in Vietnam, a war he ultimately brought a conclusion to). But the stakes just aren’t worth it in Yemen.

Trump, in his own Inaugural address, said he wanted his second Administration to be judged by the wars they ended or never started. The sooner we get started on that in Yemen the better. Pull the plug.

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