What if US airstrikes fail to stop the Houthis?

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We are into the second week of U.S. airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. U.S. warplanes have targeted Houthi infrastructure, weapons depots and leadership in the capital city of Sana’a as well as other towns and villages in northern Yemen, which have invariably caused civilian injury and death, though the actual numbers are hard to pin down.

Not surprisingly, the Houthis have responded with their own attacks against U.S. warships in the Red Sea. Their missiles have been intercepted, but — like the last 17 months — the constant volley of missiles has kept the American Navy busy, in harm’s way, and exhausting a lot of expensive missiles, nearly $2 billion worth of arms, since the end of last year.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration appears committed to fighting the Houthis in an open-ended exercise that looks and feels like a war, yet it has not been authorized by Congress and it has not been fully explained to the American people. To top it off, an embarrassing scandal exposing top officials’ use of a signal chat room to plan the initial attack on the Houthis in Yemen on March 15 has made the administration — in particular, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who appeared to let Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg “in” to the chat — amateurish and itching to flex militarily, even despite some push back from VP J.D. Vance.

This all has a broken record feel to it. President Obama enjoined the Saudi war against the Houthis in 2014; the conflict there, which the U.S. supported with weapons and other military assistance, crushed the population and continued all through the first Trump and the early Biden administration. Airstrikes against the Houthi militants were resumed after the Houthis said it would attack Israel-connected ships in the Red Sea after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel spurred the Israeli war in Gaza, which has now killed over 50,000 people.

International shipping has been disrupted — which the Trump administration is now using as an excuse to pummel Yemen. But is it our fight? Is it a useless one?

Here to talk about this are my friends and experts Annelle Sheline, who is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, specializing in Middle East affairs, and Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities, who specializes in military affairs.