A robust reprisal wasn’t only justified by the laws of armed conflict, it had become an absolute imperative to restore deterrence.
By Joe Biden’s admission, last night’s long-delayed retaliatory strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen were a long time coming. The strikes were preceded by 27 attacks on commercial shipping involving 50 nations and piratical assaults on crews hailing from 20 countries. A monthslong U.S. and British-led naval campaign to interdict Houthi attacks on shipping from the air and sea consumed vast quantities of defensive ordnance. And the Houthis’ attacks were not limited to commercial interests. The so-called Ansar Allah terror sect itself boasted of targeting U.S. naval assets. British ships, too, “may have been specifically targeted,” according to U.K. defense secretary Grant Shapps. The Houthis’ campaign all but closed the Suez Canal to commercial traffic, resulting in a 173 percent increase in container shipping costs. A robust reprisal wasn’t only justified by the laws of armed conflict — it had become an absolute imperative predicated on the most elementary apprehension of deterrence.
Unfortunately, that elementary apprehension seems to have eluded so many of our most influential lawmakers and political commentators. The only saving grace is that they have exposed their ignorance voluntarily. The least we can do is make an accounting of their unseriousness for future reference.
Among those for whom the Constitution’s value is limited to the degree to which it is an instrument that can be wielded against their political adversaries, the facile charge that Biden’s strikes are somehow illegal is gaining ground. “The President needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another Middle East conflict,” wrote Representative Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), alleging that Biden’s conduct violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution. His claim was echoed by progressives including Representatives Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Val Hoyle (Ore.), Cori Bush (Mo.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.). Even some Republicans, like Senator Mike Lee (Texas) and former Michigan representative Justin Amash, concurred with this tendentious reading of the law.
How strange. Retaliating against a hostile power actively executing attacks on U.S. naval assets, those of its allies, and civilian maritime traffic in international waters isn’t even an especially thorny case. Biden does not even have to appeal to the authority granted in the still-active 2001 authorization to use military force against terrorist affiliates abroad to justify its conduct because the president did not inaugurate hostilities. He responded to them. Self-defense against an imminent threat is not only justified by domestic law and international treaty; it’s an unremarkable exercise of presidential power.
Still, the president’s reluctant decision to exercise America’s centuries-old prerogative to protect commercial traffic from piracy has united self-described “realists” across the political spectrum in opposition. The rather flagrant motivated reasoning engaged in by left-wing outlets like the Intercept and weak-kneed supporters of U.S. retrenchment on the right — including, among others, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — is their shared apprehension toward the application of U.S. hard power abroad, even in its own defense. Both packaged their fear of “escalation” in their misreading of U.S. law, but what invited the escalation that we’ve all been forced to watch helplessly over the last three uninterrupted months of Houthi attacks was Joe Biden’s inaction. No American law constrains the president from defending U.S. interests and allies against imminent aggression, and those who think it does — or even should — reveal more about themselves than about the conflict on which they are opining.
Those who have not retreated to superficially compelling rationalizations for their pacifism have expressed their support for pacifism outright. “Violence only begets more violence,” wrote, for example, Representative Barbara Lee (D., Calif.). “We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.” The revealing remark correctly links the conduct of Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah with those of Iranian proxies like the Yemeni Houthis, but Lee concludes that the only way to restore peace is to surrender in the face of their aggression.
Many critics of Israel’s decision to exercise its right to self-defense came to a similar conclusion. “On the same day that South Africa tries to stop Israel’s genocide in the United Nations’ top court, the US defends Israel’s genocide by bombing one of the world’s poorest countries,” the inexplicably popular commentator Aaron Maté insisted. True to his Marxian outlook, the self-described socialist Owen Jones attributed the West’s belated response to Houthi aggression to the influence of capital — the preservation of “shipping lanes” at the expense of innocent lives. “Notice that even in America’s telling of events, Yemen’s blockade has been bloodless,” the pathologically anti-Israel broadcaster Briahna Joy Gray wrote with uncommon benightedness. “Yemen’s nonviolent efforts to stop a genocide is met, unsurprisingly, with more Western violence.”
There’s something refreshing in the refusal of these commentators to hide their hostility toward America’s defense of interests behind dubious legal rationalizations. At least they’re honest in their advocacy for rank dereliction from the president. And yet, their position compels us to conclude that they believe that this terrorist outfit should enjoy a free hand to disrupt international commerce, attack civilians, and target allied military assets with impunity. And when America responds to this belligerence, America is — always and forever — the bad guy.
For all the peril Biden’s bizarre dithering over the Houthis’ terrorism has imposed on America and its partners abroad, his conduct established conditions that represent a test of sober-mindedness. Those who pass it understand the gravity of these attacks on the global maritime trade regime and American geopolitical hegemony, the most visible expression of which is its guarantee of the free navigation of the seas. Those who do not pass it have allowed their mistrust of U.S. hard power to cloud their judgment. They have failed a basic test of seriousness. In the realm of geopolitics, at least, they need not be taken seriously again.