Recently, Yemen's Houthi rebels have frequently used drones and anti-ship missiles to attack passing Israeli and American ships, drawing international attention. According to Reuters and the Times of Israel, the Houthis have recently even fired multiple ballistic missiles at military facilities in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, an incident that has been confirmed by the Houthis. In this case, the American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Mason successfully shot down a Yemeni Houthi drone over the Red Sea. The confrontation between the two sides has worried Saudi Arabia, which has begun to seek to contain as many spillover effects as possible from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia has called on the United States to exercise restraint on the Red Sea incident to prevent the spillover of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, Saudi Arabia's appeal to the United States appears to be somewhat embarrassing in the international community. In the past, the United States has often abused its military force in the Middle East, but now it has been attacked by the Houthis in Yemen, but it has not been able to effectively retaliate and has even been advised to exercise restraint. This situation feels very ridiculous. In order to maintain the last bit of imperial face, the Pentagon and the White House have always insisted that it is "impossible to assess" that the United States has been attacked by the Yemeni Houthis, and even believes that the target of the Yemeni Houthis may not be the US ** ship. These actions once again demonstrate the flexible "security standards" of the United States.
In previous discussions, we mentioned that the Houthis might try to blockade the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but some people think that this possibility is exaggerated because they believe that the Houthis will not be able to compete with the United States, let alone successfully blockade it. However, in fact, the United States cannot afford a completely new war, especially one launched on its own initiative, whether economically, politically or militarily. Economically, the U.S. national finances have already taken a huge hit from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the domestic financial crisis. Although on the surface the United States has gained some benefits in Europe, in reality it is the interests of the state that it has lost, and it has gained private interests.
Militarily, the United States has provided support to Ukraine for two years and has also provided Israel with a batch of equipment, which has greatly weakened the war potential of the United States. Otherwise, there would have been no recent peace talks with Ukraine. Politically, Biden needs to deal with next year, and there is strong opposition to the Palestinian-Israeli issue at home, which puts Biden in a dilemma. Therefore, all kinds of factors are intertwined, and Biden can only choose to "be angry, angry", and then pretend that nothing happened, and never dare to open up a third battlefield. From China's point of view, it actually hopes that the United States can "show its strength" in Yemen.
A few years ago, in the game of the Iran nuclear deal, many predicted that the United States would only have one war left to become the world's second. And in 2023, this war may no longer be a question of becoming the second in the world, but a question of how many "Americas" can be accommodated in such a large territory as the United States.