Since January 13, 2024, the United States and the United Kingdom, together with more than a dozen allies, have officially launched airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen. After a month of continuous fighting, the outcome is still unclear. Although the United States dispatched an aircraft carrier battle group and joined allies to form a dozen Red Sea escort groups to carry out air strikes, it failed to contain Yemen's Houthi attacks on merchant ships, and instead intensified retaliation. As a result, frequent attacks on U.S. and British merchant ships have led to shipping companies having to choose to detour the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, which increases transportation costs and further exacerbates inflation in European and American countries. At the same time, U.S. military bases in the Middle East are also frequently attacked by Yemen's Houthi rebels. Faced with this situation, the United States and its allies seem helpless except for continued air strikes.
On January 26, 2024, U.S. Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with China's Foreign Affairs Office Director Wang Yi in Bangkok, Thailand, and asked China to exert pressure on Iran to end frequent Houthi attacks on merchant ships in Yemen as soon as possible. Despite its powerful air strike capabilities, the United States has been unable to deal with Yemen's Houthi rebels. The reason for this is that Yemen's Houthi-controlled areas are extremely poor and lack valuable targets; And they are good at guerrilla warfare, they can skillfully evade the strikes of American and British fighters, and immediately after the fighters leave, they launch missiles and drones to attack American escorts** and merchant ships in the Red Sea.
One might question whether the only way to defeat Yemen's Houthis is to send in ground forces. However, this is not the case. The United States and NATO are not reluctant to send ground troops, but they are well aware that such a move will not necessarily lead to victory over Yemen's Houthi rebels. In 2015, Saudi Arabia united more than a dozen Arab countries to dispatch 100 warplanes, 150,000 troops and heavy ** to attack Yemen's Houthi rebels. But after 8 years of fierce fighting, the Saudi coalition eventually became a "porter", while the Yemeni Houthis gradually developed from a slipper army armed with AK47s to a regular army, and its strength became stronger and stronger. The Saudi coalition was so badly wounded and devastated that it had to sign a permanent ceasefire agreement with Yemen's Houthis on April 7, 2023.
In addition, the US-led NATO coalition launched a war against the Afghan Taliban in 2001, which lasted for 20 years. Despite the cost of 2,500 dead soldiers, more than 20,000 wounded, and $1 trillion in money, the Taliban have grown stronger. Given that the ongoing war of attrition will only bring endless losses, in 2021 Biden** ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. It can be seen from this that the United States does not want to send ground forces, but knows that it simply cannot win this war.
Joint Anglo-American air strikes on Yemen