Kamran Bokhari
The United States is in the process of a historic shift in its geostrategy meant to reduce its exposure to global conflicts. The Middle East, however, seems to be an exception; U.S. military forces continue to engage in combat and, if anything, have beefed up their deployment. The Middle East is much more fragile than other theaters, so Washington will need to work much harder to succeed in relying on regional stakeholders to take the lead on security issues.
On April 28, a U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet was lost overboard from the USS Harry S. Truman while operating in the Red Sea. Though the incident itself was human error, it happened only because the carrier was making a sharp turn to evade incoming missile and drone attacks being launched by Houthi forces. This is the second aircraft of its kind to be lost in the area over the past four months – the first one was mistakenly shot down by the USS Gettysburg, a guided-missile cruiser, last December.
The incident this month comes as the U.S. military operational tempo has greatly increased in the region. Over the past six weeks alone, Washington has conducted over 800 airstrikes in Yemen. For the U.S., this spike is necessary given that the Houthis have disrupted commercial traffic through the Red Sea and targeted U.S. naval vessels since late 2023. The problem, however, is that the U.S. has spent as much as a billion dollars over the past three weeks to degrade the Houthis, who can threaten freedom of navigation by spending only tens of thousands of dollars. This is clearly an unsustainable imbalance of expenditures.
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