Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/18/23 Erik Sperling on the US Attempt to Keep the War in Yemen Going

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

Erik Sperling was back on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss the situation in Yemen. Sperling explains the recent pressure campaign launched by U.S. officials to dissuade the Saudis from making peace with the Houthis without first securing a number of American demands. Sperling and Scott go over what these U.S. officials want, think through how this effort can play out and put all of these new developments in context.  Discussed on the show: “In Strategic Shift, U.S. Draws Closer to Yemeni Rebels” (Wall Street Journal) “US maintains intelligence relationship with Houthis” (Al-Monitor) Erik Sperling is the Executive Director of Just Foreign Policy. Follow him on Twitter @ErikSperling This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, May 25th, 20203. I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war.com. and on the editor of the book

Hotter than the Sun Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons You can find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org Almost 6,000 of them now going back to 2003 there Scotthorton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show

and you can follow me on Twitter if you dare at Scott Horton's show All right introducing Eric Sperling from just foreign policy he's a former congressional staffer and has been working on the Yemen war ever since Obama switched sides in 2015.

Welcome the show. How are you doing, Eric? I'm doing pretty well. Great to be here. Really appreciate you being here and I kind of resent the occasion to be quite frank. I had a conversation with my friend, the Yemeni journalist Nasser Arb, what, six, eight weeks ago. And he was smiling and laughing. It was the first time and I've been interviewing him since 2015. It's this first time I ever heard him laugh, I think. And he was saying the war is over. It's all good now, man. So once we get things cleaned up around here, love to have you out, come visit. And I'm like, hey, all right, the war in Yemen is over everybody, finally. Or at least

we're going to switch sides back to just the war against al-Qaeda now instead of the war for them like we've been fighting for the last eight years. So if the Saudis don't want to fight anymore, then what's the problem? Yeah, well, I think you and I talked around that time as well, and, you know, I remember a lot of our friends, friends in Yemen, friends who've been working on this war for years. We were incredibly hopeful. But, you know, I know better than to get my hopes up that, you know, a U.S. backed war is going to just simply end. You know, that hasn't happened in my adult life going back quite a long time. And so, yeah, essentially, you know, it's right after the Saudi

visited Sana'a and did direct meetings with their primary opponent in the war, which is the Houthis, who have actually are the de facto government and have been governing 70% of Yemen for about eight years or so. There was a lot of hope that Saudis were going to make a deal to just simply end the threat of bombing and make a commitment to not do any more bombing to lift the blockade that is essentially given them control over the main port in the country, which will allow goods to get in, allow prices to come down. In Yemen, there isn't actually a food shortage. It's about the cost.

And the Saudi blockade is what's really the leading driver of those costs, and not just of food, but of all types of goods, of transportation. And so there was a hope that the Saudis, you know, after making a deal with Iran that's backed by China, would say, you know, felt comfortable making a deal with, with the, who Houthis, saying, okay, you won't strike into Saudi Arabia, and in exchange, we will completely exit this war. But immediately after, as that happened, and as we were all, you know, cautiously, incredibly optimistic, and we were starting to dream about our, you know, taking a trip to Yemen. The U.S. dispatched, you know, both in person and on phone calls, about five different senior

officials. And if you read the reporting from those visits, they emphasized essentially that a deal with the Houthis is not going to be enough. You need deterrence as well, was the main word they kept saying, and emphasizing their defense of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. will defend Saudi Arabia. And what does that mean? Well, it means essentially that they're saying, don't give in, you know, don't give in to the Houthis, you know, continue to use a mix of diplomacy and military power and threat. which is essentially the exact same strategy that the Saudis in the U.S. have been using for the last eight years that's led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

So as it stands now, we're unclear about which direction the Saudi leadership is going to go. If they follow the U.S. plan, then what's very likely to happen is the Houthis will have no choice but eventually to use their only tool, which is to resume cross-border attacks against Saudi Arabia, at which time the U.S. has effectively pledged the Saudi Arabia, they will help do a massive bombing campaign against the Houthis. And there's some evidence that the U.S. might prefer that. The real question is, what do the Saudis want to absorb, you know, dozens or hundreds of attacks from Yemen just to be able to get that right to resume large-scale bombing on Yemen? And I think there's, you know, I think what we're hoping is that the Saudi leadership will say it's not, worth it for us to take those hits and to do the damage to our economy. They're in the process of

doing a kind of a revamp of their approach where they want to focus on their own domestic economic development and use their money and their soft power in the region rather than their military power. But it's still very much up in the air and that's really where it stands now. And so we're hoping the Saudis will do what we think is the wise things. Focus on your economic development and your soft power in the region and give up on the military component of that. It's anti-war radio. I'm talking with Eric Sperling from Just Foreign Policy. That's just FP on Twitter. Now, doesn't the whole question here just come down to whether the Saudi Crown Prince accepts the legitimacy of the Houthi regime in Sanaa or not, whether they are

determined to have a regime change or whether they have in fact given up on that goal? What else left is there to fight about? It's not like the war started because the Houthis were sending drone attacks into Saudi Arabia. That's been defensive this whole time. And ever since the outbreak of the long-expired but still obeyed ceasefire of a year ago, they haven't been attacking inside Saudi Arabia. So that is clearly a pretext, right? Yeah. And thankfully, you and your listeners are about as far from D.C. as you can be in the continental United States, but in D.C., there is a myth, and they sort of propagate this myth that the Saudis who did this due to threats against their security. But of course, the Houthi cross-border

attacks coming from Yemen didn't start until about four or five years into the conflict when they realized they had no leverage over Saudi Arabia and the U.S. The U.S. and the Saudis were very content to see 20 million Yemenis on the verge of, you know, just a couple meals away from death. And they realize, well, if we don't bring some kind of consequences to Saudi territory and the territory of UAE, we have no leverage. So they develop that capacity. But anyone who follows the conflict knows that the very first thing the Houthis in Yemen would agree to in any deal. The first point they would agree to is an end across border attacks. And in exchange, it's very clear. They just say, leave Yemen. In Washington, they also really emphasized.

this legal fiction that the Yemeni internationally recognized the many government, which was based out of a hotel in Riyadh for the entire war. And they say, oh, it's that internationally recognized government based in Saudi Arabia, has invited Saudi Arabia to do this bombing and this starvation blockade. But in reality, of course, it's just simply an aggression from the Saudis and the US against the Yemeni people.

And just for those who are not caught up in the kind of the world of creating legal fictions to justify wars. And so essentially, the Houthis will say, you know, just, just you stay out of, you Saudis, you know, stay out of our country and we will not touch your country. So it's a very simple deal. It absolutely could happen. But the U.S. has a whole series of tricks and of messaging lines to try to persuade the Saudis that, no, you know, don't leave this conflict too early after eight years. keep pushing so that we can weaken the Houthis and force them into a power sharing agreement with that quote unquote internationally recognized government which again is basically a US Saudi creation well I mean and that is a ongoing question I mean regardless of the Saudi backed puppets there are all kinds of different factions inside the country who are going to have to come together or decide once and for all not to and of course you do have You know, bin Ladenite types, whether from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or ISIS there and, you know, associated groups, I guess with them. You got the socialists centered in Aden who were allied with the UAE, who I think, you know, would rather just split the country in half and go back to a north and South Yemen type situation.

It's interesting that the socialists and the al-Qaeda guys are both backed by the UAE. I wonder what kind of deal they're going to come to. But then you got the Muslim Brotherhood. I think there's some socialist tradition there. But I don't know that the current group is more of just a straight proxy for the, for the, for the, for the UAE. I don't know that it has much socialist character left. Okay. This southern transitional council?

Yeah. So there's the remnants of that, I guess. But anyway, I mean, what indication do you have about the, uh, hooties and their ability and willingness to negotiate with these other groups, regardless of the Saudi puppets and or, I guess, including the Saudi. puppets too because it is important that the Saudis at least threw their old guy under the bus, the former vice president turned president, Mansur Hadi, and instead appointed this council of including some bin Ladenites, but this council of other guys who presumably were under orders to deal with the Houthis and have begun to do so. But I guess the Houthis are not in any position to feel like they have to share power. They've won the war, right?

Yeah, exactly. And that's essentially what I would say those who are on the side of continuing the war. That's, you know, very reasonable argument that they make because, you know, I think we do want there to be a sustainable government in Yemen. You know, we want there to be, you know, peace in Yemen. But unfortunately, the U.S. and the Saudis came in on one side of this war and vastly increased the power of this group that, you know, essentially they've largely kept intact. I mean, there's been a lot of fraction, you know, a lot of different factions and competition within the eight member, what they call the presidential leadership council. And there's a lot of divisions there. And it's really the U.S. and the Saudis that are keeping them together. So, you know, I think once you remove tens of billions of dollars of military and intelligence support and diplomatic support from that group, then that does kind of change the balance of power a bit. And when you really leave it to just Yemenis, the Houthis is for as much as people in Washington don't like to admit it, they're from Yemen. They are Yemeni,

and that's something that you don't really hear people in Washington reflect too often. They do try to give the impression that, you know, the Saudi back side is also totally Yemeni when it's actually has tens of billions of dollars in U.S. Saudi support. So it's very possible that there would be some, once the U.S. and the Saudi military support ends, if we are able to finally accomplish that after eight years, it is possible there would be some ongoing fighting inside of Yemen. But that will all be part of a process that was going to have to happen in any case, because the many parties will have to decide how to strike a balance among them that is actually sustainable and that doesn't rely on tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military

support for the indefinite future. And the interesting thing, you mentioned the al-Qaeda component. I just wanted to add that, you know, Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, at the time this war broke out, there was a really interesting report that he was furious because the Houthis were a close anti-terror, anti-Al Qaeda partner of the United States at that time. So he was horrified that the U.S. would be now backing a Saudi war against the partner that had been fighting one of the most dangerous al-Qaeda branches, which is the al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula AQAP based in Yemen. So, you know, the other thing I would say, you know, that I think is not reflected in Washington is their approach has been the stick approach, which is do massive bombing, tens of thousands

of bombs, do the starvation blockade. But there's all, that's the stick approach. There's also a carrot approach that they, for some reason, never consider attempting, right? Like you could offer, for example, you know, reconstruction aid or support or things that the Houthis want in condition that on, you know, meeting certain goals that, say, the international community or that certain other humanity factions want. They're, you know, they're really great at the stick approach. They're so great at it that arguably, you know, the war became genocidal. The stick was so extreme, but they never try the carrot approach. And I think it's time, you know, given that the Houthis, were a partner of the United States in fighting al-Qaeda, there's certainly space for cooperation there.

And I think, you know, offering and incentivizing inclusive government or incentivizing certain behavior by offering certain types of support, such as reconstruction support, is something that hasn't been tried. And we really think would make a lot more sense. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree.

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real history, real economics, real education. All right, it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Eric Spurling from just foreign policy about the ongoing crisis in Yemen. Now, I'm glad you brought up some history there. I think it's important to note that this did not necessarily have to be resolved through violence. Once the Houthis took over the country at the end of 2014, they were willing to negotiate. And they had already begun to set up a constitutional convention of sorts.

And they were going to try to bring in the Southern Transitional Council types and the Muslim Brotherhood. And then the Saudi started bombing them anyway. And that's how the war started. So this wasn't necessarily headed towards civil war. In fact, or I guess one way to put it would be that the Houthis had won the Civil War by the end of 2014. And then the foreign invasion began three months later because, as you said, and this is also very important too, people can check the Wall Street Journal from January the 30th, 2015. And it's also in Almonitor, the article, I forget the date, but it's January.

of 2015, and it's by Barbara Slavin, and they're very specific, that they're passing intelligence to the Houthis, and the Houthis are using it to kill Al-Qaeda guys. And then is the Mark Perry article that you referred to, where Lloyd Austin, our current Secretary of Defense, who was then the head of Sentcom, he was the one working with the Houthis to kill the Al-Qaeda guys. And so he was, as Mark Perry reported, so mad he wrote an angry letter to Obama about it that apparently his friends talked about ascending. It would have destroyed his political career and I guess his rate the unfortunate

if he had sent it. So he made that choice. But it just goes to show they knew that this was treason when they switched sides. I mean, the drone war, people don't even know about this. People criticize Obama for his drone war in Yemen. The drone war was heroic

compared to the genocidal campaign that they have fought on behalf of al-Qaeda for the last eight years. and now they're only switching sides again, if we're lucky, right? Yeah, well, you know, they've continued to conduct some limited amount of airstrikes against Al-Qaeda, I think probably to counter that reality that, you know, that they're basically targeting and helping to kill Al-Qaeda's biggest opponent in Yemen.

And that is only public relations because we know that the vast majority of them were simply recruited by the UAE. You know, they were part of the Giants Brigade. Yeah, if you really had a priority of targeting al-Qaeda in Yemen, you would not be, you know, waging an eight-year war, an economic war, and over-war against, you know, against the main group that has targeted and contained al-Qaeda in Yemen. So, you know, very similar to other countries in the region where, and, you know, for those of us who grew up, I mean, I was in, you know, what was in high school at the time of 9-11. And, you know, much of my life was defined by an obsessive fear of al-Qaeda-like terrorists. I mean, that was what we were taught. And so it's always, it's amazing when you're in Washington all of a sudden, no one has anything to say about that. I mean, we barely talk about it because, you know, that people in Washington are so conditioned to simply switching sides when it's in the geopolitical interest to do so that, you know, we barely even get to make the argument that, hey, don't, don't you remember al-Qaeda in the, in the Arabian Peninsula?

Like, wouldn't it, isn't it important to counter them? In Washington, no one even talks about that at this point. It's really remarkable to see that, you know, that type of switch. Yeah. Well, most of them don't know, you know, they couldn't tell you a Sunni from a Shiite in any way whatsoever. So when it comes to it, it's a great deniability for when they're switching sides is to just not know what they're talking about in the first place at all, right? Yeah, you can't tell, you know, for some people, it's a strategic choice.

and for others it is just ignorance, you know, which it speaks to why it's so, why the U.S. is so involved in places that they couldn't tell you the first thing about, you know, and that we do see that a lot in Congress. I mean, it's, there's, there's a lot of folks who are just essentially taking orders and taking their messaging guidelines from just a couple people at the State Department. And until you talk, you know, you could talk with the heads of the Senate, the House or Senate, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations committees, and they really don't know. You know, they need to go up to this particular officials at the White House, there's only a couple people who are tasked

with really knowing anything about the conflict. And it's just remarkable to see that we're so involved in places and people taking these consequential decisions that have millions of people just a few meals away from death. And they don't even really know or care about those people. And so that's always an interesting dynamic of the work. It's just, you know, there's the ignorance, but yet the incredible,

power that these politicians have over the lives of people, you know, thousands and thousands of miles away. Okay, so talk some more about the humanitarian crisis here because I was being facetious there and calling the drone war heroic in comparison to the absolute horror show that has taken place since America switched sides in that war. But the consequences for the civilian population in Yemen have just been absolutely catastrophic. So let them know in case they never heard of that. Yeah, well, I would say the parallel that it's most similar to is sort of the way that the U.S. has transitioned out of directly

conducting wars. I mean, thanks to people like you and many of your listeners, you know, U.S. isn't as inclined to send U.S. troops directly into battle anymore after the Iraq War nightmare where we lost 5,000, you know, U.S. troops. And, you know, so essentially what happened here is, you know, they empower the Saudis, you know, we give them the intel, we give them the planes, we give them the bombs, we tell them where to bomb, but we say, oh, but this Saudi prince is pulling the trigger. You know, but so what does that really do? In effect, it means that you have actually less professional, less qualified people. And so whether by intentionally or otherwise, they completely destroyed the country, completely destroyed the infrastructure, you know, over 10,000 bombs,

at least dropped on Yemen. But that's only part of the story that, you know, arguably the bigger part is the blockade on Yemen's land, air, and sea ports. And so that is more similar to essentially, like, an extremely brutal version of U.S. sanctions policy. So, you know, now the Saudis haven't been bombing, but they are maintaining, though we've been pressuring them and they've alleviated it a little bit, but they're maintaining this blockade that essentially is a form of collective punishment for all Yemenis. So it's like imagine saying, you know, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are so pretty.

progressive on Cuba policy, they haven't even attacked Cuba. No, but of course, that's not the harm. The harm is that they're doing an economic blockade that is dramatically harming the quality of life and or pushing people into extreme poverty. And so it's very similar in Yemen, but even more extreme because they have an actual blockade and they decide ship by ship, what gets through and what doesn't. And so they can kind of turn that up or turn that down based on, you know, as a way to kind of control pressure, you know, to control the economic situation and exert and exert pressure. So what you have is at least over 20 million Yemenis dependent on foreign aid, you know, depending on the moment and the prices, you know, you can have famine-like conditions for hundreds

of thousands. We've definitely seen at a minimum hundreds of thousands of children who have starved to death or who have died. We don't know the numbers because women can barely even make it to a hospital. There was just a new BBC story yesterday about a woman who had to take a camel seven hours to get to the nearest hospital. And on the way there, she saw, you know, a pregnant woman who had passed away on that exact journey. I mean, so it's an unimaginable tool. You have a generation of children that are actually going to be developmentally stunted for lack of nutrients. It's one of the most horrific crises in our lifetimes, frankly. And so that's essentially the situation.

But just like with economic sanctions, they'll say, oh, the Cuban government is responsible. The Houthis are partially responsible. Of course, that's true. They are partially responsible. But that doesn't mean that you can intentionally and knowingly use as a tactic of warfare, starvation of tens of millions of people. That is something that we as a country, with our allies like Saudi Arabia, are consciously and intentionally choosing to do as a method of

to try to exert pressure and achieve the political outcome that we want. And it's just about as dark as it gets. And that's why it's been known for years as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. And this is the real dynamic is, you know, we have a lot of people in Washington who want to sort of play God with humanity society and say, we want to achieve the certain outcome. It's the same mentality they've been doing since at least the Iraq war. You know, if you sprinkle in a little bit of this ethnicity, that ethnicity, we can birth a new country. And they don't realize that, number one, they've never succeeded at that in any of these countries.

We're not a country that has that level of deep knowledge to even be able to accomplish that if it's possible. But most importantly, what they don't acknowledge is they are doing a harm. They're doing a horrific harm in doing this blockade and bombing with the hopes that they, could achieve a better outcome. But they're missing the fact that they're currently committing a horrific harm to the people of Yemen. And our primary responsibility as Americans is to make sure we are not engaged in a horrific harm that is mass starving people.

You know, there's always a duty much more than, you know, the secondary duty is stop others from doing harm. But our primary duty is to not to stop ourselves, our own actions from harming. And that's really what's missing in Washington and sort of the this humanitarian intervention mentality that has never worked and ends up, again, you know, implicating us in unimaginable hunger, starvation, and destruction of Yemen. All right. So to finish up here, it's anti-war radio talking with Eric Sperling.

To finish up here, Eric, talk to us a little bit more about what exactly is the holdup in the talks. In other words, between the Houthis and the Saudis, they pretty much have everything hashed out, the salaries and this and that. It's just the Americans coming in and getting in the way and exactly how are they doing that. And then finally, what are we doing about it? Yeah. So I think the Saudis, like I mentioned earlier, the Saudis have at least certain faction in the Saudis tend to think that their interests would be better suited to sign a deal. with the Houthis, who are the de facto government of Yemen, they control at least 70% of the country,

including the capital, and they've been done so for about eight years, to make a deal with them that says, okay, if you do not strike inside our territory, we will end our threat of airstrikes and we will lift our blockade and allow you to function as a country for the first time in eight years. And there are those in the U.S., including super hawkish Brett McGurk, even the U.N., the U.S. envoy to Yemen, Tim Lender King, who, you know, says he's pursuing peace, but what they're actually encouraging Saudi Arabia to do is stay in the war until they can get a quote-unquote inclusive deal. That means, you know, getting, essentially weakening the Houthis

and getting them to agree to share power with the U.S. and Saudi-backed proxy. So the split is essentially between those in Saudi Arabia who are going to say, let's get out of this war, Let's ensure there's no more attacks on Saudi Arabia. And the U.S. side that says, no, don't leave just yet. We really need to weaken the Houthis a little bit more. Which is the same strategy for eight years and it's failed. And yet they still want to continue. Yeah.

If only Xi Jinping would intervene and, you know, forge another peace deal here. And this seems to be part of it, right? We do have this new modus vivendi between Iran and Saudi brokered by the Chinese, which is, I guess part of what America is trying to thwart by keeping the war going. It's just insane. But all right, real quick now, the activism, just foreign policy and which all groups are spearheading an effort to do what? Well, I think we're working to continue that congressional pressure. We've had almost every Democrat in Congress has voted to end all U.S. support for this war.

Ending U.S. support for the war would ensure that the Saudis cannot bomb anymore. They had to completely depend on the United States to bomb. So if we end that support, the Saudis will have no choice but to get out, to sign that deal and get out. A group of about 40 Congress members just wrote a letter, which activist groups help support. And they essentially said exactly that, which is, and tell the Saudis you will not support any further airstrikes and force them to make this deal. So for those listening, I think you could look at your member of Congress, you know, reach out to them. and see where they stand on the Yemen War and make clear that you want the U.S. to tell the Saudis

that there will be no resumption in U.S. support for further airstrikes or the blockade. And, you know, if you do that and you come to our Twitter at JustFP, JustFP, and you can let us know or reach out to us on Twitter through a direct message and let us know what they say. Or if you have questions, you can also message us there and we can guide you on how to talk with your member of Congress.

But we just need all the members of Congress to say, you know, eight years of war and starvation in Yemen is enough. The U.S. should get out and should, you know, force the Saudis to get out by in doing so. Yeah. And I'd like to add, if anybody is a member of or a leader of a civic group of any kind, and you want to get involved on that basis, ask specifically when you contact Eric about the – monthly, I guess, group phone calls between all the different activist groups coordinating and

that kind of thing, because that's our real multiplier for making noise on this still a terribly important issue. So that's Eric Sperling, Just Foreign Policy. That's at Just FP on Twitter. Really appreciate your time there. Thanks for all you're doing, Scott. All right, John, that has been Anti-War Radio for today. Thanks very much for listening. I'm Scott Horton from anti-war.com and the book, Hotter Than the Sun. Find my full interview archive, about 6,000 of them now, going back 20 years at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and the rest of all the video sites too. And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show. I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.

Thank you.