Afrasianet - Dr. Marwan Alghafouri - So far, the strategic objectives of Trump's war in Yemen remain murky. In the famous conversation on the Signal app, the US Secretary of Defense wrote that it was not about the Houthis, but about restoring deterrence, and opening waterways. Even Vice President J.D. Vance didn't believe the waterway tale, writing a warning — in the same place — to save Europeans again.

In an article on Foreign Policy on April 22, Keith Johnson tried to provide a multilayered answer to this ambiguous question.

Trump believes he can succeed on issues where Biden has failed, including protecting international trade and dismantling Iran's complex axis. But is there really a need to open sea lanes? In Johnson's estimation, what Trump has done to international trade and sea routes is more dangerous than what the Houthis have done. At a moment of fracturing international trade and falling tanker prices, opening sea lanes is not a priority for the world.

If the Trump administration wants to show off its military capability to send China the message don't think about occupying Taiwan, its lackluster performance in Yemen will backfire, Johnson believes. 

Restoring deterrence, as the defense secretary wrote in his comments on Signal, seems to be the understandable part of U.S. strategy in Yemen. This strategy faces extremely difficult complexities given its lack of an exit strategy in the foreseeable future.

There is no meaning in any deterrence achieved by a powerful power such as the United States of America in a neglected land of the world, such as Yemen, unless the battle ends with the demise and disappearance of the Houthi regime, or at least its disintegration in the manner of Hezbollah.

This goal seems very difficult unless it takes the form of hybrid warfare, both internal and external, and unless U.S. forces take a step back to take the form of air cover for a powerful ally that mobilizes its human capacity on the ground.

After a full year of US-British strikes on Houthi targets, Trump has stepped up military action against the enemy itself, believing that he can win the battles in which his predecessor failed.

In addition to the battle in Yemen, Trump is fighting, on the international stage, countless battles, and his focus seems distracted, so that his Defense Department does not provide any briefings to the media on the state of war in Yemen. Trump, besieged by noise coming from everywhere, and confusing internal and external files, is waiting for happy news from Yemen to end his adventure.

In a very complex country like Yemen, and in front of a group so experienced with hybrid warfare as the Houthis, the most dangerous thing Trump could do is entrust that war to a group of officers and bureaucrats, thinking that it would be a blitzkrieg, as his country has a lot of "wonderful missiles," according to his words.

Biden and his team were aware of the gravity of the challenge posed by the Houthis: "They are quick to produce cheap and effective weapons, if not as good as the United States, good enough to affect the course of the battle," Sullivan, the Biden administration's national security adviser, told a group of reporters in January. 

Sullivan believes his country has fallen into a "very bad equation," using advanced missiles to shoot down relatively cheap drones and firing many of the smart projectiles produced by U.S. contractors too slowly, because of their over-sophistication.

Before Trump arrived in the White House, the administration had made an effort to contain Houthi military power. At a U.S. Navy conference in Arlington, Virginia, earlier this year, Admiral Brendan McLean told an audience of Navy officers gathered to discuss the lessons of the Red Sea conflict that U.S. Navy ships had fired 120 SM-2 missiles, 80 SM-6 missiles and 20 SM-3 missiles.

 SM-2 missiles cost about $2 million each, while SM-6 missiles, capable of shooting down ballistic missiles in flight, cost about $4 million each. The SM-3, capable of hitting targets in space, costs between $9 million and $28 million each.

There is no exact data on how much the Biden administration has spent in its war on the Houthis in 15 months. According to Konstantin Toropin, a military correspondent for Military.com, US naval interceptor missiles under Biden cost more than half a billion dollars. This inventory does not include the expensive Tomahawk-class assault missiles.

There is great concern about an imminent situation in which the U.S. Navy will suffer from a deficit in smart ammunition. In November last year, Samuel Paparro, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, voiced real concerns in the heads of commanders, and military operations had not escalated as intensively as Trump did.

Wasting smart weapons in pursuit of the Houthis could impose "costs on America's readiness to respond in the Indo-Pacific, the region most stressful in terms of quantity and quality of munitions, because China is the most capable potential adversary in the world," in Paparo's words. There are major adversaries, such as China, whose peace the Trump administration wants to disturb through its military parade in Yemen. 

They would be glad that that message never arrived, and that the U.S. military would stumble back in a mountainous country. The scene seems ridiculous and contradictory, as an army that is slipping into a critical supply situation in a "minor" battle is not expected to worry the tranquility of an adversary standing in its land, between its factories and machines, and aspiring to recover what it believes to be its lost island.

Producing smart munitions is not easy, and refilling stores requires time and effort. According to the Brookings Institution, there were 13 U.S. contractors manufacturing tactical missiles and an extensive list of weapons in 1990.

The United States has encouraged the merger of small companies with large ones and in 2020 they will find themselves faced with an uncomfortable strategic reality. Only three contractors are doing the job: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon Technologies. The manufacturing flexibility that America had a third of a century ago no longer exists.

It's hard to imagine a way out or a picture of victory that satisfies the ego of the new U.S. leader, who believes he can win the battles his predecessor stumbled into.

Biden approached the Houthis militarily very cautiously, they represent a particularly difficult challenge, and "they will be happy with an extended war with the United States," Sullivan told reporters, and he knew what he was saying. Trump has publicly said he is going to completely eliminate the Houthis, not just open sea routes.

Iran's allies have collapsed elsewhere, but the Houthi ally looks different from the others, and it would be a mistake to take its demise for granted.

Emily Milikian, a researcher at the Rafik Hariri Center, argues in her article on the Atlantic Council website that what makes the Houthis particularly difficult is their operational flexibility, their ability to adapt strategically, and their deep influence inside Yemen. As well as "changing regional priorities and the desire to avoid escalation with Iran." 

Defeating them decisively, Melikian believes, requires a complex approach that takes many elements into account, not just dropping bombs from the air. Unless the Dahir moves on the ground, and here is the Yemeni armed forces, there is an opportunity for the Houthis to move beyond the question of survival.

Regional powers support many military formations, which, according to a senior Yemeni military source, number one million fighters. These broad formations have a lethal element, they are contradictory and belligerent, and they are not linked.

But Trump can push his allies to unite those diasporas into a battle under one roof, something that has so far been outside the Trump administration's mind. At least if we take seriously the statements of his defense minister about his ministry's indifference to the internal Yemeni battle.

So far, Trump still believes that he has the strings of the ongoing military game in Yemen, and it is unlikely that his leaders will put the facts in front of him as they are. But in the end, he realized the difficulty of the task and stopped the air strikes on Yemen.

At the turn of the century, Bush Jr. believed that full ammunition stores were enough to win a decisive victory in a complex country called Afghanistan. That war became the longest in America's history, and instead of "total elimination" the Taliban came back to rule the country after 19 years of war against America. It is ruling all of Afghanistan again, this time with American weapons.

Yemeni leaders have recently heard unequivocal words from their Arab allies. No one is prepared to fight alongside an ally who may leave the battlefield tomorrow without warning.

The Ukrainian example in this context is more than enough. The world has come to realize that the United States has "a bold, ruthlessly aggressive decision-maker, who desperately desires the strongest, highest, brightest, and most wonderful outcome, and does not think twice about the collateral damage he will leave behind," according to Dan Adams' analysis of Trump's personality in an article in The Atlantic. This type of leader goes into battle and often comes back with a loss. 

In the past, Masoudi quoted in the meadows of gold the Umayyad prince as saying, "The absence of news about us was one of the most certain reasons for the demise of our king." For America, however, it is not about the king's demise, but even less: losing wars, time and again. 

Is it really true that America lost its war with Yemen, or that Trump's contradictions and vacillating decisions can bring America back to continue in this labyrinth?