The Otiose Idiocy of Operation Rough Rider
From Trump's perspective, it is entirely unclear what this campaign is meant to accomplish or why it is being conducted at all.
As someone who loves seeing the Houthis get bombed, this post is painful to write.
It goes without saying that nothing Trump does makes any sense, even on its own terms, and it’s futile trying to interpret contradictions embedded in his [what pass for] policies. There is therefore nothing surprising about his incoherent decision to restart a fruitless bombing campaign against the Houthis using an inordinate amount of severely strained US military resources.
More than 30 days, hundreds of airstrikes, and a billion or so dollars in, the campaign has nothing to show for itself except as many as 19 downed MQ-9 Reapers. The entire circus is as of this writing a complete failure, as literally every person predicted it would be.
But it is also, from Trump’s, and thus America’s, point of view, pointless.
Firstly, Trump hates trade. He really, really hates it. He famously wrote “TRADE IS BAD” in the margins of one of his speeches in 2018 to sum up his entire worldview. He is trying to burn down the entire global economy and send the US into prolonged recession, or worse, because he deeply believes that there has never been anything worse since the dawn of civilisation than the free flow of commerce.
What, then, is his problem with the Houthis? As David Frum put it, “They want to stop international commerce. The Trump administration also wants to stop international commerce. Houthi methods may be a little rough, but the goals are the same.”
Nothing the Houthis have done in the past two years comes anywhere close to the damage Trump himself has done. Those B-2s should be dropping bunker busters on the White House, not the often off target sand pirates, if the priority is free trade.
But this campaign makes even less sense, because the Houthis had already stopped firing on shipping. While they threatened to restart their attacks in reaction to the breakdown of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, they had not done so.1 Nor did any officials believe there was any pressing need to begin bombing them right now.
Trump’s own officials could not come up with a reason for the bombing campaign beyond “sending a message”. What that message is, or to whom it is being sent, is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the message is intended for allies and adversaries alike and amounts to “We have no idea what we’re doing or why, but at least we are also erratic and ineffectual when we do it!”
Here’s what I tweeted in 2020:
All 'policy' is random neuronal misfires in Trump's decaying brain while his headless chicken aides try to invent explanations and narratives… everything that comes out of officials on every issue [is] just an incoherent attempt to spin Trump's spastic synapses. No amount of administration babble can polish the underlying turd that is Trump's brain.
This remains the case.
There was and is a very simple and cost-effective way to ensure the Houthis don’t start firing on shipping again: force Israel back into the ceasefire it signed up to with Hamas.
It boggles the mind that Israel’s preferred outcomes in Gaza are considered of such paramount importance to the US as to outweigh the needs of INDOPACOM or any other allegedly vital interest. The Israelis aren’t likely to accomplish anything in any case (a separate post on this anon), and they’re going to be forced back into a ceasefire soon regardless.
This entire nugatory, farcical distraction, and its exorbitant expenditure of munitions and money, all while depriving INDOPACOM of vital ships and air defence systems, could easily have been avoided if the US had just forced Bibi to uphold the ceasefire2. Which, again, it is going to do anyway. At least, eventually.
There are now reports of a ground campaign being prepared by local militias to capitalise on US airstrikes aimed at retaking the Hodeidah port. One wishes them the best of success, but this should’ve been coordinated and prepared from the very beginning by the US.
If this rumoured assault is genuine, and I am extremely dubious it is, the reporting thus far is that “The U.S. is open to supporting a ground operation by local forces, the U.S. officials said, while noting that a decision on whether to back the effort hasn’t been made yet. The U.S. isn’t leading the talks for a ground operation, the officials added.”
This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, particularly given that Trump previously screwed the Saudis in 2019 after they were directly attacked by Iran. Neither the UAE nor the Saudis are likely to back a ground campaign without US guarantees, which are worthless in general, but especially under Trump. And without substantial air power, the ground campaign will bog down, assuming it ever starts.
Finally, there’s the Iran issue. That’ll be a separate post filled with despair, but in brief, as others have pointed out, the Houthis couldn’t make the decision to stop firing even if they wanted to. That decision lies with Khamenei alone.
Needless to say, Trump blustering a month ago that:
Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN. Any further attack or retaliation by the “Houthis” will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there. Iran has played “the innocent victim” of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control. They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, “Intelligence.” Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!
has not, in fact, led to any dire consequences. Or any consequences at all, for that matter. Trump’s threats rarely do, unless they’re against allies or domestic enemies.
And now for some random Trump snippets from the past few years:
December 2018: “[Other countries] are going to have to start doing a lot of their own work, and they’re going to have to start paying for it, because the United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world. We don’t want to do that… We don’t want to be taken advantage anymore by countries that use us and use our incredible military to protect them. They don’t pay for it, and they’re going to have to… Wealthy countries cannot continue to use the United States to defend them. These are wealthy countries. These are seriously wealthy countries, in certain cases, that I’m talking about. I’m not only talking about in the Middle East. I’m talking about all over the world. Wealthy countries cannot expect the United States to pay for a vast majority of their military. They can pay us. They can reimburse us.”
September 2019: “Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World. We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas, & in fact have very few tankers there, but will help our Allies!”
August 2020: “We don’t have to be there anymore. We don’t need oil. We don’t need anything there…As of a few years ago, we don’t have to be there. We don’t have to be patrolling the straits.”
Amazingly, Trump even criticised Biden for bombing the Houthis in January 2024.
And yet here we are, with the US desultorily policing the world, “patrolling the straits”, trying to reopen the shipping lanes for the Europeans and Egyptians when they didn’t ask, and discussing how to get them to pay for it, which, spoiler alert, will not happen.
Given Trump’s outlook, there is no rhyme or reason to “Operation Rough Rider”. This is one of those “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know” moments, but JD Vance was right to point it out.
Even if it magically succeeded in restoring freedom of navigation by unintentionally paving the way for a successful ground operation, it would be a waste of resources, even counterproductive, given the global trade war he decided to launch.
But like everything Trump mercurially sets his primitive blobs of neural tissue on, it won’t succeed.
The Houthis have not attacked a commercial ship since November 2024 and, prior to Trump relaunching attacks on them in March, hadn’t fired on a US warship since December 21, 2024. See the Washington Institute’s maritime attacks tracker from 2019-2025 here.
I am not arguing this is what should be done, only that it makes the most sense from Trump’s standpoint and fits with his past and present actions.