The British think tank Chatham House has a new paper on current instability in Yemen. Most notably, the paper states that economics is driving instability in Yemen which could lead to a “lawless zone stretching from northern Kenya, through Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, to Saudi Arabia,” and exhorts Western governments to take a regional approach towards multifaceted intervention in Yemen to prevent this. A “lawless zone” in Yemen, the paper argues, could attract anti-American militancy, piracy, and become a safe haven for transnational crime and terrorism. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s international conference on Yemen which he called an “incubator and potential safe haven for terrorism” illustrates that Western governments are taking this seriously.

When Dr. John Nagl, coauthor of the U.S. Counterinsurgency Manual spoke at American University about a month ago on the topic of counterinsurgency he advocated a policy of global counterinsurgency or “G-COIN” wherein the United States would attempt to inhibit the growth of militant and terrorist movements throughout the world by eliminating safe havens through applying a counterinsurgency doctrine of defeating terrorists, strengthening institutions and civil society, and nation building.

I had asked Dr. Nagl specifically about Yemen and the limited resources of the United States and Western governments and the impossibility of unlimited intervention – specifically, where does it end? Dr. Nagl stated that Yemen and Somalia could be stabilized in a worst case scenario through missile attacks by Navy gunboats and possibly U.S. drones along with increased aid to the Yemeni central government and training of the Yemeni army and security forces instead of an actual deployment of U.S. troops.

While Nagl advocates a more hawkish approach, the Chatham House paper stresses Western pressure for anti-corruption reforms in Yemen and foreign aid targeted towards alleviating poverty, strengthening civil society and democratic institutions. Yet, the Chatham House paper also warns of the danger of intervention, especially in the military sense, stating:

Western governments must also accept that as long as they view Yemen primarily through the prism of security, the authorities there will play on those fears– appealing for aid money and political legitimacy to pursue their own internal agenda. Selective insistence on the rule of law creates cynicism about donors’ motives in a country that is widely hostile to US foreign policy. Yemen is already suffering a blowback effect, in which the arrest and assassination of suspected terrorists have provoked violent retaliation.

Yemen is currently a crossroads of various regional conflicts including a southern separatism, a Shia Houthi rebellion fueled by Iran and attacking Saudi Arabia, and lawless areas which have been home to increasing radical militant groups. It seems that the Obama Administration’s Yemen policy has been based in rooted in many of the core assumptions that the Chatham House paper, and Dr. Nagl have suggested with drone attacks in Yemen attempting to take out targets deemed threatening of U.S. interests coupled with a program of military aid to strengthen Yemeni security forces. However, it does raise the question to the limits of U.S. intervention – specifically military action. There does, as aforementioned, exist the risk of blowback, and inflammation of regional tensions.

Chris Preble of the CATO Institute is more skeptical of U.S. intervention in Yemen, stating “the proposed expansion of security assistance to the government there is likely to pay only meager dividends,” and “safe havens exist in many places, including stable democratic countries. Are we really committed to preventing any country from providing a safe haven? Does the concept of a physical safe haven even make sense in the virtual world of globalized communications and the Internet?”

Eliminating safe-havens or “lawless zones” and failed states, is an essential problem of international security and foreign policy. Letting a safe haven fester can manifest itself later in a terrorist attacks, international crime and piracy or drug trade, while eliminating safe havens can be a costly policy which can bog countries down in quagmires and military occupations of fiercely nationalistic countries. And then is the question of how it is done – through foreign aid, economic development, nation-building, military drone strikes, or even in the most extreme scenario military interventions and occupations.

Nagl called the question of “where does it end” the “central question of U.S. foreign policy.” I would agree, and I am not sure we currently understand the answer. The debate is reminiscent of U.S. grand strategy during the Cold War -  when George Kennan argued for a more limited strategy of containment based in protecting strong points and averse towards overexertion while Paul Nitze in NSC-68 argued for a open-ended wide open commitment stating  “The integrity of our system will not be jeopardized by any measures, covert or overt, violent or non-violent, which serve the purposes of frustrating the Kremlin design.”

I’m not sure that going the NSC-68 route on this question truly protects U.S. interests. The Obama Administration’s drone strikes in Yemen for instance may end up killing many terrorists but actions have trade-offs and the cultural perception of the Arab street of such strikes may end up serving as a recruiting tool for more terrorists. Moreover, even if this is not the case, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has noted, al-Qaeda is now more agile and able to move faster. If Yemen is stabilized, it is still probable that violent extremists can move to numerous other unstable and weak states in the world such as Sudan, or Somalia. And finally, unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, while violent extremists can cause a lot of bloodshed and instability throughout the world and in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries, as non-state actors and not great powers, they do not constitute an existential threat towards the U.S. homeland like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany did.

The main Sunni party in Iraq, al-Iraqiyah or the Iraqi alliance, made news today by announcing a boycott of the parliamentary elections in March. A tug-of-war as of late has manifested its ugly head in Iraq, with the current Shia Iraqi government banning candidates with previous ties to the Baath party of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

In the Wall Street Journal last week, Fred and Kimberley Kagan argued that Obama was losing Iraq to Iran, and that the recent governments debaathification efforts represented major Iranian influence on the Iraqi political process.

Today, at the Center for American Progress, Brian Katulis and Peter Juul argue that it was in fact the Bush Administration policy of preemptive war against Iraq, and to “empower the most pro-Iranian elements of Iraqi politics” which has led to the current quagmire.

What’s notable is that the Iraqi party which seems to lose most from the Maliki government’s decision to purge Sunni former Baathists from government is the Shia-led alliance of former Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, arguably the most moderate of the parties running in the current election and one which has a strong record of opposing sectarianism, promoting civil liberties, and advocating a liberalization of the Iraqi economy.

I tend to side with Katulis and Juul’s argument over the Kagan’s. The fact of the matter is that the Obama Administration has tried as hard as possible to stop the barring of Sunni candidates in the elections, even as so far as to be called “intrusive” by Ahmad Chalabi, a Shia Iraqi politician. Yet, the simple fact remains that without outright direct American pressure – which would further spread the perception of illegitimacy on the election – nothing can be done to stop the current Shia Iran-backed hegemony on Iraqi politics.

The current quandary simply makes clear the problems of any sort of Wilsonian project of liberal democracy promotion, especially by force. Although American power took out Saddam Hussein, they also opened up Pandora’s Box of civil wars, ineffective governance, and the Iranification of Iraq. Furthermore, every plan to tinker with Iraqi democracy by the United States just makes things worse.