Since news broke that Trump administration officials shared details of military strikes on Yemen via a group chat that included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, condemnation from national security professionals has been swift. But missing from much of the 24/7 news coverage of Signal-gate has been a focus on the actual substance of the text messages and what they reveal about Trump’s approach to the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy more broadly.
If President Trump’s first term was conservative about the use of American hard power and easily influenced by national security experts, the Houthi PC Small Group chat suggests that Trump 2.0 is taking a different approach: one that sees no reason for military restraint when U.S. interests are on the line and isn’t concerned with second-order consequences from the use of force—and that sees the U.S. security umbrella not as a guarantee but as a commodity for sale. This reflects a strong vein of thought on both the left and the right of U.S. foreign policy circles. Yet the policies underlying the leaked attack plans—a “peace through strength, but for a price” strategy—are unlikely to bring peace to the Middle East or make the United States any safer.
Raids Without Strategy
This isn’t Trump’s first foray into Yemen. Eight years ago as a freshly minted first-term president, Trump wanted to kickstart his administration with a show of strength overseas. Military leaders steered him away from his campaign promise to “bomb the hell” out of ISIS in Iraq, and he instead settled on a less ambitious target in a country few Americans had heard of. The subsequent Navy SEAL Team 6 raid in January 2017 on Yakla, a small village in central Yemen, led to the death of about a dozen al-Qaeda operatives, anywhere between ten and thirty innocent civilians, and one U.S. Navy Seal, Ryan Owens.
Trump hailed Owens a hero and the raid a success, despite it missing its main target, Qasim al-Raymi, the operative who went on to lead al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Owens’ family, however, was less convinced: they saw the raid as an act of vanity from a president whose foreign policy instincts would waver unpredictably between aggression and restraint over the next four years.
Now, at the onset of his second term, Yemen is once again in Trump’s crosshairs, albeit on a grander scale. Trump has ordered a widespread bombing campaign of the kind that he wanted to conduct against ISIS, but this time against the militant Houthi movement that has attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea for much of the past eighteen months. And, as the Signal chats show, Trump’s team is laser focused on getting foreign governments who stand to benefit from the U.S. campaign to pick up the check.
The administration has been at pains to favorably contrast its wide-ranging strikes on Houthi targets with the more cautious approach of the Biden administration. It has also made clear that although it is bombing the Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen itself barely figures into the administration’s calculus. By designating the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, launching airstrikes, and threatening “maximum pressure” on Iran—and pledging to hold Iran to account for Houthi actions—the administration aims to create leverage with Iran that Trump hopes could lead to a grand bargain with Tehran. As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth notes in the chat: “This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered.” Earlier in March, Hegseth said on Fox, “We don’t care what happens in the Yemeni civil war.”
Who Will Pay?
Moreover, the texts reveal the Trump administration’s deeply transactional approach to the use of military force. Where previous administrations framed military interventions primarily in terms of security interests or humanitarian concerns, Trump’s team views them with an explicit focus on the bottom line. They want European powers and Egypt—which also benefits from Red Sea trade—to underwrite the cost of what is likely to be an extremely expensive military adventure.
Part of the challenge for national security professionals is that this isn’t foreign policy as we’ve known it for decades. In Trump’s worldview, power projection isn’t an end in itself but rather a means to make money, after which the United States can disengage from armed conflicts and focus on economic competition. As such, it represents a fundamental shift: American military power has become a tool for extracting value or a service with a price tag, not a public good that underwrites global stability.
But will it work? Yemen’s civil war cannot be reduced to a shipping lane dispute any more than Ukraine’s resistance can be measured in mineral exports. The Houthis have survived years of airstrikes and the only way the United States is likely to force them into dealmaking is by backing or participating in a ground campaign (which seems unlikely, given that Hegseth says the United States doesn’t care who wins the Yemen war, with Vice President Vance adding, “no one knows where Yemen is”).
American national security policy has been hidebound and often incoherent for decades. Shaking it up is not by definition a bad thing. But by prioritizing tactical victories and immediate transactions over sustained engagement, Trump risks exacerbating the complex drivers of regional conflicts in the Middle East. Elsewhere in the new administration, Elon Musk has adopted an approach of “move fast, break things, and rebuild.” The first two parts of this mantra may apply to foreign policy in the era of Trump 2.0. The third, less so.
Header Image: President Donald Trump, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen to a question from a reporter during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on March 13, 2025. Source: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Tags: national security, donald trump, yemen
Texting Military Plans Is Bad. American Policy in Yemen Is Worse.
Since news broke that Trump administration officials shared details of military strikes on Yemen via a group chat that included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, condemnation from national security professionals has been swift. But missing from much of the 24/7 news coverage of Signal-gate has been a focus on the actual substance of the text messages and what they reveal about Trump’s approach to the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy more broadly.
If President Trump’s first term was conservative about the use of American hard power and easily influenced by national security experts, the Houthi PC Small Group chat suggests that Trump 2.0 is taking a different approach: one that sees no reason for military restraint when U.S. interests are on the line and isn’t concerned with second-order consequences from the use of force—and that sees the U.S. security umbrella not as a guarantee but as a commodity for sale. This reflects a strong vein of thought on both the left and the right of U.S. foreign policy circles. Yet the policies underlying the leaked attack plans—a “peace through strength, but for a price” strategy—are unlikely to bring peace to the Middle East or make the United States any safer.
Raids Without Strategy
This isn’t Trump’s first foray into Yemen. Eight years ago as a freshly minted first-term president, Trump wanted to kickstart his administration with a show of strength overseas. Military leaders steered him away from his campaign promise to “bomb the hell” out of ISIS in Iraq, and he instead settled on a less ambitious target in a country few Americans had heard of. The subsequent Navy SEAL Team 6 raid in January 2017 on Yakla, a small village in central Yemen, led to the death of about a dozen al-Qaeda operatives, anywhere between ten and thirty innocent civilians, and one U.S. Navy Seal, Ryan Owens.
Trump hailed Owens a hero and the raid a success, despite it missing its main target, Qasim al-Raymi, the operative who went on to lead al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Owens’ family, however, was less convinced: they saw the raid as an act of vanity from a president whose foreign policy instincts would waver unpredictably between aggression and restraint over the next four years.
Now, at the onset of his second term, Yemen is once again in Trump’s crosshairs, albeit on a grander scale. Trump has ordered a widespread bombing campaign of the kind that he wanted to conduct against ISIS, but this time against the militant Houthi movement that has attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea for much of the past eighteen months. And, as the Signal chats show, Trump’s team is laser focused on getting foreign governments who stand to benefit from the U.S. campaign to pick up the check.
The administration has been at pains to favorably contrast its wide-ranging strikes on Houthi targets with the more cautious approach of the Biden administration. It has also made clear that although it is bombing the Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen itself barely figures into the administration’s calculus. By designating the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, launching airstrikes, and threatening “maximum pressure” on Iran—and pledging to hold Iran to account for Houthi actions—the administration aims to create leverage with Iran that Trump hopes could lead to a grand bargain with Tehran. As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth notes in the chat: “This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered.” Earlier in March, Hegseth said on Fox, “We don’t care what happens in the Yemeni civil war.”
Who Will Pay?
Moreover, the texts reveal the Trump administration’s deeply transactional approach to the use of military force. Where previous administrations framed military interventions primarily in terms of security interests or humanitarian concerns, Trump’s team views them with an explicit focus on the bottom line. They want European powers and Egypt—which also benefits from Red Sea trade—to underwrite the cost of what is likely to be an extremely expensive military adventure.
Part of the challenge for national security professionals is that this isn’t foreign policy as we’ve known it for decades. In Trump’s worldview, power projection isn’t an end in itself but rather a means to make money, after which the United States can disengage from armed conflicts and focus on economic competition. As such, it represents a fundamental shift: American military power has become a tool for extracting value or a service with a price tag, not a public good that underwrites global stability.
But will it work? Yemen’s civil war cannot be reduced to a shipping lane dispute any more than Ukraine’s resistance can be measured in mineral exports. The Houthis have survived years of airstrikes and the only way the United States is likely to force them into dealmaking is by backing or participating in a ground campaign (which seems unlikely, given that Hegseth says the United States doesn’t care who wins the Yemen war, with Vice President Vance adding, “no one knows where Yemen is”).
American national security policy has been hidebound and often incoherent for decades. Shaking it up is not by definition a bad thing. But by prioritizing tactical victories and immediate transactions over sustained engagement, Trump risks exacerbating the complex drivers of regional conflicts in the Middle East. Elsewhere in the new administration, Elon Musk has adopted an approach of “move fast, break things, and rebuild.” The first two parts of this mantra may apply to foreign policy in the era of Trump 2.0. The third, less so.
Header Image: President Donald Trump, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen to a question from a reporter during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on March 13, 2025. Source: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Tags: national security, donald trump, yemen