Yemen is a backwater of the Arab world, and as such, tends to get the backwash of ideological movements further north.

By Arab standards, Yemen is a democracy, a dysfunctional democracy with feuding clans that own their own tanks and missile launchers, but a democracy nonetheless. There is still AQ activity there, though, if only because of its relative freedom and its sheer proximity to the Saudi Kingdom.

The geopolitical architecture of the Middle East is far more stable in last eighty years than it was in previous centuries. There were three major powers, the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, and the Sea Empire*. They constantly jostled for position. It is the very existence of a Wahhabi kingdom stretching from Hasa to Hijaz that is the historical anomaly.

Democracy will not solve all problems in the Middle East; it probably won’t even solve most of them. Adopting democracy won’t even make the locals like us any better, but it would be an improvement over the status quo, even for Americans. Geopolitical rivalry is part of life, but so is ideology. A vicious ideology of anti-freedom has taken root in the Middle East, and this is important because ideological influences often attain a power greater than parochial rivalry.

An undue focus on parochial rivalry can often blind statesmen to the importance of the big picture. At present, our principal ideological enemies are the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (sponsored by the House of Saud) and Khomeiniist Shi’ites, and the main reason for their rivalry with each other is precisely because they have so much in common. They are quite capable of allying against us though, if only in the sense of Nazis and Communists working together against western democracies between 1939 and 1941.

* The “Sea Empire” refers to the hegemonic power of the Indian Ocean. It could variously refer to Portugal, Oman, the British Empire, and presently the United States.