Jean-Marie Guéhenno calls on the administration to pursue a diplomatic solution in Yemen:

As President Obama enters the twilight of his term and looks back at a Middle East on fire, Yemen, the forgotten war, offers the chance of a diplomatic success. After a year of military stalemate, both sides have agreed on a range of steps that could end the war. Closing a deal is far from guaranteed. But, if it is to happen at all, it requires immediate and consistent diplomatic follow-up and pressure on U.S. allies [bold mine-DL], something that has been sorely absent thus far.

If the United States fails to get negotiations back on track, the next administration will inherit yet another unwinnable war in the Middle East — one that is making its Gulf allies less secure, expanding opportunities for al-Qaeda and cultivating anti-American sentiment in generations to come.

This is what the U.S. should do, but unfortunately we know very well by now that it won’t. The point of the administration’s backing for the war is to placate our so-called “allies” in the Gulf, and so putting pressure on them is exactly what Obama and Kerry won’t do. One of the consistent failings in the Obama administration’s dealings with other states is refusing to use influence when the U.S. has leverage while making demands of those with whom it has little or no influence. Obama is very quick to issue decrees about what this or that foreign leader “must” do, provided that the leader runs a government the U.S. doesn’t provide with weapons or aid, but when the leader runs a client state he is never required to do anything to secure continued U.S. support.

The governments that the U.S. could potentially influence for the better are never put under any pressure, and at the same time Washington tries to compel changes in behavior from those that it doesn’t and can’t influence. The conventional wisdom is that Obama fails because he is too accommodating to adversaries and too “tough” on so-called “allies,” but the truth is that he sets himself up to fail by doing almost exactly the opposite. Obama has repeatedly called on adversaries to do things he can’t make them do, and he bends over backwards to demonstrate support for client states no matter how often they try to undermine his policies or how reckless and harmful their actions are.

Instead of reining in bad clients, the administration has consistently indulged and rewarded them with record-setting levels of weapons and aid. Not surprisingly, the bad clients have learned that they can do as they like without ever risking even the temporary loss of U.S. backing. It is not a coincidence that this has left the U.S. in the absurd position of enabling the clients’ worst behavior and therefore being effectively useless as a mediator in regional conflicts. Because the U.S. automatically supports its clients in their conflicts with others and refuses to put any pressure on them, it cannot be a trustworthy mediator and can’t even push its clients into accepting a settlement negotiated by others. Reflexive support for these states doesn’t just encourage them in their worst habits, but also throws away the clout that the U.S. could have when the need arises to bring them to the table and keep them there until a deal can be reached. This manages to combine all the worst problems of being a patron with none of the potential advantages. In the case of Yemen, it means making the U.S. thoroughly complicit in the crimes of a coalition war effort over which the U.S. has no control.