Destroying Yemen

Abstract

The objective of Destroying Yemen is to put South Arabia within a framework of analysis that permits new ways to explore the global transformations driven by “liberalism and market economics” during the 1900-2017 period. Of concern are the kinds of interactions between external parties, primarily driven by globalist doctrines seeking to extract the considerable surplus wealth produced in South Arabia. Crucially, the response from Yemen’s indigenous peoples appears to have global significance. Long self-sufficient and often themselves actively engaged in dynamic trans-regional relations that pre-date the ascendency of global capitalism, looking closely at how Yemenis confront and until now, resist globalist encroachments presents us an opportunity to reinterpret recent events in Yemen and the larger world since the Cold War. In particular, this book analyzes post-war Yemen through its close association with, among other things, a neo-liberal model of economic “development” that ultimately arrives in Yemen via various channels—Egypt’s invasion in 1962, Takfiri violence with Saudi support, and neoliberal “reforms” introduced by stealth over a period of 30 years. The fact that Yemen played an important role in shaping the trajectory of what were global visions for imposing Euro-American power throughout the Middle East, may prove invaluable to a broad range of scholars interested in studying the modern world from the perspective of indigenous agents.