It’s gotten little attention on the campaign trail, but the next U.S. president will face high-stakes decisions about the future of America’s open-ended military engagements around the world — engagements that risk turning into a new wave of “forever wars” that suck up American security and economic resources indefinitely.

The military campaigns in Somalia, Syria and Yemen have mostly been drowned out by the much more publicized Israel-Iran proxy war in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, both of which have offered key contrasts between Republican candidate ​and former President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Analysts say that not only have the American operations across the Mideast and Africa been largely absent from the national discourse this election season, there’s also little clarity from either Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris on exactly what they would do about them if elected.

“In terms of what pressure they’ll face to do anything one way or the other, I think that pressure is going to be quite weak, if nothing changes,” said Andrew Payne, a lecturer in foreign policy at City St. George’s, University of London, who studies the politics of U.S. foreign policy.

“None of these conflicts are on the radar of the average American voter,” he said in an interview. “As a result of that, neither candidate has articulated a clear position on them.”

Murky road ahead in Yemen

Both candidates will likely feel pressure to scale back, at some point, expensive U.S. counterterrorism campaigns in both the Middle East and Africa​. It’s in line with the broader push ​by U.S. policymakers of both parties to dedicate more military assets to the Pacific, ​the world’s most dynamic economic region where an increasingly powerful and aggressive communist China poses what virtually all observers agree is the single greatest ​challenge to America and its allies in the 21st century.

At the same time, each of the​ hostile groups in question — Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the ​terrorist organizations of the Islamic State in Syria and al-Shabab in Somalia — pose very real threats to ​U.S. interests and could fuel significant violence and regional instability if left unchecked.

The U.S.-led bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi ​forces in Yemen has certainly received more attention than other ongoing American military operations. That U.S. engagement — which has no clear metrics for success and no clear timetable — is a piece of the broader conflict between the U.S. and Israel and Iran and its proxy network across the Middle East. The ​Pentagon in January launched its air campaign against the Houthis, who began targeting ​international commercial ships with missiles and drones shortly after Hamas, another Iran-​allied militant group, launched its Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.

The Biden administration has now embraced a leading and perhaps irreplaceable role as the leader of a coalition ensuring that commercial ship traffic can safely sail through the Red Sea and other regional waterways. If the Houthis continue to try to attack those ships, it’s not clear how or when the ​Pentagon and its military allies can wind down ​the mission in Yemen without a major impact on the global economy.

The operation is also exceedingly expensive. There are no exact figures for how much the U.S. has spent battling the Houthis, but it’s widely believed to be in the billion​s of dollars.

Ms. Harris, by virtue of serving as vice president in a Biden administration that began the Houthi bombing campaign, presumably backs the effort, to at least some degree. She hasn’t articulated whether she would ramp up that operation if elected president, or if she’d seek to wind it down.

Mr. Trump earlier this year seemed to criticize the mission, framing it as another war that could have been avoided with better U.S. leadership.

“So, let me get this straight. We’re dropping bombs all over the Middle East, AGAIN​! … Now we have wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Yemen, but no ’war’ on our southern border,” he said in a Truth Social post in January.

As president, Mr. Trump ​went aggressively after Islamic State and officially designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization. President Biden rescinded that designation shortly after taking office, ​arguing it was an impediment to a negotiated end to Yemen’s own bloody civil war, though the administration subsequently labeled the​ rebel forces a “specially designated global terrorist group.”​ Houthi leaders say they began the military campaign against Red Sea shipping in solidarity with Palestinian Hamas fighters battling Israel in Gaza.

Under the next administration, the U.S. could accelerate its bombing of the Houthis as both a way to put additional pressure on Iran, the Houthis’ chief patron, and as a show of support for Israel. The Houthis have directly targeted Israel with drones and missiles on multiple occasions.

No matter who wins the Nov. 5 election, some foreign policy specialists say that the ​next administration can and should exert much more pressure on the rebel group.

“Look at the Houthis of Yemen. This is a terrorist group backed by Iran. Instead of shooting the archers, we’ve been shooting the arrows,” Clifford D. May, founder and president of the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently told The Washington Times’ “Threat Status Podcast.”

“We can’t deter or defeat the Houthis with the American military? Now, I would argue it’s not a matter of capabilities. It’s a matter of will,” he said. “We haven’t been willing to do it.”

Decisions on Somalia, Syria

For Mr. Trump, at least, the path of U.S. campaigns in Somalia and Syria is easier to envision. As president, Mr. Trump pulled American troops out of Somalia, where they had been backing a weak central government in Mogadishu in its fight against al-Shabab, a terror network loyal to al Qaeda.

Mr. Biden put about 500 U.S. troops back in Somalia in 2022, and the U.S. counterterrorism mission against al-Shabab has continued in the years since.

There is no clear end date for that operation, though it is conceivable that Mr. Trump could seek to end it. It’s not clear what Ms. Harris might do, though her position as sitting vice president suggests that she at least tacitly supported the decision to put troops back in Somalia and continue counterterrorism operations there.

The future of the roughly 900 U.S. troops in Syria could be even clearer under a second Trump term. In his first term, Mr. Trump twice tried to withdraw all forces from the country, where the U.S. maintains a presence to battle the Islamic State. Russian forces and Iran-backed militias are also active in Syria, adding geopolitical complications to the equation.

And the Syria conflict remains very much a hot war: U.S. fighter planes struck a number of Islamic State group camps in Syria this week, killing as many as 35 militants, officials at U.S. Central Command said Wednesday.

The airstrikes in the desert of central Syria were done Monday evening and targeted multiple locations and senior leaders of the group. The attacks came on the heels of a number of joint operations with Iraqi forces that ISIS militants in Iraq.

Mr. Trump’s desire to fully withdraw from Syria failed during his first term. Leaders in the Pentagon, and some influential figures in the Republican Party, succeeded in convincing the administration to shift its plans for a full withdrawal — though Mr. Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, argued recently that the leadership atop the Defense Department essentially ignored ​Mr. Trump’s direct orders.

Mr. Vance said that their ​opposition to Mr. Trump over American military engagements in the region, including in Syria,​ is a central reason why some former military leaders who served under the previous administration have been so vocal in their criticism of Mr. Trump during this election cycle.

“They were wrong about the quagmire in Afghanistan. They were wrong about Syria. They were wrong about everything, and now they’re coming after Donald Trump, because he actually has a realistic and cautious foreign policy,” Mr. Vance told CNN’s “State of the Union” program recently.

He ​argued that​ retired Gen. Mark A. Milley​, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for much of Mr. Trump’s first term in office, “disobeyed Trump’s direct orders on troop deployments in Syria.”

Mr. Payne, the City St. George’s, University of London analyst, said Mr. Trump may have learned from that experience.

“I think Trump would probably be more wise to that now,” he said. “He would potentially come with a stronger game plan, a stronger determination to overcome that. I think on Harris’ side, it’s a bit more of an open question actually.”

Under Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, the U.S. in September announced that its anti-ISIS mission in Iraq will wind down over the next year, though the new approach is not expected to directly​ affect the American ​troop deployment in neighboring Syria.