The security environment in the Middle East may be the most complex on earth, with an intricate, volatile and sometimes shifting mixture of destabilizing forces and hostilities. There are deadly power struggles within and between nations. And behind it all is the Middle East’s massive oil production, on which the global economy depends.
The United States first ventured into the Middle East early in the Cold War and has remained heavily involved, particularly since the 1970s. Over the decades, America’s policies and partnerships in the region have evolved, but the basic reasons for U.S. involvement in the Middle East remained consistent: preventing a hostile power from using the region’s petroleum reserves as a weapon. To achieve that objective, the U.S. used direct applications of military power when necessary but relied heavily on local allies, from Egypt to the Gulf states, bolstering them with security assistance and weapons sales.
Now the core assumptions for U.S. involvement in the Middle East are collapsing. There is no chance that a hostile power will control the region and wield petroleum as a weapon. Yet the U.S. still clings to its longstanding, military-centric Middle East strategy even while its underlying assumptions become invalid and its central rationale fades. Today, America’s Middle East strategy is on its last legs, less a reflection of a central purpose than a search for one.
It’s not certain that such a central purpose can even be found. The question confronting the U.S. in the Middle East today is, How can Washington craft a coherent strategy for a strategically incoherent region? Perhaps nowhere is this confusion more visible than in Syria, where the U.S. has struggled to identify its interests, let alone formulate a consistent approach to the country’s civil war, in part because it is actually several conflicts at once. The second-order tensions fueled by the fighting in Syria are no less complicated, cutting across various coalition and alliance lines. And things don’t get any easier when you consider the regional picture, where Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are engaged in a confrontation with Iran, but also in an intra-Gulf conflict with Qatar. In the face of such strategic chaos and confusion, it helps to simplify. What would the U.S. like to achieve? And what means is it willing to use to do so?
What mark will Donald Trump leave on America’s Middle East policy? Ever since he became president of the United States, the Middle East has been abuzz with speculation about what exactly he intends to do in the region. There has been much talk about his plans for getting tough on Iran and strengthening ties with Israel. But there is another idea that is making the rounds. According to a number of reports, Trump is aiming to forge a new security alliance, with Arab countries at the core, along with the U.S. and, in what would constitute a groundbreaking development, Israel. The notion that Trump seeks to formalize the mostly secret and informal ties between Israel and Gulf Arab states has been bolstered by a number of public statements since he took office, and there is growing evidence that something is, indeed, afoot. It is early yet to know how far the idea has moved. The timing for this type of alliance is as good as it has ever been, but that doesn’t mean that it is good enough.
As the reasons for U.S. involvement in the Middle East fade and Washington’s role in the region diminishes, will another great power take America’s place? Both Russia and China insist they do not want to replace the U.S. in the Middle East, but they are still intent on expanding their regional influence. The Russians are undeniably on the move, building on their Syrian strategy to deepen cooperation with Iran and move in that direction with Turkey, too. In the Arab world, Egypt’s fiercely anti-Islamist leadership may open the country’s doors to Moscow again, while across the region, Russia is getting more attention and respect as an outside player and broker than it has had for decades. China, the other contender for a bigger role in the Middle East, is aiming not to confront or compete with the U.S., but to fill vacuums when needed and to promote Chinese economic and political interests. For decades, one of the pillars of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has been to prevent any hostile outside power from dominating the region. Can Washington accommodate these more assertive policies by Moscow and Beijing and still retain its dominant role?
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