The Changing Military Dynamics of the MENA Region

Anthony H. Cordesman

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The Burke Chair is issuing a comprehensive survey of the changing military dynamics in the Middle East North Africa region. It addresses the shifts by each MENA country as well as subregion, the role of outside powers, and the full range of new military and civil pressures that are changing regional security efforts and the role of outside security assistance.

This survey is entitled The Changing Military Dynamics of the MENA Region. It is available on the CSIS website at https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210302_Cordesman_Military_Dynamics.pdf?aFbaUdiB0knUgNbAmZ_SEJOABTSDemZ7. It is being circulated for comment as a working paper. Please send any comments to Anthony H. Cordesman at acordesman@gmail.com.

The analysis focuses on the fact that the U.S. faces major challenges in its security relations with each state in the Middle East and North Africa as well as from nations outside the MENA region. It still is the dominant outside power in the region, but the security dynamics of the Middle East and North Africa have changed radically over the last decade and will continue to change for the foreseeable future.

At the beginning of 2011, most MENA nations were at peace and seemed to be relatively stable. North African countries were at peace under authoritarian leaders. The Arab-Israeli conflicts were limited to low-level clashes between Israel and Palestine. Egypt acted as a stable major regional power. Iraq’s Islamic extremists seemed to be defeated. Iran was a weak military power dependent on low-grade and dated weapons. The other Arab Gulf states appeared to be unified in a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Yemen was poor and could not meet the needs of many of its people, but it still seemed stable. Military spending and arms purchases were high by global standards, but they only presented a limited to moderate burden on local economies.

Today, none of those things are true. Regional rivalries, extremism, and the series of political uprisings and conflicts that were once called the “Arab Spring” have turned the MENA region into a fragmented mess. What appeared to be a relatively stable pattern of national security developments and outside support before the political upheavals that began in 2011, has now become the scene of local power struggles; internal conflicts; new battles with extremist movements; and major civil wars in Iran, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

Instead of a shift towards democracy, many regimes have become more repressive and authoritarian. Efforts at reforming governance and the economy have fallen far short of the needs of most states. Iran has emerged as a far more serious military threat in the Gulf. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, as well as its fight to defeat extremists and end factional struggles in Iraq that seemed to be ending in 2011, have led to a new struggle with ISIS and two decades in which security assistance meant direct U.S. participation in active combat and combat support of partner forces.

Non-state actors like the Hezbollah, Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs), and Houthis have become significant threats while the U.S. has used security assistance – and newly created Security Force Assistance Brigades – to create its own non-state actors in Syria. Other powers like Russia have provided support, combat troops, and mercenaries to support non-state actors in Libya and Syria. More broadly, Iran, the Assad forces in Syria, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen have created a coalition of hostile powers that threaten both U.S. interest and U.S. strategic partners.

There have been other important changes in the role of outside powers. European powers remain active in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Britain and France still play a role in the Gulf, but their roles have been tentative, and their power projection capabilities have continued to slowly decline. Russia has reasserted itself as a major power and competitor with the U.S. and Europe, and it plays a major security role in Libya and Syria as well as a provider of arms. China has emerged as a major global power and potential competitor in the MENA region, and there are reports that it may play a major security role in Iran. Turkey is playing an active military role in Libya, Syria, and Iraq.

All of these changes are still in play, and the Biden administration must now deal with restructuring both security assistance and the entire U.S. force posture in the MENA region at a time when the U.S. has so far failed to find either a broad strategy or an approach to security assistance that offers security and stability in any given area.

At the same time, the military and security forces in every country in the Middle East and North Africa continue to change in size, structure, and force posture. Each MENA country has to create its own approach to creating new systems of command and control, battle management, secure communications, and dependence on space systems. There are advances in military software and uses of artificial intelligence as well as in all the other aspects of what the U.S. has come to call joint/all-domain operations.

So far, most of the more advanced U.S. security partners – Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – depend on very different degrees of support from the U.S. – and particularly support from the U.S. commands and fleets in the MENA region to support the modernization of their forces for active support in peacetime exercises and operations as well as for advanced operations and interoperability if combat occurs.

Even with U.S. support, the advanced versions of such efforts radically increase the cost and complexity of military and security forces, which involve efforts that most countries are too small or too poor to deploy and afford. There are only three major outside powers – the U.S., Russia, and China – that can provide the full range of capabilities needed to allow interoperable MENA forces to operate at this level.

The end result is that major changes are still taking place in the military and internal security forces of all MENA countries and in every aspect of outside support and security assistance. Moreover, while many MENA countries still spend massive amounts of money on modernizing and expanding their military forces and their major weapons, they have greatly expanded their focus on counterextremism, counterterrorism, and internal security. As a result, their dependence on the U.S., Russia, China, and other outside forces is steadily increasing and will continue to do so indefinitely into the future.

As this analysis explores in detail, these changes impose new demands on U.S. security assistance efforts. Many MENA states have focused on acquiring advanced ballistic and cruise missiles, a wide range of precision-guided weapons, integrated mixes of land-based air and missile defenses, and a wide range of other developments in military technology and tactics. Gray area operations and hybrid warfare have become added sources of change in the military character of the region, as has the support of rebel and other separatist factions in neighboring states. Many U.S. strategic partners have generally needed added security assistance in restructuring; equipping; intelligence; and operations for their counterterrorism, counterextremism, and counterinsurgency forces.