Diplomacy for drawdown

Marc Lynch, after describing well the security dilemmas and state fragility that are driving Middle East conflicts, concludes:

US hegemony in the Middle East will never be restored because the region has fundamentally changed. Moving beyond the wars and political failures that followed the Arab uprisings will not be easy. The damage is too deep.

The question is: should Americans worry about that? Marc doesn’t answer that question, but Steven Metz does.

American interests in the Middle East are usually defined along these lines:

1. Countering international terrorism
2. Ensuring oil and gas can flow without hindrance to world markets
3. Supporting friends and allies
4. Preventing nuclear proliferation

Steven essentially says the threat of international terrorism is overblown, US energy vulnerability is vastly reduced (“Petroleum will not be weaponized”), and US friends and allies can (mostly) take of themselves. He doesn’t deal with the proliferation issue, but he really doesn’t have to, because he is talking mainly about military commitments. Military action has never been a good option for dealing with nuclear proliferation, since it would provide a very strong incentive for acquiring nuclear weapons.

Steven’s conclusion: the US should withdraw its military from the Middle East and rely instead on “off-shore balancing” to ensure that no rival hegemon is able to control the region and intervene only in the event that one threatens US interests. The savings could be gigantic: RAND estimated that in 2008 12-15% of the Pentagon budget was spent to securing oil from the Persian Gulf.

Washing our hands of the Middle East is an attractive proposition. Unfortunately it is one that President Obama tried, without a great deal of success. President Trump is tempted in the same direction. But withdrawal has left the many of the vacuums that Marc describes so well, generating security dilemmas and military responses that have left Syria, Yemen, and Libya in ruins and erstwhile American friends like Israel, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates at odds and hedging.

It is difficult to see how the United States can withdraw from the Middle East without a focused diplomatic effort to ensure that the region can restore a modicum of stability,or at least remove some of the drivers of instability. Offshore balancing won’t work if there is no balance but only chaos. The Trump Administration is said to be preparing for a Summit to restore some coherence to GCC next month. That makes sense: there will be no serious effort to counter Iran’s behavior in the region so long as Qatar is feuding with the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

But the Administration also needs to end its own feuding with Turkey and restore some balance to its policy on Palestine to make it more palatable to Sunni Arab friends. And it needs to reconsider its position on the Iran deal, which threatens to seriously undermine relations with Europe.

So yes, I agree that we should draw down, if not completely out, from the the Middle East. But there is a lot of diplomatic homework required to make that possible. And a very real possibility that the Administration will focus instead on countering Iran, leading it to increase rather than decrease its military commitments in the region.