Biden’s Middle East won’t look like Trump’s

If Biden wins, what difference will that make in the Middle East?

1. Iran: Biden will have the same goal as Trump: an expanded and extended agreement that prevents Tehran from getting nuclear weapons, limits its missile ambitions, and gets it to pull back from interference in the region, especially in Yemen and Syria. But the two candidates differ on means. Trump used only “maximum pressure” through sanctions, gray zone warfare, and threats of military action. Biden will add incentives through some sanctions relief and possibly security assurances, but he will be critical of Iranian human rights abuses.
2. Israel/Palestine: Trump has sought, with his right-wing Israeli friends, to prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state. Biden will differ on this goal and try to restore the prospect of a two-state solution by limiting Israeli settlement expansion on the West Bank while ensuring Israel’s security. Biden will not reverse Trump’s move of the US embassy from Jerusalem. He may consider renewed American contributions to Palestinian relief through the UN.
3. The Arab Gulf states: Biden will differ from Trump on both goals and means. He will be prepared to raise human rights issues and will not shield the Saudis from international criticism, as Trump has done. Acting on the basis of a growing bipartisan consensus in Congress, Biden will seek to end the Trump/Obama policy of support for the Yemen war. Wanting to phase out fossil fuels, Biden will not intervene as Trump did to raise oil prices (when Moscow and Riyadh engaged in a price war last spring). Biden will be supportive of the “Abrahamic” agreements for recognition of Israel by the UAE and Bahrain (as well as Sudan).

Biden shares with Trump the conviction that the US needs to draw down in the Middle East and will look for opportunities to do so. But he won’t do it capriciously or unilaterally, as Trump did in Syria and threatened to do in Iraq. Biden will deliberate carefully in making decisions and consult with allies and partners before making dramatic moves. That is a far better way, as abrupt withdrawal could lead to a perilous nuclear arms race among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey that would be difficult to stop.

Here are two additional propositions for Biden to consider:

1. Cooperation with the Gulf’s biggest oil and gas customer, China, in providing security for the Gulf. The US takes little oil through the strait of Hormuz and no gas, so all of the Gulf’s Asian partners (including Japan and South Korea as well as India and China) are free-loading on gigantic US defense expenditures (12% or so of the Pentagon’s budget). It would be much smarter to get China and India to cooperate in a multilateral naval effort, as well as to join the IEA in holding 90 days of strategic stocks. China already patrols (for pirates) just outside the Gulf. Tehran will not be interested in menacing a multilateral effort to protect Hormuz that includes its main oil customers.

2. A regional security arrangement that includes the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran. Intervention in the Middle East hasn’t worked well for the US. Neither has withdrawal. We need to prepare the region diplomatically to ensure its own stability by helping its states to construct a regional security arrangement like those that exist in virtually ever other corner of the world. This diplomatic effort could be much more cost-effective than the last two decades of successful military interventions followed by governance failures.

The Middle East faces a daunting array of issues: unfinished civil wars, sectarian strife, youth bulges, climate change, water shortages, the oil curse, autocracy, state fragility, unemployment, economic underperformance, and growing geopolitical rivalry among China, Russia, and the US. No one should minimize the difficulties, but Biden can make a difference if he eschews unilateralism, seeks to consult all the countries of the region, and tries to get a minimum of agreement among the great powers on a course forward while encouraging the states of the region to stabilize their own neighborhood.