Why the US just can't quit Middle East wars

Vox

6 days ago

is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map.
A view of the famous anti-US mural in central Tehran, Iran, that depicts the US flag with bombs and skulls on April 10. Hossein Beris/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
In April 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized Operation Eagle Claw, an ill-fated military operation to rescue the American hostages held at the US embassy in Iran. Since then, every US president has ordered at least one — usually more than one — military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa.
Under Ronald Reagan, there was the bombing of Libya and the deployment of Marines to Lebanon. Under George H.W. Bush, there was Operation Desert Storm. Under Bill Clinton, airstrikes against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and against al-Qaeda in Sudan. Under George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq. Under Barack Obama, a multicountry counterterrorist drone campaign, the toppling of Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime in Libya, and the redeployment of US troops to Iraq to fight ISIS. Under Donald Trump's first term, an expanded campaign against ISIS, missile strikes against the Syrian regime, and the targeted assassination of Iran's most powerful military leaders. Under Joe Biden, the deployment of US troops to the region following the October 7, 2023, attack and the airstrikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels.
Now, in his second term, Trump has crossed another Rubicon, becoming the first US president to use military force on the soil of America's longtime adversary, Iran. Though a ceasefire has now been declared, it's very possible this crisis is only beginning, particularly if, as US intelligence agencies reportedly believe, much of Iran's nuclear program is still intact after the strikes.
Trump's pivot toward the Middle East is a surprising turn from this president. This is a very different message from the one he delivered in Saudi Arabia just last month when he decried 'neocons' and 'interventionists' for ill-considered attempts to remake the region through force. Trump has said in the past, in reference to the Iraq war, that 'GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY,' and he has generally appeared to view the region — apart from wealthy Gulf States — as a hopeless war zone with little to offer the US.
While he was often stymied in his attempts to withdraw troops in his first term by hawkish advisers, this time many of his senior appointees have been so-called 'restrainers,' who advocate pulling back from US military commitments overseas or 'prioritizers,' who want to shift attention to what they see as the more important challenge posed by China. Until very recently, they appeared to have the upper hand. But in the current crisis, the US actually relocated important military assets from the Pacific to the Middle East to the consternation of some Pentagon officials.
The stated desire to end 'endless wars' in the Middle East and shift to bigger priorities is something the Trump administration has in common with the other two post-Iraq war presidencies. Barack Obama was elected in large part because of his opposition to the war in Iraq. In 2011, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, promised a 'pivot' to Asia and the Pacific for US foreign policy priorities. The Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS got in the way of that, and the phrase 'pivot to Asia' became a running joke in US foreign policy circles. Joe Biden withdrew US troops from Afghanistan — not a Middle Eastern country but very much the archetypal 'endless war' of the post-9/11 era — and put forward a foreign policy vision emphasizing great power competition with China. His national security adviser infamously described the Middle East as 'quieter than it has been in decades' just days before the October 7 attacks shattered that quiet and shifted his boss's priorities.
'Right now, President Trump is having what I call his 'Michael Corleone' moment, and at some point, every president has one,' said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, referring to Al Pacino's famous line in The Godfather III, 'Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.'
But why does this dynamic keep repeating? Why, 45 years after Operation Eagle Claw and 22 after the invasion of Iraq, can't the US military 'get out' of this region?
The Middle East is still important…and still has a lot of problems
One big reason why the US keeps getting drawn into the Middle East's crises is that those crises keep happening.
'The Middle East is an area of enduring national security interest of the United States, and it's far from stable,' said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'And as a result, we're going to keep getting dragged in until it reaches something resembling stability.'
Why is it an important interest? The simple answer is economics. The Middle East contains two of the global economy's most important chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global oil flows, and the Red Sea, through which 12 percent of global trade flowed until shipping was disrupted by Houthi attacks.
The 'no blood for oil' slogans of Iraq War protesters were an oversimplification, but it's undoubtedly true that keeping the region's oil and gas flowing to the world has been a US priority since Franklin Roosevelt met with the king of Saudi Arabia aboard a cruiser on the Suez Canal in 1945, kicking off the modern US-Saudi relationship. In the 1970s, the principle that the US would use military force to prevent any country from a hostile takeover of the Gulf region, and its vast energy supplies, was enshrined as the 'Carter Doctrine.'
Today, thanks to domestic production, the US is much less directly dependent on Middle Eastern oil than it used to be, but disruptions in the region can cause global energy prices to spike.
Beyond economics, events ranging from the 9/11 attacks to the Syrian refugee crisis have illustrated that the Middle East's regional politics don't always stay regional.
America's unique relationship with Israel is another reason why the US is continually involved in regional crises. For decades, the US has supported Israel and attempted, with mixed success, to help mediate its relationships with its neighbors and with the Palestinian territories. But the US military actually actively participating in Israel's wars rather than just sending weapons — as happened to some extent under Biden and now much more explicitly under Trump — is a fairly new dynamic.
America is still the region's preeminent outside power
Ever since the 1960s, when Britain withdrew many of its 'East of Suez' troop deployments, America has been the preeminent military power in the region. That remains true despite growing concern in Washington about China or Russia's influence.
When crises do erupt, the US, with more than 40,000 troops in bases throughout the region and close security and political partnerships with key powers in the region, is often the outside power best positionedto intervene. When the Houthis began attacking shipping traveling through the Red Sea, there was little question of what country would lead the operation to combat them, much to the irritation of America Firsters like Vice President JD Vance.
Michael Wahid Hanna, director of the US program at Crisis Group, says another reason the US often feels compelled to intervene in Middle East crises is that it 'had a major role in fomenting' something. He pointed to what he called the 'two great sins of the post-Cold War era for the United States,' the failure to secure a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the 1990s, when the US enjoyed far more leverage than it does today, and the invasion of Iraq. Both continue to drive instability in the region today.
As Secretary of State Colin Powell's famous 'Pottery Barn rule' warned in the run-up to the war in Iraq, 'if you break it, you own it.'
What if we're the problem?
Advocates of US engagement in the Middle East argue that if we pull back, it will create power vacuums that will be filled by malign actors. Obama felt compelled to redeploy US troops to Iraq just three years after withdrawing them when the country's military collapsed in the face of ISIS.
But advocates of foreign policy restraint argue that the US isn't doomed to keep intervening, and that its presence isn't actually helping.
Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes that US security partnerships can actually embolden governments in the Middle East to escalate crises, knowing that they can count on US support to deal with the consequences. The most recent illustration is Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to attack Iran, made under the correct assumption that he would have backup from the Trump administration.
'What we have is a delusion in which we think that we can continue to maintain close security partnerships with states in the Middle East, station hundreds of thousands of US service members around the region indefinitely, and that somehow the next bombing will restore deterrence, and we'll get to peace and stability,' he said. 'That hasn't worked for my whole lifetime.
Taking the long view
Whether you think America is uniquely positioned to provide stability or that it's the cause of the instability, voters should probably treat promises of pivots away from the Middle East with skepticism.
Promising to bring American troops home is always going to be a political winner. And whether it's a rising China or America's own borders, one thing there's agreement on across the political spectrum is that America's core security interests are not in the Middle East. That's especially true as the country's post-9/11 focus on terrorism has faded.
But, says Michael Rubin, senior fellow and Mideast specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, 'Most Americans understand history through the lens of four-year increments. We believe each administration starts with a tabula rasa.'
Administrations are often optimistic that one military campaign (such as Israel's recent decimation of Iran's Axis of Resistance) or one grand bargain (such as the Biden administration's attempts to reach a Saudi-Israel normalization deal that would also revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process) will resolve the region's issues enough that America can move on to other things.
The region's leaders, many of whom have been in power for decades, often take a longer view. More likely is that the regional crises, some of which we've played a role in creating, will be occupying America's attention for administrations to come.