Americans’ lack of appetite for more conflict is obvious to regional actors, regardless of the United States’ military presence. At the same time, polls show most Americans believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting and that the US public is unenthusiastic about involvement in new wars in the region. Although jihadi terrorism has hardly disappeared, the threat is mostly local and manageable with only a small, residual US military presence, if that.įoreign policy elites are reluctant to acknowledge the limits of American power. Yet, by all appearances, the US military presence has had little impact on a range of festering, multilayered civil and internationalized conflicts in, for example, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and has failed to solve lingering instability in Iraq or avert near-state failure in Lebanon. Even after the drawdown of most US military personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States continues to station tens of thousands of troops in the Greater Middle East (varying with the ebb and flow of developments) and also maintains a ring of air and naval bases there. US national security policy seems impervious to its own demonstrable failures and to the vastly altered economic and geopolitical circumstances in the region. US posture and policy toward the Middle East has been largely unchanged for decades. Substantially changed regional and global circumstances, as well as shifting US strategic imperatives, require a new US strategy. President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan might mark an inflection point-the beginning of a wider recognition that, twenty years after 9/11, the blood and treasure ($6.4 trillion) spent in the Greater Middle East has brought few benefits to US interests and neither peace nor stability to the region. An emphasis on access agreements, combined with robust diplomacy, would allow Washington to foster a stable equilibrium in the region. The United States should reduce its network of air and naval bases in the Greater Middle East and design a much smaller footprint tailored to redefined requirements.

Radical geopolitical and economic change in the Greater Middle East and new US strategic priorities with regard to core US interests-ensuring oil flows, maintaining Israel's security, preventing the rise of a dominant regional hegemon, and countering terrorism-require a zero-based rethinking of US strategy and posture in the region.The region remains one of the poorest and most conflict-prone in the world. Decades of costly and inconclusive US wars in the Greater Middle East have produced neither peace nor stability.

Greater middle east countries