By Mike Sweeney
Is it too early to begin planning for the United States to leave the Middle East? There’s a strong argument to be made it’s not. Over the past few years discussion of the United States decamping from the region—or at least significantly downsizing its basing footprint—has finally entered mainstream foreign policy debates. Articles like “America’s Middle East Purgatory” by Mara Karlin and Tamara Cofman Wittes in Foreign Affairs and “The Middle East Isn’t Worth It Anymore” by Martin Indyk in The Wall Street Journal examined the ways in which the region has decreased in importance to US interests. As a result, there has been a renewed willingness to look at the necessity of the extensive US basing footprint developed over the past thirty years.
In truth, most intellectual energy is still being spent on whether the United States should leave the Middle East, not how. But, as I argued in these pages eighteen months ago, a plan will eventually be needed for a US departure for several reasons. Not least of these is that the United States has never attempted to withdraw from a major geographic region since the global expansion of its military footprint in the wake of the Second World War.
In this regard, there is a British precedent that offers some insights. When the United Kingdom quit its role as the region’s default balancer in the late 1960s, it did so by publicly announcing a ten-year withdrawal plan (later shortened to five years.) The transparency with which London maneuvered out of the region helped limit instability in its wake. This example’s utility has its limits, of course, since the British were handing off to another power. When the United States departs the Middle East, it’ll leave the region without an external balancer for the first time in over a century.
This piece was originally published in The Modern War Institute on January 18, 2021. Read more HERE.