The Path to a Post-American Regional Order
- Foreign Affairs
- ,
In
the early weeks of 2024, as the catastrophic war in the Gaza Strip
began to inflame the broader region, the stability of the Middle East
appeared to be once again at the center of the U.S. foreign policy
agenda. In the initial days after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, the
Biden administration moved two aircraft carrier strike groups and a
nuclear-powered submarine to the Middle East, while a steady stream
of senior U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, began making
high-profile trips to the region. Then, as the conflict became more
difficult to contain, the United States went further. In early
November, in response to attacks on U.S. military personnel in Iraq
and Syria by Iranian-backed groups, the United States conducted
strikes on weapons sites in Syria used by Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps; in early January, U.S. forces killed a
senior commander of one of these groups in Baghdad. And in
mid-January, after weeks of attacks on commercial ships in the Red
Sea by the Houthi movement, which is also supported by Iran, the
United States, together with the United Kingdom, initiated a series
of strikes on Houthi strongholds in Yemen.Despite this show of force,
it would be unwise to bet on the United States’ committing major
diplomatic and security resources to the Middle East over the longer
term. Well before Hamas’s October 7 attacks, successive U.S.
administrations had signaled their intent to shift away from the
region to devote more attention to a rising China. The Biden
administration has also been contending with Russia’s war in
Ukraine, further limiting its bandwidth for coping with the Middle
East. By 2023, U.S. officials had largely given up on a revived
nuclear agreement with Iran, seeking instead to reach informal
de-escalation arrangements with their Iranian counterparts. At the
same time, the administration was bolstering the military capacity of
regional partners such as Saudi Arabia in an effort to transfer some
of the security burden from Washington. Despite Biden’s early
reluctance to do business with Riyadh — whose leadership U.S.
intelligence believes was responsible for the 2018 killing of the
Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi —
the president prioritized a deal to normalize relations between Saudi
Arabia and Israel. In pursuing the deal, the United States was
willing to offer significant incentives to both sides while mostly
ignoring the Palestinian issue.
