STEPHEN M.

WALT

U.S. Middle East

Strategy: Back to
Balancing
As I promised in my last post, today I want to offer a somewhat different view of
U.S. strategy in the Middle East. I’ve been traveling for the past 10 days, giving
talks at several venues in the United Kingdom and attending the World Economic
Forum’s meeting of Global Agenda Councils in Abu Dhabi. There ...
BY STEPHEN M. WALT
| NOVEMBER 21, 2013, 12:46 PM

Photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

As I promised in my last post, today I want to offer a somewhat different view

of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. I’ve been traveling for the past 10 days,
giving talks at several venues in the United Kingdom and attending the World
Economic Forum’s meeting of Global Agenda Councils in Abu Dhabi. There
was a lot of discussion of America’s evolving role in the world at these
meetings, and I intend to revisit some of those issues in subsequent posts. But
for now, a few thoughts on the Middle East, which is in the news big time
these days.

For me, any discussion of U.S. strategy has to begin by acknowledging

America’s remarkably favorable international position in the world. In the
endless quest to identify and neutralize new threats — both real and imagined
— Americans often forget just how secure the United States is, especially
compared with other states. As I’ve noted many times before, the United
States is blessed with a large population, abundant resources, fertile land,
navigable rivers, and a technologically sophisticated economy that encourages
innovation. These core sources of American power are highly robust, which
means that U.S. security and prosperity depend more on what happens at
home than on anything that might happen abroad.
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Furthermore, the United States has no serious rivals in the Western

Hemisphere. It is protected — still! — by two vast oceans. As the French
ambassador to the United States said in 1910: "The United States was blessed
among nations. On the north, she had a weak neighbor; on the south, another
weak neighbor; on the east, fish, and on the west, fish." Today, the United
States possesses the world’s most capable conventional military forces and
most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, giving Washington a deterrent power that
others can only envy. Indeed, the main reason the United States can roam
around concerning itself with other countries’ business (and interfering in
various ways) is because it doesn’t have to worry about defending itself against
foreign invasions, blockades, and the like.
One consequence of this favorable position, by the way, is that the country
routinely blows minor threats out of all proportion. I mean: Iran has a defense
budget of about $10 billion (less than 1/50th of what the United States spends
on national security), yet we manage to convince ourselves that Iran is a Very
Serious Threat to U.S. vital interests. Ditto the constant fretting about minor-
league powers like Syria, North Korea, Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya, and
other so-called "rogue states."

When we talk about U.S. strategy in the Middle East, therefore, we need to
start by recognizing that the United States is in very good shape, and a lot of
what happens in that part of the world may not matter very much to the
country in the long run. Put differently, no matter what happens there, the
United States can almost certainly adjust and adapt and be just fine.

So what are U.S. interests in the Middle East? I’d say the United States has
three strategic interests and two moral interests. The three strategic interests
are 1) keeping oil and gas from the region flowing to world markets, to keep
the global economy humming; 2) minimizing the danger of anti-American
terrorism; and 3) inhibiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The
two moral interests are 1) promotion of human rights and participatory
government, and 2) helping ensure Israel’s survival.

A few comments: The strategic interests haven’t changed much for decades,
though the vigor with which the United States has pursued them has varied
depending on circumstances. As for the moral interests, there has often been a
trade-off between moral aspirations and practical strategic realities, as shown
by U.S. tolerance for authoritarian regimes in various countries. Similarly, the
moral basis of America’s commitment to Israel has weakened over time, both
because Israel has become increasingly secure from external threats (it is the
strongest military power in the region at this point) and because its own
character and conduct (i.e., the continued campaign to colonize the West Bank
and suppress Palestinian Arab rights) is increasingly at odds with core U.S.
values.

The best way to pursue these five goals — especially the first three — is a
realist, balance-of-power policy, akin to the policy that the United States
followed from 1945 to 1990. During this period, the United States acted as an
"offshore balancer" in the region. It had close security ties to several countries
and clear strategic interests, and the central U.S. goal was to prevent any
single country — especially the Soviet Union — from dominating the region.
So long as the Greater Middle East was divided into many separate powers, no
 one country could halt the flow of oil and most oil producers would have
obvious incentives to sell it at the world market price.

The United States didn’t need to dominate the region itself; it just had to make
sure no one else did. Accordingly, the country relied on local allies for the
most part, and it kept its own military forces out of the region save for brief
and rare moments. Even after the Iranian revolution led to the creation of the
Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, the United States kept those units over
the horizon and only brought them into the region when the balance of power
broke down. The United States tilted toward Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War
and then balanced vigorously against Iraq when Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait in 1990.

After 1991, the United States departed from this strategy in two steps. First, it
adopted the odd strategy of "dual containment": Instead of using Iraq and
Iran to check each other, Washington took on the task of containing both. This
strategy required the United States to keep large military contingents in Saudi
Arabia, thereby reinforcing Osama bin Laden’s animus and helping produce
the 9/11 attacks. Second, George W. Bush administration adopted the even
more foolish strategy of "regional transformation," which led directly to the
disastrous debacle in Iraq. Apart from the direct costs, extensive U.S.
interference had two obvious negative effects: It helped fuel anti-American
terrorism, and it gave some regional powers additional incentives to pursue
weapons of mass destruction.

Given these realities and the need to devote more strategic attention to Asia,
the obvious solution for the United States is to return to its earlier strategy.
This is now seen in some quarters as a "retreat" or a "withdrawal," and various
U.S. client states are uttering the usual dark warnings about American
"credibility" being on the line. We should not make too much of these self-
serving complaints, in part because U.S. credibility is mostly their problem,
not ours. But more importantly, a return to offshore balancing doesn’t mean
the United States does not care about the region — the country cared plenty in
the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s — it just means it is defending its interests
in a smarter and more cost-effective way.

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The main obstacle to this step is the United States’ various "special
relationships" with certain regional powers. I refer, of course, to the mostly
unconditional aid and support that the country gives to Israel and to a slightly
lesser degree Saudi Arabia. (One might also add Mubarak-era Egypt to that
list.) Over the past 25 years or so, the United States has increasingly supported
these states no matter what they have done at home or abroad and has turned
a blind eye to their various actions that haven’t served U.S. interests (and in
many cases, that weren’t good for these countries either). The underlying
reasons for these "special relationships" vary, but overly intimate relations
with these states have robbed U.S. diplomacy of t
he flexibility that is essential to a sensible regional strategy.

At the same time, the United States has also been hampered by certain long-
lasting enmities with Qaddafi’s Libya, Syria, Iraq, and most especially Iran. To
be sure: The United States has had genuine conflicts of interest and/or values
with each of these regimes and good reasons to press them to change policies
that it regards as threatening or immoral. But the recurring tendency to
demonize every one of these governments and to exaggerate their power has
also made it harder to influence their conduct and to cooperate at those
moments when interests aligned. This has been most tragically evident in the
case of Iran, which reached out to the United States in the 1990s, after 9/11, in
2003, and again in 2005, only to be sharply rebuffed each time.

Given U.S. interests, the country would be much better off with a more
nuanced and flexible approach. To be blunt: The United States is too close to
its current allies and too hostile to some of its adversaries. That is not an
argument for abandoning current allies and launching a complete diplomatic
reversal (though some analysts have argued cogentlyalong these lines), but it
is an argument for a less polarized, black-and-white approach. To be specific:
The United States should have normal relations with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi
Arabia instead of "special relationships." This would be better for the United
States and probably better for those countries too. The United States should
also have a somewhat more normal relationship with Iran: not friendship,
perhaps, but one where the two governments cooperate on matters of
common concern (such as Afghanistan) and bargain rationally and rigorously
on matters where the two countries differ. (This approach would also take
advantage of the desire for contact with America and the outside world that is
widespread in Iranian society, especially among the younger population, and
make it harder for the clerical regime to thwart reform by blaming its
problems in the "Great Satan.")

The strategy I am outlining would also strengthen the United States’ ability to
shape events in the region. Over the past several decades, America’s allies in
the Middle East have tended to take U.S. support for granted and ignore U.S.
concerns whenever it suited them. Thus, Israel has continued to build
settlements despite repeated but impotent U.S. protests, and Saudi Arabia has
sometimes stonewalled Washington on issues of Islamic extremism and its
role in encouraging anti-American terrorism in far-flung places. Broadening
diplomatic connections throughout the region would give the United States
some useful leverage over its current clients, thereby facilitating its ability to
get them to do what it wants. Isn’t that what U.S. diplomacy is supposed to be
about?

The tumult unleashed by the Arab Spring provides a final rationale for the
approach I have outlined here. The Greater Middle East is in the midst of a
profound upheaval whose future course is still uncertain and that is unlikely to
be resolved anytime soon. Conflict is now occurring across many fault lines —
Sunni vs. Shiite, Arab vs. Persian, secular vs. Islamist, democratic vs.
authoritarian, etc. — and in ways that are beginning to shake the foundations
of the political order that first took shape at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

Given this turbulent, complex, and poorly understood situation, the last thing
the United States should do is try to play referee or try to impose its preferred
political formula on these events. (The country tried to do this in Egypt, for
example, and for the best reasons, and it is less popular there than ever.) The
good news is that the United States is going to be in pretty good shape no
matter how all this turns out, and U.S. foreign-policy elites can therefore take
a somewhat more detached view of these events than is their normal tendency.
The United States should not disengage, but it should not be overly eager to
interfere either. Remember: The preservation of a regional balance of power is
still the primary interest, and direct U.S. interference fosters anti-American
extremism and the desire for weapons of mass destruction. In short, the
United States should conduct its Middle East policy with a light touch rather
than a heavy hand.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard
University.