What can the United States learn from the recent diplomatic maneuvers driving change in the Middle East? The Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, accelerating regional normalization with Syria, and the Yemeni peace process all demonstrate how adversaries can reach a modus vivendi to accommodate each other's interests. While some analysts fear that China is displacing the United States as the region's preferred great power partner, or Syria's readmittance to the Arab League excuses the Bashar al-Assad regime's human rights abuses, the reality is these schemes reflect the independent, nonaligned foreign policies now characteristic of middle powers in a multipolar world.
There is a lesson here for Washington: Adopting a transactional foreign policy that relies on flexible diplomacy while minimizing entanglements in risky conflicts would better position the United States to engage the region on terms that reflect its negligible importance to U.S. security and prosperity.
The decline of U.S. influence and interest in the Middle East is a natural consequence of multipolarity and Washington's focus on great power competition. But overall U.S. policy toward the region remains out of sync with these developments. In Syria, the United States continues to pursue an ill-defined but high-risk mission. The Obama administration first deployed ground forces to the country in 2015 as part of an international coalition to defeat the ISIS territorial caliphate. The only local contingent available for a prolonged counter-terrorism campaign were Kurdish militias associated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Yet, Turkey, a NATO ally that hosts U.S. forces and nuclear weapons, considers the PKK a terrorist group given its history of armed separatism and attacks on Turkish soil from Syria and Iraq. Even the United States and European Union (EU) still consider the PKK a foreign terrorist organization.
Four years after the defeat of ISIS, Washington claims the continued presence of 900 U.S. forces in Syria is necessary to secure makeshift refugee and prison camps containing the family members of ISIS fighters. But endless Iranian rocket attacks, Turkish-Kurdish crossfire, and regular run-ins with Russian forces highlight how this arrangement is becoming increasingly dangerous for U.S. troops. In the absence of a clear U.S. security interest, a withdrawal of troops is long overdue. Such a move would induce the Kurds to negotiate directly with Turkey, or seek protection from Damascus. In particular, U.S. diplomatic engagement with Ankara could help the Kurds reach an accommodation that forestalls future Turkish military incursions into northeastern Syria.
This approach would also quicken the reconsolidation of the Syrian state which, despite the brutality of the Assad regime, remains a better alternative than the chaos of the previous decade. As the scholar F. Gregory Gause III argued in Foreign Affairs, "An orderly Syria, able to prevent terrorist organizations from using its territory and, over time, to put some distance between itself and its current Iranian and Russian patrons, would be better than the Syria that exists now."
Similarly, U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia have suffered from unrealistic expectations about how far each side is willing to go for the other. In 2019, after Iranian drones and missiles severely damaged Saudi oil facilities, Washington rightly refrained from responding militarily despite Riyadh's requests that it do so. Last fall, OPEC opted not to increase oil output even though the White House alleged that Saudi officials agreed to do so to help lower global energy prices. Reportedly, Saudi Arabia's price for normalizing relations with Israel includes a "firm security guarantee" from the United States and assistance with developing its civil nuclear program.
Unsurprisingly, these clashes of interest have led Riyadh to diversify its partnerships with countries willing to provide the type of aid Washington is hesitant to offer, such as developing a civil nuclear program and ballistic missiles. Changes in the global energy market also increased the geopolitical leverage of OPEC states. According to geoeconomic analysts Meghan L. O'Sullivan and Jason Bordoff, "The combination of pressure on investors to divest from fossil fuels and uncertainty about the future of oil is already raising concerns that investment levels may plummet in the coming years, leading oil supplies to decline faster than demand falls." As seen with OPEC's recent moves to cut production, this "boost[s] the power of the petrostates" who "control most of the world's spare capacity and can ramp global oil production up or down in short order."
Saudi Arabia's "turn to the east" and leverage over global energy markets will be enduring features of its independent and more assertive foreign policy. But new U.S. security commitments will not enhance Washington's influence over the kingdom or change the relationship's long-term trajectory. Instead, U.S. engagement with Riyadh should focus on select issues of mutual interest, such as countering terrorism, intelligence sharing, promoting a regionally-led air defense and maritime security architecture, and encouraging a political resolution to the Yemeni civil war.
The Middle East is moving on from the United States. Rather than make a last-ditch bid for relevancy, Washington should view its diminished status as an opportunity to usher in a much-needed exit from a region where it has few interests at stake.
Matthew C. Mai is a research associate at Defense Priorities.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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