Finally,
these governments believe the biggest threats to their security are
internal rather than external. They are unsettled by U.S. leaders’ calls
for liberalization and democratization, and well remember the Obama
administration’s quick abandonment of President Hosni Mubarak after
almost 30 years of U.S.-Egyptian partnership.
The Ukraine war has
made this tension worse. Few of these states ever bought into the Cold
War paradigm of countries bound by a higher purpose, but to them, the
rise of U.S. language calling to unite democracies to fight autocracy
sounds vaguely threatening.
China is another issue. The Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy
emphasizes the importance of U.S. strategic competition with China, and
it has a chapter whose title advises “anchoring our strategy in
regional allies and partners.” Yet the report glosses over an irony:
many of the most important U.S. partners in the Middle East—Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates—have also signed “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”
agreements with China. How does the United States intend to square that
circle? What does it mean to be partnered with the United States, and
in particular, what does partnering with the United States mean for a
country that also seeks to partner with China? It is a question no one
really wants to confront squarely.
China and Russia offer quick
solutions to regional states’ immediate problems, unencumbered by
legislative oversight or human rights concerns. Weapons, surveillance
equipment, nuclear reactors, and the like are all on offer, and
sweetening the pot is the Russian and Chinese argument that they seek to
help countries preserve their unique values, not remake them. This is a
dog whistle to authoritarianism and homophobia, intended to build
Middle Eastern societies’ resentment to the West, and it works. Further,
they argue there is no need to pick sides, undermining precisely the
sort of close security ties that the U.S. military is trying to promote.
But
the biggest challenge the U.S. military faces in the Middle East isn’t
overseas, it’s at home, where the White House and the Congress aren’t
behind them. Middle Eastern rulers have the leeway to defy their
publics, and when their publics’ approval ratings of the United States
are in the low double digits, it need not shape the bilateral
relationship. But both the White House and Congress have grown sharply
critical of many Middle Eastern governments and critical of seemingly
endless U.S. military commitments to the region. While many Gulf
governments find the Biden White House especially skeptical, it was
President Trump who said U.S. engagement in the Middle East “was the single biggest mistake made in the history of our country.”
The U.S. public’s view is more complicated. Some polls
suggest sustained support for a U.S. troop commitment to the region in
the abstract. When presented with specific issues, such as defending
Saudi Arabia from Iranian attack or protecting Syrian enclaves from the
depredations of Bashar al-Assad, that support quickly withers.
Seeing
this, the military is still going full speed ahead. It makes promises
the rest of the U.S. government doesn’t want to keep, and it warns
countries away from engaging militarily with China and Russia while
arguing for understanding when they do. Pentagon officials speak
privately of doing the maximum without Congressional approval, given
Congressional skepticism. The CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Erik Kurilla, can talk about
how the U.S.-Saudi relationship “underpins our strategy in the Middle
East,” but President Biden previewed his own trip to the Kingdom, describing “a
strategic partnership going forward that's based on mutual interests
and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American
values.” It is hard to ignore the implicit ranking in Kurilla’s
statement that was absent in Biden’s.
Middle Eastern governments
see the space between the military and the rest of the U.S. government,
and they hedge. That pushes the military to attempt an even tighter
embrace. Yet, the hedge creates greater distrust in Congress and the
White House, and the gap widens.
It is hard to imagine how the
U.S. military can sustain a long-term strategy toward the Middle East
that doesn’t have political support. Given the openness of U.S.
politics, it is difficult to imagine that Middle Eastern governments
will fail to notice that U.S. political support for close security ties
to the Middle East is diminishing. The Pentagon may feel it needs to
keep up appearances of intimacy, but partners will not, and that will
drive politicians in precisely the direction that the Pentagon doesn’t
want. The Pentagon sees its principal targets being governments in the
Middle East, but if it wants to sustain close ties in the region,
winning support from politicians at home is both more urgent and more
important.
Middle Eastern governments will doubt the value of any
policy the U.S. military pursues without strong and durable political
backing. They will look to supplement it with other relationships, even
if the U.S. military trumpets its fealty, and they wouldn’t be wrong for
doing so.