Daniel Byman tries to defend keeping a large U.S. military presence in the Middle East:
A pessimistic view of the United States’ record and prospects in the region, however, misses important, if less dramatic, U.S. achievements in the Middle East. Although these outcomes are less visible and can be difficult to quantify, a strong U.S. military presence prevents a variety of actions by adversaries and allies that might make the region even less stable and generate more civil strife, nuclear proliferation, dangerous interventions, and other grave threats. Maintaining even a limited U.S. military presence is therefore vital to mitigating these risks, even if the United States continues to fall short of its ambitious regional goals.
It is doubtful that the American military presence in the region achieves much of anything. To the extent that it does, the costs related to maintaining this presence outweigh any conceivable benefits. These costs can be measured in the resources and manpower wasted on a region where the U.S. has few important interests, and they can also be measured in the conflicts that the U.S. chooses to join, support, or start because it remains entangled in the region’s affairs.
Put another way, if the U.S. weren’t already so heavily overcommitted in the Middle East no rational policymaker would recommend putting so many troops and ships into the region. It would rightly be seen as an unnecessary and fruitless use of limited resources. The case for keeping these forces there is remarkably weak on the merits, but as we know it can be extremely difficult to overturn the status quo in foreign policy even when the status quo is bankrupt.
The U.S. military presence doesn’t seem to prevent clients from running amok whenever they wish. The U.S. presence seems more likely to encourage client governments to behave more recklessly than they otherwise would because they assume that the U.S. will be in a position to bail them out if things get out of control. Maintaining a sizable military presence is also an invitation to involving the U.S, in unnecessary conflicts that almost no one would choose to join if our forces weren’t already in the area. That presence also creates opportunities for local hostile forces to take shots at the U.S. that they would never be able to take if our government didn’t provide them with easy-to-reach targets.
The core of the argument for keeping a large U.S. military presence is that it discourages Iran from causing trouble, but this is speculative. Byman writes, “In the absence of U.S. forces, Tehran would be freer to foment regional instability or mount aggression toward rival states,” but it doesn’t follow that this is likely to happen in the event that the U.S. withdrew its forces. This is nothing more than a guess informed by the usual threat inflation. It might occur, but that’s not enough to justify such a large presence. Keeping tens of thousands of troops and sailors in the region on the off chance that some bad things might happen if they left doesn’t make sense. It’s always possible that undesirable things might happen after a U.S. withdrawal, but that isn’t a compelling argument for maintaining an indefinite commitment.
Byman doesn’t take into account that a continued American presence in the region is perceived by Tehran as provocative and threatening. As such, it contributes to tensions that can then spill over into violence in those places where the U.S. and Iran both have influence. The U.S. presence doesn’t really have the stabilizing effect that Byman claims. If there weren’t a large U.S. military presence on Iran’s doorstep, regional tensions would likely be lower than they are. He asserts that “Iran would also be more likely to build nuclear weapons” if U.S. forces weren’t in the region, but that seems obviously wrong. U.S. withdrawal from the region would reduce the likelihood of an attack on Iran, and that would remove one of the main reasons why the Iranian government might want to have nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
One of the key flaws in Byman’s article is that he keeps talking about U.S. “allies” in the region when the U.S. has no allies there except for Turkey. When he says that “the U.S. presence, on balance, has helped preserve the United States’ interests and those of its allies,” he is counting this appeal to “allied” interests to help sell his case. Because the U.S. has no real allies across most of the region, that claim doesn’t hold up very well.
The weakest part of the article is when Byman tries to scare us with a bad credibility argument:
A U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East would also have consequences for other parts of the world, such as Asia and Europe, that are more of a priority for many in Washington wary of Chinese and Russian aggression. Allies in one region are aware of Washington’s behavior in other parts of the world. U.S. support for Ukraine, for example, has reassured many who fear a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Displays of weakness, by contrast, embolden aggressors. If the United States failed to stand by an ally in the Middle East in the case of Iranian or militant aggression, it would send a message to other longtime U.S. allies around the world that the United States may not defend them should they be attacked.
This is a fairy tale that defenders of the status quo tell themselves, but it isn’t true. The U.S. doesn’t have allies in the Middle East in any case, and Washington’s action or inaction there wouldn’t tell us anything about its willingness to honor its commitments in regions where it has vital interests. If the U.S. doesn’t go to war for the Saudis, the UAE, or Israel, that doesn’t make its commitments to its treaty allies any weaker. Bringing in other U.S. alliances is a tell that Byman knows how weak the case for a military presence in the Middle East is. He is trying to make it seem as if the entire system of alliances might collapse if the U.S. pulls back from the region, but that makes no sense.
Finally, Byman falls back on the old vacuum argument. He writes that “a U.S. withdrawal from the region could create a power vacuum that China, Russia, or others might exploit.” This is possible, but this would mean that some other power would be stuck with the burdens of trying to manage the region’s conflicts. The U.S. should not be afraid of some other power taking on this thankless task. If our own experience is any indication of what would happen next, the power foolish enough to fill the vacuum would pay a high price and would spend decades frittering away its resources while neglecting more important interests. By all means, let another power “exploit” the vacuum and see how much good it does them.
The more important question is whether the current military presence helps preserve U.S. interests. Unless one defines U.S. interests in an extremely expansive way, the answer has to be no. Keeping these forces in the Middle East doesn’t make the U.S. more secure. It increases the likelihood that the U.S. takes part in regional conflicts that it could otherwise easily avoid. It ensnares the U.S. in the rivalries of its clients at America’s expense. I don’t expect the U.S. to withdraw its forces from the Middle East anytime soon, but there is no question that it would be far better off if it did.