If one wonders what the world might look like absent U.S. leadership, welcome to the Middle East, where the global future has been playing out now for over a decade.
Not since the tumult of World War I and the reordering of the former Ottoman realms to satisfy European colonial aggrandizement has the Middle East faced such instability and coming uncertainty. Yet the West, in particular Europe, seems to have moved on, inserting itself now only when narrow self-interest is in play and usually in a limited, unilateral fashion. One might argue that has always been the case, but this time there is a notable difference.
While European nostalgia for empire may forever linger, the stakes now are higher, local leaders and populations more assertive and mobile, and the U.S. no longer eager to serve as the region’s policeman, stepping in, when necessary, to ensure a balance of power and to prevent allies from biting off much more than they can chew. For Washington, declining interest in the state of the Middle East is not new but has arguably reached its zenith due to a combination of factors, including growing energy self-sufficiency at home, but primarily domestic fatigue, if not outright voter anger, over the high cost and duration of “the forever wars,” topped in recent memory by the disgraceful 2021 exit from Kabul. When it comes to “memory,” however, it is one commodity, along with “lessons learned,” that seemingly has been in the shortest supply; otherwise, how does one explain the repeated U.S. interventions that have come up short?
From Truman’s momentous decision to recognize the State of Israel in 1948 through to the end of the Cold War, the Middle East was a sideshow for the U.S., not the main event, despite what the historical record might periodically indicate. Whether Eisenhower’s refusal to bail out Britain and France over the Suez Crisis in 1956, Reagan’s ill-fated Beirut foray in 1984, or Bush’s ouster of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, American presidents have largely acted only when perceiving their hands to be forced. A decision to intervene in the region has never been cost-free, but the same can be said when avoidance has been the preferred course of action, as the world tragically discovered after the Clinton Administration’s underestimation of the threat posed by Al Qaeda.
In 2009, Barack Obama, distancing himself from his predecessor George W. Bush’s response to Al Qaeda and varied regional threats, perceived or otherwise, declared “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.” Tied to no official policy or foreign assistance initiative to realize his ambition, other than perhaps a policy of noninterference moving forward, Obama’s “new beginning” was meant to signal the “end” of an era—an end to U.S. attempts to manage the region’s order or disorder and an end to U.S. policing.
Obama’s regional ambitions, or, more precisely, lack thereof, reflected not only his own or the American Left’s worldview at the time but also that of an increasing number of middle-of-the-road voters who elected him not once but twice to the White House. Much as a sizable segment of the population rallied to Obama’s call to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a majority have now flocked to President Trump’s similar but much more isolationist America First agenda. Unfortunately, the choice to remain engaged around the globe, or not, was and is not America’s to make alone. The Middle East, as well as the international community, also has a vote in the matter. Obama either forgot or conveniently chose to ignore his own predecessor’s 2000 campaign promise, “If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I’m going to prevent that.” In doing so, Obama failed History 101: those who ignore it (history or the Middle East) are doomed to hit the repeat button. 9/11 made sure of that for Bush. The Arab Spring and the Islamic State had a similar effect for Obama.
Whereas George W. Bush took the bait and ran with it, Obama—chastened by his decision to support a limited 2011 intervention in Libya, which he later declared as the “worst mistake” of his presidency—opted for strategic retreat from the region when confronted with its untidiness. The rest is, as they say, history. Over the course of the remaining years of the Obama presidency, the seeds of the post-Pax Americana era in the Middle East were sown, well-watered, and began to sprout. The impotence of military firepower alone to resolve the legacies of decades-long dictatorship in Libya, which Bush learned to America’s detriment in Iraq, led Obama to double down on his instinct of retreat. From here on out, he would not allow himself or the U.S. to get sucked back in by the Middle East; he would not go all in as his predecessor did in Iraq when things began to fall apart.
Regret over Libya informed Obama’s fateful decision to fudge self-imposed “red lines” on chemical weapons in Syria; dithering over the overthrow of both longstanding ally Mubarak and then his Muslim Brother successor in Egypt; the idle witnessing of the disintegration of Libya as a nation-state; the descent of Yemen into an Iranian vassal and humanitarian disaster; and, to top off the list, the downplaying of the Islamic State as a regional anomaly that could be managed from afar. Left to fend for itself, Europe could only watch and absorb the aftermath of all these crises—hundreds of thousands fleeing the carnage northward with its long-term implications for the health of European democracy.
October 6, 2023 events in Gaza and Israel, in some respects, proved a culmination of Obama’s worldview—reflecting that of the American electorate with whom political leadership is unwilling to engage on global realities—that if the region (and world) could be left to its own devices, it could police itself, and America would be better off for it. It is a policy legacy his immediate predecessors inherited and have steadfastly maintained, the recent bombing of Houthi weapon sites notwithstanding. If ignoring or remote management—coupled with the periodic intervention—of the region’s post-Sykes Picot myriad challenges may once have sufficed to contain potential global spillover, 9/11 and the rise of the Islamic State should have made it abundantly clear this is no longer the case. However, in the post Pax Americana era, perceptions of self-interest have replaced accepting global realities and dealing with hard facts. Every nation is now left to define its own interests and how to best serve them. In the Middle East today, we are already seeing the result.
