Theodore Roosevelt summarized his approach to diplomacy with the maxim “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Time and again, President Obama has chosen the opposite tack. Perhaps nowhere has his policy of speechifying without substance to back up the rhetoric been more problematic than in the Persian Gulf.
Addressing the United Nations on September 28, Obama attacked a straw man: those who argue “the only strength that matters for the United States is bellicose words and shows of military force.” A mere 11 days later, the USS Theodore Roosevelt quietly departed the Persian Gulf. The nuclear-powered carrier is home to about 5,000 sailors and 65 combat planes and has played a central role in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since August 2014. Its replacement—the USS Harry Truman—will arrive in the Gulf only later this winter, meaning that for the first time in eight years the Navy will have no aircraft carrier in the Gulf. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson had already warned the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, “Without that carrier, there will be a detriment to our capability” in the Gulf.
Yet as damaging as this “carrier gap” may be from a short-term operational standpoint, the risk it poses to America’s long-term strategy in the region is far more significant.
Among the multitude of dangers posed by the nuclear deal with Iran is the way it threatens to constrain the options of future administrations, Republican or Democratic. Through weak inspection and enforcement mechanisms and the 15-year sunset clause, the Obama administration is tacitly allowing Iran to become—at minimum—a threshold nuclear state. Moreover, by releasing up to $150 billion in frozen assets to Tehran, giving the green light to the reintroduction of foreign trade on a massive scale, and removing all restrictions on sales of conventional weapons and ballistic missile systems to Tehran within eight years, the deal significantly raises the economic, diplomatic, and military costs of strategies to prevent Iran from actually developing nuclear weapons. Thus, the Obama administration risks constraining future U.S. policymakers by making deterrence in the Persian Gulf our only viable strategic option.
In fact, in his extended interview with columnist Thomas Friedman last April, President Obama specifically mentioned a policy of deterrence as his fallback position if Iran does not adhere to the nuclear agreement. To lay the groundwork for such a policy, the joint statement issued after Obama’s Camp David summit with Gulf allies in May reiterated that it is U.S. policy to use all elements of U.S. national power to deter and confront external aggression “against our allies and partners.” The administration also promised to increase the number of large-scale joint military exercises with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. And the president has repeatedly dismissed critics who claim his “pivot to Asia” risks signaling a U.S. retreat from the Middle East by pointing to the approximately 35,000 U.S. forces stationed in the Persian Gulf as proof that America is not withdrawing any time soon.
In order for deterrence to be effective, however, two elements are required: capability and will. The United States and its allies likely possess enough conventional military power to deter Iran in the near-term. Indeed, some analysts argue that the United States can respond to any potential Iranian aggression in the Gulf with carriers based in the Indian Ocean and a leaner force structure taking advantage of technological advances such as RQ-170 Sentinel drones that have operated undetected over Iran for years, though one crashed there in 2011.
Yet even if the Theodore Roosevelt’s redeployment is manageable from a short-term operational perspective, it risks undermining America’s strategy of deterrence in the Gulf by heightening skepticism about our willingness to honor commitments. Although President Obama reportedly went out of his way at Camp David to stress his understanding of the threat Iran poses to the region, he has given ample reason for doubt. Even before the nuclear deal with Iran was completed, the president expressed his desire for a new “equilibrium developing between . . . [the] Gulf states and Iran” and his belief that Iran could be “a very successful regional power.” The president infamously retreated from his red line against Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria—and Assad is using chemical weapons still. Although the administration has assured critics of the Iran deal that it will strictly enforce the remaining sanctions against Tehran, Reuters recently reported that U.S. enforcement of the Iran arms embargo fell off sharply over the past year as the deal was being negotiated.
The Obama administration has repeatedly weakened a key aspect of alliance management in the Middle East: the policy of reassurance. Although the administration pledged at Camp David to facilitate U.S. arms transfers to GCC states, over the past two years it has shown that U.S. weapons do not equate to American support during a crisis. As thousands of rockets were being fired at Israeli population centers during the 2014 war with Hamas, the administration held up arms shipments to Israel for further review in order to pressure the Israelis to accept Secretary of State John Kerry’s ceasefire proposal, which basically adopted all of Hamas’s demands. Although the United States has provided TOW antitank missiles and small arms ammunition to CIA-vetted Syrian rebels since Russia’s intervention in that conflict, it was the administration’s unwillingness to impose a no-fly zone over Syria that created the vacuum allowing Vladimir Putin to launch his air offensive against our putative partners.
In other words, if the Obama administration is seeking to deter Iran and reassure our partners in the region, it has severely undermined its preferred strategy by its own actions. As former ambassador James Jeffrey recently told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s not American military muscle that’s the main thing. . . . It’s people’s belief—by our friends and by our opponents—that we will use that muscle to protect our friends, no ifs, ands or buts.”
It is against this backdrop that the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s redeployment must be considered. Although scheduled months in advance, this redeployment for maintenance could not be any worse-timed, juxtaposed as it is with images of Russian aircraft escalating their bombing of anti-Assad-regime targets in Syria. This scheduled gap reflects not only the effects of sequestration, but also the prioritization of Asia, and is thus anticipated to be merely the first of many.
It would be dangerous to assume—as many academics do—that credibility does not matter in international relations, or that GCC leaders will distinguish between the level of U.S. commitment in Syria, which they see as part of the broader regional struggle against Iran, and our commitment to the Gulf. If the United States is pursuing a policy of deterrence against Iran, it must commit the necessary military capabilities to the region and reassure our partners that our commitment is credible. Otherwise, GCC states may pursue an independent security policy (overextending themselves in Yemen, for instance, or supporting more radical rebels in Syria), a separate peace with Iran, or sponsorship by another great power seeking to gain a foothold in the region to the detriment of U.S. interests.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s retreats have raised the cost of signaling American commitment for whoever occupies the Oval Office on January 21, 2017. It would therefore be prudent for primary voters to ask candidates of both parties how they will restore U.S. credibility in the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East more broadly. For the continued failure of deterrence and reassurance in the region could have catastrophic costs for the United States well after the Obama administration has left town.
Benjamin Runkle is a former official at the Defense Department, the National Security Council, and the House Armed Services Committee and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
