After nearly 20 years, the last U.S. troops have finally left Bagram Airfield, America’s hub of operations in Afghanistan. President Joe Biden was right to bring our troops home — the war in Afghanistan no longer served our core interests and was opposed by the vast majority of Americans. As we end America’s longest war and consider our deployments elsewhere during the Global Force Posture Review, the president should recognize the declining importance of the Middle East to American interests and scale back our military presence.
Despite the $6.4 trillion we’ve spent in the Middle East in the past two decades and the more than 7,000 U.S. service members we’ve lost, America has few vital interests in the region. These include preventing major disruptions to global energy supplies, preventing the rise of a regional hegemon, and countering terrorism. None of these objectives require us to continue our mission in Iraq or to keep tens of thousands of troops on bases across the Middle East. In some cases, our large troop presence undermines those interests.
The Middle East was far more important to the United States during the Cold War, when we were heavily dependent on the region’s oil and more vulnerable to global supply shocks. During the Carter administration, the U.S. created the Rapid Deployment Force (the forerunner of U.S. Central Command) to be capable of quick, offshore intervention should oil supplies be threatened. Even when the stakes were much higher, the U.S. relied on offshore balancing rather than the extensive network of permanent bases and tens of thousands of ground troops we’ve stationed in the decades since.
By contrast, the U.S. is now the world’s top oil producer. Comparatively, the Middle East matters so little to our energy supplies that we import more oil from Mexico than Saudi Arabia. Though major disruptions could still damage the global economy, oil markets are historically adept at reacting to supply shocks, and tools such as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve leave America well-equipped to weather such storms.
One possible source of major Middle Eastern oil disruption, a Saudi Arabian civil war, is actually a higher risk with large U.S. troop deployments in the Middle East that could alienate religious conservatives. We learned this tragically after the Gulf War, when keeping troops in Saudi Arabia contributed to al Qaeda’s rise.
The Strait of Hormuz is another important global oil bottleneck, but no regional power has the military capability or financial incentive to attempt to close it for an extended period. The U.S. military and regional partners would be more than capable of defeating any attempt to do so with offshore naval and air assets rather than ground troops. Diplomatic efforts, such as renegotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran, are ultimately more important for reducing this risk.
More broadly, no power in the Middle East can plausibly dominate the region in the near future. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey are well equipped to balance each other should any threaten to become a hegemon. By doing more abroad with diplomacy and less with our military, the U.S. can better incentivize Middle Eastern countries to stop riding on our security and start working together more — we’ve seen this begin to unfold with increased public cooperation between the Gulf States and Israel against Iran.
Finally, large U.S. troop deployments in the Middle East are ineffective at countering terrorism. The harrowing experience of 9/11 taught us that robust coordination between law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and our allies is far more important to foiling terrorist plots than having troops deployed in Middle Eastern countries.
What’s more, decades of troop deployments in the Middle East and U.S. support for reckless partners who commit clear human rights violations (such as in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen) spur local resentment and aid terrorist recruitment. Policymakers have acknowledged this for decades. Our deployments to dangerous countries such as Syria and Iraq don’t advance any of our core interests in the region but do make our troops easier targets for those seeking to do them harm.
Should terrorists emerge in the Middle East with both the intent and capability to strike the U.S., they can be eliminated in ad hoc counterterrorism raids. America’s globally unparalleled over-the-horizon strike capabilities allow it to target threats anywhere in the world. Operating from a fraction of our current bases in the Middle East or from offshore assets such as aircraft carriers, we can continue to protect ourselves.
As we reflect on the end of an unnecessarily long and costly war in Afghanistan, let’s recommit ourselves to our national interests elsewhere and bring our troops home from the Middle East.
Tyler Koteskey is a senior foreign policy analyst at Concerned Veterans for America.
