The U.S. is moving, step by step, into the center of the Middle East geopolitical snake pit

The Biden administration is making Israel's fight ours.

Events in the Middle East illustrate the risks and adverse consequences of the United States’s overly expansive global military presence and role. 

We have no true, actionable strategic interests in the region. Yet we are currently conducting bombing operations in three countries – Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. We have had three soldiers killed in Jordan and scores of others throughout the region injured by near daily attacks from Shia militias. This despite supposedly having troops in Iraq and Syria to contain a Sunni militia, Islamic State.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is being held accountable, both domestically and internationally, for how Israel is conducting its war against Hamas, a Sunni militia and political organization. And not unfairly. The Biden administration is trying to dictate to Israel what it can and cannot do to secure itself after the Hamas attack. And how an after-war peace settlement with the Palestinians should be structured. 

Let’s break some of this down. The United States has 900 soldiers stationed in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq. These are not significant enough numbers to do much of anything of consequence militarily. They are supposedly in both countries to help domestic forces combat Islamic State, a repressive, fundamentalist Muslim militia/political organization comparable in many respects to al-Qaeda. 

At one point in time, Islamic State was a true regional threat. It was in control of substantial territory in Iraq and Syria and was on the march. 

No longer. A U.S. military surge during the Obama presidency, overlapping into Trump’s, largely degraded its reach and capabilities. A recent Inspector General report described Islamic State as follows: “The group remained militarily defeated, incapable of mounting large, complex attacks domestically or externally ….” In other words, Islamic State has been reduced to a threat indistinguishable from numerous others in the region’s cauldron of violent militias. 

Having unwisely left troops in harm’s way, when the predictable harm became too much to ignore, the U.S. felt obliged to retaliate by bombing facilities of the militias regarded as responsible. But not so much as to provoke a broader conflict with the militias’s sponsor, Iran. And thus probably not enough to deter ongoing attacks. This is a tightrope that could have, and should have, been avoided.

The bombing of the Houthis in Yemen is an example of the disproportionate responsibilities the U.S. assumes, almost without thinking about it. The Red Sea is an important shipping lane, but less so for the United States than for many other countries. 

The menacing of ships in the Red Sea by the Houthis has the largest consequence for Egypt. It was already facing a financial crunch due to persistent mismanagement of its economy. The crunch has become particularly acute with the decline in passages through the Suez Canal due to the Houthi attacks. Egypt has a massive military, but it is used mostly to suppress internal political dissent. 

Western Europe is far more dependent on cargo shipping through the Red Sea than the United States. Western Europe has a larger population than the United States and an economy roughly the same size. Yet it falls on the United States to seek to restore, futilely so far, safe passage through the Red Sea. Several European countries have signed up for a paper coalition supporting the campaign, but only Britain is contributing anything of military consequence. 

The Israel-Hamas conflict is tragedy compounded. Hamas’s attack on Israel was barbaric. Israel’s commitment to eradicate Hamas as a threat is fully understandable. Yet, given how interwoven Hamas and its underground complexes are with civilian structures, achieving that necessitates the unleashing of a humanitarian crisis of imponderable proportions for the Palestinian people.

Let me take a side road for a moment to establish a strategic construct through which to consider the proper U.S. response and role.

I think President Joe Biden is mostly right when he says that the geopolitical conflict of our time is between democracy and authoritarianism. I would say democratic capitalism, to borrow Michael Novak’s formulation.

Israel is a democratic country with a market economy that was subjected to a brutal and inhuman attack by an authoritarian militia/political organization. Israel is on our side of the geopolitical conflict. Its fight is not our fight. But the United States should be willing to sell Israel the weapons it feels it needs to protect itself and defend Israel against calumnies in international forums. 

The United States is in no position to second guess, or try to dictate, what Israel does, or doesn’t do, to protect itself against the depredations of the likes of Hamas. Moreover, doing so, as the Biden administration is increasingly attempting, makes its fight our fight. And that isn’t in our own security interests. 

The Biden administration is working overtime in an attempt to midwife a comprehensive peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which again is neither our business nor in our interests.

The outline is as follows: A Palestinian state is created. Saudi Arabia and some other Arab despots assume some responsibility for its good governance. In exchange, the United States provides security guarantees to the House of Saud. Undoubtedly, American taxpayers will be asked to foot a large bill of some sort to grease the skids.

The path to a better life for the Palestinians lies with a peaceful region and significant interaction with the high-performing Israeli economy. But there is zero evidence, or even reason to hope, that a Palestinian state would work toward that outcome. Particularly after Israel has denuded Gaza in attempting to eradicate Hamas. Israel is embittering a generation of Palestinians, a strategic consequence it is up to Israel, not the United States, to weigh. 

If the geopolitical conflict of our time is between democratic capitalism and authoritarianism, why in the world would the United States provide a formal security guarantee to Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive regimes on the planet? We have a strategic interest in the geopolitical conflict between democratic capitalism and authoritarianism. We don’t have a strategic interest in which Middle East despots are gaining or losing influence.

The Middle East is seething with religious and ethnic conflicts. The track record of the United States attempting to manage or navigate through them is abysmal. To the extent what happens there has ramifications beyond the region, the consequences fall far more significantly on Western Europe and even Asia than the United States. 

As I’ve written before, the Middle East is a geopolitical snake pit. It is not in the strategic interest of the United States to attempt or assume responsibility for managing the snakes. Yet, once again, we are working our way, step by step, into the center of the snake pit.          

Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.