The US no longer has vital interests at stake in the Middle East. Shale oil and gas have made the US energy-independent, so safeguarding Middle Eastern oil supplies is no longer a strategic imperative. In fact, the US has been supplanting Iran as an important source of crude oil and petroleum products for India, the world’s third-largest oil consumer after America and China. Moreover, Israel, which has become the region’s leading military power (and its only nuclear-armed state), no longer depends on vigilant US protection.
The US does, however, have a vital interest in resisting China’s efforts to challenge international norms, including through territorial and maritime revisionism. That is why Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, promised a ‘pivot to Asia’ early in his presidency.
One, of course we have a vital interest in resisting China.
But two, killing Soleimani wasn't "interfering" in the Middle East. It was defending our interests and our allies.
And three, of course we have vital interests in the Middle East despite not importing much oil from the region.
The area still breeds and exports terrorism. And vital allies outside of the Middle East who we trade with as a pillar for our prosperity import lots of oil from the Middle East. Preventing hostile powers, whether local or foreign, from holding or dominating that region is a vital American interest.
And of course Israel still relies on America. Israel can win a short war, but it is a tiny country and can't long fight a war at the level of mobilization Israel needs to win wars against larger regional enemies.
Not that I'm fully defending Obama's "pivot" which simply reflected an ongoing (correct) process of shifting the allocation of resources to Asia from Europe since the collapse of the USSR threat to Europe; and which was really a disguised retreat from the Middle East, in my opinion.
But more to the point, defending our interests in the Middle East is not an "addiction" for interfering that is distracting America with dealing with China.
America defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War despite multi-year "distractions" in Asia in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and despite fluctuating commitments in the Middle East that culminated in the 1991 Persian Gulf War before the USSR collapsed late that year.
American troops strength in the Middle East has waxed and waned from 1950 to 2015 as this paper shows (see especially figure 4, although the 1990 and 1991 figures seem lower because the numbers are annualized and the deployments for the brief Persian Gulf War span short periods of 1990 when we deployed and 1991 when we fought).
And I'll answer one question from that paper about why US deployments abroad have declined in general over the decades. One, wars in Korea and Vietnam ended; two, we won the Cold War; and three, the American military has been reduced in size a great deal over that time. So the ability and need to deploy overseas went down.
But I digress.
Right now American troop strength is more--but still lower than in the recent past:
Despite Donald Trump's pledge to bring troops home, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East on Thursday said the most recent forces to enter the region could be there for "quite a while." ...
The Bataan and two other U.S. warships moved into the Middle East on Jan. 11. By Thursday, they were in the north Red Sea, roughly 50 miles south of the Sinai Peninsula. They are the latest additions to America's troop presence in the region. Since May, their numbers have grown from about 60,000 to more than 80,000.
Keep in mind that few of the 80,000 are on the ground in combat rather than supporting local allies in combat because we fought our common enemies and trained our local allies to largely replace our direct ground combat role.
Unfortunately the demand for American military involvement and attention rose enormously in the last three decades. It is down from its peak and I would certainly like the need for troops to go down even more. Ending the Iran threat would go a long way to achieving that.
One more thing about the "pivot" should be explained. Facing China comes from our fleet and positions off the coast of Asia for the most part. So facing China doesn't mean major increases in troops strength in Asia. Indeed, as our fleet shrank, the pivot was about increasing the percent of the smaller fleet in Asia. Much of the pivot was actually seen as qualitative--putting our best naval and air forces into the same footprint. And being able to reinforce, of course, in wartime.
I hope our Middle Eastern presence can go down in the future. It already has from our peak involvement. Hopefully our surge in forces over the 2000s held the line while local forces could be mobilized to hold the line in place of our own troops. So far that is happening. And as long as we don't cut and run requiring a new effort--as our departure from Iraq in 2011 led to since 2014--the downward trend of direct American involvement in the Middle East can safely continue despite fluctuations for specific threats.
So America can focus on China as the biggest threat despite the need to address lesser but annoyingly pointless threats from Russia in Europe and persistent bad actors in the Middle East. America doesn't have the luxury of having just one problem.
Letting small threats grow from inattention into large threats is not strategic thinking.
If this is Australia's idea of strategic thinking, no wonder Australia doesn't appreciate the value of Darwin.
