Paul R. Pillar
Security, Middle East
THE OBAMA administration’s intended “pivot” to Asia was a valid statement not only about the importance of developments in that region but about the disproportionate attention and resources the United States has expended elsewhere, and especially in the Middle East. An immense share of the blood and treasure the United States has lost overseas in the past couple of decades has been in the Middle East, an expenditure that has not brought proportionate benefits. The net effect on U.S. interests has been, in many respects, negative.
America’s concentration on the Middle East has persisted for a variety of reasons, some of them reflecting the region’s special characteristics and some having more to do with domestic politics or habit. There is oil, of course, which has been a major reason for special attention ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Ibn Saud on an American cruiser in the Suez Canal during the closing months of World War II. As the birthplace of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, the Middle East is connected to the religiously rationalized violent extremism that has preoccupied Washington for the last fifteen years. Old habits dating from the Cold War, of viewing the region as a chessboard for great-power competition, have been encouraged by Russia’s recent activities there. And the attention feeds on itself; much of the hand-wringing over a conflict such as the one in Syria is due not only to admittedly bloody events on the ground but also to hand-wringing that already has taken place and sustains the notion that the conflict is somehow a test of U.S. mettle.
Read full article