One Sphere? Not in the Middle East

In his recent Foreign Affairs essay, “There Is Only One Sphere of Influence: Why America Can Project Power With Little Constraint—And Its Rivals Cannot,” Michael Beckley argues that despite the widespread rhetoric of multipolarity, the world remains structurally unipolar. Only the United States, he contends, possesses the capacity to project sustained military, financial, and diplomatic power globally without meaningful constraint. China and Russia, though formidable, remain regionally bounded.

As a structural assessment of material capabilities, the argument is internally coherent. The United States maintains an unparalleled global military footprint, commands unmatched naval reach, anchors the dollar-based financial system, and sustains deep alliance networks. Measured purely in aggregate capability, American primacy remains undeniable.

But from the vantage point of the Middle East — a region shaped and reshaped by successive external interventions — the thesis of a single sphere of influence is not merely analytically insufficient. It is normatively dangerous.

The language of “sphere of influence” carries historical weight here. The modern Middle East was carved through imperial arrangements and external bargains. Colonial mandates, Cold War alignments, and post-9/11 military campaigns embedded the region within larger strategic designs. For societies that have repeatedly experienced foreign power projection as constraint rather than protection, reviving the conceptual legitimacy of singular spheres risks normalising hierarchy as order.

Consider Palestine. The diplomatic asymmetry surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be separated from Washington’s structural position within the United Nations Security Council. Repeated US vetoes shielding Israel from binding resolutions illustrate how primacy shapes the possibilities for diplomacy. Whether one agrees with those decisions or not is secondary. What matters is the structural pattern: if only one sphere meaningfully exists, such asymmetries appear systemic and inevitable rather than politically contestable.

Yet inevitability is often a political choice disguised as structure.

The broader regional security architecture reinforces this concern. The US Fifth Fleet remains stationed in Bahrain, and American military facilities stretch across the Gulf. Security partnerships define procurement patterns and alliance structures. But decades of overwhelming American presence have not delivered uncontested stability. Iraq’s post-2003 fragmentation, Afghanistan’s institutional collapse, and Yemen’s prolonged humanitarian crisis all demonstrate a central lesson: projection capacity does not automatically translate into legitimate order.

Moreover, the Middle East today does not behave as though it lies within a single uncontested sphere. Saudi Arabia pursues economic diversification under Vision 2030 while expanding cooperation with China. The United Arab Emirates balances Western security ties with growing commercial integration in Asia and Africa. Iran strengthens relations with China and Russia to offset sanctions pressure. Even in Syria, Russian military coordination complicates any notion of exclusive dominance.

These are not signs of American irrelevance. They are signs of hedging within a networked global system.

Here, a theoretical distinction matters. Primacy is not the same as uncontested hegemony. Hegemony, at its most durable, rests not only on material superiority but on legitimacy and consent. When legitimacy erodes, structural advantage remains, but authority fragments. Across the Middle East, public opinion frequently reflects ambivalence toward external intervention, whether Western or otherwise. Without consent, dominance produces compliance at best — not a durable political settlement.

READ: US lawmaker calls for halt to weapons transfers to Israel amid Gaza violence

Furthermore, influence in the contemporary era is multidimensional. It operates through infrastructure, digital networks, financial systems, energy markets, and regulatory standards. Chinese investment in ports and telecommunications, Russian security engagement, European regulatory leverage, and Turkey’s regional activism all intersect in complex ways. Influence resembles overlapping webs rather than concentric circles radiating from a single centre.

The risk of the “one sphere” thesis lies less in its empirical assertion of American strength than in its normative undertone. If policymakers internalise the belief that US power faces little structural constraint, strategic overconfidence may follow. Iraq was launched under the assumption of rapid transformation. Afghanistan was sustained under expectations of institutional consolidation. Both exposed the limits of material dominance in socially and politically complex environments.

At the same time, regional politics are increasingly shaped by domestic transformation. Demographic pressures, youth unemployment, economic diversification, and social reform agendas drive recalibration of policy. These trajectories cannot be reduced to extensions of American grand strategy. They reflect internal negotiations over governance, identity, and development.

None of this denies American primacy. The dollar remains central to global finance. US military logistics are unparalleled. Alliance depth provides enduring leverage. But durability is not exclusivity. Structural strength does not eliminate strategic friction, nor does it erase the agency of regional actors navigating among competing powers.

The Middle East does not resemble a single gravitational field. It resembles a zone of intersecting vectors — security ties pointing one way, economic integration another, technological partnerships yet another. Sovereignty is negotiated within these intersections, not absorbed by a singular sphere.

Ultimately, the question is not whether the United States remains the most powerful state in the international system. It does. The more consequential question is whether conceptualising global politics through the lens of a single sphere clarifies contemporary realities — or obscures them.

For the Middle East, a region long subjected to external cartographies of influence, the language of singular spheres evokes hierarchy more than stability. Durable order will require not the reassertion of exclusive dominance but the cultivation of legitimacy, negotiated constraint, and plural engagement.

Power projected without perceived limits may appear decisive. But in regions shaped by memory, fragmentation, and contested sovereignty, it is the recognition of limits — not their denial — that determines whether power endures or unravels.

And in that sense, whatever global primacy may exist, it is not — and has never truly been — absolute in the Middle East.

OPINION: Board of Peace and the illusion of peace without justice

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.