Obsolete and Overdue: Withdrawing US Forces from the Gulf

Presumptions of friendship and guarantees in international relations are never secure and rarely lasting.  Even when they are given the stamp of firm endurance, a closer look will find greater benefits accruing to one party over the other.  When one needs to persuade a weaker power into surrendering real estate and valuable terrain for the more powerful counterpart to use, always employ the terminology of “joint-facility”, “joint-operations” or some such.  That will go a long way into validating the mendacity of an arrangement.

The Gulf Arab states are the latest to learn this lesson from the United States, whose guardianship credentials have been looking particularly shabby of late. 

Having not sought the conflict with Iran that the US, in collusion with Israel, started at the end of February, they now face the prospect of a diminished American presence once hostilities with Tehran end.  

For decades, the Gulf Cooperation Council states sought to create a defence order based on gluttonous arms purchases and extensive offerings to US military personnel in terms of bases and facilities, the assumption being that this would guarantee them against attack.  While the presumptive attacker in that case was Iran, the GCC states did not spare diplomacy in attempting to mollify Tehran, adopting a conscious policy of distancing from US-Israeli policy.  The presence of US forces, in offering that insurance of security, also encouraged those in the Gulf region to advertise grandly as destinations for stable investment, capital and labour (however shoddy the conditions), sheltered by the comforts of the US imperial shield.  

The American promissory note guaranteeing Gulf security was spectacularly invalidated in the opening days of March.  Shortly after the first US-Israeli strikes hit Iranian soil, retaliation from Tehran came in an expansive spray of attacks on GCC states.  These caused fires in the vicinity of luxury accommodation in Dubai.  Kuwait’s international airport was disrupted.  The Aramco facility in Ras Tanura, responsible for the production of more than half-a-million barrels of oil per day, was targeted and damaged.  As the strikes continued, it also became clear that the exorbitantly priced defences long marshalled by the states came to very little.  Sophisticated anti-missile technology, for instance, could barely account for swift, stealthy drones of cheaper make yet devastating effect.  By mid-July, the US itself had used up over 1,700 Patriot interceptors and over 200 THAAD missiles in the Middle East.

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The debate among the policy wonks and wags is that American influence in the region has not only received a bruising, but a bruising with consequence. 

“For the first time since the great powers dismembered the Ottoman empire a century ago,” declares The Economist with haughty certitude, “the Middle East’s overarching order will no longer be imposed from afar.”  American attempts to shape the region had “run their course.” 

As with previous powers – Britain, France, Russia – the US would still be involved in so far as its interests demanded it.  Force and interventions were not to be permanently shelved.  “But it will abandon its role as architect.”  

The pages of Foreign Affairs are also filled with the symptoms of imminent troop withdrawal.  Dana Stroul, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East in the Biden administration, suggests moving US forces (the stock weasel word is always “redeployment”) away from the Persian Gulf.  Michael Fuchs, former Special Assistant to President Joe Biden and former Deputy Chief of Staff to Vice President Kamala Harris is even more blunt in light of the “failed Iran War”, suggesting it to be a “spur for a long-overdue withdrawal.”

The debate favouring withdrawal from the Gulf has gathered such momentum as to worry the coterie of jodhpur imperialists who still insist on the sacrosanct role of US power.  F. Gregory Gause III of Texas A&M University is almost panicked by this outbreak of Middle East retreatism, proposing that “a better option would be a prudent reconsideration of the US basing structure in the Gulf, engaged in jointly with the Gulf states that continue to want to host and support the American presence.”

To add formidable insult to smarting injury, President Donald Trump is also of the view that the costs of the catastrophe he was instrumental in unleashing should be covered by regional allies. 

Making the absurd claim that Washington protected these states in the first place, having demonstrably shown the opposite to be the case, Trump told CBS News that they “are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war.”  Without the US, “they would not exist.”  Just to add some fiery topping to the commentary, the president also bracketed Israel in their company.  “Without us, Israel would not exist.”

The focus on the part of the Gulf states will invariably be one of introspection followed by arrangements for an intra-defence system sharpened by the lessons of the Iran War.  Collaborative associations with other states – Turkey and Pakistan, for instance – are bound to become even more attractive (witness Riyadh’s move in that direction with the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement), though any military component will be hampered by a continuing addiction to American weapons systems that require continuous technical support and maintenance from Washington.  Then there is the GCC Unified Military Command, formerly known as the Peninsula Shield Force.  Its effectiveness, always subsidiary given the heavy reliance on American brawn, may be revisited.  To do that, however, the Gulf states will have to set aside their own grumbling differences – indeed, a tall order. US power, in the meantime, will continue to be eclipsed.  

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