The Competing Tensions in America's Middle East Policy

President Donald Trump’s proposal last week to end the war in Gaza displayed the competing tensions in American Middle East policy. Trump campaigned for re-election on the platform of “America First,” which threatened that the United States would no longer maintain the liberal international order. In the Middle East, Trump declared last week, “We should have never gotten in there a long time ago.” In the press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he continued: “We spent trillions of dollars and created so much death.”  

But a mere heartbeat later, Trump proposed an intervention in the Middle East that would go far beyond anything attempted in Iraq or Afghanistan. The President called for the removal of the population from Gaza to make way for its occupation by the United States. “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” Trump declared.  “We’ll own it …create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.” He envisions turning the war-torn territory along the Mediterranean into a “Riviera of the Middle East.”

In just one press conference, Trump displayed the contradictions at the heart of American policy toward the Middle East. On the one hand, Trump’s criticism of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suggests he would like to wash his hands of the region as part of a general American withdrawal from the world’s problems. On the other hand, Trump’s proposal to take over and rebuild Gaza echoes the great American successes in remaking postwar Europe and East Asia.  

The success of his foreign policy will depend on whether he can reconcile these competing impulses with the facts on the ground, which include civilizational rivalries going back centuries, religious hatreds, de-colonization, weak states, and wide income gaps.  Israel’s recent victories over Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s corresponding weakness, and Syria’s final collapse open new possibilities. American strategy may follow a cautious strategy that relies on Israel and our Sunni Arab allies to wage a fully backed proxy campaign against Iran, the primary source of instability in the region.

Trump’s approach to foreign policy should have signaled a withdrawal from the Middle East. His America First strategy has focused on a revival of the Monroe Doctrine. Trump’s initial steps called for a return to the Panama Canal, a purchase of Greenland, and an attack on the flow of drugs and crime along the borders. The administration is re-focusing attention on the primary goals of American national security: protection of the homeland and protection of the Western Hemisphere from foreign influence. Our nation’s other strategic goals have also included, in lesser importance, preventing any hostile power from dominating either Europe or Asia, securing the global commons (the seas, air, and space), and maintaining a liberal international order. But Trump’s campaign comments that promised to end the war in Ukraine and speculated about withdrawing from NATO suggest that the new administration will retreat from the last three goals. Some within the Republican party – and sometimes Trump himself – have suggested that Europeans and Asians have free-ridden off American defenses in their regions.  

A withdrawal – or at least a reduction in forces and spending – from Europe and Asia would find little place for a Middle East commitment. In developing the strategy of containment, George Kennan – then head of the office of policy planning at the State Department, an office now headed by Claremont Institute alumnus Michael Anton – argued that the United States had a strategic interest in preventing a single power to take over either Europe or Asia. Once in command of the world’s other great economic heartlands, an opponent could turn those resources against us – as had happened during World War II. The Trump administration, however, seems intent on turning its back on this fundamental pillar of American postwar strategy. Their foreign policy and national security leaders may believe that the costs of maintaining the status quo in Europe and Asia exceed the benefits to the United States. However, our World War II and Cold War experiences would seem to undermine the idea that Washington can leave Asia and Europe to their separate fates – though some realist scholars have argued that the United States could have stayed out of both World War I and II and allowed the European powers to destroy each other.

But if the Trump administration believes a truly realist calculus now tilts in favor of withdrawal from Europe and Asia, Israel and the Middle East surely cannot demand much attention from the United States. The Middle East lacks the great concentration of economic and political power to pose a long-term threat to the United States.  If Washington is going to carefully husband its limited defenses in the 2020’s and 2030’s, the Middle East does not rank anywhere in importance to Europe and Asia.  Even with its decline as a political and military force, the European Union still amounts to an estimated 450 million people and $18 trillion in GDP; the United States has an estimated population of 340 million and a GDP of $30 trillion; China has about 1.4 billion people and $18 trillion in GDP.

Elbridge Colby, whom President Trump has nominated for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, has looked at these figures and concludes that the United States should reduce its commitments in the Middle East to concentrate on the threat of a rising China. Colby is right that China presents the most serious threat to American national security since the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Not only does it enjoy an industrial base that may exceed our own and a population that does, but China is led by a Communist Party that advances an ideology hostile to American interests. Beijing has launched a massive military buildup, seeks to dominate new technologies such as AI and quantum, and has waged a covert cyberwar against the United States for years. While Europe has an economy the size of China’s, it has neither the capability nor desire to project power abroad seriously. Its democratic governments bear no hostile intent toward American security.  Though it would not care to engage in the necessary defense spending, the European Union could defend itself from Russia (a nation of 146 million and $2 trillion in GDP, both falling) if left to its own devices.

If the Trump administration is to devote the most American resources to our greatest strategic interests, it is difficult to see a justification for comparable attention to the Middle East.  The Middle East has about 370 million people and a $5.2 trillion GDP. Much of that GDP sits in the ground in natural resources; the Middle East possesses about 50 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 40 percent of its gas. Aside from Turkey and Israel, industrialization has not strongly developed in the Middle East. The countries there do not present the concentrated economic or military power about which Kennan and American strategists have worried. A realist can think the Middle East is important, as instability could interrupt oil supplies and throw advanced economies into deep recessions. Our newfound energy self-sufficiency, thanks to fracking, however, makes us less vulnerable to the oil markets than Europe and China. And surely, maintaining the supply of cheap oil for others does not equal the strategic goal of preventing Russia from breaking up NATO or China exercising hegemony over Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.

Trump’s grand strategy may envision a return to a balance of power system with great powers controlling spheres of interest. A revived Monroe Doctrine would represent a declaration that the U.S. intended to exert greater control over the Western Hemisphere, even as it pulls back from Europe and Asia that can now fall under the suzerainty of others. Trump’s Gaza plan makes little sense within this ruthless realism. Trump wants to solve the Israeli-Arab problem by taking over Gaza, removing the inhabitants, and building there a modern American-style paradise. Once the Palestinians receive a homeland somewhere, hopefully, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States can join Egypt in making peace with Israel. This new alliance started with the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term and will present a united front against Iran and its effort to spread its Islamic revolution throughout the region.  

Trump may have the right strategy for the Middle East. But his comments on Israel and Gaza reflect an approach that echoes more of neo-conservatism than realism. Trump refused to rule out the use of American troops to pacify Gaza and declared that Palestinians would have no right to return. The President does not explain why risking American troops is worth defending a nation that, while possessing the most effective military in the Middle East, still represents a small fraction of the region’s resources. Israel has a population of only 9.5 million in a land mass about the size of New Jersey. It has a GDP of $472 billion, impressive in light of its lack of natural resources and small population, but still only 51st in the world. Iran is almost 10 times larger in population and three times in GDP. Obama and Biden, for all their rhetoric about defending the international order, pursued a realist policy of accommodating Iran and restraining Israel. Some international relations scholars have even argued, notoriously, that a pro-Israel policy must result from a political lobby operating within the United States.

But Trump and a majority of Americans rejected the failed Obama-Biden policy of sidling up to the mullahs in Teheran. Instead, they support the American defense of Israel.  Even as the Democratic party waged an internecine battle over how far that support should go in the Gaza war, a large majority of Republicans believed that Israel was taking the right approach.  Their views represent a rejection of cold-blooded realism. Instead, the United States has held deep ties to Israel ever since Harry Truman unilaterally recognized its existence as a state on May 14, 1948. American and Israeli society share much in common. They both have lively democracies, market economies (with close connections in the high-technology industry) and common roots in Western civilization. Neo-conservatives such as those that populated the George W. Bush administration (in which I served as a Justice Department official) argued in favor of American support for such democratic nations. While the Bush Doctrine, as it became known, failed because its open-ended goals outran America’s limited means, it expressed that American foreign policy does not operate on realism alone. The United States has also seen itself as a nation with a special mission to protect and promote individual liberty and democracy abroad when it can.

If an American First approach to world affairs sees the value in defending Israel, the task ahead is to develop a strategy that incorporates Jerusalem’s security into larger American goals.  To succeed, the Trump administration must ensure that its strategic ends fit with the limited means available. Washington has an interest in maintaining a regional status quo where our main allies – Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States – can live peacefully.  The primary threat to stability emanates from Iran and its allies, Syria (though perhaps no longer after the fall of Assad), and terrorist groups such as the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.  American policy, therefore, should focus on preventing the spread of both Iranian influence and radical Islamic jihadism.

Without risking boots on the ground, Washington can bring Israel and its allies together to contain Iran. The parties may be more open than before, as the October 7th conflict has revealed far greater Israeli capabilities and a much weaker Iranian military (which, as Samuel Huntington argued long ago, is usually the case with militaries that devote their time to oppressing the civilian population rather than fighting wars). Rather than deploy US forces, the Trump administration can transfer the most effective American missiles, planes, drones, and munitions to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Should our allies believe force becomes necessary to stop Iran and its allies from continuing their terrorist offensive in Lebanon and Gaza or even to prevent Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States can rely on Jerusalem and Riyadh to fly the actual missions and drop the real bombs. In addition to supplying our allies with weapons, the United States could provide the real-time intelligence and cyber capabilities to make such attacks effective. But American support will not involve the deployment of American troops, the cost of which could quickly exceed any benefits to our security.

A reduced role for the American armed forces but expanded military aid could align the means and ends of Trump’s America First. With his comments about Gaza, Trump has declared that a realist calculation of limited goals will not restrain his strategy toward the Middle East. But Trump’s limited means will not support the active front-line measures that past administrations have taken. The United States will have to rely more on its allies to maintain regional stability, at the price of providing them with the tools to do so. Rather than pursue dreams of beachfront luxury properties, Trump can free our allies to achieve more significant strategic goals for which the United States no longer wishes to pay.

John Yoo is a distinguished visiting professor at the School of Civic Leadership and a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, the Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.