Michael Lind: Let's End America's "Middle East First" Policy
[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."]
The crisis in Egypt, however it plays out, provides Americans with an opportunity to reconsider the role of the Middle East in American foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has pursued a global grand strategy centered on the Middle East, while treating the rise of China as a secondary strategic concern. The growing costs of both excessive military intervention in the Middle East and inattention to China’s military and economic policies raise the question of whether America's obsession with the Middle East has been an expensive distraction.
Because military resources and attention spans are limited, American strategies tend to focus on one or two critical regions from which the greatest security or economic threats might emerge. Isolationists who advocate an America First strategy are unlikely to get their way, as long as threats to American security from within the Americas are perceived to be minor. Nor does a Europe First strategy make sense, as long as Europe is peaceful, prosperous and allied with the U.S. It is the problem children who get attention, not the well-behaved.
In an industrial civilization, an industrial great power like the U.S. can be threatened by other industrial great powers that convert their economic strength into military power, or by countries that, although not great powers themselves, can control or disrupt the flow of energy supplies on which the economies of the industrial powers depend. East Asia is the region that contains the only industrial great power, China, which in a few decades might be a "peer competitor" or rival to the United States. The Middle East is the region with the greatest concentration of the fuels on which machine civilization depends.
Today’s American grand strategy can be described as Middle East First. During the Cold War, the Middle East was a zone for proxy wars between the two superpowers. Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was followed by the first U.S. war against Iraq in 1991, the U.S. has sought to establish itself as the sole military superpower in the region. If the Greater Middle East is defined to include the partly Muslim areas of the Balkans like Bosnia and Kosovo, Central Asia including Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Horn of Africa, then since 1989 the U.S. in addition to numerous small-scale strikes and interventions has fought five major wars in the region -- Bosnia, Kosovo, the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the Afghan War. Only the Afghan war was a response to the al-Qaida attacks of 9/11. The other wars had different causes or pretexts, but their effect was extending and solidifying America’s military domination of the Greater Middle East....
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The crisis in Egypt, however it plays out, provides Americans with an opportunity to reconsider the role of the Middle East in American foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has pursued a global grand strategy centered on the Middle East, while treating the rise of China as a secondary strategic concern. The growing costs of both excessive military intervention in the Middle East and inattention to China’s military and economic policies raise the question of whether America's obsession with the Middle East has been an expensive distraction.
Because military resources and attention spans are limited, American strategies tend to focus on one or two critical regions from which the greatest security or economic threats might emerge. Isolationists who advocate an America First strategy are unlikely to get their way, as long as threats to American security from within the Americas are perceived to be minor. Nor does a Europe First strategy make sense, as long as Europe is peaceful, prosperous and allied with the U.S. It is the problem children who get attention, not the well-behaved.
In an industrial civilization, an industrial great power like the U.S. can be threatened by other industrial great powers that convert their economic strength into military power, or by countries that, although not great powers themselves, can control or disrupt the flow of energy supplies on which the economies of the industrial powers depend. East Asia is the region that contains the only industrial great power, China, which in a few decades might be a "peer competitor" or rival to the United States. The Middle East is the region with the greatest concentration of the fuels on which machine civilization depends.
Today’s American grand strategy can be described as Middle East First. During the Cold War, the Middle East was a zone for proxy wars between the two superpowers. Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was followed by the first U.S. war against Iraq in 1991, the U.S. has sought to establish itself as the sole military superpower in the region. If the Greater Middle East is defined to include the partly Muslim areas of the Balkans like Bosnia and Kosovo, Central Asia including Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Horn of Africa, then since 1989 the U.S. in addition to numerous small-scale strikes and interventions has fought five major wars in the region -- Bosnia, Kosovo, the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the Afghan War. Only the Afghan war was a response to the al-Qaida attacks of 9/11. The other wars had different causes or pretexts, but their effect was extending and solidifying America’s military domination of the Greater Middle East....