Middle East minimalism.

• Author: Shapiro, Jeremy
• Position: Essay

Recent presidents of both parties have agreed that the United States has vital interests in the Middle East. But the region has become extraordinarily turbulent. Civil wars rage in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Libya, where central authority and state structures have broken apart. Various regional powers are intervening in these wars, many of which serve as proxy contests between Iran and Saudi Arabia. America is fighting a war against ISIS in Iraq, Syria and, increasingly, Libya. Russia has intervened in the Syrian Civil War.

The chaos convulsing the Middle East concerns the United States but is deeply rooted in local factors--in the failure of Arab governance, regional rivalries, and sectarianism and identity politics run amok. Alas, the last fifteen years have demonstrated the limited ability of the United States to bend these historical forces to achieve its preferred outcomes of peace, prosperity, security and better governance in the region.

Confronted with this clear mismatch between American aspirations and capabilities, some experts are calling for a partial U.S. disengagement from the region, while others want to double down on existing U.S. commitments. Most agree that nonmilitary tools of statecraft are important to protecting American interests and that the United States should continue to use them to address the political, economic and social drivers of instability. The main fault line in this debate focuses heavily on the role of military force in U.S. strategy for the region.

One school of thought contends that America's credibility and reliability have suffered as a result of the Obama administration's weak and indecisive leadership and its risk-averse policies, in particular its caution in employing U.S. military force. Members of this camp call for more interventionist U.S. policies and greater reliance on force: destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; bolster the opposition to the Assad regime by establishing a no-fly zone under U.S. military protection; more aggressively challenge Iranian adventurism.

A second camp argues that the United States can better protect its core interests by pursuing less ambitious goals in the region and minimizing the role of U.S. military power. In light of the nature of the problems, the limits on American power and resources, the costs and risks of large-scale military operations, and competing global priorities, advocates of this view argue that the United States should manage threats to core U.S. interests in the Middle East rather than try to solve intractable local problems.

Against the backdrop of these debates, we address the following questions: How well are America's core interests in the Middle East being safeguarded? Would the United States be able to protect these interests if it assumed a more minimalist military presence in the region and, in general, more limited involvement? We conclude that, despite the intervention of other outside powers, the humanitarian disasters pouring out of Syria and the instability in the region, the most important U.S. interests are well protected. Given the high costs of a U.S. military presence in the region, we argue for a strategy of "minimum essential U.S. engagement."

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What constitutes America's core interests in the Middle East, and are they currently at risk? Are an increased military presence and more liberal use of military force necessary to protect and advance these interests? Republican and Democratic administrations have broadly delineated U.S. core interests in the Middle East, and with a fair amount of consistency. In his September 2013 speech to the un General Assembly, President Obama described them as: confronting external aggression against U.S. allies and partners; maintaining a free flow of energy; dismantling terrorist networks that threaten the American people; and preventing the development or use of weapons of mass destruction.

Experts argue, of course, that these are not the correct interests--that they either understate or overstate the degree of U.S. concern with the region or fail to account for the domestic U.S. political context in which U.S. policy toward the region is formulated. To be sure, domestic politics make the quest for a consistent, interest-based policy somewhat quixotic. But the important question is whether core interests are being satisfied and to project into the future what needs to be done to protect them. If these are not the correct interests then that case should be made to U.S. leaders and the American public directly. Advocating policies that entail increased risks and greater resources than necessary to protect an undeclared interest only adds to conceptual confusion.

Many experts and some government officials believe that spreading democracy and protecting human rights are core U.S. interests in the Middle East. But U.S. leaders have only asserted these interests inconsistently. President Obama has said that the defense of human rights is a secondary interest that should only be protected with U.S. military force in partnership with other countries, if the costs and risks of intervention are low and the...