Pull Those Boots Off The Ground

As the new President takes office, the United States is in deep trouble in the Middle East. Despite Obama's promises to withdraw from Iraq, the debacle there shows no sign of ending soon, and it has made America's terrorism problem worse, not better. Meanwhile, Hamas rules in Gaza, Iran's stature is on the rise and Tehran is quickly moving to acquire a nuclear deterrent—which, despite a lot of tough talk, the United States and its allies have been unable to prevent. And America's image throughout the Middle East is at an all-time low. (Story continued below...)

All this is a direct result of the Bush administration's misguided policy of regional transformation. George W. Bush hoped he could implant democracy in the Middle East by using the U.S. military to topple the unfriendly regime in Baghdad—and maybe those in Damascus and Tehran, too—and replace them with friendly, democratic governments.

Things didn't work out well, of course, and it's now vital that the new president devise a radically different strategy for dealing with this critical part of the world. Fortunately, one approach has proved effective in the past and could serve America again today: "offshore balancing." During the cold war, this strategy enabled Washington to contain Iran and Iraq and deter direct Soviet intervention in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. As a Middle East policy, offshore balancing may be less ambitious than Bush's grand design was—no one promises it will lead to an "Arab spring"—but it will be much more effective at protecting actual U.S. interests.

So what would it look like? As an offshore balancer, the United States would keep its military forces—especially its ground and air forces—outside the Middle East, not smack in the center of it. Hence the term "offshore." As for "balancing," that would mean relying on regional powers like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia to check each other. Washington would remain diplomatically engaged, and when necessary would assist the weaker side in a conflict. It would also use its air and naval power to signal a continued U.S. commitment to the region and would retain the capacity to respond quickly to unexpected threats, like Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But—and this is the key point—the United States would put boots on the ground in the Middle East only if the local balance of power seriously broke down and one country threatened to dominate the others. Short of that, America would keep its soldiers and pilots "over the horizon"—namely at sea, in bases outside the region or back home in the United States.

This approach might strike some as cynical after Bush's lofty rhetoric. It would do little to foster democracy or promote human rights. But Bush couldn't deliver on those promises anyway, and it is ultimately up to individual countries, not Washington, to determine their political systems. It is hardly cynical to base U.S. strategy on a realistic appraisal of American interests and a clear-eyed sense of what U.S. power cannot accomplish.

Offshore balancing, moreover, is nothing new: the United States pursued such a strategy in the Middle East very successfully during much of the cold war. It never tried to garrison the region or transform it along democratic lines. Instead, Washington sought to maintain a regional balance of power by backing various local allies and by developing the capacity—in the form of the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF), which brought together five Army and Marine divisions, seven tactical fighter wings and three aircraft-carrier battle groups—to deter or intervene directly if the Soviet Union, Iraq or Iran threatened to upend the balance. The United States helped Iraq contain revolutionary Iran in the 1980s, but when Iraq's conquest of Kuwait in 1990 threatened to tilt things in Baghdad's favor, the United States assembled a multinational coalition centered on the RDF and smashed Saddam Hussein's military machine.