Commentary
The war in Ukraine is costing Russia its leverage overseas. Across the South Caucasus and Middle East, this presents an opportunity for Europe to pick up the pieces and claim its own sphere of influence.
William Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk
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Source: Getty
In The Media
America’s Core Middle East Interests Are Already Secure
Instead of increased military interventionism, the United States should adopt the principle of “minimum essential engagement” in the Middle East.
Published on Jun 30, 2016
Source: National Interest
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...
This article was originally published by the National Interest.
About the Authors
Jeremy Shapiro
Brookings Institution
Jeremy Shapiro is the research director and U.S. program director of ECFR. His areas of focus include U.S. foreign policy and transatlantic relations. Shapiro was previously a fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, where he edited the Foreign Policy program’s blog Order from Chaos. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, where he advised the secretary of state on U.S. policy in North Africa and the Levant. He was also the senior adviser to then assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs Philip Gordon, providing strategic guidance on a wide variety of U.S.-European foreign policy issues.
Richard Sokolsky
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Program
Richard Sokolsky is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program. His work focuses on U.S. policy toward Russia in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
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