U.S. disengagement has not produced a more stable or secure Middle East.
Five years into the Obama presidency, this approach has yielded mixed results. Administration officials were wrong to believe that the region's problems have been exaggerated or are mostly the result of American blunders. U.S. disengagement has not produced a more stable or secure Middle East. In fact, the region has gotten much worse. Left to their own devices, the region's leaders have hardly governed more effectively; partly as a result, civil wars are burning in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon are teetering on the edge. Meanwhile, instability in those places has spilled across borders into Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Turkey, straining those countries' already fragile social fabrics. Moreover, these stresses have collectively provoked a vicious proxy war between Iran and a group of Sunni Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, that many fear will snowball into a regionwide Shiite-Sunni conflict.
Ironically, however, these conditions have validated one of the claims made by administration officials. The growing chaos in the Middle East has not yet affected core U.S. interests, which suggests that those officials were correct when they claimed that U.S. interests in the region were less vulnerable than often assumed. Throughout Obama's time in office, the price of oil -- the ultimate barometer of Middle Eastern stability and the most important U.S. interest in the region -- has stayed largely stable, and most projections suggest that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. So far, there have been no major terrorist attacks against Americans, either in the region or at home. And so far, most of Washington's key Middle Eastern allies, including Israel, have suffered only modestly from the regional mayhem.
That is a noteworthy and somewhat surprising outcome. In 2009, it would have been hard to put much stock in a prediction that the United States could shirk its regional leadership role for five years, sit back and watch as the Middle East came unglued, and not suffer painful blows to vital U.S. interests. And yet, although American interests have not suffered thus far, Washington's good fortune seems unlikely to last. The relative stability of oil prices has been driven by expanding oil exports from places that are increasingly beset by violence, particularly Iraq. Syria has become a breeding ground for international terrorists, some of whom aspire to attack targets in the United States. The power vacuum in Yemen continues to provide a safe haven for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And as Libya slides into a civil war of its own, other Salafi groups are finding sanctuary and recruits there.
Although Washington's closest allies in the region have so far stood up well to a multitude of threats, they have not been immune to them. In the past three years, Israel has used force multiple times against the Syrian regime, as well as against extremists in Gaza and the Sinai, to try to tamp down the dangers growing along its borders. Unprecedented internal unrest has buffeted the monarchy in Jordan, which is also struggling to withstand a flood of refugees from Iraq and Syria. And Saudi Arabia faces the prospect of an unnerving royal succession in the not-too-distant future.
Nevertheless, the fact that these problems have not already affected American interests suggests that, in confronting the region's instability, a modestly increased effort might be all that is required to safeguard U.S. interests against the Middle East's myriad threats. Obama might have pushed the pendulum of U.S. involvement in the Middle East too far toward disengagement, but there is no need to swing it back to the militarized overinvolvement that characterized the administration of George W. Bush.