The post-Cold War “Era of American Hegemony” proved remarkably brief.  The world has entered a new era of competition.  As in previous such eras, wealth and power form both the means and the ends of these struggles.  It is possible to understand the current Middle East policy of the Biden Administration in this light.[1] 

First, the world’s economy still runs on oil and will for a long time to come.  The pricing policies of the Gulf States affect the performance of the global economy, notably that of the United States.  Even as the Biden administration seeks to de-carbonize the United States, China remains a massive consumer of Middle Eastern oil.  Influence (if not control) over Middle East oil gives the US leverage on China. 

Second, the Middle Eastern oil states buy a lot of military hardware from the United States.  Buying hi-tech weapons systems inevitably ties the purchaser to the manufacturing and support sectors of the producing country.  Buy the first iteration of a weapons system and you go on buying parts and up-dates, and paying for the training on how to use the systems.  All this helps the American balance of payments while spreading the enormous development costs. 

Third, as the United States shifts its primary policy toward the struggle with China, it needs partners to take up the slack elsewhere. Europe and the Middle East figure as the two chief “elsewheres.”  In the Middle East, the chief problem that has to be addressed is the Islamic Republic of Iran.[2]  A crisis point approaches in the long-running civil war in the Muslim world between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran.  The agreement reached between Iran and its opponents during the last stage of the Obama administration had opponents in both the United States and Iran.  President Donald Trump abandoned that agreement and returned to open opposition.  The Biden administration seems to have begun by hoping that—Orange Man having left the scene—the previous agreement could be quickly restored.  Alas, the Iranian opponents of the agreement seem to have gained the upper hand. 

Looking for help in the Middle East, the most promising, but also most problematic, states are Israel and Saudi Arabia.  They are promising because of their long-standing ties with the United States, Israel’s military power (including nuclear weapons) combined with a willingness to use it, and Saudi Arabia’s great wealth and influence over lesser Arab states.  The Trump administration pushed Israeli-Saudi cooperation against Iran as the basis for Middle East stability as America shifted its attention to China.  As with other Trump policies, the Biden administration seems to be recognizing the merits. 

They are problematic because their leaders, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Saudi Crown Prince, seem to think that America has gone soft and also seem to personally despise President Biden.   The “America’s gone soft” view is the older, bigger, and more consequential problem.  The United States spends a lot on its military and it has some impressive weapons systems.  It is much less clear that the United States will fight on foreign soil in the near future.  There also exist some doubts about how well-led are American forces.  Doubting America itself, it must seem like a much safer bet than in the past to treat its president with disdain.   

America needs to solve its own problems to be able to step down on the vipers.   

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[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Biden’s New Approach to the Middle East,” WSJ, 15 August 2023. 

[2] For previous installments in this long-running “franchise,” see: Iran | Search Results | waroftheworldblog