America will not leave the Middle East

By Robert Ford  Jumada al-Akhirah

Former US ambassador to Syria and Algeria and researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington<
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In the year that went by 2021, I saw many people claiming that the United States would abandon the Middle East. These are superficial expectations. The United States is based in the Middle East, wrote analyst Dalia Kay of the University of California-Los Angeles in Foreign Affairs last month.

The administration of President Joe Biden completed a major review of US military deployments around the world in November. As expected, the study concluded that China is the biggest strategic challenge, but as analyst Rebecca Wasser wrote in the strategic website War on the Rocks in December, the aforementioned review did not call for any major changes in the deployment of US forces in Middle east.

First: The Americans maintain their bases in the Persian Gulf region, in countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. They are expanding the “Muwaffaq Salti” air base in Jordan. Meanwhile, the US Navy continues to operate in the Persian Gulf and near the Arabian Peninsula. The exact number changes from day to day as military units rotate, but last June, there were about 40,000 American troops in the Levant and Gulf regions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated at the Manama Security Conference in November that the United States “has real combat power in the region, and we will maintain it.”

The last three US presidents have discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are wary of launching a new ground war in West Asia. Of course, caution about launching a new war is not the same as it might be about defense or withdrawal.