Two decades of U.S. military interventions in the Middle East have shown that America can win battles but repeatedly fails to convert those victories into a stable regional political order, leaving partners less dependent and rivals more influential.

Growing strategic competition with China is forcing Washington to prioritise the Indo-Pacific, creating pressure for progressive military retrenchment in the Middle East—likely fewer permanent forces and greater reliance on regional partners—within roughly a three-year window (by ~2029).

The region’s opportunity is to fill the resulting vacuum with its own capacity and institutions rather than simply swapping American dependence for another external hegemon, through stronger indigenous defence cooperation, burden-sharing and diversified partnerships.

For more than two decades, the United States has tried to manage the Middle East as though military power could substitute for a durable regional political order. It has invaded Iraq, fought wars in Afghanistan, battled Islamic State, intervened in Libya, supported partners in Syria, confronted Iran, protected Gulf shipping and maintained a sprawling military infrastructure across the region. However, the central paradox of American policy is now difficult to ignore: Washington has repeatedly demonstrated that it can win battles in the Middle East without being able to translate those victories into a stable strategic settlement.

That does not mean the United States will suddenly abandon the region. It almost certainly will not. Oil, maritime chokepoints, Israel, terrorism, Iran and the security of America’s Gulf partners remain too important. Nonetheless, a more consequential change is already under way. The United States is likely to reduce the scale, political ambition and military exposure of its Middle Eastern commitments because the strategic competition that matters most to Washington is moving eastward—to the Indo-Pacific and China.

The question is no longer whether America will leave the Middle East tomorrow. It is whether Washington has already begun the process of leaving—and whether the region is prepared for the consequences. More importantly, who will fill the vacuum if American primacy continues to recede? 

China is the obvious economic contender, with its expanding trade, infrastructure investment, energy relationships and diplomatic presence across the Gulf, but Beijing has so far shown little appetite for assuming the full military burden that Washington has carried for decades. On the other hand, Russia remains capable of exploiting instability, particularly through arms sales, political networks and selective military engagement, but its resources are constrained by its wider strategic commitments. Türkiye is emerging as a more consequential regional military actor, while Iran will inevitably seek to protect and expand its influence across the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. 

The danger, therefore, is not that one power will simply replace America, but that several powers will compete to fill different parts of the vacuum, creating overlapping spheres of influence and potentially turning the Middle East into an arena for intensified great-power competition. This is precisely why regional states should not simply exchange American dependence for dependence on another external power. The strategic opportunity is to ensure that the emerging vacuum is filled not by another hegemon, but by regional capacity, regional institutions and a balance among Middle Eastern powers themselves. If the region fails to achieve that, the post-American Middle East could become less stable rather than more autonomous.

America Consumed Its Power Without Producing American Order

American record is uncomfortable. The United States entered Iraq in 2003 with overwhelming military superiority and rapidly defeated Saddam Hussein’s conventional forces, destructing the Iraqi state, and generating sectarian conflict, insurgency and eventually the conditions in which Islamic State emerged. The United States then returned to Iraq to fight the very forces that had flourished in the political vacuum created after the invasion. Thus, the strategic problem was not simply military but rathe political.

The United States achieved major military successes in Iraq but repeatedly struggled to establish clear long-term strategic objectives for the political order that followed. The result was an unstable Iraq in which Iranian influence expanded while Washington remained uncertain about its ultimate mission.  The same problem appeared elsewhere. In Afghanistan, the United States spent two decades attempting to build a functioning political and security order before withdrawing in 2021. In Syria, Washington fought Islamic State while simultaneously confronting the complicated realities of the Assad government, Iran, Russia, Türkiye and Kurdish forces. The lesson from these campaigns is not that American military power is useless. It is that military power has diminishing returns when the political objective is unclear.

CSIS’s assessment of the lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria was particularly blunt: American interventions repeatedly suffered from the absence of clearly defined strategic and grand-strategic objectives. That is the fundamental weakness of the post-2001 Middle Eastern strategy. America repeatedly entered conflicts with the ability to destroy military targets but without a realistic theory of how to construct a sustainable regional order afterwards.

America Has Won Wars and Lost Strategic Space

Washington may point to genuine achievements. Islamic State’s territorial caliphate was destroyed. Saddam Hussein’s regime was removed. Several terrorist organisations were severely weakened. American military power has deterred attacks on some allies and protected maritime commerce. Nevertheless, strategic success should not be measured simply by counting destroyed targets. The more important question that arises: Is the region more aligned with American interests than it was twenty years ago? The answer is considerably less flattering and pleasurable.

Iran expanded its regional influence after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Russia returned as a major Middle Eastern actor through Syria. China became a major economic partner for Gulf states and eventually helped broker the Saudi-Iran diplomatic rapprochement. Türkiye developed an increasingly autonomous regional strategy. Gulf states diversified their relationships beyond Washington.

Even America’s closest regional partners have become less willing to place all their strategic eggs in the American basket. That is not because they have suddenly become hostile to the United States. It is because they have learned from experience. They have learned that Washington’s priorities can change and shift with each administration, that American public opinion constrains prolonged wars and that military commitments can become politically expensive. The rational response is diversification.

China Is the Strategic Problem Washington Cannot Ignore

The United States can tolerate considerable instability in the Middle East without threatening the foundations of American power. However, Washington cannot say the same about Beijing. This is the predominant reason why the American strategic centre of gravity is likely to continue moving towards the Indo-Pacific. On the other hand, China possesses the economic scale, industrial capacity, technological capabilities and military resources to challenge the United States as a peer competitor. The most consequential potential flashpoints are no longer primarily in Baghdad, Damascus or Sana’a. They are in the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, East China Sea and western Pacific.

The American military itself has increasingly organised its planning around this reality. The Congressional Research Service notes that U.S. policy has increasingly treated competition with China as the organising principle of American military planning in the Indo-Pacific. It also describes the expansion of American access to facilities in Australia........

© Eurasia Review