The Case for Withdrawing from the Middle East

Bottom line: The U.S. should withdraw from the Middle East, a region that is small, poor, and strategically unimportant. U.S. involvement in the region is expensive, fruitless, and unnecessary. The U.S. can maintain its Middle East interests without troops there.

U.S. wars and involvement in the Middle East have been extraordinarily costly. Withdrawing from the Middle East would produce savings of $65–70 billion per year. The region is a strategic backwater, with a small GDP and population. By pretending that this region punches above its weight, U.S. policymakers have trumpeted theories of energy security and terrorism prevention to justify continued involvement.

The U.S. does not depend on the Middle East for its oil supply, so the longstanding justification to remain in the region for energy independence is not credible. Turmoil in the Middle East may disrupt oil prices, but history shows that the price system can quickly ameliorate any price shocks. U.S. troops in the region will not prevent oil price vulnerability. Calls to keep U.S. troops in the region to maintain oil security rely on a misunderstanding of how energy markets work. 

Israel does not need U.S. troops in the region to defend itself. Since the Six Day War in 1967, Israel has aggressively improved its security situation unimpeded. It spends far more on its military and its military is far stronger than its Middle East counterparts and need not rely on American help. It is also the only country in the region with nuclear weapons.

Effective counterterrorism doesn't require an ongoing U.S. presence in the region. By any conventional risk analysis, the threat of an American dying in a terrorist attack is extremely low and cannot justify the $50 to $100 billion cost of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the region. ISIS has been defeated, and its remnants pose little to no threat to American national security.

The argument to withdraw from the Middle East is gaining traction. Yet the biased foreign policy establishment that benefits from the continued U.S. presence maintains the undesirable status quo. U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East shares some parallels with Britain giving up on its empire in the mid-20th century. The U.S. does not have the answers to the Middle East's problems, nor does it need them.

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