The Mideast is no longer a top US priority

• Author: NEVILLE TELLER
• Published date: 06 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

From the first days of his presidency, Joe Biden started implying that the Middle East did not feature among his top concerns. As a consequence, the region has been sinking down the policy agenda of major players like the European Union and its member nations.

To other interested parties, however, this shift in Western priorities must seems like an opportunity too good to miss – parties like Russia, Turkey, Iran, even China. With the US no longer fully engaged, all are feeling less constrained in pursuing their particular interests in the region – a recipe for intensifying the current chaos.

cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });

>

A close Biden adviser told the online journal Politico recently: "If you are going to list the regions Biden sees as a priority, the Middle East is not in the top three.... That reflects a bipartisan consensus that the issues demanding our attention have changed as great power competition is resurgent." He meant an upcoming struggle for power between the US and China, and also possibly Russia.

Biden's chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, regardless of consequences, is taken by friend and foe alike as evidence of his comparative lack of interest in the future of the region. This perception was reinforced when Biden recently informed Iraq's prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, that he intends to end the US's combat mission in that country, too, and withdraw all American forces by December 31.

The Cato Institute, a leading global think tank, recently produced what it called a blueprint for the US disengaging altogether from the Middle East.

"If Biden can end America's 20-year participation in an unnecessary war," it posited, "why not also end America's 40-year occupation of a region of ever-decreasing importance?"

The author could find no reason in terms of America's self-interest for it to engage with the Middle East by any but diplomatic means. And, indeed, there would seem to be few political advantages to be gained from direct involvement in the conflicts and economic disasters rocking the region. The only benefits might lie in the moral field.

The situation in Yemen has been described as a humanitarian crisis for at least two years, with the nation on the brink of famine. Widespread poverty and internal economic turmoil have brought Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Libya to within a handsbreadth of catastrophe. The future of...