Description
Why has the United States struggled to "do less" in the Middle East? At a crucial moment of geopolitical change, the notion that blood and treasure has been invested disproportionately in a region of declining strategic importance to US interests is no longer anathema. Yet despite a growing recognition of this reality and strong majorities of public opinion in favour of ending the era of “endless war”, the underlying US footprint in the region has barely shifted. This paper addresses this puzzle by exploring the ways in which domestic constraints impede the pursuit of a coherent programme of retrenchment. In doing so, it challenges existing accounts which tend either to ignore the role of domestic determinants of grand strategy altogether or attribute the lack of strategic adjustment rather narrowly to the obstructionism of a foreign policy “establishment”. Drawing on insights from adjacent sub-fields concerning public opinion, foreign policy decision-making and civil-military relations, this paper argues that the pathways through which domestic political incentives have frustrated attempts to change the character and scale of America’s commitment to the Middle East are at once deeper and broader than is commonly understood. In doing so, this paper is intended as a response to and amplification of recent calls for scholars of US grand strategy to take more seriously the role of variables below the level of relative power and national resources.
