{"id":12156,"date":"2020-01-24T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T18:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12156"},"modified":"2020-01-23T12:20:32","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T20:20:32","slug":"must-america-be-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/must-america-be-in-the-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Must America Be in the Middle East?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since World War II, the United States has identified a number of national interests in the Greater Middle East, a region often defined quite loosely as the Arab nations (including those of North Africa), Israel, and sometimes Turkey, as well as Iran, the Horn of Africa countries, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the Cold War period, from 1946 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, American bipartisan foreign policy identified a strategic need for the region\u2019s petroleum. Gulf oil was seen as critical in augmenting America\u2019s own seemingly finite supply or ensuring the free world\u2019s access to it. Thus was born the post-war U.S. realist interest in the Middle East \u2014 a region that after the 15th-century discovery of the New World lost the strategic global position it had held since classical antiquity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The United States backed most prominently the House of Saud and neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies and dictatorships on the rationale that they would endlessly pump oil and sell it to the West at a fair price. British Petroleum enjoyed a more or less controlling oil interest in Iran, and U.S. oil companies had a free hand in Saudi Arabia; both nations maneuvered with other regimes to develop oil-exporting industries. The ensuing conspiracy theories, coups, and succession scraps of Arab and Persian strongmen fueled a half century of \u201cGreat Satan\u201d chanting and the burning of American flags on the Middle East street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At various times, U.S. presidents sought to deny the Soviet Union the ability to harness the region\u2019s resources and thereby leverage Western oil-dependent economies. Most notable was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger\u2019s success, in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in flipping Anwar Sadat\u2019s Egypt from being a Russian client to being a de facto American ally. For all practical purposes, the Russians stayed ostracized from the Middle East until Secretary of State John Kerry in 2012 na\u00efvely invited them back in after a roughly 40-year hiatus \u2014 supposedly to help monitor Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Syrian depot of weapons of mass destruction. Huge new finds of Russian gas and oil in the 1980s and 1990s had made the Middle East less important to Russia, although regional chaos that spiked oil prices and hurt Western economies was always welcome to Moscow, both before and after the fall of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/magazine\/2020\/02\/10\/must-america-be-in-the-middle-east\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Since World War II, the United States has identified a number of national interests in the Greater Middle East, a region often defined quite loosely as the Arab nations (including those of North Africa), Israel, and sometimes Turkey, as well as Iran, the Horn of Africa countries, Afghanistan, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3a4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6026,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-stagnant-mediterranean\/","url_meta":{"origin":12156,"position":0},"title":"The Stagnant Mediterranean","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Socialism and Islamism don't foster a climate of economic growth and security. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online From the heights of Gibraltar you can see Africa about nine miles away to the south \u2014 and gaze eastward on the seemingly endless Mediterranean, which stretches 2,400 miles to Asia.\u00a0Mare\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Economy&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/economy-europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12119,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-is-the-middle-east-in-the-middle-of-anymore\/","url_meta":{"origin":12156,"position":1},"title":"What Is the Middle East In the Middle Of Anymore?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Since World War II, the United States has been involved in a series of crises and wars in the Middle East on the premise of protecting U.S., Western, or global interests, or purportedly all three combined. Since antiquity, the Middle East has been the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6475,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/watching-the-middle-east-implode\/","url_meta":{"origin":12156,"position":2},"title":"Watching the Middle East Implode","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Only when we recognize the fundamental role Islam plays in the region can we begin to craft sensible policies that put U.S. interests first. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Defining Ideas\u00a0 The revolutions against dictators in the Middle East dubbed the Arab Spring have degenerated into a complex, bloody m\u00e9lange of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Islam&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":767,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/winning-battles-losing-wars\/","url_meta":{"origin":12156,"position":3},"title":"Winning Battles, Losing Wars","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Can We Still Win Wars? Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question. We have enough conventional and nuclear power to crush any of our enemies many\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;America's Future&quot;","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9862,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-three-headed-hydra-of-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":12156,"position":4},"title":"The Three-Headed Hydra of the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Trump has inherited a matrix of problems that primarily stem from Iran, Russia, and ISIS. The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration\u2019s failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ISIS&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ISIS","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/isis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-tar-pits-abroad\/","url_meta":{"origin":12156,"position":5},"title":"The Tar Pits Abroad","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ Defining Ideas \u00a0 As missiles fall on Syria in retaliation for Bashar Assad\u2019s medieval use of chemical weapons\u2014and as voices call for the use of some American ground troops to expedite his removal\u2014we might reflect upon American military interventions in the post-Vietnam era. America\u2019s major interventions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Bill Clinton&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Bill Clinton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/bill-clinton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12159,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156\/revisions\/12159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}