5 Strategic Questions America Faces in the Middle East
The Biden administration has increased U.S. engagement in the Middle East, but it needs to focus on key questions to adopt a steadier, more proactive strategy.
The Israel-Hamas war passed the six-month mark this weekend, and it remains unclear how this conflict will end or whether a wider regional war can be avoided. Only one thing seems certain: a return to the relationship Israelis and Palestinians had before this war won’t happen, and that’s a good thing. But the forecast for what comes next remains cloudy with a strong chance of more turmoil.
The war has sparked complicated debates here in the United States, and these debates tend to generate more heat than light about the pathway forward. More often than not, they fuel the confusion and division that has come to define U.S. politics on nearly all issues these days.
Here are five strategic questions the United States continues to face, both in the Gaza war and the broader Middle East, along with some short answers to these questions aimed at promoting a more clinical big-picture debate than often occurs in America today.
1. How can the United States support the return of hostages held by Hamas—including Americans—and eliminate the security threats posed by Hamas?
We should never forget that this war began with a brutal and deadly attack by Hamas and its terrorist allies against Israel. It also resulted in a prolonged hostage situation with about 100 people estimated still either held by Hamas or dead. This war has lasted longer and had higher costs than previous wars between Israelis and Palestinians for one main reason: Hamas continues to fight with tactics that endanger ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. It also seeks to confuse the debate around the world about how this war started and how it should end. Voices calling for an immediate, permanent ceasefire too often forget that Hamas bears the blame for misery in Gaza.
How to get better results: Achieve a ceasefire deal that includes a hostage release.
Easier said than done, but the quickest way to make progress towards this goal would come from an end to stonewalling by the leaders of Hamas in negotiations to achieve a ceasefire and hostage release in exchange for a release for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Intransigence by Hamas has kept the door locked to wider diplomacy. There is some tension between the goal of eliminating the security threat Hamas poses and getting hostages released because Israel is essentially negotiating with figures it seeks to eliminate. If Hamas does not surrender and give up its capacities to threaten security including its weapons arsenal and hundreds of miles of tunnels, no sustainable peace seems likely anytime soon.
2. How can the United States lead a more cohesive international effort to protect civilians and deliver more humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip?
The current debate mostly centers on what Israel and others can do to protect innocent Palestinian civilians caught in the crosshairs of the war and address the deteriorating human security situation in Gaza. Here, there is obviously much room for improvement. Last week’s announced policy shifts by Israel, under pressure from the Biden administration and the international community, to open up new humanitarian aid corridors into Gaza, are important steps in the right direction. It remains to be seen whether these measures are too little given the magnitude of the human security challenge, even though it is already apparent that they are much too late in the game.
How to get better results: Surge aid to Palestinians facing humanitarian challenges, including a possible famine.
Build on the recent shifts to open up more aid and look to create a bigger U.S.-led humanitarian aid corridor into Gaza, as Elise Labott recently argued in Cosmopolitics. Increase U.S.-Israel security and intelligence cooperation, rather than decrease and downgrade it as some have proposed, to enhance targeting measures and avoid mistakes like the ones that have resulted in deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians, international aid workers, and Israeli hostages in the first six months of this war. Increased regional security cooperation with Israel and other actors in the Middle East, rather than a withdrawal from the region as some have proposed, also sets a better framework also for dealing with regional security threats, one that can enable the creation of a state of Palestine in the future.
3. How can the United States avoid a wider regional war in the Middle East?
Global attention has understandably fixated on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, but this is just one of many flashpoints in today’s Middle East. A wider conflict is already underway with the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. But a bigger conventional regional war would hamper diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as well as divert U.S. resources and attention from other challenges in the world, including the Ukraine war and China.
How to get better results: Deepen rather than pullback from U.S. security cooperation in the Middle East.
Inoculate against the threats posed by Iran and its network of partners across the region. This means strategic re-engagement by the United States in the Middle East, but a re-engagement that is built on partnerships that share the burden of security in the region rather than pullback from it, something the Biden administration was starting to do before the October 7 attacks.
4. How can the United States create a pathway to a State of Palestine and additional regional normalization and integration deals?
The Biden administration has re-stated long standing U.S. goals of a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. After some slight delays at the start of the administration on broader regional peace and normalization deals, the Biden team stepped up its diplomatic efforts to support additional progress building on the 2020 Abraham Accords and sought an Israel-Saudi normalization deal. Given the ongoing war and regional crisis, some of those efforts are understandably on the back burner for now. The reality of public opinion among Israelis and Palestinians right now, which shows decreased support and hope in a two-state solution, makes this idea a long-term effort. This effort requires security guarantees for all and trust and confidence building measures as a result of concerted efforts to wage peace after the war is done.
How to get better results: Increase, rather than decrease, U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East.
In particular, create a more organized regional diplomatic contact group to address short-term issues like humanitarian aid to Gaza—but also to establish a diplomatic framework for collective action to complement regional security coordination. Most of America’s Arab partners support the creation of a state of Palestine, and these partners are the most likely ones to have the financial resources and diplomatic capacity to support a pathway to that outcome.
5. How can America avoid the partisan and ideological divisions at home that impede success in U.S. foreign policy these days?
Fights between Democrats and Republicans and internal party divides on Middle East policy questions have become more pronounced during the two decades after the 9/11 attacks. The 2003 Iraq war accelerated trends that focused first and foremost on partisan politics and ideological fights at home and put U.S. strategic interests second in those domestic debates. All of this contributed to the problem of neo-Orientalism in America’s Middle East policy debates—the tendency to use the people of the region as props in America’s own internal debates.
How to get better results: Promote a more analytical debate about U.S. policy in the Middle East and seek to build coalitions across parties and ideologies.
Out of the five strategic questions raised here, this is probably the hardest one to make progress on because of structural problems in America’s politics and media and the incentives that drive commentary and U.S. foreign policy making these days. Division and rancor seem to rule the roost these days, and this hyper-partisanship will likely only increase the closer November elections get. But Middle East policy debates remain mostly an elite phenomenon, and working-class Americans outside of these highly educated bubbles expect political and thought leaders to explain complicated dynamics and come up with reasonable solutions. Heated advocacy campaigns in America about the Middle East don’t seem to resonate outside of particular groups that have a connection to either Israelis or Palestinians.
These five questions rise to the level of strategy because answering them correctly can turn things towards the right direction in this war and the wider tensions in the region.
Six months into this war, the Biden administration stepped up its engagement in the Middle East in ways that it had not expected or planned when it came into office in 2021. The Middle East has never been a region with easy answers to tough questions, but a key ingredient for progress is fostering a deeper and more textured debate about the drivers of conflict and the openings for peace.
Is there a chance Israel will get frustrated with trying to negotiate hostage releases and decide that destroying Hamas is more important than saving hostages? I sometimes think that’s the least bad option. The phrase that keeps popping up in my head about Gaza is, “the issue must die.” The Israel-Hamas conflict must end, and I think it can only end by Hamas dying a full and final death, even if the hostages perish.