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With the start of a new administration in the United States, the coming months might offer an opportune moment for Washington to rethink some of the fundamental premises underlying American policymaking in the Middle East and review how the United States engages the region, and for what purpose.
A new RAND report reimagines U.S. strategy in the Middle East by analyzing long-standing American interests and relationships with central partners and then considering an alternative framework. The research assesses the advantages and trade-offs of a regional strategy where strategic goals link to a broader understanding of stability that prioritizes reduced conflict, better governance, and greater growth and development.
The authors consider how a U.S. strategy in the Middle East might look if the approach shifted from an emphasis on what they call threatism—focusing on the threat of the day, and particularly the Iranian threat—to a positive vision of a region supported by increased diplomatic and economic investments, one in which the sources of extremism and interstate competition are reduced to manageable levels. Reimagining U.S. strategy in the Middle East with a positive, but not idealized, vision of outcomes (rather than focusing on only the threats the United States is trying to contain) could lead to a new set of policy options for future decisionmakers to consider.
To assess current policy and the proposed alternative framework, the RAND team assessed four aspects of U.S. engagement in the Middle East: (1) relations with regional partners; (2) the management of adversarial threats; (3) the role of global competitors, particularly China and Russia; and (4) policy tools to advance U.S. strategic objectives.
The researchers recommend 26 specific actions organized into the following three pillars:
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