September 9, 2020
America Is Obsessed With Policing The Persian Gulf, It Doesn't Have To Be
If U.S. presidents prefer to compete against China and Russia, the Gulf region stubbornly refuses to let America and its allies leave.
by James Holmes
Here's What You Need To Remember: As the keeper of the system of liberal maritime trade and commerce, the United States clearly has an interest in preserving freedom of the sea wherever it comes under threat. That does not mean the U.S. sea services—the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard—must take the forefront of every effort to uphold nautical freedom. If other nations, notably Arab states and oil-thirsty European states, have more compelling interests in staring down Iran, it only makes sense that they should bear primary responsibility for the effort.
That chronic pain gnawing at officialdom’s guts is bipartisan. Presidential administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, keep trying to draw down the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf region in particular, to attend to more pressing priorities. Back in 2012 the Obama administration vowed to “pivot†or “rebalance,†from the Middle East to the Pacific theater to counterbalance China. President Donald Trump and his lieutenants proclaim that an age of great-power competition is upon us. Like their Democratic forerunners, they have signaled their desire to reapportion finite U.S. diplomatic and military resources elsewhere around the Eurasian perimeter—say, to the South China Sea or Baltic Sea.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/america-obsessed-policing-persian-gulf-it-doesnt-have-be-168550
