Washington has spent the better part of forty years building a military apparatus in the Middle East vast enough to suggest that the American republic itself depends on who controls every airfield and oil terminal from the Persian Gulf to the Levant. Then came the war with Iran. The bases meant to deter and, if necessary, defeat Iran were pummeled by missiles. Pentagon officials are now weighing whether to rebuild or reduce that battered footprint, reportedly discussing a westward shift toward Jordan, Israel, or Western Saudi Arabia. The internal debate is welcome, but instead of starting from which bases to reconstruct, planners should ask what Washington actually needs from the Middle East itself. The posture should follow from that answer.
America has long treated the Middle East less as a region containing a finite number of American interests than as a critical area whose every tremor must summon the United States military.
America’s actual interests in the Middle East are much narrower than its military footprint suggests: ensuring energy reaches global markets, preventing a hostile power from controlling the region, and disrupting terrorist networks before they reach the homeland. Protecting these interests does not require a permanent garrison network.
The fact of the matter is that the vulnerability and defensive burden of America’s bases in the Persian Gulf, especially Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, and eastern Saudi Arabia, exceeds the marginal strategic benefit of maintaining them. Their proximity to Iran places them squarely inside its missile envelope, making their defense both difficult and ruinously expensive. This is not an indictment of American servicemembers, who remain the best in the world. No amount of martial excellence can overcome an ill-conceived strategic posture.
Unlike in the 1970s, America is no longer an energy-starved industrial power waiting for Saudi oil to keep the country running. The United States now produces more oil than ever. That said, because oil is traded on a global market and the Gulf countries remain significant producers, Washington shares an interest with other consumers and producers in seeing Gulf energy reach global markets.
But this does not mean the U.S. needs to supervise every country within a thousand miles of an oil well. The Gulf monarchies do not need American soldiers to convince them to sell the commodity that finances their government. U.S, troops’ absence would increase all regional oil producers’ incentives to prevent crises from getting out of hand without U.S. troops there as a backstop.
The military question only arises when a hostile power threatens to seize enough of the region’s energy production or disrupt its export routes on a scale capable of shocking the global economy. A permanent garrison is not necessary to prevent this. In 1990, Saddam Hussein’s conquest of Kuwait threatened to put an enormous share of Gulf oil under one hostile ruler’s control. The United States did not need permanently pre-positioned troops there beforehand. Saudi Arabia and a global coalition opened the region to American forces and would likely do so again, however undesirable that possibility is.
The Strait of Hormuz stays open in peacetime because every major producer shipping through it has a vested interest in selling oil. The Strait’s vulnerability in war is geographic, and it only takes a few missiles or drones to deter most merchants from trying their luck. Decades of permanent military presence did not prevent the Strait’s closure during this latest round of fighting, nor can any realistic posture.
The bottom line is that the United States does not need to live in the Gulf to retain the ability to return. The strategic requirement for that is surge capacity, best achieved through allies, diplomacy, naval power, and logistical capacity.
The logic that lets Washington step back from a Gulf-wide garrison network rests on the assumption that Gulf energy stays diffuse enough that no single actor can hold it hostage. That assumption is why preventing any single hostile power from dominating the region’s resources and trade routes is so important. Any country in that position could conceivably use that dominance to coerce other regional states into aligning against Washington. While this remains a legitimate concern, no country in the Middle East currently has the resources, manpower, or political cohesion needed to mount a bid for hegemony.
The third primary concern is terrorism, and no country understands the costs of ignoring it better than the United States. But the war on terror made clear that eliminating every last insurgent is impossible. America must therefore retain the ability to detect and destroy terrorist networks that have the intent and capability to strike the U.S. homeland.
In 2026, that mission depends on intelligence, partner forces, and long-range, over-the-horizon capabilities, which is how the United States conducts most of its counterterrorism operations already. Operation Epic Fury itself was directed from South Carolina, and the B-2 bombers used during Operation Midnight Hammer took off from Missouri.
Further, today’s Middle East is no longer that of 2001. Many regional governments now possess capable security services with every incentive to use them against movements that threaten their survival.
No one can say today with confidence exactly what the ideal posture should look like, but it should be smaller, farther from Iran, and consolidated around a small number of locations designed to preserve access and surge capacity in a crisis. That could mean facilities in Jordan, western Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Horn of Africa, or even southern Europe.
Every few years, Washington announces that it is finally done allowing the Middle East to devour American foreign policy. Yet the region keeps clawing its way back to the center of it, usually with a new war and justification to stay. The Pentagon’s internal review offers a rare chance to break that cycle. Washington should use this moment to build a posture around its core interests, before the rubble is cleared and old strategic habits are poured back into concrete.
Matthew MacKenzie is a Foreign Policy Analyst at Americans for Prosperity.
