From Hardware to Holism: Rebalancing America’s Security Engagement With Arab States

Although the so-called great powers began providing security assistance to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) some two centuries ago, security assistance these days is primarily a legacy of the Cold War. During that protracted conflict, both the United States and the Soviet Union considerably enhanced their security assistance. In addition to arms supplies, these new trimmings included development assistance wrapped up in ideologically informed capitalist and communist models, respectively, coupled with incentives if recipients aligned their policies and political economies with the appropriate bloc—West or East. Cold War security assistance, in short, was part of a package deal.

The collapse of the Soviet Union rendered this all-encompassing approach unsustainable for the successor Russian state. Development assistance, ideological guidance, and membership in a bloc of aligned nations were shorn away, leaving security assistance the only major tool of Russian power projection. Even that was reduced in scope. Military alliances and intrusive engagement with recipient armed forces were supplanted almost entirely by weapons sales, coupled with unilateral gray-zone interventions.

The trajectory of U.S. security assistance to the Middle East runs parallel—albeit trailing behind the Russians by a decade or more and without the addition of extensive gray-zone activities. The disastrous 2003 intervention in Iraq represented the apotheosis of the United States’ Cold War–era boots-and-all approach. That failed effort to convert Iraq into a beacon of Arab democracy—or even to constitute a legitimate, effective national government—ended, possibly forever, attempts to shape recipient nation states in America’s image. Like Russia, the United States has resorted to arms deliveries as the principal component of its security assistance. In the U.S. case, that’s supplemented by building partner capacity, or what the Department of Defense calls BPC—robust equipment sustainment programs and broader military upgrading efforts. Washington hopes BPC will allow the United States to project power at a lower cost with fewer boots on the ground than the legacy model of security assistance left over from the Cold War.

Costs and Benefits of the Post–Cold War Model of Security Assistance

Military, economic, and political factors all contributed to the United States’ Cold War victory over the Soviets in the Middle East. Had Washington not embedded weapons transfers into broader security assistance, support for development, and integration into U.S.-backed alliances, the outcome might have been different. Since then, have contemporary policymakers overweighted weapons transfers while underweighting broader security and development assistance?

Apparently yes, for three reasons.

First, weapons transfers are symbolic. Their role as a signal of the U.S. security guarantee typically outweighs their actual military value. Since the administration of former U.S. president Barack Obama, various Middle Eastern governments have diversified their procurement, driven largely by concerns that the United States is actually not committed to their security—no matter how many expensive U.S. weapons systems they purchase. Failure to effectively integrate some of these weapons into the recipient militaries have not deterred their continued acquisition. This suggests that symbolic value matters even more than combat usefulness in clients’ calculations.

Second, procurement is being diversified to restrict the influence of a predominant weapons supplier. Weapons manufacturers eager to tap into the lucrative Middle Eastern market are proliferating. The Obama administration’s ill-fated attempt to influence the Egyptian military in the wake of the July 2013 coup by suspending military assistance that October exemplifies the limited effectiveness of conditionality. Obama restored U.S. assistance to Egypt in March 2015, having gained no leverage over Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—who, in the meantime, had begun to diversify Egypt’s weapons procurement. Within two years, the United States had fallen into third place among Egypt’s weapons suppliers. France now provides 40 percent of Egypt’s weapons purchases. The United States lags behind Russia and is barely ahead of Germany, which sells more weapons to Egypt than to anyone else.

Third, costly weapons procurement and other military expenditures have contributed to economic stagnation in many Middle Eastern countries while reinforcing the political power of armed forces. Weapons transfers are paradoxically justified by the United States on the grounds they contribute to stability—a half-truth, at best. For the most part, weapons transfers create more problems than solutions. As regimes’ political bases narrow, repression has increased, which, coupled with economic decline, has contributed to the MENA region’s chronic instability. Moreover, this instability feeds on itself. The Middle East’s increasingly fragile security environment begets more weapons acquisitions from ever more suppliers—a self-perpetuating arms spiral that benefits neither the MENA region nor the United States.

Security Assistance vs Actual Security

As individual Middle Eastern countries and the broader MENA region have become increasingly securitized, overall security has diminished. Some evidence suggests there might be a causal relationship. Between 2000 and 2018, two-thirds of overall U.S. aid allocations were development related and only one third military related. In the Middle East, however, military-related assistance made up 55 percent of a total $210 billion in U.S. overseas development assistance. During that period, over half of all U.S. military aid went to the MENA region. Middle Eastern armed forces are the world’s largest, as measured by proportion to population and by spending as a percentage of GDP. Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, countries in the MENA region spent more than twice as much on defense as a percentage of GDP than South Asia—the next highest-spending region. Of the twenty countries that spend the most on importing arms, nine are in the MENA region. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s 2019 yearbook, Middle Eastern countries increased their arms imports by 87 percent between 2009–2013 and 2014–2018. In that latter period, MENA countries accounted for 35 percent of global arms imports and relatively impoverished Egypt became the world’s third-largest importer of arms.

Although MENA states invest disproportionately in security, they’ve often failed to adequately deliver it to their populations. In 2019, MENA countries were among the world’s least peaceful according to the Global Peace Index. Of the world’s nine most dangerous countries that year, five were in the MENA region. About 90 percent of the MENA population lives in countries more dangerous than the world average, while almost 100 million live in five of the most dangerous. The evidence thus suggests that security assistance to the MENA has not produced strong, accountable, peaceful states within a stable, safe, and secure region.

The record is not much better from the perspective of security assistance serving U.S. interests. Jihadi extremism has been substantially contained but—other than the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks—it has actually posed little direct threat to the United States. The flow of oil has been maintained, but primarily because of market forces rather than militarily enforced security. The one clear interest that has been well served is Israel, which, paradoxically, is increasingly independent of the United States.

After a decade-long hiatus in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia has reentered the region as a military power. China’s economic and soft-power presence is steadily growing as well. North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have become major competitors in the region’s lucrative arms markets. Iran, the United States’ principal regional opponent, has not been contained. Most Arab countries that had been closely aligned with Washington, such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, are increasingly militarily and strategically independent. The descent into chaos of Libya, Syria, and Yemen, coupled with increasing state fragility in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan, calls into question the continued viability of anything resembling a regional state system guided by agreed principles and interests. In the absence of such a system, the Middle East will devolve into ever-shifting alliances and conflicts in which the United States must compete with a host of actors to secure its and its allies’ interests. If U.S. security assistance were reformed, might it be able to address at least some of these challenges?

Weapons Technology and Reform of Security Assistance

Technological advances in weapons systems take two divergent forms. One is ever-greater sophistication, price, and sustainment requirements of top-of-the-line arms, especially manned aircraft. The price of F-16 fighter jets purchased by Arab countries, for example, has risen from $36 million in the early 1980s to $122 million today. Apache helicopters cost $11 million in 1995 but $61 million in 2020. The UAE is reported to be paying $10.4 billion for fifty F-35s it ordered in 2020—more than $200 million apiece. Sustainment and training costs for increasingly high-tech equipment are inflating at an even more rapid rate. In addition to carrying high costs, these weapons must also be integrated into the complex electronic battlefield control systems they’re designed to operate in—which are themselves costly to purchase and sustain. Designed primarily for use by the U.S. military, these high-tech weapons and technical systems stretch even the Pentagon’s capacities.

The second trend is occurring at the opposite end of the weapons spectrum. Sophisticated asymmetric weaponry is becoming increasingly easy to operate, inexpensive, and lethal. Unmanned aerial vehicles and missiles are the prime exemplars of this trend. Their effective use—as demonstrated, for example, by Turkey in western Libya in 2020 and by Iran against Saudi oil facilities in Abqaiq in September 2019—calls into question the cost and battlefield effectiveness of more complex, expensive weapons systems. Referred to as Costco weapons by a U.S. general, they pose a challenge to the role that more valuable and high-tech weaponry plays in U.S. security assistance.

The impacts of these diverging technological trends are serious even for advanced militaries. For recipients, they necessitate more careful tailoring of procurement to needs, resources, and capacities than has previously been the case. Less able to afford, maintain, and operate the new generation of advanced weapons systems, many Middle Eastern militaries’ needs may be better served by a greater emphasis on asymmetric weapons coupled with the human and organizational components of their armed forces. Thus far, however, the high-tech arms race in the region, driven by reputational and actual needs, has not yet been impacted by careful cost-benefit analyses of those weapons.

Toward More Effective U.S. Security Assistance    

Returning to the Cold War model of comprehensive security assistance coupled with broad support for development is impossible. What can be done is to reconfigure bilateral security assistance while simultaneously encouraging the creation of Middle Eastern security architecture. The key is to shift weight between the principal legs of security assistance—which are, in order of present importance, weapons transfers, sustainment of those weapons, training and advice, and institution building. Deficient institutions in recipient countries pose obstacles not only to building and operating effective and efficient militaries, but also to achieving appropriate balances between commitments to national security and other public needs. As MENA militaries become more complex, lethal, and expensive, there is a growing need for their development and operations to be shaped by strategies, budgets, and internal organization informed by threat and capability analyses. The region’s ministries of defense, typically operating autonomously from civilian governments and staffed overwhelmingly by military personnel with skill sets insufficiently related to these tasks, need to be reformed and incorporated into and controlled by other governmental institutions. The United States has a comparative advantage in supporting such institution building. The potential payoffs from that kind of development far outweigh the acquisition of an expensive new weapons system.

At the regional level, security would be most improved by limiting arms flows. But conditionality, as indicated by the Obama administration’s attempts to deal with Sisi, is ineffective. Arms embargoes are equally misguided. In the early 1950s, an attempt to impose one on Egypt ended in the 1955 Egyptian-Czechoslovakian arms deal—a classic Cold War failure for the West. In the wake of the first Gulf War, the administration of former U.S. president George H. W. Bush aimed to restrict the transfer of nonconventional and conventional weapons to Iraq, seeking support from major arms providers. It proved to be a dead letter.

This unfortunate history paradoxically implies that a broader approach, rather than one focused exclusively on limiting weapons transfers, may have a greater chance of success. Policymakers should look to models that emerged during the Cold War and managed to improve communications, reduce the chances of conflict, and limit arms races. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is the largest example, composed of fifty-seven member states, and probably most relevant. A Middle East security framework is long past due. An effort to build one might produce greater dividends for U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration than a plethora of engagements intended to reduce specific conflicts and their impacts in a host of regional settings.

Conclusion

The current structure of U.S. security assistance is serving neither U.S. nor regional states’ interests. It is far too centered on weapons transfers, and deeply insufficient when it comes to improving national institutions or creating a regional security framework. Security assistance recipients are bearing costs that are disproportionate to their resources and likely their actual defense needs. The weapons they acquire aren’t even well-suited to countering the most vital threats to their national security. It is long past time to initiate a thorough review of U.S. security assistance, and to engage other providers and recipients in an overdue discussion of the ways and means to obtain greater security at lower costs.

Robert Springborg is a non-resident Research Fellow of the Italian Institute of International Affairs, Rome, and Adjunct Professor, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. Formerly he was Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and the holder of the MBI Al Jaber Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, His most recent books are Egypt (2018) and Political Economies of the Middle East and North Africa (2020), both published by Polity Press.

Based on their reading of U.S. domestic politics and the global landscape, nearly every country in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) believes that the United States is poised to revise its posture in the Middle East. The gap between what Gulf states expect from the United States and what Washington is willing to offer has widened in recent years, making this recalibration inevitable. Although the scope, size, and purpose of Washington’s shift are still up for debate, Gulf governments are already preparing for it—even as they are likely to resist any major changes. Yet they are doing so divided—a peculiar mix of anxiety and self-confidence underpins both their hope that any new entrants to the Gulf arena will extend similar security benefits and the sober understanding that the United States remains their preferred, indispensable guarantor.

Recalibration will be no small task for Washington’s strategists and defense planners. The U.S. military footprint is significant and entrenched, the Gulf states remain major security and economic partners, and many of the GCC’s security concerns remain well-founded (however inflated they may be at times). Their capacity to shape, impose a cost on, or even derail U.S. policy cannot be easily wished away. If Washington seeks a more cooperative and inclusive security system that permits reduced U.S. involvement in the Middle East, it will have to recalibrate its position and reassure its partners simultaneously—and cautiously.

Defense Diplomacy Anchors the Relationship

The primacy given to security relations over the past four decades has distorted the broader relationship between the United States and its major regional partners in the GCC. Defense diplomacy has become both the preferred and default way of doing business, providing a sense of continuity as U.S. foreign policy inevitably fluctuates from administration to administration. U.S. Central Command leaders (who are focused on basing, logistics, and operations; command large staffs and massive resources; and are able to placate their local counterparts) and intelligence officials (who are concerned with the domestic and transnational security threats that Middle Eastern governments consider the most acute) have often outshone typically low-profile diplomats who pursue more complex agendas, and can’t be expected to promptly deliver or reward. This dynamic has worked out well for Gulf states; it facilitated relations—notably by sidestepping unpleasant conversations about human rights, domestic governance, and economic prospects—and it cultivated a cadre of friendly officers and defense interlocutors.

The flip side is that defense entanglements have often hidden deteriorating political relations, papered over changing strategic rationales, or obfuscated nontraditional security challenges. When threat perceptions or policies diverge, Washington invariably offers defense consultations or so-called strategic dialogues to smooth differences. Meant as reassurance, such outreach has compounded the problems in the relationship by skirting rather than addressing growing strategic gaps and political tensions.

This is also true for the Gulf states. Whenever tensions have emerged with Washington, defense relations supersede them. Things like basing rights, lavish conventional arms transfers, and military-to-military cooperation are viewed as a form of insurance policy that ties the United States (and its allies) to the region. The UAE’s planned purchase of F-35 aircraft exemplifies this kind of calculus: however legitimate the military rationale may be (in this case, technological superiority over rivals), the primary goal is to secure Abu Dhabi’s relationship with the U.S. defense establishment for the next three decades, regardless of political differences. Qatar took a similar tack when it came under severe pressure from its neighbors in 2017. The Qataris purchased Eurofighter Typhoon, French Rafale, and U.S. F-15 aircraft to ensure continued goodwill in major Western capitals.

This approach has not delivered the expected defense outcomes. GCC states remain unable to provide their own external security. Gulf power projection is underpinned by Western military assistance and security guarantees even when it is at odds with Western interests and preferences. And the cost of disrupting the entrenched interests, military rent, and institutional arrangements that have been in place for forty years remains high. U.S. military bases and facilities, multidecade defense contracts and servicing, and strong military-to-military cooperation are a glue that binds the Gulf states and the United States.

Most importantly, the focus on defense diplomacy has distracted from looming nontraditional security threats to Gulf stability. From climate change and the energy transition to domestic governance and economic transformation, the GCC’s agenda is loaded with issues that Washington’s securitized approach has done little to prioritize and address.

A Series of Shocks to the U.S.-Gulf Relationship

Today, major Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the United States find themselves misaligned or at odds on many issues. This fact, obfuscated during Donald Trump’s presidency due to its highly personalized and transactional approach, has been starkly highlighted by the return to more disciplined statecraft under President Joe Biden’s administration.

Relations between the United States and its Gulf partners have undergone multiple shocks during recent decades, beginning with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the resulting ascendance of Iran. The 2011 Arab uprisings introduced another source of tension. The (arguably short-lived and ambivalent) U.S. embrace of revolutionary change rattled conservative Gulf monarchies. The chaotic regional competition that followed further poisoned relations.

The biggest challenge to U.S.-Gulf relations has been Washington’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran since 2012. The manner in which former president Barack Obama’s administration conducted its negotiations validated Gulf preconceptions about U.S. engagement with Iran. Displeasure with the resulting deal stemmed less from its actual terms than from suspicions that the United States would subordinate Gulf state concerns—notably Iran’s militia network and missile program—to protect its diplomatic success, thus paving the way for greater Iranian reach. Inevitably, subsequent U.S. policy in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen was interpreted through this prism. Discontent with Washington peaked when Obama suggested in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic that Saudi Arabia and Iran “need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood.” Rightly or not, it was seen as heralding U.S. accommodation of Iran that belied a fundamental misreading of Iranian ambitions.

The clearest moment of reckoning was the momentous attacks against major Saudi oil facilities in September 2019, reportedly carried out by Iran in retaliation to the Trump administration’s strategy of maximum pressure. The strikes, conducted by UAVs and missiles, halved Saudi oil export capacity for a few weeks and demonstrated enduring Gulf physical vulnerabilities in the face of Iranian military prowess. The U.S. reaction was relatively mum; despite the ostensible closeness between the Saudi ruling family and the Trump administration, the United States declined to identify the attackers and put the onus on Saudi Arabia.

In effect, these attacks clarified for Gulf states Washington’s declining security commitment to the region regardless of who sits in the White House. The United States had recast energy security in the Gulf not as a global public good that it would necessarily and unilaterally defend, but primarily as the responsibility of local powers. This episode augured future changes in the U.S. posture, forcing new Gulf security thinking and defense planning. Not only did Washington expose its local partners to Iranian aggression, but the vaunted U.S. security guarantee could no longer be seen as certain, absolute, or automatic. What remained of president Jimmy Carter’s doctrine to defend U.S. national interest in the Gulf had effectively been buried. Simultaneously, however, it illustrated the Gulf’s enduring dependency on the United States; Riyadh successfully requested for U.S. air defense batteries to be deployed on Saudi soil, and Gulf states showed greater interest in deploying early warning and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities on top on U.S.-made missile defense systems and layered defense.

Gulf officials often note the tension between Washington’s hope that local powers will take ownership of regional security and its expectation that they will continue to align with U.S. standards and policy preferences. But the same actions that many in Washington consider unnecessary, reckless, or belligerent are often seen in Gulf capitals as necessary, justifiable, and defensive. The crisis in Yemen exemplifies this divide. While Gulf officials fixate on the merits, strategic necessity, and legality of the Saudi-led intervention, U.S. officials—especially legislators—are increasingly concerned by its brutal conduct, the humanitarian impact of the ongoing blockade, and the United States’ own moral and political liabilities. Even as Washington emphasizes Saudi violations of the law of armed conflict, Saudi and Emirati officials argue that international complacency is what allowed the Houthis to expand, seize a missile arsenal, and strengthen ties with Iran—making the war inevitable.

Gulf Perspectives on Washington’s Middle East Retrenchment Debate

As Washington policymakers debate the future of the United States’ posture in the Middle East, Gulf states are watching with puzzlement and trepidation. They are ostensibly confident that the dense web of relations they have cultivated with the United States will temper any sudden or radical moves. However, they worry about the rise of a diverse, vocal, and broadening coalition calling for a reassessment of U.S.-Gulf relations.

The Gulf states regard themselves as loyal, grateful partners that have backed U.S. policy on most issues and remained silent when in disagreement, such as with the Iraq war or the Israel-Palestine conflict. From their perspective, the United States undermined a regional order that benefited the monarchies when it invaded Iraq in 2003, supported revolutionary movements in 2011, and prioritized a nuclear deal with Tehran over GCC concerns. The Gulf states’ own arms buildup and aggressive foreign policies followed, rather than preceded, these momentous changes. In their view, maintaining close relations is the best way Washington can make up for these U.S.-made disruptions—and the Gulf states have paid more than a trillion dollars over several decades to ensure it.

The apprehension that Washington will prove at once naive and cynical regarding Iran pervades Gulf thinking. Many Gulf officials still worry that nuclear diplomacy with Iran is meant to pave the way for the United States to accommodate Tehran, disregard GCC concerns, and ultimately allow Iranian hegemony. Gulf officials and observers expect that if no agreement can be struck on Iran’s missile program and regional power projection, any nuclear deal with Iran would need to be accompanied by further U.S. security guarantees. Of course, this demand runs counter to U.S. policy goals in the Middle East, which seek to reduce rather than expand security commitments.

From the Gulf states’ perspective, there are other strong arguments for a lasting U.S. commitment to the region. The Gulf will likely be a key arena for great-power competition, given Chinese energy and geoeconomic interests and Russian power plays. A considerably reduced U.S. role could lead local powers to ramp up engagement with Washington’s strategic rivals. This, Gulf officials are quick to note, is not their preference—but geopolitics may require otherwise. This forewarning, however, does not square with a broad acknowledgment that Russia is an overpromising and uncommitted partner, while an opportunistically mercantilist China remains reluctant to take on security burdens.

Are There Really Alternative Security Partners?

Even though strategic diversification by the Gulf states predates the more recent tensions, anxiety about U.S. retrenchment has accelerated it. The Gulf states have always been sensitive to global shifts of power—real or perceived—and keen to cultivate major powers even when interests don’t align. Russia’s resurgence in the Middle East and China’s arrival therefore offer tantalizing, if overstated, possibilities.

Almost every regional partner of the United States has attempted to diversify its weapons supply over the past decade. Visitors to the International Defense Exhibition and Conference in Abu Dhabi can see the wide range of non-Western weaponry and services now available to Middle Eastern countries. When denied access to armed U.S. UAVs, for example, Saudi Arabia acquired Chinese CH-4B Rainbows while the UAE bought Chinese Wing Loong II. Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems are reportedly high on Gulf wish lists.

Signaling their intention to buy advanced weapons systems from U.S. rivals is one way that Gulf states convey discontent with and demonstrate autonomy from Washington, rather than representing a real concerted shift away from the United States. It also resonates among Arab populations, where China and Russia are popular compared to the United States. Saudi Arabia, for example, is floating the possibility of buying the S-400 air defense system from Russia, as is Qatar. This serves two strategic goals: it is a sign of the kingdom’s displeasure with U.S. policy, but it is also a way to curry favor with Moscow and ensure it does not side with Tehran. The UAE, meanwhile, announced in 2017 that it would collaborate with Russia on the development of a fifth-generation aircraft. The prospects for such a collaboration are low, however—in 2020, the UAE ordered U.S. F-35s.

The Gulf states’ procurement rationales do have some validity. The September 2019 attacks revealed that Saudi Arabia is physically vulnerable to air attacks; the Russian S-400, therefore, is very attractive to the Saudi defense establishment. The acquisition and operating costs of Western systems are also considerably higher, and Western procurement processes are lengthy and politically fraught (which Saudi Arabia and the UAE have experienced recently amid congressional opposition to arms sales over the Yemen war).

However attractive Russian and Chinese procurement options may be, neither offers the suite of security services, products, and—ultimately—guarantees that the United States provides. The Gulf states understand that their fundamental dilemma is the fact that although prosperity may come from the East, their best bet for security is in the West. The guarantee of U.S. strategic support is irreplaceable for the foreseeable future; therefore any hedging by the Gulf states is inescapably limited. Arab defense officials recognize that U.S. and Western technology remains the most appealing and combat proven. Sixty-one percent of Saudi arms purchases came from the United States between 2013 and 2017, followed by the United Kingdom (23 percent) and France (3.6 percent). Part of the United States’ appeal and attraction is the long tail of after-sales servicing, training, and integration that non-Western contractors often don’t offer and that represents an important diplomatic glue.

Recalibration Will Require Reassurance

In the eyes of many in Washington, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are inexorably tainted by their embrace of the Trump administration, support for the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and military intervention in Yemen (and, to a lesser extent, in Libya). Consequently, there is little patience in many circles for their security concerns, and Saudi and Emirati efforts at recalibrating their own policies since 2019 are often dismissed as too little too late. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi—as well as Kuwait City, Manama, Doha, and even Muscat—are worried that, over time, the United States could significantly downsize its physical presence, end the sale of weapons, and ultimately define down its commitment.

These concerns are not necessarily justified. Biden has pledged to “defend [Saudi] sovereignty and territorial integrity and its people,” and there is no sign (yet) of upheaval in their relationship. But unless the relationship is redefined on a healthier basis, calls by former officials and commentators to close the naval base in Bahrain, cancel already agreed-upon weapons sales and stop future ones, and create equivalences between the Gulf states and Iran could find a more sympathetic reception among officials and on Capitol Hill.

U.S. basing in the Gulf is the most visible element of the security relationship, and perhaps the ripest for a reassessment. The current footprint (with bases and facilities in each Gulf state) is oversized, over-resourced, politically exposed, and militarily questionable—deterring Iran does not require such a large presence. The changing nature of warfare and Iran’s technological advances even make U.S. installations a liability in some senses. Downsizing the U.S. footprint can happen if Washington also encourages GCC efforts to develop early warning systems, ISR, modern air defenses, and maritime security.

Arms sales are a thornier topic. The temptation in Washington is to distinguish between offensive and defensive capabilities, and pledge to provide only the latter. But there is no neat difference between the two, and total reliance on air and missile defense is strategically unsatisfactory, operationally insufficient, and very costly. With the lifting of a UN arms embargo on Iran in 2020 and another one to be lifted in 2023, Tehran will likely increase its missile, UAV, and proxy superiority and preserve its nuclear edge. The Gulf states will want to maintain conventional superiority, to ensure credible deterrence over Iran but also to demonstrate to their citizens a degree of self-reliance. Unless Washington is ready to shoulder the burden of deterrence alone, sales of advanced weapons systems will remain high on the bilateral agenda. What can be negotiated down, however, is the size of these extravagant packages.

More importantly, the focus should be on strict conditionality and accountability for power projection in the region. The United States could precisely define the criteria and circumstances under which it would provide or deny assistance (including resupply, servicing, and logistical or intelligence support) to interventions outside the GCC. Washington should also have a clear sense of what assistance it is willing to deny its partners—or, in certain cases, even what sanctions it is willing to impose. The complexity of modern battlefields, the United States’ own checkered military record, the sense that Washington upholds standards it does not necessarily abide by, and the understanding that compliance with the law of armed conflict is weakening will all make a purely legal or technical approach less effective than intense, clear-eyed diplomatic engagement.

As strategists know too well, reassurance is considerably harder and costlier than deterrence. A good place for the United States to start, then, would be by eschewing its tendency to reassure through defense diplomacy.

For over a decade, the United States has been attempting to reduce its involvement in Middle Eastern wars and shift its attention to Asia. Recent attempts to divest U.S. military resources from the Middle East—including withdrawals that never occurred and a beefed-up force presence to “restore deterrence”—have faltered. Now, the new U.S. administration under President Joe Biden intends to revise what it views as an outmoded U.S. military posture in the Middle East in order to free up resources needed to better compete against China. It seems increasingly clear that the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East will change. But it is less apparent how the U.S. posture should change and how it could be altered in a responsible manner that will preserve core U.S. interests.

The Rationale for U.S. Presence

The roots of U.S. security in the Middle East arguably emerged during World War II, when expanding military operations drove an increased need for new and abundant sources of oil. This opened the door for a quid pro quo: U.S. access to regional energy sources in return for security. Little presence, however, was needed to maintain this relationship. For much of the Cold War, the Middle East featured a small U.S. presence intended to pare back encroaching Soviet influence and hedge against a potential Soviet invasion. But the 1980 Carter Doctrine, attacks on oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq War, and the need to contain Iraqi aggression following the first Gulf War all required a larger continuous presence, which formed the roots of the current U.S. posture in the Middle East. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and successive conflicts in the Middle East, that basing structure continued to grow extensively. Installations like Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait swelled in size and became permanent, major operating bases.

Today, the expansive constellation of U.S. bases in the Middle East serve a number of requirements. Ongoing operations in Afghanistan and against the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have further reinforced the need for these operational hubs. They also meet peacetime demands, such as supporting deterrence missions against Iran and security cooperation activities intended to strengthen the military capabilities of regional partners. These activities have been buttressed by robust arms sales to regional partners, particularly the Gulf states, amid the return to great-power competition with China and Russia. More so, these bases and the U.S. personnel who serve on them act as a persistent reminder of the long-standing U.S. security guarantee that is critical for reassuring partners.

Shifting U.S. Security Priorities

U.S. military posture in the Middle East has not always advanced U.S. goals or served to support its core interests, suggesting a need to rethink the link between strategic interests and presence. Preserving stability and access to Middle Eastern oil has been a long-stated interest of the United States. But a global diversification of energy sources, including America’s own shale revolution, coupled with a decrease in oil consumption, have weakened the Gulf states’ ability to control the price of oil. While many countries like China still rely on the Middle East to meet their energy needs, this is no longer the case for the United States.

Protecting the U.S. homeland is an enduring American interest. With this in mind, ensuring Middle East stability remains a priority. Ongoing conflicts may create the conditions that breed or create safe havens for terrorists. Should a state-based threat like Iran metastasize or embolden its global proxy network, it could pose a threat to the U.S. homeland. But U.S. regional basing architecture, originally developed to counter state-based threats, is ill-suited to meet the unique threat posed by nonstate actors, which remain the greatest risk to U.S. domestic security.

Lastly, although the United States has spent decades mired in the Middle East and embroiled in regional conflicts, it may finally be achieving its long-sought pivot to Asia. The 2018 National Defense Strategy made clear that great-power competitors China and Russia posed the most significant long-term threat to the U.S.-led international order. Recent comments by Biden suggest that China will be the focus of his administration. This augurs a shift in forces, capabilities, and resources to Asia, which will inevitably impact U.S. posture in the Middle East.

The Case Against U.S. Bases

From a strategic standpoint, U.S. presence in the Middle East is not directly linked to core U.S. interests. Critics argue that continued U.S. presence contributes to, if not fuels, the ongoing instability in the Middle East, often driving U.S. operations. Such arguments cite diminishing U.S. reliance on oil and gas originating in the Middle East and the emergence of regional terrorist organizations intent on attacking U.S. troops specifically to force a military withdrawal.

Operationally, continued U.S. military presence in the Middle East comes directly at the expense of U.S. forces in other, more critical regions. At the same time, critics argue that continued U.S. presence contributes to the inability or unwillingness of regional states to develop their own military capabilities. They also highlight the growing risks to U.S. forces as the capabilities of regional adversaries like Iran advance, and claim that forward presence is no longer required thanks to new technological advancements in warfare.

The supporting evidence bears out these arguments. U.S. troops have been attacked by terrorist organizations, notably the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 and the more recent rocket attacks by Iranian-backed groups in Iraq. The U.S. military presence has also added to the security of Middle Eastern autocracies, which has emboldened these authoritarian regimes to crackdown on their citizens—for example, in Bahrain after the February 14, 2011, uprisings.

The presence of U.S. forces and the unspoken U.S. security commitment has also meant that many regional countries have not invested heavily in building up their militaries. Some partners, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have used their nascent capabilities in ways that work against U.S. interests.

Furthermore, the growing capabilities of regional adversaries has placed U.S. military installations at risk. Iran, especially, poses a risk to the survivability of U.S. forces and could impede U.S. military operations, as Tehran builds up its missile capabilities, employs new technologies like unmanned aerial vehicles, and proliferates its capabilities to proxy forces. Moreover, while advancements in U.S. military capabilities enable remote operations, they are unlikely and unable to replace forward-based operations in the Middle East—either in the case of an Iran contingency or to respond to terrorist threats.

Linking Interests to Missions

Any changes to U.S. posture in the Middle East will need to be done responsibly to not impinge on core U.S. interests or military operations and keep relationships with regional partners intact. This is a tall order, but one that is well overdue. The U.S. Global Force Posture Review announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in February 2021 is an opportunity to set the groundwork for a revision of U.S. presence in the Middle East, as the review seeks to better link the global U.S. military footprint to national interests.

The importance of the initial interests that undergirded U.S. presence in the region have faded over time, with energy no longer holding the same salience it once did. Moving forward, the U.S. military presence should be driven by current strategic value, rather than supporting legacy targets, with core U.S. interests and objectives directly mapped to missions. This should, in turn, dictate the number and location of forces and the capabilities required to achieve those missions.

For example, ensuring the freedom of navigation in critical maritime chokepoints throughout the Middle East is now arguably a secondary objective. With this in mind, rethinking the appropriate level of effort and resources required for this responsibility is in order, especially against the backdrop of eroding U.S. naval readiness and overtaxed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets. Such a mission should not require a carrier strike group, nor should it be the justification for a continuous carrier presence in the region. Performing this mission with a different level of resourcing would require regional partners and other allies—many of whom also have an interest in maintaining the free flow of energy—to take on additional responsibilities.

In the current strategic landscape, the most crucial U.S. objective in the Middle East has become stability, as linked to the core U.S. interest of protecting its homeland. With this in mind, the United States needs to retain access to a few key bases in the Middle East in case of contingencies involving Iran or a nonstate actor, to conduct limited counterterrorism operations, and to undertake peacetime security cooperation activities. This will undoubtedly alter the location, size, and type of forces that make up the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East.

Achieving a Responsible Military Drawdown

Mapping forces to the key missions as outlined above will determine where the United States will need to maintain a military presence in some form, although this presence need not be permanent. The key will be to retain enough forces and capabilities in the Middle East, and negotiate the right access arrangements to manage ongoing operations against the Islamic State and a range of potential contingencies, including other nonstate actors or Iran.

Instead of relying on major operating bases, the United States should embrace a distributed basing structure. This would involve developing a constellation of smaller bases located throughout the region—especially those farther away from Iranian territory, like Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan or Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia—to host rotations of U.S. forces. Many of these would be so-called warm bases, operated and maintained by host nations with the United States retaining contingency access. Washington would also shift several installations deemed unessential for key U.S. missions from “hot” to warm, and return these bases to host nations.

The U.S. footprint at larger operating bases—particularly those within range of Iranian weapons—should be reduced. This includes bases like Camp Arifjan and Al Udeid, which are largely bloated vestiges of older wars. Personnel and capabilities in the region should also be rightsized to reflect updated requirements. For instance, the number of personnel at the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain could be reduced without impacting naval operations, while the Armored Brigade Combat Team earmarked for the Middle East—once needed for ground operations in Iraq—would be reassigned to another region. Meanwhile, rotational forces would cycle in for security cooperation activities intended to strengthen partner capabilities and limited counterterrorism operations.

Additionally, the United States would pre-position equipment identified as necessary to defend against a range of threats or required for potential contingencies at these bases, as well as the logistics equipment required to enable these missions. Limited numbers of key capabilities and forces required for critical intelligence or counterterrorism missions, such as ISR and special operations forces, would remain in theater, with an emphasis on assets able to fulfill multiple requirements, such as remotely piloted aircraft that can be used for ISR and airstrikes.

The preservation of U.S. military access and overflight is critical to providing the United States the flexibility it requires to untie itself from permanent presence at brick-and-mortar bases in the Middle East. This task is, arguably, difficult—bases have become symbols of the U.S. security commitment and act as tripwires in case of adversary aggression. Conveying to regional partners that this is rightsizing rather than retrenchment, so as to not damage these relationships, will be no small feat, but one that is critically important to the success of any future U.S. footprint. To ensure that the United States does not find itself embroiled in regional conflicts that would again require an outsized military footprint, diplomacy will be essential to preserving U.S. relationships with key regional partners and guaranteeing continued U.S. military access.

The United States is, by far, the largest provider of weapons to countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Between 2000 and 2019, it supplied 45 percent of the arms sold to the region. For decades, the United States has exported arms to MENA states under the assumption that this will help solidify alliances, give the U.S. military access to the region, and—combined with U.S. military training and advice—produce strong, legitimate militaries capable of defending these countries against external threats.

Instead, in many cases, U.S. arms have helped reinforce the corruption and rent-seeking that underpin state fragility throughout the region. And these arms—which were meant to provide some leverage over states’ domestic and foreign behavior—have instead often provided regimes with a source of personal enrichment and political patronage, as well as tools used for repression, surveillance, and to stymie popular calls for reform.

The new U.S. administration of President Joe Biden has pledged to make anticorruption an important pillar of American foreign policy. It made a good start by putting a hold on arms sales to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, although some sales have gone forward since then. For Biden to succeed, improving governance of the arms trade to MENA states and reinvigorating anticorruption efforts vis-à-vis American arms exports must be important components of the administration’s foreign policy.

Corruption in Arms Sales: Choice or Accident?

MENA regimes often purchase arms in quantities that far exceed their defensive needs or, as prestige purchases, do not even address the challenges they face. One reason is well known: purchasing arms helps incentivize the United States and other Western states to provide a security umbrella. Another, less-examined motivation for arms purchases is the role weapons sales play in maintaining corrupt, brittle, despotic governments. The rent-seeking and patronage associated with arms purchases by MENA governments are often the intended results, not unfortunate side effects.

Arms sales have been a significant source of personal enrichment for many elites in these countries, helping to incentivize their tight grip on power. As such, they have largely refused to provide meaningful arms procurement oversight. For example, the United Kingdom documented that BAE Systems and its agents paid at least 6 billion British pounds in bribes to the Saudi royal family between 1985 and 2006. The Saudi government has recently accused Saad al-Jabri, a former Interior Ministry deputy, of misspending $11 billion of a $19.7 billion Saudi counterterrorism fund. Al-Jabri argues that the payments were legal and often “a reward for a job well done.” In Iraq, the defense minister was summoned before the legislature in 2016 to answer allegations of billions of dollars lost to bribes in his ministry. He laid the blame on members of parliament who had lobbied on behalf of favored defense companies. Scandals such as these demonstrate the impunity enjoyed by leaders in the region, who will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain it.

But the bribes and kickbacks associated with various arms procurement contracts do not sit solely with regime elites. Some filter down through patronage to solidify crucial support—helping elites remain in power this way can be the primary motivation for some arms procurement. For example, through a co-production agreement with the United States Egypt manufactures M-1 tanks that are ill-suited for its antiterrorism needs, but they provide jobs and patronage through the associated military-run businesses.

An especially effective method of spreading patronage is through defense offset contracts—sweetener side contracts associated with large arms deals. Even if the U.S. defense contractors involved have not violated any laws (such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA), the combination of extreme secrecy and lack of safeguards from conflicts of interest and kickbacks makes them an excellent opportunity for MENA leaders to pass contracts, jobs, and other benefits to themselves and their key supporters. In Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, for example, offset procedures and contract negotiations are not subject to a competitive tender or public disclosure. Due to this secrecy, offset agreements often emerge from leaks or other scandals. For instance, in 2017, the Intercept reported that the UAE had accepted cash as part of offset obligations that were paid to the Emirati company Tawazun Holding. As defense analyst William Hartung noted about the episode, “Offsets are a common practice in the global arms trade, and they are largely unregulated. . . . I’m less familiar with the idea of using cash payments, which seem at best a form of legalized bribery.” In 2006, Raytheon helped establish a shrimp farm in Saudi Arabia as part of its offset obligations. The fact that intermediaries such as offset brokers often handle these obligations further obscures the financial flows associated with defense procurement agreements.

Arms contracts also provide the coercive means to remain in power and help prevent citizen reform efforts. Just in 2019, the United States sold at least $3 million in small arms to Qatar, $1.3 million to the UAE, and $1 million to Kuwait. While these weapons are standard fare for militaries, they can also be used by domestic law enforcement. Because these arms exports were all direct commercial sales rather than part of the Foreign Military Sales program, little information about them has been publicly disclosed. And tracking U.S. small arms exports recently become even harder: new U.S. regulations in 2020 moved oversight of many types of weapons—including pistols, sniper rifles, and AR-15s—from the State Department to the Commerce Department, which has looser rules for vetting exports and no congressional notification requirement.

U.S. arms exports can also include surveillance technology. In one example, the UAE’s Project Raven program, signals intelligence experts working for U.S. contractor CyberPoint created a surveillance web capable of tracking and spying on everyone from reform-minded civil society members to U.S. citizens. CyberPoint’s contract with the Emirati government was undertaken with permission from the State Department and National Security Agency. This has enabled the Emirati regime to monitor any emergent dissident networks and arrest activists before protests even erupt.

An Arms Sales Black Hole

MENA regimes can get away with using arms procurement for personal enrichment, patronage, and coercion because the entire region lacks effective security sector transparency and accountability. According to Transparency International’s Government Defense Integrity Index (GDI), nearly every single MENA country is rated as having “very high” or “critical” levels of corruption risk. Only Tunisia receives a grade of “high” risk. In most MENA countries, arms procurement decisions are made solely by a tiny coterie of regime insiders, there are few or no external audits of arms-related accounts, and few or no protections against conflicts of interest or outright kickbacks. In some cases, those who attempt to report defense corruption have found themselves censured or worse.

The corruption associated with arms procurement has put U.S. interests in the region on increasingly shaky ground. Arms purchased for reasons other than national defense can rarely be effectively employed or sustained. Instead, they often contribute to the conditions that make states fragile to begin with. Between 2003 and 2011, for instance, the United States spent $20 billion to build up the 800,000-member Iraqi army. But due to corruption and politicization, it fell apart facing the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Mosul a mere three years later. Since the Camp David Accords in 1979, Egypt has received about $1.3 billion per year in U.S. military aid. Nonetheless, it made a poor showing as part of the allied coalition in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and its antiterrorism campaign in the Sinai over the last decade has failed to achieve its stated goals.

An Entry for Chinese and Russian Influence

General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, has asserted that the primary way for Washington to confront China’s and Russia’s growing influence in the MENA region is through arms sales to its partners. The corruption and patronage reinforced through American arms sales in the region and the dearth of accountability or citizen oversight of defense contracts in general in the region provide avenues for increased Russian and Chinese influence. Both countries aggressively use corruption as a foreign policy tool. Neither country has anticorruption safeguards in their arms sales processes, and both have used corruption to extend their influence in the region. As Russia and China increase their security assistance, the arms procurement sector is an easy target for them to purchase leverage from regional elites through corruption. The lack of countermeasures such as a free press, vibrant civil society, and robust parliamentary oversight means there are few checks to prevent great power meddling in this manner.

Institutionalizing and Formalizing Anticorruption in U.S. Security Assistance Practices

These threats posed by arms sales are not new, and wholesale new legislation is not needed to address them. Congressional hearings in the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War highlighted how corruption associated with U.S. arms sales—including the revelation that U.S. defense contractors had paid bribes to Saudi officials—undermined national security. The response was legislation like the FCPA and the Arms Export Control Act, which provide a sound framework to reevaluate U.S. arms exports to MENA regimes and ensure they do not undermine popular calls for reform and produce further fragility. What is needed, however, are amendments to current legislation plus robust regulations to improve U.S. security assistance.

First, the U.S. Congress should legislate that the Defense Department conduct risk assessments and monitoring to help ensure lethal and nonlethal weapons exports are not inadvertently exacerbating corruption and authoritarianism in recipient states. Red lines and contract amendment or termination procedures should be established in case security sector governance deteriorates or fails to meet benchmarks.

Second, the transparency of U.S. arms sales has suffered lately. Formerly public information has been newly classified, and Congress has received less-detailed information about arms sales, in addition to the lack of small arms sales information and offset contract transparency. Congress should mandate new transparency standards for timely public disclosure of arms sales, and especially demand more detailed data on direct commercial sales as well as any small or light weapons sales approved by the Commerce Department.

The U.S. government should also enhance its corruption-related checks of arms sales. Direct commercial sales of arms undergo significant screening of all parties—including intermediaries like finance and insurance brokers—as well as a review of political contributions and marketing fees. Arms sold under the Foreign Military Sales program and under the auspices of the Commerce Department, however, do not. Published summaries of offset contracts and beneficial ownership information associated with arms contracts should be required, and corruption risks associated with the contracts specifically assessed.

Finally, the most important constituency to monitor arms procurement contracts are the citizens themselves—through elected representatives—of the recipient countries. The 2019 GDI noted that only two countries—Kuwait and Tunisia—had any structure at all to allow for some legislative involvement in defense issues; most MENA countries had zero parliamentary or public oversight. Some, such as Egypt, Kuwait, and the UAE, criminalize unauthorized scrutiny of the defense sector or the distribution of unauthorized news about the armed forces. While U.S. security cooperation programs are now mandated to help develop healthier civil-military relations in recipient countries—including the role of parliamentary oversight of defense matters—it is clear that the U.S. military has its work cut out. The corruption and patronage associated with arms procurement are often deliberate choices rather than inadvertent side effects. A high degree of political will and associated conditionality will be necessary if elites in MENA states are to begin gradually improving transparency, accountability, and anticorruption institutions at home.

U.S. arms sales to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have long been justified by the belief that they provide substantial numbers of jobs to American citizens—a line that was famously repeated, and exaggerated, by former president Donald Trump’s administration. Yet lobbying efforts by domestic arms manufacturers and shrewd purchasing practices by Middle Eastern government have obscured whether these arms sales actually benefit American employment.¹

A careful review of the data shows that U.S. arms sales to MENA countries have less of an impact on employment than domestic arms purchases or even arms exports elsewhere. Nonetheless, the perception remains that MENA states enjoy a stranglehold on Congress and the White House due to the jobs created by their weapons buys. As MENA states change their buying habits to meet evolving needs, U.S. policymakers and politicians must do more to understand, anticipate, and address the effects that selling—or suspending the sale of—these weapons will have on domestic employment.

Historically, MENA states have often purchased expensive U.S.-made weapons to keep American assembly lines from drying up. These big-ticket items generally went unused. But as newly emboldened countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates deploy their militaries, they’re demanding cutting-edge planes and relatively simple bombs that create few American jobs.

Changes in MENA weapons purchases will drive U.S. job creation rates down for three reasons. First, MENA states now spend most of their money on planes and sophisticated missiles rather than ammunition and armored vehicles. Second, they’re increasingly demanding more support for their own indigenous defense industries. Finally, they favor advanced weapons whose production is nascent and munitions that can be easily outsourced. Buying F-35s or gravity bombs with guidance kits will not have the same political impact as purchasing expensive weapons that are late in their life cycle.

How Much Does that Defense Job Cost?

In July 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) found that $15.5 billion in defense export sales contracts “would create or sustain 127,328 employment opportunities”—a rate of 8,215 jobs per billion dollars of exports. This topline number is a useful start, but BIS provides two other key figures. The first is a broad assessment of the effects of offsets—contracted obligations that offer additional incentives. Second, the report leverages data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the census to estimate job creation in the manufacturing sector. These values offer a more accurate depiction of potential jobs sustained or created by MENA arms deals.

Table 1 shows the BIS estimates for job creation rates, before offsets, for various defense manufacturing sectors. These rates vary widely; building an airplane creates fewer jobs than producing ammunition. This is partly because a worker is likely paid more money to build a plane than to build a bomb, because they are generating more value. But one can safely assume that most politicians would prefer to claim 10,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs than 7,000 somewhat-better-paying manufacturing jobs.

From 2016 to 2018, aircraft-related manufacturing accounted for 36 percent of worldwide U.S. defense export contracts. Missiles and ammunition made up 37 percent, while military vehicles only constituted 7 percent. MENA nations, in particular, spent substantially more on planes and sophisticated missiles than on ammunition and armored vehicles. The balance between these two sectors will determine how many jobs are created. Where in the supply chain an industry is located also matters; making aircraft components creates many more jobs than assembling the aircraft itself.

Clients Increasingly Rely on Offsets

BIS data shows that offsets clearly steer money away from domestic jobs to the client state. In 2018, the BIS estimates the three-year moving average for offsets as a percentage of contract value at 39.4 percent. Once offsets are factored in, even the best-performing sectors of the defense industry in Table 1 created jobs at a rate far below that of the broader commercial export market.

Sophisticated weapons buyers like the Gulf states increasingly demand that a considerable amount of their purchases be reinvested in their own country, leaving less money for job creation in the United States. Offset percentages for MENA states are likely to climb even higher over time. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are attempting to build indigenous defense industries, largely through offset demands. It isn’t yet clear that such efforts will actually succeed, but these states will surely continue to funnel money into their domestic industries. The UAE—whose defense conglomerate Edge is now the twenty-second-largest defense contractor in the world—recently revised its offset guidance, requiring firms to invest 60 percent of a contract’s value into the emirates. Much of these offsets will likely take the form of licensed production and technology transfer, which will directly cut into American defense jobs.

If a state cannot realistically contribute to the production of its desired weapon, it may require offsets in other important sectors instead. From 2016 to 2018, 34 percent of the value of U.S. export contracts were missile-related, but only 6 percent of offset values were spent in this sector—because very few importers have a developed missile industry. Instead, 48 percent of offset transactions were spent on aircraft-related manufacturing, which accounted for 36 percent of defense export contracts. This means that although selling missiles abroad will not come at the cost of American jobs in that sector, the aircraft-manufacturing sector could be hit instead. According to the BIS, offsets in the aircraft-manufacturing sector shifted 2,790 more jobs overseas than were created by exports. Not coincidentally, in 2019 the UAE produced its first combat aircraft.

Closing (or threatening to close) a factory is more politically salient than the promise of future jobs. MENA states have a reputation for saving production lines by buying weapons the United States no longer wants. Egyptian, Saudi, and Iraqi purchases famously kept the Abrams tank assembly line in Ohio open for many years. Kuwaiti and Qatari purchases of Boeing’s F-18 and F-15 jets helped keep Missouri assembly lines hot. Emirati purchases helped save the Patriot plant in Massachusetts. But the cutting-edge weapons that Gulf states now seek are in high demand—those factory lines aren’t about to go cold. The F-35 order book, for example, stretches across decades. It is highly unlikely that these high-paying jobs are going away anytime soon.

Buying weapons toward the end of their manufacturing life may temporarily save jobs, but even these transactions should be examined closely. Earlier-generation technology is both less central to U.S. national security and more easily absorbed by states seeking to climb the production ladder—thus, it’s more easily outsourced. Lockheed Martin, for example, proposed shifting its entire F-16 production line to India in exchange for a large order of the earlier-generation fighter jets. Already, it has shifted production of all F-16 wings to India. Similarly, as part of a recent Paveway bomb deal with Saudi Arabia, Trump allowed the assembly of an unprecedented portion of the munitions’ electronic systems in the kingdom.

There is, therefore, a relatively fleeting window of opportunity to maximize the number of jobs saved by arms exports. It only opens when the weapon desired by a foreign customer is neither too early nor too late in its product cycle.

Case Study: The 2020 U.S.-UAE Arms Deal

In late 2020, the Trump administration announced a $23.4 billion arms deal to the UAE—which is currently under review by President Joe Biden’s administration. The specifics of the sale can illustrate how the above insights can shape analysis. Going through each item of sale with only slightly more detail, the BIS data allows policymakers to numerically estimate job creation. Policymakers can then qualitatively analyze this number, considering the weapon’s point in the product cycle as well as sectoral-specific offsets. Using the BIS’s topline job creation value, these deals would result in an impressive 192,000 jobs. But after applying the above insights, the improved estimate looks to be, at best, about 55,000 jobs.²

Using the data from Table 1, the largest Emirati order, $10.4 billion for F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and related equipment, will create about 24,000 jobs. But this number is likely to be a significant overestimate for several reasons. As explained above, aviation manufacturing is a relatively inefficient job creator. Moreover, the F-35 is not even in full-rate production yet—Lockheed Martin failed to actually build the planes it had committed to producing last year. With several thousand units planned, fifty F-35 fighters are a fraction of any likely production run. At the maximum annual production rate of 180 planes, any jobs it could create are likely far in the future.

Given BIS data on offset sectors, the offsets associated with these deals will likely further cannibalize U.S. aircraft industry jobs. Indeed, a large percentage of the program is already sourced from outside of the United States. Every F-35’s aft fuselage and vertical and horizontal tails are built by BAE Systems in either the United Kingdom or Australia.

The combination of 14,000 missiles and bombs in the UAE’s $10 billion order for Munitions, Sustainment, and Support will create roughly 25,000 jobs—a few more than the F-35 deal. This figure is based on assigning half a billion dollars of the contract to bombs, given unit prices. These munitions will likely be delivered in the medium term.

The vast majority of the deal’s value covers sophisticated missiles with missions like air-to-air combat and suppression of enemy air defenses. $1 billion of exports in missile-related sectors creates a relatively high number of domestic jobs, few of which are lost to offsets. While they may have some application in the UAE’s adventures in Libya and elsewhere, these weapons are not generally used in Yemen. On the other hand, forbidding the sale of gravity bombs and their guidance kits would forego less than 2,000 jobs.

The U.S. military, concerned about a shortage of its higher-end missiles, is ramping up its purchases. To keep up with domestic demand, the U.S. Congress is funding the creation of an additional Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile production facility. Over the next five years, the United States plans to purchase over 74,000 of the same Joint Direct Attack Munitions that the UAE seeks to buy. That means that job creation associated with the UAE arms deal is likely to be overestimated, as production lines are likely to hum for the indefinite future.

Finally, the $2.97 billion included for MQ-9B Remotely Piloted Aircraft and related equipment will create about 7,000 jobs. Of the three proposed sales to the UAE, this is the most reliable estimate. The U.S. Air Force is moving away from this platform, so this sale will likely save a politically relevant number of jobs at places like General Atomics’ assembly line in Poway, California. These also appear to be configured for maritime missions such as anti-submarine warfare, which is more in line with U.S. national interests.

Cushioning the Blow to Employment

Given that munitions might be the most effective way to steer short-term behavior of client states—and are relatively more efficient producers of jobs—Congress should pay special attention to the domestic orders. A more stable domestic procurement cycle for these weapons, which are in high demand by the U.S. military, would provide a level of certainty that most firms would prefer over splashy international orders that may never materialize. Defense lobbyists likely care less about the customer than the size and predictability of the order.

With modest additional math, analysts can more precisely estimate the employment effects of targeted restrictions on arms transfers. This will allow policymakers to weigh job losses against controlling the use of specific weapon types. Advanced missiles used for air defense are probably more efficient job creators relative to aircraft and especially the precision-guided bombs currently suspended by the Biden administration.

In addition to these calculations, understanding the product cycle for each weapon will aid policy decisions. The advanced weapons demanded by MENA clients are politically easier to withhold due to the large demand at home and abroad. Lower-end weapons nearing the end of their production runs make up a smaller part of the MENA export market, but they more directly contribute to the conflict in Yemen. At either end, these are useful ways to put political pressure on clients without risking many jobs.

The views presented here do not represent those of the U.S. Naval War College, Department of the Navy, or Department of Defense. The author would like to thank Bill Hartung for valuable feedback.

Notes

¹ Though the defense industry employs many agents to advance its interests, their effect should not be overstated. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that, in 2019, defense lobbyists spent $113 million—a relatively small portion of the entire lobbying industry’s reported $3.5 billion in spending. In the 2020 campaign cycle, donors associated with defense firms contributed $32 million to political campaigns—only 0.03 percent of the $14 billion campaign cycle. Little of this likely went toward pushing MENA sales, which remain a much smaller stream of revenue than the domestic market. MENA states also spend a great deal of money to influence the United States, but it is not clear that this efforts’ focus is on emphasizing jobs.

² To calculate the jobs created by an arms sale, I attempted to estimate the balance for various subsectors for a given sale of weapons. For example, for F-35 and MQ-9, I summed the jobs created from each aviation sector from 2016 to 2018, and divided by the total value of contract sales (all from Table 1 and the BIS Offset report). I then multiplied by 0.4 to account for offsets, and then multiplied by the arms transfer value.

While the United States remains the top exporter of arms to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), European nations are engaged in a fierce competition to become the region’s secondary provider. Countries such as Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have exploited this intra-European rivalry to convey political discontent or simply negotiate better bargains. For now, competition between Europe and the United States is nascent. Prestige, power, and political factors all help Washington retain its status as the most sought-after defense supplier in the region, and a majority of European defense industries remain technologically dependent on their U.S. counterparts. However, as these factors evolve over the coming years, competition could intensify, to the detriment of long-term Western and local interests. Policymakers in Europe and the United States need to take steps now to mitigate this rivalry.

Europe’s Card in the Middle East and North Africa

European defense suppliers often employ a marketing argument similar to one put forward by Russia and China; unlike the United States, they’re willing to turn a blind eye to end use. This is particularly true for France. To a lesser extent, it also applies to the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and others.

Between 2017 and 2021, however, Washington brushed aside concerns about human rights and other customary restrictive measures. Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s administration pursued large arms sales as a priority in itself. The policy pumped extra revenue into the U.S. economy, but it came at the expense of heightened tensions in several parts of the world—particularly the MENA region. U.S. arms were used in deadly conflicts that caused untold human rights violations and produced little-to-no strategic benefit for Washington, such as the war in Yemen. From the European perspective, Trump’s arms-exports policy encouraged even more leniency vis-à-vis MENA clients and even less coordination vis-à-vis Washington.

Now, as President Joe Biden’s administration looks to recalibrate Washington’s arms-exports policy in conjunction with a probable reduction in U.S. military involvement in MENA—and as lower oil prices may reduce the volume of arms deals in the region—the United States must reverse the destabilizing effect of Trump’s legacy. The challenge is twofold: Policymakers must (1) ensure that decreased U.S. military engagement in the region does not push MENA powers toward European or other arms suppliers; and (2) better regulate arms exports stemming from Europe.

Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE have all demonstrated a desire to develop new strategic ties away from the United States. Starting in 2014, Egypt has purchased weapons from France and Russia. During the Gulf Cooperation Council crisis of 2017–2021, Qatar did not hesitate to utilize billions of dollars’ worth of defense procurement as a way to avoid isolation and remain relevant in various Western capitals. This is not to say that Qatar is turning to the Europeans instead of, or as a possible replacement for, the United States. Washington remains an irreplaceable friend for Gulf actors to keep and cultivate. Rather, in this context, European defense suppliers are seen as a mere complement for extra safety.

New Demands—and New Sellers—in the MENA Region

Adding to the complexity, the defense market in the MENA region is undergoing several transformations. Some countries have been building an indigenous defense industrial and technological base. As these ambitions materialize, buyers’ behavior and conditions change. For instance, following the launch of Saudi Arabian Military Industries in 2017, Riyadh began imposing new demands in its purchase contracts, like technology transfers and the localization of assembly lines. This, in turn, increases the pressure on Western arms industries, as was seen with the dissolution of the French-Saudi defense agency ODAS.

Contributing further to the overall level of competition has been the arrival of new actors intent on capturing market shares away from established giants. Turkey’s recent surge as a regional power, via a slew of military expansionist endeavors across several theaters, has propelled its profile as a defense exporter. Some recipients of Turkish defense products—such as Qatar and the United Nations–recognized Government of National Accord in Libya—are motivated by political factors, while Tunisia and other nations are simply attracted by the efficiency of the cheap and popular Bayraktar TB2 combat drone and the more advanced Anka-S drone, as well as other systems. As relations between Ankara and Gulf countries thaw, there could be a boost in defense and aerospace exports from Turkey.

Changes in the global geopolitical environment also create new defense suppliers in the region. The Abraham Accords, signed in August 2020, and other normalization deals struck in its wake make it possible for Israel to pursue security- and defense-related opportunities. The UAE and other Arab countries will likely start to import defense equipment and services from Israel—especially in domains where the Jewish state is considered a pioneer, such as remotely piloted vehicles, air defense systems, and cybersecurity.

U.S. Ambivalence Sparks Rising Competition Among Europeans

Over the last ten to fifteen years, a more ambivalent and aloof Washington has indirectly sparked geopolitical ambitions across the MENA region. In Libya, Syria, Yemen, and, more recently, the Western Sahara, regional powers now seek to influence the outcomes using an array of means—including military force. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have both deployed their armed forces in Yemen against the Houthi rebels, as well as for counterterrorism missions against al-Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Qatar, Turkey, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt have all intervened directly or transferred arms to local allies in the Libyan conflict, in violation of a UN arms embargo.

U.S. end-user agreements—which forbid the “disposal or use of the defense article for purposes other than those for which they were furnished without first receiving written U.S. government authorization”—are thoroughly enforced, limiting the unauthorized injection or use of U.S.-made weapons in the region’s civil wars. The same cannot be said of European exporters. This asymmetry has opened the door for European defense industries—in 2014, the UAE started using French-made Mirage 2000-9s in lieu of U.S.-made F-16s to conduct airstrikes over Libya. Others have followed suit.

In October 2020, Italy snatched up a $1.2 billion Egyptian order for two European multi-use frigates (FREMM), five years after Cairo acquired the same type of frigates from France. Factors including price (the Italian warship cost half its French counterpart), credit lines, human rights, and politics prompted Egypt to change its FREMM supplier to Italy. Similarly, the political distance between Qatar and President Emmanuel Macron’s France has grown in recent years. Doha chose to buy Boxer armored fighting vehicles from Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), just three years after it had signed a contract with KMW’s French rival, Nexter.

As part of its post-Brexit vision for a “Global Britain,” the United Kingdom is staging a foreign policy comeback in the Middle East. London’s new posture includes not only the 2018 creation of a permanent military base in Bahrain, but also a more aggressive pursuit of arms exports—which will entail more intense competition against members of the European Union.

Effectively regulating arms exports between European states has not been easy. No mechanism is in place yet to mitigate disagreements regarding human rights. Discrepancies already pose a problem for some joint defense programs. As France and Germany collaborate on their common Future Combat Air System and Main Ground Combat System projects, for example, human rights concerns have been one of the sticking points between the two neighbors.

In January 2021, the Biden administration imposed a temporary freeze on U.S. arms sales concluded by the Trump administration to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, including a major order for top-of-the-line F-35 fighters. The review, which may turn out to be merely a temporary formality, inspired the United Kingdom and Italy to follow suit. This, however, does not mean that other members of the EU, like France, will also align their practices with the United States.

Tempering Competition Through Conventions and Restrictions

The Biden administration must mitigate intra-European and U.S.-European arms export competition before its destabilizing effects worsen. Since Biden took office, transatlantic good will is in abundant supply. Washington should seize this moment to reintroduce teamwork to the agenda, and invite its European allies to join a new diplomatic forum designed specifically to align arms-sales standards and reduce any gaps in end-use scrutiny and human rights norms. Such a venue will facilitate a degree of harmonization on arms exports and management of their utilization by MENA buyers.

As a complement to this initiative, which should be voluntary in nature, Washington should take full advantage of its existing International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) framework. ITAR offers a means of blocking European arms exports if 5 percent or more of the weapons’ components are U.S.-made. This is how, in 2018, the United States temporarily blocked a sale of France’s Rafale jets to Egypt—the Rafale’s so-called SCALP missiles contained a U.S.-made item.

Lastly, Washington should consider expanding its end-user agreement framework so that it encompasses not only a given MENA country’s U.S.-made systems but also the weapons that nation buys from non-U.S. suppliers—like the Europeans. Most key players in the MENA region still consider the United States a vital supplier of weapons. Washington can and should use its privileged status to compel its regional partners into aligning their utilization of defense systems with U.S. standards. Without such a bold impulsion, European competition—and MENA disorder—will only escalate.

Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war in late 2015 propelled its return to the Middle East’s power politics. Today, more than five years later, the operation stands as a textbook example of the skill possessed by Vladimir Putin’s regime at calculated risk-taking, limited military operations, and planting powerful narratives in the minds of the world’s decisionmakers. Throughout the intervening period, Russian officials have conspicuously held court with nearly every government in the region. The Kremlin’s diplomatic charm offensive has banished memories of a nearly thirty-year absence from the region, and Moscow has energetically sought to plant wedges between Washington and a number of its closest partners.

For years, U.S. officials had overstated Russia’s decline, failing to appreciate that the disappearance of Russian influence in the Middle East was, in fact, a transitory, aberrational phenomenon. Of course, Moscow’s touted successes have not occured in a vacuum. The Kremlin capitalized on a series of well-advertised openings created by U.S. policymakers, including a deep-seated reluctance to become directly involved in the Syrian civil war and former president Donald Trump’s highly personalistic and erratic management of key relationships in the region.

Much of the Russian approach to the Middle East validated the old saying that 80 percent of success in life is just about showing up. The Kremlin has doggedly sought to extract the maximum possible benefit from the limited array of tools at its disposal. Yet few of Moscow’s efforts have remotely matched the heft of the United States across the region let alone the extensive relationships and sources of security, economic, political, and military influence that Washington routinely draws upon.

Rather, Russia’s resurgence in the Middle East has demonstrated the Kremlin’s knack for achieving substantial diplomatic and military results with minimal investments. Is it truly the case that a country with a GDP on par with South Korea or Brazil and a rather small military footprint has transformed the geopolitics of the entire region? Hardly. Nevertheless, Washington has at times fallen into the intellectual trap of inflating both Russia’s influence and capabilities. It also has often viewed efforts to counter Russian inroads as an end in itself, treating the Middle East as part of a broader global struggle under the rubric of great power competition and the battle against Russian malign influence.

Russia’s Paltry Tool Kit for its Middle East Ambitions

Moscow’s claimed successes in the Middle East in recent years have been all the more impressive given the limited tool kit that the Russian leadership relies upon. Time and again, Putin and other top figures have prioritized high-visibility political gestures and rhetorical attacks on the United States over any ability to achieve concrete policy objectives.¹ While Russian officials tout their willingness to engage across the board with all players in the Middle East, including controversial actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah, they have invested hardly any serious political capital in easing regional tensions or addressing long-standing sources of societal instability and underdevelopment.

Instead, the Kremlin prefers to rely on high-profile political dialogue, arms exports, civilian nuclear cooperation, oil and gas exploration and transportation projects, infrastructure deals, grain exports, and traditional trade and investment activities to make its presence known. Russian arms sales generally account for the majority of its trade with the region. Yet such transfers are only a small fraction of U.S. sales. (Between 2000 and 2019, U.S. sales accounted for upwards of 45 percent of all weapons sold to the Middle East.)

Russia is barely visible as an economic partner. Despite large hard currency reserves and the long legacy of large-scale Soviet-era development aid, Russia has shown no interest in serving as a meaningful donor country or source of postconflict assistance. In the case of Syria, Russia has instead turned to the United States, the EU, and wealthy Gulf countries to fund large-scale reconstruction aid and infrastructure projects. Amid the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic in various parts of the Middle East and North Africa, Moscow has provided only minimal shipments of the Sputnik V vaccine to countries in need while trying to launch commercial partnerships to help overcome Russia’s domestic production constraints. ² Nor has it supported meaningful distribution through COVAX, the World Health Organization’s vehicle for making vaccines available to vulnerable low-income countries.

Relations with fellow oil-exporting nations have been rocky at times. In early 2020, Russian leaders badly miscalculated the effects of the pandemic on global oil demand. They stubbornly resisted urgent requests from Riyadh for joint efforts to stabilize the market, seeking instead to use falling crude prices to punish U.S. shale producers who had captured market share at Russia’s expense. Saudi leaders reacted harshly, triggering a short-lived price war that forced Moscow to adopt even larger production cuts amounting to a nearly 9 percent drop in Russia’s 2020 oil output versus 2019 levels. The Kremlin and the Saudis have quickly patched things up, and their coordination under the aegis of OPEC-Plus has succeeded far beyond initial expectations, enabling Brent crude futures to climb back above the $60 level in February 2021.

Moving Beyond Great Power Competition

The Trump administration embraced great power competition as a key organizing principle for its approach to foreign policy. According to that framing, Russian inroads in the Middle East and elsewhere are largely a subset of a new global contest for influence that pits the United States against revisionist powers such as Russia and China. Applying this approach in the Middle East has meant first and foremost, in the words of former Syria envoy Ambassador James Jeffrey, “avoiding entanglement in local issues while still pushing back on near-peer and regional dangers. In practice, this amounted to containing Iran and Russia while smashing serious terrorist threats.”³

One problem with this approach is that it took for granted that U.S. and Russian aims in the region would always be inherently at odds. It also encouraged wishful thinking that the sustained application of U.S. power could somehow dislodge Russia from places like Syria (where it has been active since the 1960s) or somehow push Russia out of the region entirely. It also conveniently overlooked the fact that Russian avenues of influence in Israel had grown considerably during Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure. Such thinking has been motivated, quite understandably, by the sharp deterioration of the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationship and a spate of unhelpful Russian moves in parts of the world. Still, U.S. policymakers have generally come to treat countering Russian influence as an end in itself, to inflate the Kremlin’s actual capabilities for contesting U.S. influence, and to give short shrift to possible ways to enlist Russian cooperation in areas where some alignment of each side’s interests—in theory, at least—remains possible.

Recent history teaches that Russian policy aims in the Middle East are not simply rooted in the undermining of U.S. interests at each and every turn. Iran is perhaps the single most important case in point. Moscow’s lengthy involvement in the negotiation of the Iran nuclear agreement was testament to the complexities of its relations with Tehran, suggesting that the Kremlin does more than play an anti-U.S. spoiler role in the region. In a similar vein, Israel has been able to wage a sustained military campaign against Iranian missile and military infrastructure in Syria without encountering major pushback from the Russian leadership.⁴ It is also the case that the deeply entrenched relationship between Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Iran is creating serious obstacles for Moscow’s search for a political solution to the Syrian civil war. None of this is to suggest that U.S. policymakers should be naïve about Russian actions, ignore harmful or destabilizing Russian activities, or nourish false hopes, for example, of an impending Russian-Iranian split. But at a minimum, the United States should avoid steps that push its adversaries into closer alignment or make complicated situations even stickier.

Capitalizing on Russian Overreach

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is currently conducting a review of U.S. global military deployments and trying to reset relations with problematic partners in the region. Getting the balance right will be no small feat, especially against the backdrop of Iran’s growing activism throughout the region. Still, it is hard to ignore the fact that the U.S. security presence in the region has mushroomed since 1991 and that military tools have taken ever greater precedence in U.S. policy. As the Biden administration tries to unwind some of these commitments, it will need to devise policies that are neither self-defeating nor a source of easy wins for Russia.

If the United States is serious about reducing the burden that it has been shouldering in the Middle East, then it should at least test the possibility of a different modus vivendi with Moscow. That means avoiding the temptation to treat each and every manifestation of Russian activity as a proverbial nail to be hammered. It also means trying to engage Russia in diplomatic initiatives involving the future security of the Persian Gulf, the crisis in Yemen, and counterterrorism.

One key element of success will be the ability to set clear priorities while maintaining a degree of steadiness and self-confidence about enduring U.S. strengths and reservoirs of influence. U.S. vigilance over objectionable Russian activities will sometimes require getting tough with U.S. allies who contribute to the Kremlin’s opportunistic forays. Several positive and negative examples stand out. For example, under both Biden and Trump U.S. officials have been reluctant to call out the UAE’s financial and political support for the Kremlin’s military intervention and arms transfers in Libya. In the case of Egypt, U.S. officials have been more assertive, successfully short-circuiting Russian requests for basing and overflight rights from the Egyptian military. Russian attempts to expand defense cooperation with Lebanon’s armed forces have been stymied through concerted pressure by its primary partners, the U.S. and European Union.

U.S. policymakers also need to avoid placing excessive hopes in the ability of sanctions to solve problems. For example, the Kremlin has instrumentalized its sale of S-400 missile systems to Ankara to plant wedges between Turkey and both Washington and Brussels. Penalties imposed under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) are simply not sufficient to change Ankara’s calculus. There is a risk that a similar scenario could play out with other longtime U.S. partners in ways that cause damage to key relationships without actually impeding problematic weapons transfers.

At the same time, U.S. partners in the region such as the Saudis and the other Gulf states surely understand that Moscow is unlikely to help them push back on malign Iranian activities or put its own relationship with Tehran at risk. The Saudi military is almost completely dependent on U.S. support to operate. The Saudis continue to need U.S. intelligence-sharing, training, and maintenance support for ongoing and future defense operations, and they are unlikely to engage with Russia in a manner that risks undermining this crucial and deeply entrenched set of dependencies. Buying a lot of high-end Russian military equipment would destabilize fundamental aspects of the Saudi military system.

The Egyptians, albeit to a lesser extent, are in the same situation. However, Cairo’s decision to purchase twenty-four Russian Su-35 fighter jets risks creating a replay of the showdown with Turkey over the S-400s. The key question for U.S. policymakers is not whether the sale is objectionable. It clearly is. But it is not immediately clear that these Russian planes will upend the regional security balance or the bilateral U.S.-Egyptian defense relationship, which continues to serve U.S. interests. While the Biden administration presumably will feel obliged to invoke sanctions under CAATSA, the sale points to the limitations of sanctions as a tool for halting governmental actions (as opposed to those of commercial entities with a much lower tolerance for pain and disruption). The key will be to strike the right balance between sending a message of displeasure while not expecting that sanctions in and of themselves will force a rethink in Cairo.

Going forward, U.S. policymakers need to be alert to the Kremlin’s propensity for overreach and ham-handedness. Studying Russian missteps can have instructive benefits for future policymaking. For example, the deployment of a significant contingent of Russian mercenaries to Libya was overmatched by a Turkish military intervention that broke the back of General Khalifa Haftar’s forces and helped reinvigorate diplomatic efforts by the United States and the European Union to create a new unity government under UN auspices. Having dealt the Kremlin a black eye, Western policymakers would be wise to leave space for cooperation ahead of elections in Libya expected in late 2021. Such cooperation, grounded in appeals to Russian economic opportunism, can help lay the ground for the eventual withdrawal of Moscow’s forces.

There are other issues on the horizon where Russia’s ambitions will likely clash with reality. For example, Egypt, which turned to the IMF for an emergency $1.7 billion standby agreement in 2020, currently plans to borrow $25 billion from Russia to fund construction of the long delayed El Dabaa civil nuclear reactor project. Russian civilian nuclear reactor projects in Jordan and South Africa fell apart in 2018 amid questions about dubious financing arrangements and shaky economic rationales.⁵ The Egyptian government’s rosy portrayal of the project’s economic viability clearly warrants closer scrutiny.⁶

Conclusion

The Kremlin’s newfound role in the Middle East is a fact of life that cannot simply be wished away. For the foreseeable future, Moscow will see the region as an important venue for chipping away at U.S. leadership of the international system and validating its claim to be an important global player. But it would be a mistake to overstate the depth of Russia’s capabilities or to mistake Russian triumphalism and PR gambits for problem-solving acumen. While the Kremlin’s activist diplomacy and careful exploitation of other players’ mistakes have made it a force to be reckoned with, no U.S. policymaker would wish to play Russia’s hand. In the end, the United States’ vastly superior tool kit provides significant advantages and sources of leverage.

Of course, much will depend on whether U.S. policymakers are able to avoid repeating the kinds of self-inflicted mistakes that have helped destabilize the Middle East and damage America’s global standing while contributing to the creation of so many openings for Moscow. Early efforts by the Biden administration—repairing the transatlantic relationship, reasserting U.S. leadership at the UN, and reestablishing U.S. credibility in embracing multilateral norms and institutions—are a good start and should pay dividends over time. Tolerating Russia’s role in the Middle East is not necessarily at odds with U.S. interests. Nor should the door be closed completely to finding ways to cooperate with Moscow if such opportunities present themselves.

Notes

¹ In Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s telling, “We do not want to project influence only to force others to do Moscow’s bidding. . . . We want security and coexistence of cultures, civilizations and religions. None of Russia’s actions in the Middle East which we undertake for some reason or other have brought about disunity or the division of ethnic, religious or civilizational groups.” See “Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to questions during the Valdai International Discussion Club’s panel on Russia’s policy in the Middle East, Sochi, October 2, 2019,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation,” October 2, 2019, https://www.mid.ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3826083?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_languageId=en_GB.

² The two most promising partners for in-country production of Sputnik V are currently Turkey and Algeria, although few details have been made public.

³ Jeffrey appears to have defined success as embroiling Russia (along with its Assad regime and Iranian partners) in a military stalemate in Syria. (“We have a plan A. Plan A doesn’t answer ‘how does this all end?’ Plan A’s whole purpose [is] to ensure that the Russians and Assad and the Iranians don’t have a happy answer to how this all ends, and maybe that will someday get them to accept Plan B. Meanwhile, they’re tied up in knots. They don’t see Syria as a victory.”) See Jared Szuba, “Outgoing Syria Envoy Reflects on Turkey, the Kurds and What Everyone Got Wrong,” Al-Monitor, December 9, 2020, https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/12/trump-syria-envoy-jeffrey-mideast-policy-turkey-erdogan.html.

⁴ One glaring exception was the inadvertent shootdown of a Russian military surveillance plane at the hand of Syria’s air defense forces who had mistaken it for an attacking Israel jet in autumn 2018, killing fifteen Russian soldiers.

⁵ A $76 billion Russian-led project in South Africa was derailed following a sustained push by civil society activists and lawmakers who had raised questions about its underlying rationale and the trampling of state procurement rules. The ensuing scandal culminated in the resignation of then president Jacob Zuma. See Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss, “Nuclear Enrichment: Russia’s Ill-Fated Influence Campaign in South Africa,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 16, 2019, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/12/16/nuclear-enrichment-russia-s-ill-fated-influence-campaign-in-south-africa-pub-80597.

⁶ According to the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy, the “Russian loan of $25 billion is not a burden on Egypt. Although it is a huge amount, Egypt will pay its value by selling the energy generated from the nuclear reactors. This project would not be costing Egypt anything.” See “Russia Lends Egypt $25 Billion for Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant,” Al-Monitor, February 23, 2020, https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/02/power-plant-nuclear-egypt-russia-loan.html.

China’s growing influence and presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have raised concerns in Washington and around the world about Beijing’s long-term intentions and the implications for great-power competition in the arena. The MENA region has become increasingly important for Beijing’s economic interests and its quest for global influence, and many regional states have embraced China’s offerings as a means to diversify their great-power relationships. China will continue to deepen its economic and diplomatic footprint—and, to a more limited extent, its military engagement—in the MENA region over the coming years, albeit at a slower pace than the previous decade due to its renewed attention to internal development amid global uncertainty. China, however, neither seeks to nor is likely to replace the United States as the dominant security player in the region for the foreseeable future and will likely maintain its self-interested policy of neutrality in the region’s complex rivalries and local conflicts.

China’s growing geopolitical weight poses serious challenges to certain U.S. objectives, such as promoting democratic norms and strengthening human rights, in a largely illiberal arena in which states prefer partners like Beijing who do not question their governance models and domestic transgressions. At the same time, the United States and China also share common interests in the MENA region, including preserving stability and the free flow of trade. Rather than viewing the arena as one of zero-sum competition, therefore, the United States should adopt a nuanced strategy toward China in the MENA region. Washington should compete with Beijing where necessary by deepening and diversifying engagement in coordination with U.S. allies and partners to offer alternative options and to ensure that China does not become the sole economic, diplomatic, and military partner to the region. It should also strengthen political accountability, the rule of law, and human rights in the region and invest in institutional capacity building so that MENA leaders and their citizens can better manage China’s growing presence. At the same time, Washington should encourage Beijing to use its growing power to provide public goods and advance peace by welcoming its constructive contributions. And it should work with China in areas of mutual interest, such as on nonproliferation and humanitarian efforts.

China’s Strategy in the Middle East and North Africa

China’s footprint in the MENA region has expanded rapidly over the last two decades, and today it ranks among the region’s top trade partners and foreign investors. China’s engagement predates the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But since the BRI’s official launch in 2013, Beijing has signed dozens of agreements with MENA states on infrastructure, energy, finance, and technology cooperation, in addition to softer initiatives such as cultural exchanges and promoting tourism. Energy cooperation, in particular, is one of Beijing’s top priorities—China relies on the Middle East for nearly 40 percent of its oil and natural gas imports. Beijing has also focused on establishing a so-called Maritime Silk Road, partnering with MENA states to build a strategic network of ports and industrial park complexes that provides China access to the Persian Gulf, the Arabian and Red Seas, and, ultimately, the Mediterranean. To advance the BRI and its associated economic and strategic interests in the region, China has also invested heavily in building diplomatic ties with MENA states, launching multilateral mechanisms like the China–Arab States Cooperation Forum and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

As China’s economic and diplomatic engagement in the region has deepened, its military presence in the general theater has naturally expanded as well. In 2017, China opened its first overseas base in Djibouti. Beijing described the base as critical for China’s continued participation in counterpiracy patrols, peacekeeping missions, and emergency rescue and evacuations, especially given the growing number of Chinese citizens and commercial interests in the region. It has also forged “strategic partnerships” and “comprehensive strategic partnerships” with almost all of the region’s states. In addition to economic, diplomatic, and cultural components, these partnerships with regional heavyweights such as Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia also feature elements of military cooperation in the form of military exchanges and, to a lesser degree, arms sales. Over the last decade, China has engaged in port calls, military exercises, and exchanges with Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, among others. China has also become the dominant supplier of advanced armed drones to the region, filling a gap left by strict export restrictions that prevent U.S. companies from selling such technology to MENA partners. In selling heavier weapons systems to MENA states, however, China lags far behind other major players including France, Russia, and the United States. As China advances its domestic defense industry, it may very well seek to sell more arms to states in the region. But such a push would likely be motivated chiefly by commercial interests as opposed to a strategic vision for shaping the balance of power in the MENA theater.

U.S.-China Competition in the Middle East and North Africa

Although China’s military presence and engagement in the region are significant, Beijing has shown no interest to date in overtaking the United States as the region’s premier military power and security provider. The presence of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the region is very modest compared to the United States’ forces, assets, and network of bases and facilities. And it is likely to remain so, given the PLA’s primary mission remains protecting China’s core interests in the East Asian theater. Even if the U.S. military were to draw down from the region, China would have little interest in rushing to fill the vacuum. As U.S. security provision diminishes, China may feel obliged to deploy greater military personnel and assets to protect its citizens and investments. But any dramatic PLA buildup in the region would require a fundamental shift in China’s grand strategy, which is premised on seeking global dominance first and foremost through economic power rather than global military expansion.

Recent news that China finalized a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran that includes elements of both economic and military cooperation have raised concerns that Beijing is forging pacts that will destabilize the Middle East at the expense of the United States and its regional partners, including Saudi Arabia and Israel. But such fears seem overstated, given China’s strong stake and long-term interests in maintaining a relatively stable relationship with the United States and other MENA states, including rivals of Iran.

Chinese investment and trade with Iran remain minimal, especially compared to its other economic portfolios in the region. China and Iran also made headlines in December 2019, when they conducted unprecedented trilateral naval drills with Russia in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman. Analysts point out, however, that the exercise was more about signaling symbolic support for Iran than a sign of deep security cooperation between the three powers. Although Beijing certainly seeks to modify the international order to its benefit, its broader interests in regional and global stability render its outlook fundamentally different from Iran’s or Russia’s. These interests will continue to disincentivize intimate coordination with both states and limit China’s involvement in any extreme revisionism in the MENA region.

In fact, China’s strategy in the MENA region has been premised on its efforts to remain neutral in the various regional rivalries. China’s “five-point initiative” for “achieving security and stability in the Middle East,” articulated by Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his recent Middle East tour in March 2021, broadly summarizes Beijing’s long-standing approach to the region. The list included familiar exhortations for peaceful coexistence, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nonproliferation, and specifically Iran and the United States’ return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It also indicated China’s interest in a multilateral dialogue with MENA states to promote regional security and stability, and continued cooperation on development.

In the Middle East and elsewhere, Beijing has long touted its principle of “noninterference”— a policy that implies China is willing to do business with any sovereign entity, regardless of its regime type and what it does within its own borders, as a defining feature of its diplomacy that sets it apart from other major powers. China’s “value-neutral” and mercantilist approach to the region poses arguably a greater challenge than its military ties for the United States and like-minded partners who are pushing for better governance, democratic norms, and human rights in an area of the world where most states rank in the bottom quarter of Freedom House’s global freedom index. Beijing’s diplomatic engagement in the region and its public efforts to highlight the successes of its so-called development first model—which privileges state-led economic development and stability over political reform and inclusion—and, by implication, the failures of the Western liberal model can reinforce existing nondemocratic norms and practices.

Another concerning facet of China’s engagement in the region is that while it has avoided taking sides in local conflicts, it has used its growing influence with MENA states to win symbolic support for its own core interests and policies on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. As long as regional states face little to no domestic or international price for endorsing or at least muting their criticism of China’s official positions, they are likely to continue supporting Beijing’s policies at the United Nations and other international bodies. This carries implications for the advancement of human rights and democratic norms as well as regional stability in China’s own neighborhood as well as the broader global arena.

It is important to note, however, that MENA states do not seek to exclusively work with China. While they have welcomed China’s growing engagement, they continue to hedge by maintaining close ties with the United States and other major external powers, including European and Asian states that also have deep security and economic interests in the region. Moreover, while there have long been concerns that the United States is withdrawing from the MENA region as it turns its attention to the Indo-Pacific theater, the trajectory of China’s engagement remains uncertain as well. In response to growing global uncertainty and competition with the United States, Beijing is pushing its new “dual circulation strategy,” which calls for China to shift its attention from overseas markets and place just as much, if not greater, emphasis on developing its domestic market and domestic innovation. Chinese leaders insist that this new strategy does not mean China is turning inward and that the BRI will continue. But, realistically, China’s attention will be split and its economic investments in the MENA region are unlikely to expand at the rapid pace seen in the early days of the BRI.

Toward More Constructive U.S.-China Relations in the Middle East and North Africa

For the foreseeable future, U.S.-China competition in the MENA region will be less a contest for security partners or military dominance and more about building diplomatic coalitions and influence over regional and global political norms. By demonstrating deep economic, diplomatic, and, to a lesser extent, military investment in the region—including its recent pandemic outreach—China has generated support for its nondemocratic, “development first” model in a part of a world where authoritarian tendences are already well entrenched. It has also used its influence to generate support, albeit mostly symbolic, for its narrower core interests closer to home. Such developments challenge efforts by the United States and its like-minded partners to advance human rights and democratic norms (in the MENA region as well as globally) and to censure China for its human rights violations and destabilizing behavior within its own borders and immediate neighborhood.

However, both the United States and China, as well as other European and Asian states, share a strong common interest in ensuring regional stability and the free flow of trade and energy resources in the MENA region. Instead of viewing the theater in simplistic, zero-sum terms, therefore, Washington should adopt a multifaceted strategy for managing relations with China in the region. It should push back on the destabilizing aspects of China’s growing influence in the region by deepening and diversifying U.S. engagement in coordination with U.S. allies and partners. But Washington should also welcome Beijing’s contributions to public goods, such as humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, the protection of sea lanes, and conflict mediation, and work with China where appropriate in the interest of peace and stability in the MENA region.