The US made the Middle East more volatile by wanting to preserve its supremacy

A demonstrator carries a sign ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) near the United Center in Chicago, on August 19. Bloomberg

America’s insistence on maintaining its global supremacy has become a major topic of discussion among academics, journalists and even on social media. With Washington facing a rising China, is the US effort to sustain its hegemony a stabilising factor in international relations, or a destabilising one? More particularly, how does this relate to the situation in the Middle East?

Generally, the US has claimed to be a country that advances peace and security in the region, and therefore also stability. Yet on all these levels, Washington’s behaviour in the past two decades has come up well short of its rhetoric. The US has been selective in advancing peace, and the liberal values deriving from this; it has been unpredictable in providing security, and its actions have generally exacerbated instability.

The Israel-Gaza war is the most recent example undermining America's image of itself in these categories. The administration of President Joe Biden’s unwillingness to impose a ceasefire after 10 months of mass killing is proof alone of Washington’s duplicity. It purports to want a ceasefire, but has used none of its instruments of power to bring the conflict to an end. Indeed, US weapons have caused the horrific loss of life in Gaza, even as the Americans have done very little in recent decades to create an environment in which peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians could succeed.

Nor is Gaza just another Middle Eastern war. It comes at a time when the US is increasingly competing with a rising China, so the resentment Gaza has created is playing into this contest. Many states view the conflict as a window through which to challenge US global dominance, and the fact that the US is complicit in Gaza’s suffering has reinforced a view among several countries that such dominance must end.

The same holds for the values accompanying peace. If peace, in the US view, provides an ideal context to advance liberal, humanitarian principles, Washington’s perfunctory attempts at ending the war in Gaza reveal that its commitment to these principles is superficial.

What about security? The US presence in the Middle East has not really strengthened security at the regional level much. The Americans have provided security to some allies, but at a systemic level they haven’t. And even there the record is spotty. When Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility was hit by Iranian drones in 2019, the US did nothing, though protecting Saudi oil was a strategic constant of the US presence.

Some might argue that a major component of regional security is combating terrorism, which the US did successfully at the head of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. Perhaps, but this also laid the groundwork for much instability, as the US alliance with Kurdish forces against ISIS was and is regarded as an existential threat by Turkey.

At the same time, the US inability or unwillingness to develop any regional or international solution for ISIS prisoners and their family members has only produced an explosive situation that makes a revival of the organisation more likely.

Regional stability would be greatly enhanced if the US agreed to work with China – another major actor with an interest in such stability to guarantee the continued flow of oil for its economy. Yet the US priority is to limit China’s reach in the Middle East. The paradox is that the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement mediated by Beijing last year, for instance, helped to calm regional tensions. This led countries in the Middle East to look more positively at China's role, and, by contrast, more critically at America’s.

There is ambiguity in the US position that reveals a great deal about its intentions. Since the Obama administration, the US has indicated it does not want to maintain a paramount role in the Middle East. Yet at the same time, it does not look benignly on a larger Chinese role, nor does it want to see its myriad advantages challenged.

The US appears to have no overriding strategy to iron out the incongruities

This uncertainty is confusing, and harms justifications for US actions in the region. In wanting to preserve its supremacy (and therefore that of allies such as Israel), the US has made the region more volatile and far less peaceful. In imposing its own security priorities, Washington has clashed with other states who have security priorities of their own. And in opposing China’s rise, the Americans have forsaken a potentially valuable collaboration that could defuse regional hostilities.

Certainly, the Americans are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. Backing one ally, Israel, may lead to instability, while failing to back another, Saudi Arabia, may, equally, have generated instability. The problem is that the US appears to have no overriding strategy to iron out the incongruities. To a great extent this stems from the fact that Washington resists rethinking its pre-eminence in the Middle East.

Sooner or later, the Americans will realise that just as decades ago a detente with the Soviet Union helped appease global antagonism, some form of acceptance of China’s role will be necessary to do the same in the future. This is especially true in the Middle East, where the Chinese, even more than the Americans, have little interest in new wars and where both countries have the capacity to resolve conflicts by acting in unison.