IN Part One, we traced the forty-five-year doctrine that turned the Persian Gulf into a permanent American commitment, and the toll the 2026 war with Iran took on markets that had no vote in it. Part Two turns to the case for staying, and asks whether it still holds.
The defenders of America’s military presence in the Middle East offer several arguments for this strategy.
The first is energy. For decades, Washington argued that its military presence guaranteed the free flow of oil. Yet the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz in 2026 demonstrated the limits of that logic — and the disproportionate price paid by economies that had no hand in starting the war. It was not the absence of American power that disrupted global shipping; it was the presence of American forces fighting another war in the Gulf, and even the Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain for exactly this purpose, could not force the strait back open. Meanwhile, Gulf states themselves have every incentive to keep oil flowing, and the global energy market is far more diversified than it was in 1980. What 2026 proved is that permanent basing did not prevent the shock; it simply meant American forces were fighting inside the chokepoint when the shock arrived.
The second argument is that withdrawal would empower Iran and fuel terrorism.
But decades of military guarantees did not prevent Iranian retaliation, attacks on Gulf infrastructure or the emergence of extremist groups. In some cases, invasion and occupation created the very chaos from which those movements grew. The invasion of Iraq did not weaken Iran; it removed one of Tehran’s greatest regional rivals. The war on terrorism often became a factory for new grievances. None of this means terrorism is not a threat. It means that permanent military occupation is not necessarily the answer. Intelligence sharing, regional diplomacy and targeted operations can continue without tens of thousands of troops permanently stationed across the Middle East.
The third argument is that withdrawal would leave Israel dangerously exposed, alone in a hostile neighbourhood without its principal guarantor standing behind it.
Israel is not, in fact, without capability of its own. It fields the most capable military in the region and is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East. The deeper problem may run the other way: an unconditional American backstop has made it easier for successive Israeli governments to take risks — expanding settlements in the West Bank, launching the 2026 war against Iran, striking Lebanon and Syria — that a less certain guarantee would have made costlier to take. American support has, in practice, insulated Israeli decision-making from consequence rather than making Israel more secure in any lasting sense. A relationship recalibrated around conditions, tied to ending the occupation of Palestinian territory and pursuing a genuine peace process, would not mean abandoning Israel’s security. It would mean asking Israel to bear more of the political cost of its own choices, which is a different thing entirely.
The fourth argument is that an American withdrawal would create a vacuum that China or Russia would inevitably fill.
Perhaps. But the 2026 war has already shown what sustained entanglement in the Middle East costs on the other side of the ledger. Marines originally stationed in Okinawa to deter China were redeployed to the Gulf as the conflict escalated. A May 2026 assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found American munitions stockpiles depleted and production timelines for critical weapons stretching three to four years — precisely the kind of readiness gap a rival with ambitions in the South China Sea and toward Taiwan would be foolish not to notice. China has, for now, shown remarkable caution about projecting military power far beyond its immediate neighbourhood, and Russia’s influence in the Middle East has shrunk considerably since the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government. But for readers in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta or Manila, the more pressing question is not whether Beijing marches into an empty American base in Bahrain. It is whether Washington can still show up, credibly and consistently, in the waters that actually shape their region’s future, while its Navy and Air Force remain consumed by a conflict thousands of miles away that produces no strategic return.
Critics of withdrawal are not wrong to fear the consequences. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and the smaller Gulf monarchies live in a difficult neighbourhood, caught between Iran’s ambitions, regional rivalries and the ever-present threat of extremist violence. To many of them, the American military presence is not an imperial project but an insurance policy. The memory of Iraqi tanks rolling into Kuwait in 1990, of missiles falling on Riyadh and of oil installations burning in the desert remains vivid. A sudden and reckless American departure could create uncertainty, trigger regional arms races and tempt hostile actors to test the resolve of Washington’s allies.
But that reality raises an uncomfortable question: if forty-five years of American protection, trillions of dollars in military spending and tens of thousands of troops have still left America’s partners feeling vulnerable — and still left Asian markets exposed to a shock originating in a strait Washington claims to guarantee — has the strategy truly succeeded? Security guarantees that were meant to create stability have, in some cases, created dependency. The challenge facing Washington is not whether it should abandon its allies, but whether an endless military presence has become a substitute for the difficult work of regional diplomacy, political compromise and the construction of a security order that can survive without American warships anchored offshore.
Rome discovered what every empire eventually discovers: legions stationed on distant frontiers can become prisoners of the politics they were sent there to control.
America today finds itself in precisely that position.
None of this means abandoning the Middle East. Trade, diplomacy and intelligence cooperation remain essential. But there is a profound difference between economic engagement and permanent military occupation.
The twenty-first century’s defining challenges do not lie in the deserts of Mesopotamia. They lie in the economic dynamism of the Indo-Pacific, the technological revolution transforming global industries, and the shifting balance of power in Asia. Every billion dollars spent rebuilding another desert base is a billion dollars Washington cannot invest in the industries of the future, and every aircraft carrier tied down in the Gulf represents a superpower distracted from the very region that will dictate tomorrow’s global economy.
The costs of this addiction, in other words, are not confined to Washington or the Gulf. When the Strait of Hormuz closed in 2026, the shock did not stop at America’s shoreline. It travelled through tanker contracts and freight insurance premiums to Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur — to economies that had no vote in the decision to go to war and no stake in its outcome, yet absorbed its costs regardless. Geopolitics has a habit of disguising a simple truth: a war decided in Washington and fought in Iran is, within weeks, paid for in Jakarta, Manila and Ho Chi Minh City.
Empires rarely collapse because they are defeated from the outside. More often, they exhaust themselves trying to solve problems that geography, history and culture make unsolvable.
For forty-five years, America has tried to manage the Middle East’s ancient rivalries with aircraft carriers and blank cheques, exporting a volatility that routinely sends shocks through global markets and emerging economies far removed from the conflict itself. The 2026 war with Iran may ultimately be remembered as the moment Washington was forced to confront an uncomfortable reality: military power can destroy armies, topple governments and redraw borders, but it cannot reorder civilizations — and it cannot, indefinitely, be paid for by economies that never chose to fight.
Perhaps the greatest act of strength now would be to admit that not every crisis requires an American soldier, and that true leadership sometimes means knowing when to leave.
Long after the last American aircraft has departed, fishermen in Basra will still cast their nets into the Shatt al-Arab. Traders will still crowd the markets of Baghdad. The call to prayer will still echo across Bandar Abbas at sunset. And container ships will still carry the region’s oil toward Asia’s ports — ideally, without an American war fleet standing between them and the sea.
Empires arrive believing they are indispensable.
History, and the markets, usually have other ideas.
Abbi Kanthasamy is a Canadian entrepreneur, photographer and writer.