It’s been just under ten years since then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, to Foreign Policy, the U.S. pivot to Asia after a decades-long focus on the Middle East. It didn’t last long. Soon after, the Arab Spring uprisings forced the Middle East back into the center of U.S. foreign policy. Then came civil wars in Syria and Libya. Next was the eruption of the Islamic State. All the while, there were nuclear negotiations with Iran—a cascade of events that ensured that the Middle East, as it had for former presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and certainly his son, would exert inexorable pull on the Obama administration.
Like former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, U.S. President Joe Biden hoped to downgrade the Middle East in favor of finally waging a strategic competition with China, which Biden said would be the most consequential challenge of his presidency. But just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in.
