War in Mideast Challenges U.S. Defense Strategy.

TEL AVIV -- The war between Hamas and Israel is forcing the Biden administration to send more forces and military capabilities back into the region, redirecting U.S. policy on the Middle East when they had been hoping to focus on potential threats from China and Russia.

Fearing that the conflict set off by Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel could widen, the Biden administration has re-established some of its military footprint in the region.

The conflict could force the U.S. to rethink how it uses its military in the Middle East and is a test for how the Pentagon could continue to support Ukraine and keep its focus on China, which the Defense Department says is its top long-term priority.

This sudden turnaround comes as the U.S., which spent two decades fighting insurgencies in the Middle East and Central Asia, was starting to tackle a new era of power competition with China and Russia. The surge in Middle East violence and the intensive American push to prevent the conflict from spreading could eclipse longer-term U.S. efforts to focus on the Indo-Pacific and to buttress the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's ability to deter Russia.

President Biden has insisted that the U.S. has the global reach and military resources to handle the Gaza crisis and support Ukraine.

Some former military commanders say the strategic importance of the Middle East means the U.S. must maintain a more substantial day-to-day presence.

"Our posture in the region does make a difference," said Frank McKenzie, the retired Marine general who led U.S. Central Command from 2019 to 2022. "Iran carefully watches what we do. When we draw down our forces and couple that with inept policy messaging that our singular focus is now on the Asia Pacific, we don't give assurance to our friends in the region and we do give confidence to our potential enemies in the region."

The U.S. has so far sent two aircraft-carrier strike groups, consisting of roughly a dozen ships and 12,000 military personnel, redeploying assets in Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Pentagon had reduced naval assets in the region in recent years, moving more of its resources toward the Asia Pacific to combat threats from China. Similarly, the Pentagon has moved A-10 attack aircraft and F-15 and F-16 jet fighters back to the Persian Gulf, beefing up the air assets it has rotated through the region in recent years. The Defense Department also is preparing to potentially deploy roughly 2,000 troops to the region.

Other resources are being tapped for the conflict. Israel has so far received several thousand 155mm artillery rounds since Hamas launched its attack, defense officials said. This comes shortly after the U.S. effectively emptied its stockpiles of 155mm rounds kept in Israel to meet Ukraine's demand for the highly sought artillery.

Though the White House says it has no information that Tehran orchestrated the attack on Israel, the U.S. has made clear that it is rushing aircraft carriers and warplanes to the region to dissuade Tehran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia Iran supports, from widening the war. The Wall Street Journal reported that there was a meeting between Hamas and Iranian security officials to help plan the attack.

For years, a succession of administrations, both Republican and Democratic, sought to focus on efforts to counter China's growing influence and military, only to have those plans complicated, first by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which were followed by the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then by the rise of Islamic State.

During the Trump administration, the Pentagon's national-defense strategy called for making Chinese and Russian deterrence the top U.S. defense priorities. But the White House's foreign-policy focus was on rolling back Iran's nuclear program and Tehran's support for militant groups in the region.

The Biden team renewed the push to shrink the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, determining that it could end the conflict in Afghanistan and put meaningful resources and policy attention toward the Indo Pacific. The concern over Beijing has been driven by U.S. assessments that Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his military to be ready by 2027 to take military action against Taiwan, though American officials say such action isn't inevitable.

The U.S. withdrew more than eight Patriot missile batteries from the region last year, including from Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and their accompanying troops, as well as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad system, from Saudi Arabia. The naval and aircraft deployment that were kept in the region generally were very modest, while the Pentagon maintained it could surge forces back to the Middle East in a crisis.

"The Middle East matters to us because of oil, Islamist terrorism and Israel, not always in that order," said Eliot Cohen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The idea that we can walk away from the region was always false."" [1]

1. World News: War in Mideast Challenges U.S. Defense Strategy. Lubold, Gordon; Youssef, Nancy A;
Gordon, Michael R.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 18 Oct 2023: A.8.