No. of Recommendations: 9
Sure, 30 years ago, we had vital interests in the middle east. But today? We're a net exporter of energy (which was the reason we were highly interested in the past: energy). Why do we care now?
Oh, a bunch of reasons.
The first is that even though we are energy independent, most other countries in the world are not - and we're very interested in what happens with those other countries. Top of the list would be China, which has been trying to expand its influence all over the globe, and has been cozying up to the various oil exporting nations in the ME for the last decade or so under their Belt and Road plan. To the extent that those nations can be pushed towards (or kept in) the Western/Israeli economic and security spheres of influence, the better to check China's global expansion. Also on that list are the economies of most of our allies - Japan and South Korea in a big way, but also Europe generally. An interruption in oil exports from the region might not hit the US badly, but it could devastate our Asian allies - with enormous geopolitical consequences. The "oil weapon" is still potent for those countries, and we don't want China being the main ally of the ones who can wield that weapon against Japan and South Korea.
The second is that the region is critically important for global shipping. Even without oil, a sizable amount of global seaborn trade goes through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea trade route. And U.S. naval forces traverse the area - it's an important point of flexibility for us to move naval assets from the Med and northeast Atlantic theaters into the Indian Ocean.
Finally, the area is one of a few limited land borders between the edge of NATO and non-NATO countries. Turkey shares a border with Iran, Syria, and Iraq. Iran is one of the regional hegemonic military powers, and a close ally of Russia. Syria is also mostly a Russian proxy, and is deeply allied with Iran as well. So checking the growth of Iran's power and influence in the region is a critical aspect of NATO defense, and an oversized Israeli military keeps Iran focusing on that threat and helps provide the other nations with an alternative security strategy than allying with them or China.
To say nothing of the fact that Israel is a de facto nuclear power - and probably one of the biggest risks to U.S. security is that something goes very badly wrong with one or more of the nuclear nations. So no matter what, we are deeply invested in what happens in and around the nuclear countries. Something going wrong in Israel or in India/Pakistan are certainly two of the top scenarios for inadvertently triggering global thermonuclear war.
All of that together keeps the region pretty important for U.S. interests. We pay about $4 billion a year to Israel in military aid (approximately), which allows them to have a super-big military footprint in the region so that we don't have to do it ourselves. There's certainly a solid argument that's good value for the price.
