Rosemary Kelanic joins DEFP to lead new Middle East Engagement Program -

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 28, 2024 Contact: press@defensepriorities.org ROSEMARY KELANIC JOINS DEFENSE PRIORITIES AS DIRECTOR OF ITS NEW MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM WASHINGTON, DC—Defense Priorities is pleased to announce its new Middle East Program—which seeks to operationalize and promote a strategy of restraint for the United States in the Middle East—as well as the program’s new director, Rosemary Kelanic, formerly an assistant professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Program overview The Middle East is a region where U.S. interests are limited and the use of U.S. military force has repeatedly proven unnecessary and counterproductive. After the 9/11 attacks and the declaration of the “Global War on Terror,” the United States initiated a series of interventions, first in Afghanistan, then in various countries in the Middle East—Iraq, Libya, and Syria—all of which proved disastrous. Of all the regions where the U.S. military has been heavily engaged in recent decades, the Middle East holds the least strategic importance. The two core U.S. interests in the Middle East are: (1) to prevent critical, long-term disruptions of Persian Gulf oil and (2) to counter anti-U.S. terrorist threats. Neither of these interests requires an open-ended military commitment to the region or permanent ground forces. Washington’s military interventions over the past few decades largely produced conditions of destabilization and discontent and incubated new terrorist threats, like ISIS. Continuing deployments in places like Iraq and Syria have made U.S. servicemembers targets for hostile actors who otherwise couldn’t reach them. Moving forward, U.S. policy in the Middle East should aim to: Avoid direct U.S. involvement in new wars in the region, particularly with Iran and its regional proxies. End the permanent U.S. military presence in the region within five to 10 years, and urgently remove U.S. forces from Syria and Iraq. Avoid security guarantees to states in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, which promote destabilizing action by these states and could entangle the U.S. beyond its national interests. End U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen. Normalize relations with states across the region, eschewing both entangling partnerships and enduring rivalries. Cooperate with local powers to counter anti-U.S. terrorism through intelligence sharing. Refrain from needless great power competition with China and Russia in the region. Recognize that U.S. influence in the Middle East has limits and may be unnecessary or counterproductive to U.S. national interests. Rosemary Kelanic @rkelanic Rosemary Kelanic is director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities. Kelanic publishes widely on energy security, great power politics, and U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in outlets ranging from Foreign Affairs and Security Studies to The Washington Post and The National Interest. Kelanic’s book, Black Gold and Blackmail: Oil and Great Power Politics (Cornell University Press, 2020), explains the differences in energy security strategies that great powers adopt, while her edited volume (with Charles L. Glaser), Crude Strategy: Rethinking the U.S. Military Commitment to Defend Persian Gulf Oil (Georgetown University Press, 2016), urges a reappraisal of U.S. engagement in the region. Kelanic spent 10 years teaching political science at the University of Notre Dame and Williams College prior to entering the policy world. She earned her PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and her BA, summa cum laude, from Bryn Mawr College. “The Middle East receives outsized attention from Washington and takes up too many U.S. resources given its limited strategic importance,” said Defense Priorities President Edward King. “I’m delighted Rose Kelanic will lead our new Middle East Program and lend her expertise to promote a better, more balanced U.S. strategy that advances our security and prosperity interests in the region with more diplomacy and less exposure to the region’s conflicts and violence.” “I am thrilled to join Defense Priorities and advance its mission to promote realism and restraint in U.S. foreign policy. Sadly, both have been absent for far too long, especially in the Middle East, which has distracted the U.S. from other priorities,” said Rose Kelanic, director of the new Middle East Program. “Decades of bad policy have mired the United States in unnecessary and intractable military conflicts, when in fact, neither of the two core U.S. security interests in the region—energy security and countering anti-U.S. terrorism—require much force. The U.S. should rebalance its commitments and strategies to reflect these realities.”