Across the Pacific Rim, America’s allies are watching what happens in the Gulf

The hands-off approach America is pioneering in its last years in the Middle East will also reach Asia – with serious consequences for its Asian allies, writes Faisal Al Yafai

Residents from Ramadi who fled their homes as ISIL militants advanced. Sabah Arar / AFP

Summer approaches and Barack Obama’s thoughts turn to his traditional allies. For too long he has neglected them in favour of the diplomats of an emerging power. His allies, having spent decades of political and financial capital on the US alliance, begin to wonder if America remains an indispensable ally and if, when threats emerge, America will stand beside them.

All of which may sound like a description of America’s relationship with the Gulf states before last week’s Camp David summit. In fact, it describes its east Asian allies last year, before Mr Obama went on a four-country tour to reassure his friends along the Pacific Rim.

The symbolism of America’s meeting with the GCC’s leaders last week at Camp David was clear to both the Gulf states and Iran. But that symbolism will also have been noted much further afield than the Middle East, in Seoul, Tokyo, Manila and Kuala Lumpur. Mr Obama visited these four capitals last April, seeking to reassure them that the US remained committed to their defence against China. And as the symbolism was noted, so was the lack of concrete steps to defend the Gulf allies. America’s east Asian allies will have taken note.

Many of the problems that the Gulf states face are very similar to the problems that America’s allies in East Asia face. There, as here, a historic power is expanding and seeking to create new facts on the ground, at the expense of more prosperous nations. In Asia, it is China that is re-emerging as a regional power. And there, as in the Gulf with Iran, China does not appear to be setting itself up for a traditional military conflict – although countries like Japan certainly worry about that possibility – but rather a series of low-level confrontations.

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Mr Obama’s visit to Asia last April was prompted by exactly one of these low-level confrontations. A few months previously, China had unilaterally declared an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) across an area that includes disputed islands that Japan also claims. America’s response, at the time and since, was timid, limited to showmanship (flying military aircraft through the zone) and diplomacy. Since then, China has continued low-level confrontations – reclaiming land around the islands which Japan suspects it intends to use as a military outpost. Those issues continue to rumble – in fact, the day after Camp David, America’s secretary of state John Kerry flew from Maryland straight to Beijing, where these disputed islands and the ADIZ were discussed.

The problem is that America today, at least as led by Mr Obama, is not especially good at handling low-level confrontations. Even before he took office, America struggled to deal with confrontations rather than wars – its massive military was built up during the Cold War, in preparation for a serious all-out war with the Soviet Union.

But today’s conflicts are not like that. The conflicts north and south of the Arabian peninsula, in which Iran’s hands are visible, or those confrontations that China is provoking in the South China Sea are much harder to resolve. They do not necessarily rise to the level of all-out war, at least not immediately. The US has usually relied on its overwhelming military might to deter countries from small confrontations for fear of provoking America into a larger war.

But as China and Iran begin to rise, they recognise that for America, wearied by the brutal and inconclusive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threshold for a military confrontation is much higher. America today is willing to tolerate far more small confrontations and threats to the authority of its allies – whether in Iraq, in Ukraine or in the South China Sea.

The end result of which, both in the Gulf and in East Asia, is that America’s security umbrella has weakened. As the tolerable level of conflict around the edges rises, both Seoul and Tokyo begin to wonder if they, too, ought to go nuclear, to protect themselves against nuclear-armed China.

The same thing is occurring in the Gulf. Just before the Camp David summit, the Saudis pointed out that whatever the Iranians end up with in regards to a nuclear programme, Saudi Arabia will almost certainly match.

This search for parity, both in the Gulf and in East Asia, brings with it the prospect of a new nuclear arms race. That ought to be a worrying prospect, across the world. It should also be of great concern in the White House, both from a policy perspective and a legacy perspective. It would be deeply ironic if Barack Obama, having tried so hard to be unlike George W Bush, leaves the Middle East (and Asia) more unstable through his inaction that Mr Bush did through action in Iraq. Ironic, but perhaps not unexpected. America has built the international order around itself. Remove the linchpin, after all, and the wheels come off.

On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai