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For half a century, the US-Middle East relationship rested on a straightforward bargain: America guaranteed security and the Gulf exported oil. That compact was born of trauma — the 1973 embargo — and hardened by the Cold War. Today, both pillars look shaky. The US is awash with its own hydrocarbons and the credibility of its security umbrella is increasingly in doubt. Yet Washington still appears reluctant to let go, if only because the region remains useful for other reasons: as a source of capital, as a stage for great power competition and as a theater where US influence can still be traded, if selectively, for strategic dividends.
Energy independence has loosened the bond. In 2005, the US imported about 60 percent of its oil consumption; by 2023, that share had fallen below 10 percent, with Saudi crude accounting for barely 6 percent of US imports. America is now the world’s largest oil and gas producer, exporting more liquefied natural gas than Qatar. The idea that Washington must garrison the Gulf to keep American cars running is obsolete. Policymakers know it and so do regional leaders.
Yet energy interdependence has not disappeared — about 21 percent of the world’s oil still flows through the Strait of Hormuz and any disruption would send global prices soaring, hitting US allies in Europe and Asia. The US cannot wall itself off from those ripples, even if its own barrels are secure.
Security, once the other half of the bargain, looks just as fragile. The US still maintains major bases in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Carrier strike groups continue to surge into the Gulf in moments of crisis. Yet when it comes to deterrence, the guarantees look less absolute. The recent Israeli strike in Doha, which reportedly evaded American detection or at least triggered no preventive action, exposed the awkward truth: the US posture is less a shield than a presence. Regional leaders may reasonably ask whether American radar arrays and surveillance networks really missed the attack — or whether Washington chose to remain uninvolved. Either way, the credibility of the “security guarantee” looks thinner.
The idea that Washington must garrison the Gulf to keep American cars running is obsolete
Dr. John Sfakianakis
That gap reveals what has become the real coin of the realm: investment. Gulf sovereign wealth funds collectively control more than $4 trillion in assets — ֱ’s Public Investment Fund alone has over $925 billion under management, while the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Mubadala together exceed $1.2 trillion. US officials now court Gulf capital as eagerly as they once courted Gulf oil, with sovereign wealth flows into American tech and infrastructure climbing sharply over the past five years.
The implicit deal is no longer “oil for security” but “capital for access.” Washington reassures Gulf elites of enduring ties; in return, Gulf money helps fund America’s innovation economy. The transactionalism is stark and not lost on the region’s rulers.
If security is still being provided, it is often by Israel rather than America. Israeli forces have struck targets in Syria more than 1,000 times in the past decade, degrading Iranian and Hezbollah supply chains, while US operations have become rarer and more risk averse. Israel is increasingly the region’s de facto enforcer, willing to act unilaterally where Washington hesitates. For the Gulf states, this creates an uncomfortable paradox: the ally they have long depended on for protection appears less willing to bear costs, while the state they once defined as an adversary is now the most muscular and assertive defender of regional order, at least against common threats.
All this plays into a larger American pattern of selective engagement. Washington no longer commits itself wholeheartedly to the region but calibrates its involvement to moments of acute crisis — surging a carrier group here, conducting a drone strike there, leaning on Gulf capitals to bankroll reconstruction elsewhere. The instinct is increasingly inward: avoid open-ended commitments, avoid domestic backlash, avoid the impression of “forever wars.” But the effect is corrosive. If America is only present when it must be, and absent when it is wanted most, Gulf leaders will hedge — with Beijing, with Moscow and others.
If America is only present when it must be, and absent when it is wanted most, Gulf leaders will hedge
Dr. John Sfakianakis
China’s arrival deepens the unease of the West with the Gulf. Sino-Gulf trade has ballooned to more than $350 billion annually and Beijing has signed comprehensive strategic partnerships with ֱ, the UAE and Iran. Chinese companies are building ports, refineries and 5G networks, offering Gulf rulers something Washington rarely does: large-scale infrastructure investment.
Where Washington seems intent on extracting capital, China appears intent on supplying it. The balance of attraction is shifting and the US risks being seen not as a partner of first resort but as an opportunistic interlocutor — useful for arms, still relevant for influence in Washington, but no longer indispensable.
Russia, by contrast, offers a different kind of partner. Its foothold in different parts of the world and the Middle East is backed by arms sales and intelligence ties. Moscow brings a pragmatic, transactional approach valued in the Gulf and the wider Middle East in addition to its OPEC+ role. Russian systems and cooperation provide options — and remind Washington that Gulf states are not without alternatives.
American politics pushes in the opposite direction. The public has no appetite for another “forever war.” Iraq and Afghanistan left deep scars and both Republicans and Democrats now prioritize domestic issues and competition with China over Middle Eastern entanglements. The reflex is selective engagement: surge when necessary, retrench when convenient. A powerful pro-Israel lobby in Congress, the White House and civil society ensures America cannot leave the region, but its priorities often align more with Israel than with Gulf partners.
The question, then, is not whether America needs the Middle East but whether the Middle East needs America in its old guise. The region still matters to Washington, but more as a source of liquidity and a site of competition with China than as an irreplaceable lifeline of energy. The Gulf still values American arms and access, but doubts whether those translate into meaningful protection. And as Israel asserts itself with increasing impunity, the old architecture of American security primacy looks more like a façade. America is no longer dependent on Gulf oil, but it still expects Gulf countries to recycle their billions into American assets and industries. What was once “security for oil” has quietly become “capital for reassurance.”
- Dr. John Sfakianakis is Chief Economist and Head of Economic Research at the Gulf Research Center.