The Quincy Institute has published an extensive report on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and how to change it to bring it in line with a strategy of restraint. The executive summary lists the report’s key conclusions, and it describes the core of the replacement strategy that the authors are proposing:

The U.S. should significantly reduce its military footprint while retaining the readiness to redeploy if its core interests are threatened and pursuing diplomatic and commercial engagement with all states in the region. By no longer attempting to play the role of regional hegemon, the U.S. could instead rely on core American interests to determine policy. With greater diplomatic flexibility, the U.S. would no longer feel compelled to support abusive regimes.

Kelley Vlahos already discussed some of the new report earlier this week, and I would like to add a few more comments. The authors of the report (Annelle Sheline, Paul Pillar, Trita Parsi, and Andrew Bacevich) are to be commended for an excellent analysis of where U.S. foreign policy in the region has gone wrong over the last thirty years and for spelling out in considerable detail what the U.S. should be doing instead. This is the sort of serious rethinking of U.S. foreign policy that the Quincy Institute was created for, and they have already made a significant contribution to the debate. When critics of restraint demand to know what alternative it is that restrainers propose, here is the latest answer.

The report is refreshing in its authors’ willingness to specify the very few interests that the U.S. has in the region and to tailor their policy accordingly. The policy that the authors outline is a restrained, humble one consistent with America’s limited interests in the region, and that is why the changes that they want to make are quite ambitious. They are calling for a very substantial reduction in the U.S. military presence and a dramatic overhaul of U.S. relations with many states, but they are also proposing greater and more creative diplomatic engagement than the U.S. has practiced for decades. This is absolutely not an end to engagement as such, but it is a move away from the hyper-militarized entanglement that has caused so much harm to the U.S. and the peoples of the region. The authors also call for a major change in how the U.S. relates to its traditional clients in the region. To the extent that these relationships will continue at all, they would be managed very differently, and some of them would be phased out entirely. The report is quite clear that there must be no more “cartes blanches” for any clients, and the U.S. has no obligations to defend any of them. As Bacevich says in a separate op-ed, there will be no more “free passes” or “special privileges.”

The U.S. has wasted decades taking sides in the region’s conflicts and rivalries, and that hasn’t made the U.S. more secure or the region more stable. Rather than backing despots to the hilt and subsidizing illegal occupation and annexation, the authors propose that the U.S. stop taking sides in regional quarrels in order to be able to act as a mediator. By identifying the U.S. so closely with one bloc of states, the U.S. has not only tied its own hands in its diplomatic dealings, but it has trapped itself into defending the clients’ interests at our expense. Reflexive support for clients has only served to encourage them in their worst behavior and to make them much less prone to compromise. Because they assume that the U.S. backs them in whatever they do, clients have behaved with great recklessness, often to their own detriment as well as ours. The region is a much bloodier, uglier place because the U.S. has indulged its clients without question for so long, and removing that source of instability and violence is both wise and just.

Just as they want no more “cartes blanches” for clients, the authors call for ending the pariah status of countries on the other side of the regional divide. That would mean rejoining the JCPOA for a start, ending the economic wars against the countries targeted by “maximum pressure,” and then reestablishing normal relations with Iran. Regarding normalization, the authors anticipate the usual objections and say this:

Establishing diplomatic relations is neither a gift nor a capitulation to Tehran. Rather, it is a much-needed measure to maximize America’s leverage.

Normal diplomatic relations with other states are just that: a normal part of international affairs. They should be ruptured only in the most extreme cases of open hostilities, and refusing to restore them for decades amounts to depriving yourself of the influence and information that you might otherwise gain. The absence of normal relations does not provide the U.S. with any advantage, and it frequently leaves the U.S. in the dark about the Iranian government’s intentions. Not having normal relations takes away one of the most basic tools of statecraft available to us in our dealings with Tehran, and it forces the U.S. to rely on third parties to deliver our messages for us. To continue this abnormal and ridiculous state of affairs for even a few more years is irrational and contrary to the best interests of the United States. It is also an ongoing danger to international peace and security, because in the absence of normal relations it has been much easier for both governments to miscalculate and misinterpret the other’s actions. The U.S. and Iran need a regular mechanism for communication and deescalation, and once that is established it will be possible for our governments to find a workable modus vivendi that will reduce tensions in the region and keep our governments from going to the brink of war as they have done several times in just the last year.

If the U.S. sharply cuts back on its entanglements in the region’s conflicts, that will free it to engage in constructive diplomacy and to advocate credibly for the protection of human rights. The authors emphasize that this is consistent with securing U.S. interests, which the short-term accommodations with abusive authoritarian states have undermined and harmed:

Such emphasis is not only right simply from a moral perspective; it is also in large measure congruent with U.S. interests. Denial of human rights has contributed to instability and violent extremism emanating from the Middle East. Research on the primary drivers of violent extremism often highlights the role of human rights abuses by state institutions. To be effective, America’s approach to human rights must be consistent and not selective. To condemn some states while giving others a pass demeans the concept of human rights, exposes the United States to charges of hypocrisy, and weakens America’s moral voice both in the region and beyond.

We should also consider the costs of remaining complicit in the crimes and abuses of these client governments. The U.S. makes new enemies each time that it sides with authoritarian regimes as they lock up, torture, and kill their political opponents. Decades of backing these regimes has contributed directly to creating threats against our country, and it has also enabled horrifying human rights abuses against prisoners and dissidents and gruesome atrocities against civilians that have been committed with U.S.-made weapons. The U.S. should seek to have a more modest, but also a more just and humane, foreign policy, and by curtailing our ambitions in the region we will be better able to treat the people living there with respect for their lives, their rights, and their sovereignty. This Quincy Institute report is the initial blueprint for exactly that kind of foreign policy, and it should serve as a strong foundation for additional proposals in the future.