America's Middle East Grand Strategy after Iraq: The Moment for Offshore Balancing has Arrived.

In this paper, I argue that there is an emerging consensus among realists that the U.S. should abandon its hegemonic strategy and adopt an offshore balancing strategy. Here, Iraq and the so called war terrorism (or "long war," or "global counter-insurgency," as some American officials sometimes refer to it) have been the catalysts. Increasingly, it is recognized that U.S. aims in the Persian Gulf/Middle East - and the American military presence in the region - have fueled terrorism, and caused Iran to self-defensively seek to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. A number of leading realists now argue that the best strategy for the U.S. is to extricate itself from Iraq, reduce its regional footprint, and adopt an offshore balancing strategy.In this paper, I make the case for offshore balancing as America's next grand strategy. In so doing, I argue that offshore balancing can be considered as a "wedge" (or wedge-like) strategy for two reasons. First, at the great power level, it can be used to break up potential alliances directed against the United States, and also to force possible future rivals of the United States to focus their security policies on each other rather than on counterbalancing the U.S. Second, in the Middle East an offshore balancing posture would help drain away much of the opposition to American policies that fosters Islamic terrorism directed at the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]