the Clinton administration entered office in
1993 and proceeded to adopt a strategy of "dual containment." Until that
moment, the United States had acted as an "offshore balancer" in the Persian
Gulf, and we had carefully refrained from deploying large air or ground force
units there on a permanent basis. We had
backed the Shah of Iran since the 1940s, and then switched sides and tilted
toward Iraq during the 1980s. Our goal
was to prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, and we
cleverly played competing powers off against each other for several decades.
With dual containment, however, the United States had
committed itself to containing two different countries -- Iran and Iraq -- who
hated each other, which in turn forced us to keep lots of airplanes and troops
in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We did this,
as both Kenneth Pollack and Trita Parsi have documented, because Israel wanted
us to do it, and U.S. officials foolishly believed that doing so would make Israel more
compliant during the Oslo peace process. But in addition to costing a lot more money, keeping U.S. troops in
Saudi Arabia for the long term also fueled the rise of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was deeply offended by the
presence of "infidel" troops on Saudi territory, and so the foolish strategy of
dual containment played no small role in causing our terrorism problem. It also helped derail several attempts to
improve relations between the United States and Iran. Dual containment, in short, was a colossal blunder.