Deeply appreciate the generosity of Elliott Abrams, Martin Kramer, and Steven Cook in providing thoughtful responses to “The Strategy Washington Is Pursuing in the Middle East Is the Only Strategy Worth Pursuing.” I’ll offer my reactions to their arguments—with each of which I respectfully disagree—one by one. In my essay, I describe what I see as a coherent strategy toward the Middle East taking shape in the Trump administration. Elliott Abrams, for his part, sees no common worldview or sense of collective purpose at all. “[T]he decisions of the past two years,” he writes, may instead reflect the many individuals who have affected decision-making (Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, James Mattis, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and for that matter Mohammed bin Salman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Benjamin Netanyahu, etc.), not to mention the president’s own changes of mind. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume Abrams is entirely correct. But will he concede that the administration has at least exhibited clear inclinations, and that these inclinations are unlikely to evaporate? Particularly relevant are five: (1) The administration has an aversion to deploying troops on the ground. (2) It has nevertheless displayed a willingness to use force to deter adversaries—as it did, for example, in response to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. (3) It is much more favorably disposed toward traditional American allies—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—than the Obama administration preceding it or the current Democratic leadership. (4) It rejects the fashionable cant, on the American left and among Europeans, about the supposed centrality of the Israel-Palestinian conflict to Middle East international politics. (5) It is very hostile to Iran and its ambitions, both in the nuclear arena and in regional politics. In brief, if this administration is producing chaos, not policy, then it is chaos with a very distinctive shape—and one that should not be altogether displeasing. The question then becomes: is there an organizing principle that can give strategic purpose to these inclinations? Hostility to Iran, I submit, is precisely that principle, and the element that has been most missing from American policy for many years. Now the Trump administration has offered us (and by “us” I mean explicitly to include all three of my respondents) a prime opportunity to develop just such a coherent anti-Iran strategy. While Abrams does not entirely deny this opportunity, he perceives a fatal flaw in the administration’s reluctance to deploy ground troops. “In my view,” he writes, “the United States will build a security system with its own military or it won’t have one at all.” This argument invites two objections. First, it exaggerates the significance of President Trump’s withdrawal from Syria, suggesting as it does that the American military will no longer be a major factor in alliance-building. But let’s not conflate an aversion to putting boots on the ground with an unwillingness to use force. The administration struck the Assad regime for using chemical weapons, and threatened the regime and its Russian and Iranian patrons when, last August, they readied an assault on Turkish positions in the province of Idlib. Neither of these moves required the presence of 2,000 troops in the Syrian desert, and there is no reason to believe that removal of the troops will prevent similar conduct in the future. Moreover, not only can the American security umbrella remain largely unchanged, but it will purchase considerable room for maneuver in Syria by Turkey and Israel. This is not to minimize the very real threat of escalation that Turkish and Israeli leaders face when they conduct military operations in proximity to Russian forces. That threat can be reduced, however, by the deterrent effect on Vladimir Putin of knowing that any contemplated Russian reprisals will provoke a direct American response. Second, Abrams’ argument ignores a mountain of counter-evidence from history—in this case, the history of the cold war in the Middle East. Our recent era of extensive troop deployments and the micromanaging of Arab societies may feel like the norm, but it was inaugurated only after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Prior to then, the United States was preternaturally disinclined to deploy troops, for fear, among other things, of provoking a countermove by Moscow. It therefore worked through regional proxies to thwart the Soviet Union, and after some initial missteps it did so quite effectively. AFP.