Discovered something that we ourselves were reminded

discovered something that we ourselves were reminded of in Iraq and Afghanistan: Operational excellence alone is
often not enough to realize strategic victory.) So why does the current administration fight so hard to keep arming
our partners in the Gulf? I don’t think it’s as simple as the need to support the U.S. military industrial base, though
that is a concern I’m sure it has. Some U.S. strategists genuinely fear that if we do not arm our partners, our Russian
or Chinese rivals will . They can’t cite that fear to justify the “emergency” that allows us to continue arming the
Saudis and Emiratis over congressional objections, because it’s more of a strategic concern, but based on my
conversations with U.S., Saudi, and Emirati officials, it’s a major driver of American policy . I’m just not sure that is
a good-enough reason. Russia and China can no t , in the near term, rival the numbers of personnel we have deployed
in the region . None of our partners is going to call the Chinese military to save them from the Iranian navy. So we
should probably stop being so scared of the Russian or Chinese bogeymen , no matter how much our partners might
publicly flirt with our rivals. One of the reasons they do that, after all, is because their strategic interests diverge
from ours : We want to rebalance our resources toward future security challenges, while they want to keep as many
of our forces tied down in their region as possible . Going forward, we can afford to focus on building our allies’

capacity only when we expect to reap a direct benefit. Especially following large recent sales of aircraft to Saudi
Arabia (F-15s), Kuwait (F-18s), and Qatar (F-15s), we’ve probably sold enough advanced fighter aircraft to the
regionAllies of Convenience We need to help our allies build capabilities that will allow the United States to do less,
and that largely means building up naval forces and integrated air and missile defenses—another rare bright spot in
U.S. capacity-building efforts (at least until the Gulf militaries all stopped talking to Qatar, home to the largest U.S.
air base in the region). You want to sell weapons to the Gulf? Fine. But sell them some frigates and air defenses.
That’s not going to be easy for two reasons: First, unlike Egypt or Lebanon or Israel, the Gulf militaries are not the
beneficiaries of U.S. largesse in the form of foreign military financing, a mechanism whereby we give countries
funds to spend on U.S. weapons and training. The Gulf states have their own dollars that they can spend as they like,
and they don’t have to spend those dollars on U.S. weapons. If we don’t sell them a certain weapon system, they can
buy a similar one elsewhere. But they do so at their own risk. If you buy a bunch of Chinese drones and allow
Chinese engineers to walk around your air bases, it will not be long before those U.S. aircraft and U.S. military
personnel find another base. And our Gulf partners don’t want that. They like keeping us close . Second, our Gulf