Presence of the USA Troops in Persian Gulf - Essay Example

The Middle East is an area that stretches from North Africa and the Persian Gulf, since 1801, there has been a victim of momentary US military intervention. The US military fought its first involvement in WWII after it was dispatched by Thomas Jefferson warships to protect the commerce of America from the Barbary pirates’ raids. This was necessary since the government was to protect the American’s wealth and wellbeing; hence the need for the continued military presence. Since there was a lot of dependence on the oil from the Persian Gulf, it was justified for the US military to continue its operations in the region (John 2009). Following the partition of Palestine in 1947 and the US government recognition six months later of the State of Israel, there was the need for the US military to intervene and protect the young nation. 

The war in Egypt after the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser who was succeeded by Anwar Sadat who attacked Israeli necessitated the US involvement after the Soviet had threatened to intervene by use of military force against the Israelis. It was at this time when Henry Kissinger used a diplomatic engagement and managed to make peace between the warring countries. To this far, the American Military involvement was justified to be in the Middle East. This is because had it not been for the US military, there would have been no peace between the Israeli and the Egyptians; many people would have lost their lives. The US managed not to be involved militarily in the Middle East conflicts after WWII, due to continued instability in the Middle East politics between Muslims and Christians, there was a need for the American troops to be dispatched there. They managed to contain the situation between the warring factions without any casualties (Faucet, 2013).
However, despite all the achievements of the US involvement militarily in the Middle East, there are many reasons as to why it should not be involved in the region militarily as follows;

According to John C. Goodman, in 2009 only, the US government devoted a lot of resources to defend the oil in the Persian Gulf. The reason why the US troops are maintained in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Oman is to ensure a free flow of oil from the Middle East.  The final implication of this reason is cheap oil from the Middle East which comes with unmentioned expenses and costs which policymakers should give a lot of thought before supporting any foreign policy. He argues that if the federal budget for the Persian Gulf defense were to be included in the gas price, the US consumer would be paying $5 per gallon (Faucet, 2013).

It is unnecessary to have a continued presence of the US troops in the Persian Gulf to ensure free flow of oil from the region, the Persian oil producers, consumers, and shippers, who now mostly stay in East Asia and or Europe, would be willing to protect and ensure the free flow of oil from that region.

According to Ivan Eland, it is even more irrational for the US military to protect the Persian Gulf than the European imperialism of the nineteenth century, because the region only provides 10% of the total oil consumed by the United States. The US government should emulate the trend which the Europeans took by relying mainly on markets to get oil; the EU stopped using armed forces to obtain oil and resorted solely to free markets, if America were to use the same method, the US taxpayers would save a lot. Instead, the government has expanded its military control to oil-producing countries like Central Asia, West Africa, Latin America, and the Caspian Sea region (Freedman, 2009).

It is really unfortunate that the United States government has to use military forces in other foreign sovereign countries to get oil, the military presence anywhere signifies that the two countries involved are at war. The unspoken truth is that if the US left the countries to themselves and try to trade with them amicably, then the taxpayers would lessen their tax burden and the countries would protect and ensure a free flow of the contentious oil to the US.