Posting this because I think “Operation Epic Fury” is a useful stress test for a fairly standard assumption in U.S. foreign policy thinking, which is that maintaining a large forward military presence in the Middle East is still worth it.
This piece argues that the current posture creates more problems than it solves, by increasing the risk of entanglement, lowering the threshold for military action, and locking the U.S. into a constant cycle of crisis response. Rather than rebuilding and reinforcing the existing base network, the U.S. should reduce its presence and move toward a more offshore or over-the-horizon approach.
Of course, this is coming from Cato and an author with a strong anti-interventionist attitude, but hard to argue with the core arguments here that entanglement hasn't produced great outcomes.
Posted by MightExpress4873