President Trump has alienated key allies by unilaterally pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and re-imposing sanctions. Saudi Arabia has already been unable to enlist allies to protect shipping in the region from Iranian attacks.
The United States and Saudi Arabia lack virtually any allies as they consider how to respond to this weekend's attacks on Saudi oil refineries, raising doubts about whether the Trump administration could build any coalition for military action in the region.
Successive U.S. administrations have used coalitions to bolster the legitimacy of military actions and to relieve some of the pressure on heavily used U.S. military forces — from the 1991 Gulf War and the Clinton administration’s actions in the Balkans to the much-maligned “coalition of the willing” that the George W. Bush administration recruited for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
That’s seen as a key concern at a time when the military is trying to shift troops, aircraft, warships and other equipment away from the Middle East to better prepare for potential conflicts with Russia or China.bedrock military partners like France and Germany — steered clear out of concern that the Trump administration might use the mission to drag them into a confrontation with Iran.
In leading the effort, the U.S. has committed destroyers and “intelligence gathering assets,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. Telling reporters last month that the mission was “up and running,” Esper described its mission as “first, to provide freedom of navigation for the commercial shipping that is so vital to global economic trade, and second, to deter provocations and avoid conflict in the region.
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