Expert Interviews is an exclusive series provided by The Gulf Nashra, where we sit down with leading researchers, policymakers, and analysts to examine the political, economic, and geopolitical dynamics shaping the Gulf, and what they mean for the rest of the world.
Today we’re sharing our conversation with Professor John Calabrese. He is an Assistant Professor at the American University in Washington D.C., Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) and Book Review Editor of The Middle East Journal. His research focuses on Middle Eastern international relations, particularly the evolving political and economic connections between the Middle East and Asia. A specialist in regional and cross-regional dynamics, Professor Calabrese has authored and edited numerous books and scholarly works, including China’s Changing Relations with the Middle East and Revolutionary Horizons: Regional Foreign Policy in Post-Khomeini Iran. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in English and Government from Georgetown University.
During the recent Iran conflict, Gulf states demonstrated an increasing ability to defend themselves against missile and drone attacks, reviving debate about the value and future of the US-Gulf security partnership. From your perspective, has the United States fundamentally changed its approach to the region, or are we witnessing a broader transformation in the international system and the nature of warfare itself? More broadly, why does the American security role in the Gulf appear different today than it did during earlier crises such as the 1990-91 Gulf War?
The debate is often framed as whether the United States is “leaving” the Gulf. The more important shift is that the conditions that once made American primacy function as a security system have eroded.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Gulf security was defined by a relatively clear set of priorities: deterring state aggression, securing energy flows, and ensuring freedom of navigation. These were domains in which overwhelming US conventional superiority translated directly into regional order.
Today, the threat environment sits in a different space. Drones, precision missiles, cyberattacks, financial disruption, and infrastructure sabotage operate in the gray zone between war and peace. They are harder to attribute, deter, and neutralize through conventional force alone. As a result, US military dominance remains necessary but no longer sufficient as an organizing principle of regional security.
This is reflected in the Iran war, where US forces could not fully prevent or unilaterally deter calibrated Iranian retaliation at the margins of escalation. More broadly, this points to a convergence of two dynamics. First, US strategy has shifted toward Indo-Pacific priorities, post-Afghanistan wariness of open-ended deployments, and domestic pressure to reduce forward presence. Second, the character of warfare has changed in ways that reduce the marginal decisiveness of external conventional superiority.
