Pete Moore, Case Western Reserve University
The February 28, 2026 American and Israeli attack on Iran has demonstrated the power as well as the peril of US military bases in the Middle East. On the one hand, US military dominance of the 21st century Middle East is extraordinary. From the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, US bases, naval presence, and aerial control have gone unchallenged by anything approaching a military peer for decades. In infrastructural and logistical terms, the US military is vertically integrated into regional transportation and civilian port networks. The rapid build-up of US forces by the Trump Administration to attack Iran is in many ways a refined, repetition of the US military deployment of hundreds of thousands of soldiers that preceded Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Today’s US bases have grown massively since the 1990s stitching together different national militaries, support infrastructures, and surveillance networks so that much of the region can be considered contiguous American airspace.
On the other hand, the leaderships and societies of the smaller Arab states have experienced acute vulnerability precisely because Iran targets US bases for retaliation. Days after the US attack on Iran, prominent UAE businessman Khalaf Ahmad al-Habtoor, someone close to the Emirati leadership, publicly castigated President Trump, “You have placed the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] and the Arab countries at the heart of a danger they did not choose…Who gave you permission to turn our region into a battlefield?” Despite purchasing billions of dollars of American weapons and opening their countries to every facet of the US military, small states in the region find themselves more threatened than at any period in their modern history. This paper comparatively examines two of the most important US bases in the region: Jordan and Kuwait. These two states represent one pole in the menu of options available to small states in the region, opting to make themselves as indispensable as possible to US military posture and activities in order to ensure American protection and assistance.
Conceptualizing Kuwait and Jordan as small states combines material conditions with relational importance.[1] Kuwait has a small national population of just over one million citizens and a limited geography, but its oil resources and historical role within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leverage larger capacities. Jordan’s population is estimated at over 11 million yet lack of resources and chronic fiscal weakness make Jordan resemble a more typical, dependent small state. Relationally however, Hashemite Jordan’s importance to the US and Israel is significant enough that there has been no serious discussion of cutting, reforming, or rethinking US support to Amman for over 30 years.[2] Jordan and Kuwait are arguably the most important “security bases” in the region. Washington planners see Kuwait and Jordan as geographic lynchpins for US power projection to the Gulf and for the protection of Israel. Kuwait hosts the largest logistics and warehousing bases, while US bases in Jordan provide defense in depth for Israel. Each country began hosting bases in different periods, and their political and strategic importance to Washington has shifted overtime. Both monarchies have faced domestic opposition and maneuvered through political crises, sometimes animated by relations with the US. How did the basing of US troops in each country evolve? How did the US military presence fit into domestic politics?
Jordan from Cold War origins to the GWOT
The US security and protection relationship with Hashemite Jordan traces to the early 1950s as the United Kingdom withdrew from its regional bases. The Central Intelligence Agency began giving the young King Hussein monthly payments to build his own intelligence network in lieu of British support. Once King Hussein prevailed in the 1970-71 civil war against Palestinian guerrillas, the Nixon Administration eagerly embraced what it saw as the survival of a stable American client amidst others going “down like ten pens.”[3] The relationship further solidified in American eyes because of Jordan’s front-line position in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the consequences of its possible instability for Israeli security. Washington’s intervention into the 1980s Iran-Iraq war deepened the American presence, as officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency expanded their cooperation with Jordanian security institutions, especially the General Intelligence Directorate, to facilitate provision of American intelligence and support to Baghdad.[4] Jordanian authorities in turn took on significant debt to purchase front of the line American, Soviet, and British weapons systems. Eventually, efforts to sustain the military debt failed in 1989, leading to austerity protests and civilian deaths in the southern parts of the country. The aftermath of the crisis marked an important turning point in the fiscal politics of the US military position in Jordan. While annual economic aid from Washington supported the fiscal pathologies of Jordan’s rentier economy by warding off a 1989 type crisis, the military aid subvented Jordan’s ability to maintain one of the largest per capita militaries in the world despite its anemic economy.[5]
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the American response triggered a massive military buildup in the region that repurposed its regional military missions. US bases and surveillance in Jordan became Israel’s frontline defense against Iraqi missile retaliation. After Kuwait was liberated, US-led sanctions on Iraq reinforced the importance of the US ability to monitor Iraq and launch air strikes from Jordan. After Jordan signed an official peace treaty with Israel in 1994, the Clinton administration designated Jordan as a non-NATO ally in 1996. The global war on terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq propelled the US-Jordanian military relationship into new areas. Jordanian special forces units and GID personnel deployed with the US to Afghanistan, while Jordanian bases served critical support roles during the US occupation of Iraq and participated in the extraordinary American rendition program during the Bush-era war on terror. By the 2000s, US training with the JAF had become the biggest in the Middle East, while Jordanian officers contributed the largest contingent of officers to the US military’s primary training program known as International Military Education and Training (IMET). In institutional and programmatic terms, the JAF is America’s closest Arab military ally.[6]
Today, the US military mission in Jordan involves more than just protecting Hashemite rule. The size of the US military presence in Jordan hovers around 5,000 troops and is concentrated at two Jordanian air bases. The Muwaffaq Salti Air Base near the town of Azraq hosts the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing – a unit solely intended to wage aerial combat over the entire region. Since 2018, the US has spent over $265 million upgrading the base.[7] Farther east near the Iraqi border in the Mafraq Governorate, the H-4 Air Base hosts American surveillance, special forces, and search and rescue units. Combined with the close relations between the CIA and Jordan’s GID, the Jordanian-American security relationship is widely considered the deepest in the region after Israel. This, as Ryan notes in this collection, has not spared it from a variety of indignities at the hands of the Trump administration, and has left it exposed in the Iranian-Israeli crossfire.
Kuwait as the Hinge Gulf Base
Prior to the 1990s, Kuwait’s security relations with the US reflected the country’s “dinar diplomacy” whereby bilateral agreements and diversified weapons purchases from multiple external powers—for example, Kuwait was the first Gulf country to sign a friendship treaty with the USSR—were meant to replace reliance on a single patron. Less than a year after Iraq’s invasion of Iran, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah led the creation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). At the height of the tanker wars in 1986, Kuwait requested protection from the Soviet Union and the US. The US responded by reflagging Kuwaiti oil tankers to protect them from Iranian attack, broaching a new relationship between the countries.
Just as the liberation of Kuwait impacted Jordan, the liberation also profoundly reshaped Kuwait’s external relations (see Freer in this collection). Mary Ann Tetreault wrote that the acute impact of Kuwait’s military defeat and occupation gave rise to broad discontent and “destroyed the myth of diplomatic prowess that had been an important element in the regime’s claim to popular support… from the perspective of most Kuwaitis, the actions of the government were primarily responsible, both for the invasion itself and for the complete unreadiness of the population and most of its putative defenders to protect themselves against it.”[8] As a result, Kuwait’s leadership worked closely with the US to launch the region’s most rapid rearmament and militarization program. In September 1991, Kuwait became the first Gulf state to conclude a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) with American authorities. Kuwaiti leaders followed with what many observers in Washington, D.C. saw as an “ideally cooperative”[9] increase in the defense budget that totaled well over 110 percent of the country’s national GDP and nearly 60 percent of the annual public budget.
The first formal US base in Kuwait, Camp Doha located west of Kuwait City, evolved into larger, full service American bases in Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem Air Base. These bases conformed to what Toby Jones described as “the strategic logic of militarization” in the Gulf in which the US committed to protect the oil producing ruling families.[10] Resembling early American protection of King Hussein, this policy would also grow and embrace wider goals. Kuwait hosted regular field training exercises with US forces, “Intrinsic Action,” which grew to the largest in the region after “Bright Star” training in Egypt and “Eager Lion” in Jordan. In 2003, the US military launched its ground invasion of Iraq from forces amassed on the Kuwait border. Despite however growing into the fourth largest US military base in the world, military-to-military relations never came to approximate the scope and scale achieved in Jordan. The military never fulfilled the promises of reform launched after liberation.[11] Nor has the Kuwaiti military deployed with US forces, instead offering only support units to Gulf Cooperation Council operations in Yemen.
Today, Kuwait hosts the forward operating base of the US Army’s Central Command, essentially placing the country as the command-and-control center of the network of bases stretching from Jordan and Iraq to the Southern Gulf. US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan relied extensively on US bases in Kuwait to rotate units, supplies, and house contractors. Whereas other bases in the southern Gulf maintain naval and air deployments, Kuwait is one country housing all combat branches. A final consideration of Kuwait’s central role has been to address one enduring difficulty of GCC unity. Since the 1980s, GCC leaders have made announcements and plans to integrate the different national militaries into a unified Peninsula Shield Force. Where domestic obstacles thwarted those efforts, the US military has nevertheless integrated bases and different national militaries units—all mostly operating with or through American systems—into a region-wide military network. This maybe one reason Iran has targeted Kuwait so heavily in its retaliation.
Domestic Entanglements and Variations
While US bases form and expand in the context of multiple regional wars, the domestic ramifications in each country link to coalitional and regime dynamics. At one level, early CIA payments to protect the Hashemite monarchy can be simply seen as supplanted seventy years later with bases and annual fiscal aid. Yet at another level, Jordan is much different today. The JAF is less important because of its potential war-making capacities and more for its role in delivering salaries, pensions, food, housing, and education to the Transjordanian tribes seen as loyally backing Hashemite rule.[12] The role of the Kuwaiti military by contrast has been as more recipient, not distributor, of patronage and services. What is more, the Kuwaiti military and security services have not taken on the kind of political economy roles that have emerged in Jordan over the last two decades.
The actual presence of US personnel and facilities in both countries is largely hidden from public view or media coverage. Most American troops stay on the bases. In Jordan, the largest and most active US bases are in isolated parts of the country or are clandestine. Over the decades, it is not hard to recognize a correlation between a deepening of these American positions and the gradual erosion of opposition politics in both countries. Jordan’s parliament has been historically caged, and therefore criticism of the US presence has been indirect, aiming at normalization with Israel or opposing US military interventions in other parts of the region for example. It is also important to note that there have been deadly attacks against US military personnel at the hands of their Jordanian allies.
Kuwait’s comparatively more powerful parliament has allowed direct, though delicate, opposition to militarization since liberation. Kuwait’s tumultuous political struggles between the parliamentary opposition and the ruling family in the 1990s and 2000s ranged across many issues. While critical inquiry into the Kuwaiti-American military relationship was out of bounds, inquiry and public debate over weapons purchases flourished. Tenacious parliamentary investigations into a near 1$ billion deal to buy US artillery eventually ended with the Kuwaiti government reneging on the deal in 2000. In the run up to the new Emir, Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad, dissolving parliament in May 2024, similar investigations and suspicions surrounded a deal to purchase fighter aircraft from Italy.
The history and consequences of US bases reflect regional pressures, domestic pressures, and shifting US interests. One persistent dilemma is the mismatch between small states’ reliance on these forms of American protection and the insecurity that seems to accompany it. In the aftermath of the Iran war, discussions and debates about the future of American bases must address this issue.
[1] Tom Long, A Small State’s Guide to Influence in World Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022)
[2] The last break in US-Jordanian relations came when King Hussein rhetorically supported Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
[3] Andrew Scott Cooper, The Oil Kings : How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East, 1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 42.
[4] Pete W. Moore, “A Political-Economic History of Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate:
Authoritarian State-Building and Fiscal Crisis,” Middle East Journal 73;2 (Summer 2019), p.252-253
[5] Sean Yom and Pete Moore, “The Fortress State: Extreme Militarization in Jordan,” Middle East Law and Governance 16 (2024), 371-386.
[6] Jordan has largely supplanted Egypt in this respect.
[7] J.P. Lawrence, “Pentagon Awards Latest Contract in $265 Million Project to Expand Remote Air Base in Jordan,” Stars and Stripes, 13 May 2022.
[8] Mary Ann Tetreault, Stories of Democracy, pp. 76-77.
[9] Michael Knights, Troubled Waters: Future U.S. Security Assistance in the Persian Gulf (Washington, DC: Washington Institute of Near East Policy, 2006), p.127.
[10] Toby Jones, “America, Oil, and War in the Middle East,” The Journal of American
History (June 2012).
[11] Bilal Saab, “Beyond Post-Desert Storm: How to Elevate the US-Kuwait Security Partnership,” Report of the Middle East Institute, September 2022.
[12] Anne Marie Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare: Neo-liberalism and Jordanian Policy,” Middle East Journal 62 (2008): 277-303.