JD Vance blamed the war for the Republican Party's crushing defeat in America's midterm elections. The US vice-president said, "The reason we lost is the war." This loss could lead to a major retreat in America's global role, potentially changing the balance of power in the Middle East for everyone.
American retrenchment could change Middle East balance of power and signify opportunities for China
"The reason we lost is the war." That was the verdict of JD Vance, just hours after the Republican Party's crushing defeat in America's midterm elections.
The US vice-president had already let it be known, privately, that he advised against the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28 this year. By going public with his opposition, he is igniting a debate on the future direction of US foreign policy with implications well beyond the Middle East.
Many presidents have sought to bounce back from domestic political defeats by concentrating on foreign policy -- where they have a freer hand to act. That temptation to look for a global legacy is particularly pronounced when a president enters the "lame duck" period -- the last two years of a second term in office.
But the sheer scale of the Republicans' defeat -- together with the emerging consensus that it was directly linked to a hubristic war in the Middle East -- makes it more likely that the midterms will lead to a further retrenchment of America's global role. That kind of shift could fundamentally change the balance of power in the Middle East, while unnerving European allies and creating new opportunities for China in Asia and around the world.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary-general of Nato, says: "I worry that the end result of all this may be a more isolationist America."
The Middle East redrawn
The Iran war remains the most urgent foreign policy challenge facing the administration. Before the midterms, Donald Trump had talked publicly about the possibility of a new assault once the elections were out of the way. This was more than just idle chatter. The US is moving a third aircraft carrier into the region. The Pentagon's planners have drawn up military options for the president to consider.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat briefed on these plans, described them as "insane" and suggested that they could trigger a "devastating escalation". It was widely reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pressing for renewed military action.
In recent days, however, Trump has played down the prospects of another big attack on Iran. "We're not really in a war," the president told the FT this week.
He is, of course, famously volatile -- and could change his mind again. But the new political context created by the Republicans' disastrous performance in the midterm makes an intensification of the military campaign against Iran less likely. The post-election stock sell-off may also come into play, since the president is sometimes wary of upsetting the markets.
Given Vance's recent comments, any decision to step up hostilities with Tehran could trigger a public split between Trump and his vice-president. Instead, the president may select a different target for his wrath. He is said to be considering sacking Pete Hegseth, his bellicose secretary of defence.
Vance's first suggestion for reviving Republican fortunes was "end the war". If he and the "restrainers" in the Republican Party get their way, the US will now cut its losses in Iran -- negotiating the best face-saving deal possible under the circumstances.
The result of an American pullout at this stage in the conflict could be a profound shift in the balance of power in the Middle East. A war that was fought to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran may end up leaving Tehran as the de facto hegemon of the Gulf.
The Iranians have survived everything that the US and Israel threw at them -- including the assassination of the country's top leadership as the opening act of the war. They have also demonstrated that they can choke off energy supplies going through the Strait of Hormuz. And they have struck US military bases across the Middle East, as well as the infrastructure of their Gulf neighbours.
The US naval base in Bahrain is apparently so badly damaged that it may not be rebuilt. And Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have been put on notice that they can be targeted at will. Under these new circumstances, the Gulf states may have no option but to come to an accommodation with Tehran -- on terms that suit the Iranians.
But while the Iranian regime will be delighted by the results of the midterms, Netanyahu's far-right government in Israel is dismayed. One of the four points suggested by Vance for a revival of Republican fortunes was "change our relationship with Israel".
The day after the midterms, Amit Segal, a prominent Israeli journalist who is close to Netanyahu, posted on X: "What happened in America last night is a catastrophe. Take AIPAC's worst nightmares, double them, and you still don't get close," he said, in a reference to the pro-Israel US lobby group.
Segal lamented the election of Abdul El-Sayed, a fierce critic of Israel, as the new Democratic senator for Michigan. And he added: "The Republicans are blaming Israel for the Republican Party's troubles."
His suggestion was that Israel's only option now is a national unity government -- presumably led by Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister's Likud party took the largest number of seats in the country's election last month, although his coalition lost its majority.
But such a proposal ignores the fact that Netanyahu is now a toxic figure for both major political parties in the US. Many Democrats routinely refer to him as a war criminal who is responsible for a genocide in Gaza. For Republicans like Vance, he was the leader who talked Trump into a disastrous war with Iran.
If Israel is seeking a path to rehabilitation in the US -- and the wider world -- getting rid of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, would appear to be an essential first step.
Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot is expected to be invited this Sunday by President Isaac Herzog to have the first chance to form a government instead of Netanyahu.
Eisenkot faces many hurdles. But a new Israeli government -- based on co-operation between Jewish and Arab parties -- would do much to combat critics' argument that Israel is an inherently racist state.
Allies unnerved
Many of America's other allies -- in Europe and Asia -- will be more upbeat about the midterms. Trump has made a habit of bad-mouthing the US's friends and has even flirted with withdrawing from Nato while using the threat of tariffs to extort promises of massive investment from Japan and South Korea.
Traditional US allies will hope the new Congress can restrain Trump's instinct to reach for tariffs as his preferred weapon in any foreign policy dispute. Prominent members of the Senate are already talking about trying to roll back his tariffs on Canada -- although the president could veto any such measure.
Countries such as Germany, the UK and Japan will hope that the repudiation of Trump could signal a return to a more traditional US foreign policy, in which America once again embraces the role of "leader of the free world". But they should temper their expectations.
If Vance succeeds in grabbing more influence over the Trump administration's foreign policy, US suspicion of European allies and hostility to Ukraine could actually increase. It was the vice-president, after all, who made a notorious speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, in which he said he was more worried about the alleged erosion of democracy in western Europe than about Russia.
Two weeks later, he confronted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a televised showdown in the White House ("Great television" was Trump's own verdict on that particular meeting.)
The Democrats may be almost as wary as many Republicans about a reassertion of America's traditional role as the security guarantor for its partners around the world -- allying with Israel against Iran, while protecting European allies from Russia and Asian allies from China.
The "progressive" wing of the party campaigned vigorously against "forever wars". Senator-elect El-Sayed said explicitly on the campaign trail: "For too long and too often . . . we have turned ourselves into the world's policeman."
There are also practical constraints on America's ability to underpin global security. The US has a national debt of 127 per cent of GDP and is running a budget deficit of almost 6 per cent of GDP. Its ill-starred war with Iran has led to a serious depletion of vital munitions, such as cruise missiles and Patriot missile interceptors. Rebuilding those stocks may take several years and cost billions of dollars.
An election that turned on "affordability" and high gas prices -- which were directly linked to the latest in America's 21st-century history of foreign wars -- is also unlikely to lead to a more forward-leaning foreign and security policy.
The more probable outcome is a renewed emphasis on "nation building at home" (a phrase of former president Barack Obama's) and the need for America's partners to do more to ensure their own security.
Dealing with the dictators
One of the reasons some Trump officials were sceptical about going to war with Iran -- as well as continuing support for Ukraine -- was the belief that the US needs to concentrate its military resources on preparing for a possible war with China.
Trump himself has shown little interest in military confrontation with Beijing, preferring to concentrate on trade. He is due to travel to China this month for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19. It is widely expected that, while in China, he will hold a three-way summit with President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, Russia's president.
The image of three strongman leaders -- Xi, Putin and Trump -- meeting together would send shudders down the spines of US allies in Europe and Asia.
Trump may see any such encounter as a meeting of the world's "big three" -- a phrase redolent of the Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill summits held during the second world war. They are still bitterly remembered in eastern Europe as a great-power carve-up -- in which an imperialist Russia was granted a "sphere of influence" that sacrificed the sovereignty of its neighbours.
There will be fears in Kyiv that Putin might persuade the US and China to back a modern version of 1945's Yalta meeting -- a "peace deal" that would sell out Ukrainian interests or endorse a Russian view of the conflict.
Japan, which is currently locked in a tense confrontation with China, will also have reason to be concerned about Trump's dealings with Xi. Taiwan will be watching nervously for any possible shift in the US position on China's claims to the self-governing island.
But while Trump enjoys the pomp and ceremony of meetings with autocrats such as Putin, Xi and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, recent history suggests that very little of lasting significance actually emerges from these summits.
After the midterms, his aura and authority will also be much diminished. Foreign leaders know that Trump has been rejected by the voters and is on his way out. That diminished status suggests that, even if he did make outrageous concessions to Xi and Putin, he might not have the ability to make such deals stick once he gets back to Washington.
And what will Xi and Putin make of it all? The Chinese and Russian leaders know that they are meeting a weakened president who represents a divided America. They also know that, in the run-up to the 2028 presidential election, the US will increasingly be looking inward -- as both major parties prepare for the post-Trump era.
For China and Russia, the last two years of the Trump administration may look like years of opportunity.