In his recent Foreign Affairs essay, “There Is Only One Sphere of Influence: Why America Can Project Power With Little Constraint—And Its Rivals Cannot,” Michael Beckley argues that despite the widespread rhetoric of multipolarity, the world remains structurally unipolar. Only the United States, he contends, possesses the capacity to project sustained military, financial, and diplomatic power globally without meaningful constraint. China and Russia, though formidable, remain regionally bounded.

As a structural assessment of material capabilities, the argument is internally coherent. The United States maintains an unparalleled global military footprint, commands unmatched naval reach, anchors the dollar-based financial system, and sustains deep alliance networks. Measured purely in aggregate capability, American primacy remains undeniable.

But from the vantage point of the Middle East — a region shaped and reshaped by successive external interventions — the thesis of a single sphere of influence is not merely analytically insufficient. It is normatively dangerous.

The language of “sphere of influence” carries historical weight here. The modern Middle East was carved through imperial arrangements and external bargains. Colonial mandates, Cold War alignments, and post-9/11 military campaigns embedded the region within larger strategic designs. For societies that have repeatedly experienced foreign power projection as constraint rather than protection, reviving the conceptual legitimacy of singular spheres risks normalising hierarchy as order.

Consider Palestine. The diplomatic asymmetry surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be separated from Washington’s structural position within the United Nations Security........

© Middle East Monitor