Obituaries

Matthew Petti | 7.26.2024 11:45 AM

The first and only time I met Ambassador Martin Indyk was in February 2020, at the offices of The National Interest, a magazine I worked for after graduating college. Indyk was there to give a talk related to his recent Wall Street Journal article, "The Middle East Isn't Worth It Anymore." Unlike many who believe that U.S. interventionism in the region has been destructive and wasteful, Indyk argued that Washington has basically gotten what it wanted—and could now leave the region alone.

Indyk would know. The former White House official and diplomat, who passed away on Thursday at the age of 73, was one of the architects of U.S. policy in the Middle East in the 1990s, when Washington was first starting to flex its dominance over the region. Indyk's most (in)famous contribution was announcing the "dual containment" policy, which committed the U.S. to a virtually endless struggle against Iran and Iraq at the same time. Later in life, he became a skeptic of continuing those commitments.

Last year, Indyk called for ending U.S. military aid to Israel, which he had previously fought to secure throughout his career.

"Those who actually believe the Middle East doesn't matter anymore thought that I had become a defector to the isolationism crowd," Indyk joked at The National Interest event, in his distinctive Australian accent. But the U.S. did have legitimate reasons to intervene in the region, Indyk insisted: "The first three were oil, oil, and oil. The fourth was Israel." It was only because those interests were secure that Americans could back off. The global energy market had moved away from a reliance on Persian Gulf oil, he noted, and "Israel today is quite capable of standing on its own two feet."

His tone shifted yet again over the final few months of his life. Indyk's last public statements were a series of social media posts bemoaning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership of the country and failure to appreciate U.S. support. "Wake up Israel! Your government is leading you into ever greater isolation and ruin," Indyk wrote on May 22. The policy pillars that Indyk had helped erect had not only outlived their usefulness; it seems they had begun to collapse in on themselves.

It was Israel that got Indyk interested in the Middle East in the first place. Born in Britain and raised in Australia, he was studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem when........

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