The goal of the Carter Doctrine: maintain access to Persian Gulf oil, prevent the rise of a regional power hostile to the US. According to those criteria, the doctrine has been a success.

Judged from any other vantage, US policy in the Middle East since 1980 has been a disaster https://twitter.com/foreignpolicy/status/1264239755086254082

Sure, you *could say the doctrine worked. But at what cost? Trillions of $, tens of thousands of lives wasted in pointless wars, US clients permitted to repress their own people, entire nations reduced to chaos, civil war, and deprivation.

The article itself gets it wrong. Trump has spoken out against the doctrine, and US policy in the region, while doubling down on the same broken practices in pursuit of the same ends. The doctrine still holds: what is needed is an actual re-evaluation.

One of the challenges of studying diplomatic history is avoiding the trap of imagining how things *could have gone, had different decisions been made. Since 1980, the US has committed a number of major own-goals—Iraq, 2003 being one. But there were others

The 1982 US intervention in Lebanon was a mess—a collision of conflict ting objectives, vague mission parameters, an outcome that served Israeli (rather than US) objectives https://images.app.goo.gl/gTHgdvtCP7xAnxuD8

The Iran cash-for-hostages campaign (better known as Iran-Contra) was ill-conceived and illegal. It muddied the waters of US policy, which was outwardly in support of Iraq in its war with Iran. Meanwhile... https://images.app.goo.gl/rhoWRu2sGUWBu2GHA

...the decision to back Iraq was motivated by short-term thinking and long-term delusion (the idea of pulling Baghdad away from the USSR). The US and it’s clients supported Saddam Hussein with little thought to the consequences. https://images.app.goo.gl/Vu9ieJccPgwHV6pH6

Desert Storm/Desert Shield was the Carter Doctrine in action: a potential threat to the free-flow of oil was neutralized and contained. But there was no follow-through; instead the policy of dual containment worked to maintain US opposition to Iran and Iraq...

...with no thought to how to resolve the situation. Meanwhile, maintaining and expanding the US military presence in the Gulf encouraged greater regional hostility, and allowed free-riding from clients https://images.app.goo.gl/HV9fDp234HVNHqyG7