U.S. Shuts Erbil Air Base, Ending Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq

Great-power retrenchments rarely end neatly. Washington’s 2026 departure echoes its December 2011 pull-out—followed by a return when ISIS captured Mosul in June 2014—and even the far quicker collapse after the Soviet exit from Afghanistan in February 1989. Like Saigon 1973 or Kabul 2021, bell-ringing parades in Baghdad risk obscuring the question of who actually monopolises force once the foreign scaffold is gone. Long-term, the move fits a 20-year U.S. trend of shifting assets from the Middle East toward Asia, leaving regional balance to local actors and proxy networks. It accelerates Iraq’s century-old struggle (since the 1920 British Mandate) to assert sovereign control over oil, militias and borders while caught between stronger neighbours—now chiefly Iran. Whether 2026 marks lasting independence or merely the prelude to a third American return will hinge on Iraq’s ability over the next decade to integrate militias, police its airspace and prevent an ISIS 3.0. In a hundred-year lens, the episode may be remembered less for the American exit itself than for how effectively—or not—Iraq used the breathing space to build durable institutions amid an era of waning unipolarity.