The International Politics of the Persian Gulf 9780815651529, 9780815632801

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International Politics of the Persian Gulf

Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Series Editor

O t h e r t i t l e s f rom Mode r n I n t e l l e c t ua l a n d P ol i t ic a l H i s t ory of t h e M i ddl e E a s t

Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities M ic h a e l l e L . Brow e r s

The Education of Women and The Vices of Men: Two Qajar Tracts Translated from Persian with an Introduction by H a s a n Java di and W i l l e m F l o or

Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, Religion, and Modernity Edited by Bi rg i t S c h a e bl e r and L e i f S t e n be rg

God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity Fa r z i n Va h dat

A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971–1979 P e y m a n Va h a bz a de h

The Kurdish Quasi-State: Development and Dependency in Post–Gulf War Iraq De n i s e N ata l i

Modernity, Sexuality, and Ideology in Iran: The Life and Legacy of Popular Iranian Female Artists K a m r a n Ta l at t of

The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey Edited by E s r a Öz y ü r e k

Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey Ş e r i f M a r di n

The Urban Social History of the Middle East, 1750-1950 Edited by P e t e r S lug l e t t

International Politics of the Persian Gulf Edited by

Mehran Kamrava

S y r ac use U n i v e r si t y Pr e s s

Copyright © 2011 by Syracuse University Press Syracuse, New York 13244-5160 All Rights Reserved 11 12 13 14 15 16

6 5 4 3 2 1 Published in association with the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit our Web site at SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu. ISBN: 978-0-8156-3280-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data International politics of the Persian Gulf / edited by Mehran Kamrava. p. cm. — (Modern intellectual and political history of the Middle East) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8156-3280-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Persian Gulf Region—Foreign relations—21st century.

2. Persian Gulf Region—

Foreign economic relations—21st century. 3. Persian Gulf Region—Politics and government—21st century. 4. Persian Gulf Region—Strategic aspects. 5. National security—Persian Gulf Region.

I. Kamrava, Mehran, 1964–

DS326.I576 2011 327.536—dc22 Manufactured in the United States of America

2011011777

• For Melisa, Dilara, and Kendra

Contents List of Figures and Tables • ix Acknowledgments • xi Contributors • xiii List of Abbreviations • xvii

1. The Changing International Relations of the Persian Gulf M e h r a n K a m r ava

•

1

2. Sovereignty and Boundaries in the Gulf States Settling the Peripheries J. E . Pet e r s on •

21

3. Security Dilemmas in the Contemporary Persian Gulf F r e d H . L aw s on

•

50

4. Foreign Policy in the GCC States S t e v e n W r igh t

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72

5. GCC Perceptions of Collective Security in the Post-Saddam Era Jo se ph Ko st i n e r

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94

6. American Policy Toward the Persian Gulf Strategies, Effectiveness, and Consequences Moh a m m e d Ayo ob • 120

7. Regional Consequences of Internal Turmoil in Iraq Da n i e l L . By m a n

•

144

8. Saudi Arabia’s Regional Security Strategy F. Gr e g ory Gause , I I I

•

169

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9. Iranian Foreign and Security Policies in the Persian Gulf M e h r a n K a m r ava

•

184

10. China, India, and the Persian Gulf Converging Interests? N. Ja na r dh a n •

207

11. Political Reform and Foreign Policy in Persian Gulf Monarchies K at ja N i et h a m m e r Notes • Bibliography Index •

259

• 339

307

•

234

Figures and Tables F igu r e s 10.1. World oil consumption by region and country group, 2005 and 2030 • 210 10.2. GCC-China trade, 2001–7 • 212 10.3. GCC-China trade, 2007, in billion USD • 213 10.4. India-GCC non-oil trade • 216 Ta bl e s 1.1. World’s proven crude oil reserves, 2007 and 2009 10.1. India-GCC trade • 217

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Acknowledgments This book is the result of two highly productive meetings held in Doha, Qatar, under the auspices of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. The meetings were held in June 2008 and January 2009 and gave the chapter contributors the opportunity to share and exchange ideas with one another, refine and revise their own arguments, and examine the project in its entirety. In addition to the authors whose contributions appear here, a number of colleagues joined in at the group’s second meeting with the express purpose of providing additional input and advice. They included Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rami Khouri, Lawrence Potter, Paul Salem, and Robert Wirsing. Both individually and collectively, they gave the group invaluable advice and insightful comments. The present volume is all the richer because of their input. The meetings at which this book was conceived and discussed were organized and managed by the capable staff of CIRS, whose unflappable professionalism and enthusiasm for the project made the otherwise difficult task of collecting scholars from around the world in Doha both easy and enjoyable. Zahra Babar, Aphrodite Hammad, Suzi Mirgani, Naila Sherman, and Maha Uraidi deserve great credit for making work on this and on other projects sponsored by CIRS a delight. Alex Richard Schank and Fahimeh Ghorbani, at the time based in Doha and Tehran respectively, provided invaluable research assistance with chapters 1 and 9 and deserve great thanks for locating much of the data presented and the sources used in the two chapters. Thanks also go to James Reardon-Anderson, founding dean of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, for his unwavering support and enthusiasm for this and for the many other research initiatives undertaken by the Center for International and Regional Studies. Perhaps more than any other xi

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individual in recent times, Jim deserve the credit for pioneering the institutional study and research of international relations in Qatar and many of its neighboring countries. Joseph Kostiner, Yossi as he was affectionately called by friends, passed away in August 2010 and did not see one of his final works in print. He will be remembered fondly by all who knew him and for his multiple contributions to Middle Eastern studies, including his insightful chapter here. Putting a book together is always taxing on the author’s loved ones, and mine are no exception. My wife, Melisa, and my daughters, Kendra and Dilara, bore the brunt of my preoccupation with this book while cheerfully providing the loving care and happiness that enabled me to work on its editing. For that and for everything they are to me, I dedicate this book to them.

Contributors M o h a m m e d A y o o b is University Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Michigan State University. His books include The Politics of Islamic Reassertion (1981), The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (1995), The Many Faces of Political Islam (2008), and Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia: Wahhabism and the State (2009). Da n i e l L . By m a n is the director of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and the Center for Peace and Security Studies as well as an associate professor in the School of Foreign Service. He is also a senior fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Byman is the author of The Five Front War: The Better Way to Fight Global Jihad (2007), Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (2005), Keeping the Peace: Lasting Solutions to Ethnic Conflict (2002), and co-author of Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from the Iraqi Civil War (2007) and The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (2002). F. Gr e g ory G ause , I I I is professor of political science at the University of Vermont. In addition to numerous articles on the international politics of the Middle East, he is the author of Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (1994), Saudi-Yemeni Relations (1994), and International Relations of the Persian Gulf (2010). N. Ja na r dh a n is a UAE-based political analyst specializing in Gulf-Asia affairs. Janardhan was editor of “Gulf in the Media” and program manager, GulfAsia Relations, at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. He also worked with The xiii

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Asian Age and The Gulf Today, newspapers in India and the UAE respectively, and with the Rome-headquartered Inter Press Service as well. M e h r a n K a m r ava is director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He is the author of a number of books, including, most recently, Iran’s Intellectual Revolution (2008) and The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War, 2nd edition (2011). He has also edited The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity (2006) and is the co-editor, along with Manochehr Dooraj, of the two-volume work Iran Today: An Encyclopedia of Life in the Islamic Republic (2008). Jo se ph Ko st i n e r was professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. He authored The Struggle for South Yemen (1984), South Yemen’s Revolutionary Strategy (1990), From Chieftaincy to Monarchical State: The Making of Saudi Arabia 1916-1936 (1993), and Yemen: The Tortuous Quest for Unity, 1990–1994 (1996), and co-edited (with P. S. Khoury) of Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (1991). F r e d H . L aws on is Frederick Rice Professor of Government at Mills College, where he has been teaching international relations and Middle East politics since 1985. He is the author of Social Origins of Egyptian Expansionism during the Muhammad ‘Ali Period (1992), Why Syria Goes to War (1996), and Constructing International Relations in the Arab World (2006). K at ja N i et h a m m e r is professor of Islamic studies at Hamburg University. In the 2008–9 academic year, she also held the position of postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University’s Center for International and Regional Studies. In addition to a number of journal articles on issues related to Persian Gulf politics, she is the author of Political Reform in Bahrain: Institutional Transformation, Identity Conflict and Democracy (2011). J. E . Pet e r s on is a historian and political analyst specializing in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, the

Contributors

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most recent of which are Defense and Regional Security in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf, 1973–2004: An Annotated Bibliography (2006), Historical Muscat: An Illustrated Guide and Gazetteer (2007), and Oman’s Insurgencies: The Sultanate’s Struggle for Supremacy (2007). S t e v e n W r igh t is assistant professor of international affairs at Qatar University. His publications include The United States and Persian Gulf Security (2007) and Fixing the Kingdom: Political Evolution and Socio-Economic Challenges in Bahrain (2008).

Abbreviations AFPAK AMRAAM AQI AWACS CENTCOM CENTO CSTO FAC GIA GCC HIMARS ICJ IONS IRBM IRGC LNG LTTE MBPD MTA MKO NATO NDI OAPEC OPEC PJAK PKK

Afghanistan and Pakistan Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile Al-Qaeda in Iraq Airborne Warning and Control System United States Central Command The Baghdad Pact Collective Security Treaty Organization Fast Attack Craft Islamic Armed Group Gulf Cooperation Council High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems International Criminal Court Indian Ocean Naval Symposium Intermediate-range Ballistic Missile Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Liquefied Natural Gas Liberation Tigers of Tamil and Eelan Million Barrels per Day Million Tons per Annum Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Democratic Institute Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan Kurdistan Workers’ Party xvii

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PLA-N PLO PRPG RPF SCIRI SCO SOFA THAAD UAE UNSC

Abbreviations People’s Liberation Army-Navy Palestinian Liberation Organization Political Resident in the Persian Gulf Rwanda Patriotic Front Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq Shanghai Cooperation Organization Status of Forces Agreement Terminal High Altitude Area Defense United Arab Emirates United Nations Security Council

International Politics of the Persian Gulf

The Changing International Relations of the Persian Gulf M e h r a n K a m r ava

Observers of the Persian Gulf agree that the strategically critical region is undergoing profound changes. These changes affecting the region run the gamut from rapid economic and infrastructural development to profound social and cultural changes resulting from diff usion, globalization, and the widespread introduction of American-style education.1 This book concentrates on a series of changes underway in the Persian Gulf that have not heretofore been studied, namely in the region’s international relations.2 Far from eroding the region’s strategic significance, these changes have only accentuated regional rivalries and tensions, thrown into confusion previously somewhat predictable patterns of foreign policy behavior, and brought to fore new challenges to regional security and stability. This volume examines some of the most salient underlying causes for changes in the region’s international relations and the consequences that each of these changes have entailed both in the specific areas they concern and in the broader context of international relations in the Persian Gulf, in the larger Middle East, and beyond. Perhaps one of the most striking features of the international relations of the Persian Gulf is its securitization. For a variety of reasons, ranging from the nature of political rule within each of the countries of the region to the ways in which their international interactions have evolved historically, much of the international politics of the Persian Gulf has focused on security issues of one form or another. The region has faced, and continues to face, multiple security challenges, and there have been a number of attempts, thus far not all that 1

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successful, to forge collective security arrangements. Not surprisingly, many of the efforts and involvements of actors in the Persian Gulf, whether from within or outside of the region (the United States and the European Union), have occurred either directly because of or at least with an eye toward security issues. Threats, or at least perceptions of threats, have lurked in the shallow waters and the sandy beaches of the Persian Gulf as far back as the early days of the British Empire, and those engaged in the region’s international politics have been unable to escape the multiple concerns to which they have given rise. This is not to imply, of course, that all of the Persian Gulf’s international politics can be reduced to issues of security, but rather to argue that security issues have never been far from consideration insofar as regional politics are concerned. My goals in this introductory chapter are twofold: to outline some of the broader themes that have been consequential in the international relations of the Persian Gulf, and also to highlight some of the changes that have occurred to the emerging security system of the region over the last three decades or so. These changes have resulted in a number of challenges with which both regional actors and those from the outside have had to contend. I will begin by briefly outlining the main reasons for the continuing strategic significance of the Persian Gulf, not only because of its vast oil and gas deposits but also because of its emergence as a global hub of commerce and finance, the growing postures of Dubai and Doha as major entrepôts for the rest of the region and beyond, the apparent rise in Iranian influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and continuing tensions between Iran on the one side and the United States and Israel on the other. Concurrently, there have been major, tectonic changes in the Persian Gulf’s prevailing security system, with imperial hegemonic tendencies—Britain before 1971 and the United States from 2001 to 2008—competing with or giving way to balance-of-power politics, containment, and anarchy and confusion. Today, the Persian Gulf security system stands at the precipice of change, the ultimate shape of which will not be determined for a good few years. All of this, of course, entails challenges, some endogenous to the region and others exogenous. I will highlight some of the more pressing security challenges the region faces, calling attention also to the very unpredictability of their intensity, direction, and ultimate fate. Finally,I will outline how the more specific discussions and conclusions of the chapters that follow bring to light some of the broader trends and dynamics I have outlined here.

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T h e St r at e gic Sign i f ic a nce of t h e Pe r si a n Gu l f For much of the contemporary history of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf has stood at the center of the region’s strategic significance. As far back as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain zeroed in on the Persian Gulf as a critical passageway to its crown jewel, India, and entered into protectorate agreements with local ruling families, thus bestowing on them international legitimacy and, eventually, the resources and support necessary to ascend to kingships. When Britain withdrew from the region in 1971, the United States stepped in to fi ll what it perceived to be a critical vacuum of power guarding Western interests. No sooner had the British left than the so-called Arab oil embargo took place, in the immediate aftermath of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, resulting in the shooting up of oil prices worldwide, changing consumer habits in the West and elsewhere and demonstrating the global economic powers of the Persian Gulf’s oil producers.3 Since then, the Persian Gulf appears to have stumbled from one crisis into another, while retaining, and in many ways in the process deepening, its strategic significance in relation to powers and actors both inside and outside the region. The Iranian revolution of 1978–79, the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War in 1990–91, chronic U.S. tensions with Iran and with Iraq, and the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq beginning in 2003 have all combined to highlight dramatically both the volatility of the Persian Gulf and its strategic significance. Today, the Persian Gulf is strategically significant for four primary reasons. By far the biggest reason is the region’s vast deposits of oil and natural gas, with the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plus Iran and Iraq having an estimated 62 percent of the world’s proven crude oil reserves in 2007 (table 1.1). Similarly, after Russia, the second and third largest deposits of natural gas belong to two Persian Gulf states: Iran has approximately 16 percent of the world’s proven natural gas reserves, with Qatar closely behind with slightly more than 14 percent.4 Today, Qatar has positioned itself as the preeminent supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the rest of the world, with world LNG demand only expected to grow significantly over the coming years and decades. By one account, world demand for LNG, estimated at over 140 million tons per annum (MTA) in 2006, is projected to grow to 250 MTA by 2010, 330 MTA by 2015, and 410 MTPA by 2020.5 Existing and projected trends in the global trade of LNG

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Ta bl e 1.1 Wor l d’s prov e n c ru de oi l r e s e rv e s , 2 0 07 a n d 2 0 0 9 Barrels (billions)

World reserves (%)

NA 136.15 115.0 NA NA 101.5 5.572 15.207 264.209 3.0 97.8 3.128 NA

NA 11.31 9.55 NA NA 8.43 0.46 1.26 21.94 0.25 8.12 0.26 NA

741.566 484.288 939.016 1204.182

61.58 40.22 77.98

2007 Bahrain Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria UAE Other Yemen Middle East (countries above) GCC OPEC Total world 2009 Bahrain Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria UAE Other Yemen Middle East (countries above)

0.12456 136.15 115.0 0.00194 0.001 104.0 5.50 15.21 266.71 2.50 97.80 NA 3.0

0.0 10.01 8.57 0.0 0.0 7.75 0.41 1.13 19.87 0.019 7.29 NA 0.22

745.9975

55.58

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Ta bl e 1.1 Wor l d’s prov e n cru de oi l r e se rv e s , 2 0 07 a n d 2 0 0 9 (c on t ’d.) Barrels (billions)

World reserves (%)

2009 (Cont’d.) GCC OPEC Total world

489.34456 NA 1342.20732

36.46 NA

Sources: Data for 2007 collected through Hasan M. Qabazard, ed., OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2007 (Vienna: Ueberreuter Print und Digimedia, 2008). Data for 2009 collected from Energy Information Administration, International Data, Petroleum (Oil) Reserves, http://www.eia.doe.gov/ emeu/international/contents.html, accessed on May 12, 2009.

support these estimates: from 1995 to 2005, the global trade in LNG grew by 7.4 percent per year and is expected to grow by 6.7 percent a year from 2005 to 2020.6 One indicator of the strategic significance of the Persian Gulf can be measured by the amount of oil that passes through its “chokepoint,” namely the Strait of Hormuz.7 In 2007, 17 million barrels of oil a day (MBD) passed through the Strait of Hormuz, amounting to nearly 40 percent of all global oil passing through all chokepoints. This compares to the 15 MBD that passed through the Strait of Malacca (about 35 percent of the world total), 4.5 MBD through the Suez Canal (10.5 percent of the world total), and a mere 0.5 MBD through the Panama Canal, only 1.16 percent of the world total.8 None of this would have mattered if petroleum and petroleum-related products did not remain central to the stability and growth of the global economy. Despite increased environmental awareness and efforts to reduce reliance on hydrocarbon sources of energy, particularly in the West, levels of energy and especially petroleum usage are anticipated to rise globally in the coming years and decades. In fact, energy exports constitute “the one major exception to the failure of the Middle East and North Africa to compete on a global level,” with the global economy “projected to become massively more dependent on the Middle East in the future.”9 According to the data supplied by OPEC and the International Energy Agency, the GCC states plus Iran and Iraq supplied 30.5 percent of the world’s petroleum needs in 2007 and 36 percent in 2009, a trend that is likely to continue to rise.10 Because of all this, the significance of Persian Gulf oil is only likely to increase. The case of the United States is illustrative. Despite efforts by

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successive US administrations to diversify energy sources and reduce US reliance on Middle Eastern oil suppliers, fully 42 percent of petroleum imported into the United States in 2005 came from OPEC countries.11 By 2020, the United States is expected to import as much as 65 percent of its petroleum needs (up from 59 percent in 2005),12 and the importance of OPEC suppliers, especially those located in the Persian Gulf region, is anticipated to rise accordingly. Not surprisingly, one observer calls energy “the one true U.S. strategic interest in the Middle East.”13 The same assertion could be made about Asian and European interests in the region. A second strategic significance of the Persian Gulf lies in the location and global positioning of a number of regional states that aspire to superpower status within the region itself and to middle power status globally. Most notably, Iran and Saudi Arabia (and, prior to 2003, Iraq) each sees itself as a regional superpower and a major force in Middle Eastern and global politics. Chapters 8 and 9 in this volume more fully discuss Saudi and Iranian foreign policies respectively. Suffice it to say here that the two states often have contradictory visions of the Persian Gulf’s ideal security system and the role of outside powers in it. In broad terms, Iran advocates an indigenously-crafted and maintained security architecture in which it plays an influential role, while Saudi Arabia prefers to see the United States proactively involved in and underwriting regional security arrangements. For its part, the United States attaches great strategic significance to the Persian Gulf and maintains an extensive military presence there. The US Navy’s Fift h Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain, while the US Air Force maintains the Al ‘Udayd air base in Qatar. The Al ‘Udayd air base, which currently houses around 9,000 US military personnel, is slated to become the headquarters of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) in the near future and is undergoing additional expansions in both infrastructure and personnel. Additional US military personnel are stationed in Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and of course Iraq (and Afghanistan). Related to this is a third strategic significance of the Persian Gulf, namely the nature of the relationship between certain actors within the region and others located outside, perhaps the most consequential of which are Iranian-US and Iranian-Israeli relations. Although by themselves tensions between Iran on the one side and the United States and Israel on the other do not make the region strategic, they do significantly raise the stakes in the region where the stakes are

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already extremely high. As we will see more fully in chapters 6 and 9, the United States and Iran pursue policy objectives in the Persian Gulf that are, as of this writing, fundamentally contradictory and conflictual. In broad terms, from the American perspective, an extensive and proactive US military presence in the Persian Gulf is an essential component of efforts to keep at bay forces that are hostile to American interests and allies, chief among which is Iran.14 From the Iranian perspective, the United States has no business maintaining forces in the Persian Gulf and should allow the regional states to put into place their own security system. The ensuing tensions between the two powers, one a global superpower and the other an aspiring regional power, reverberate across the Persian Gulf, putting on edge states that can ill-afford the prospects of open conflicts and yet another war. There is widespread consensus among GCC leaders that open hostilities between the United States and Iran “would probably mean being dragooned by the United States into a confrontation with Iran.”15 As Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Hamad was told by his hosts while on a private visit to Iran in May 2006, any American attack on Iran would be responded to by an Iranian attack on American forces in Qatar and elsewhere in the region.16 The warnings of Prince Turki Al-Faysal in June 2006, at the time Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, about the dire consequences of a US-Iranian clash ring as true today as they did when he issued them: “If there is a military conflict, if bombs are dropped, ships are blown up, oil facilities on our side of the gulf are targeted . . . just the idea of somebody firing a missile at an installation somewhere would shoot up the price of oil astronomically. . . . Not just our installations, but the whole Gulf would become an inferno of exploding fuel tanks and shut-up facilities.”17 Since the Bush administration’s departure from office in January 2009, the possibility of the outbreak of open hostilities between the United States and Iran has receded substantially. Tensions between Iran and Israel continue to remain high, however, with frequent talk of “surgical” Israeli strikes on Iran’s suspected nuclear sites. While most of this tension remains rhetorical and driven by domestic politics, the danger of it escalating into open warfare remains ever-present. If that were indeed to happen, its consequences are not too unlike those of a USIranian clash. According to a 2009 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an Israeli attack on Iranian targets, which the study maintains has a low probability of success, is likely to “give rise to regional instability and conflict as well as terrorism”; destabilize Iraq; “increase the threat of asymmetric

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attacks against American interests and allies in the region, especially against countries that host the US military such as Qatar and Bahrain”; and “target U.S. and Western shipping in the Gulf, and possibly attempt to interrupt the flow of oil through the Gulf.”18 Finally, an additional significance of the Persian Gulf lies in the evolving nature of the relationship between culture and international relations in general and Islam and politics in particular in the coming years and decades. Within the Persian Gulf proper, three principal states—Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq—and one nonstate actor—Al-Qaeda—are likely to have defining consequences for the overall role and nature of political Islam, however defined, in the region’s intraand international politics.19 The overall trajectory of political Islam and Islam’s more specific role in international politics, both in the Persian Gulf and beyond, is likely to remain particularly sensitive to a number of developments. Among the most consequential of these are policy initiatives and ideological orientations in Riyadh and Tehran, the veracity of the state-building project currently underway in Iraq (and Afghanistan), and the degree to which the Pakistani state, with millions of its citizens scattered across the Persian Gulf as migrant workers, can weather the chronic crises that have become an endemic feature of its internal politics. In chapter 9, I point to the tensions inherent in the constitution of the Islamic Republic between adherence to Westphalian principles on the one hand and a pledge to rush to the support of oppressed co-religionists on the other. Whichever tendency prevails will have consequences both for Iranian foreign policy and for regional politics. Similarly, the impunity with which Al-Qaeda can operate in Iraq, and further afield in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is bound to influence both the tenor and the substance of regional politics and, more importantly, the amount of attention focused on regional actors and states. In his chapter on Iraq, Daniel Byman discusses the regional consequences of political disintegration and reconstitution in Iraq. Iraqi state-building being a work in progress, the role and degree to which the state will embark on or eschew cultural politics, or become a satellite of an ideological and/or nationalist Islamic Republic, remains to be seen. Similarly consequential will be developments and dynamics within Saudi Arabian politics. With an estimated 30 percent of the world’s population being Muslim by 2025, Saudi Arabia’s symbolic significance as the birthplace and a reference point for the world’s fastest growing religion cannot be ignored.20 By virtue of

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being “custodians of Islam’s holiest places,” Saudi leaders are likely to fi nd themselves under greater scrutiny and pressure as more attention is focused on them by Muslims worldwide. A number of observers have actually gone so far as to discuss the “possibility that an archaic political system, with its thousands of privileged princes, may finally totter, destabilizing the strategically vital Persian Gulf.”21 Despite a number of fundamental political vulnerabilities endemic to all authoritarian systems, the Saudi state is actually unlikely to face widespread and threatening political opposition any time in the near future.22 What is certain, however, is the greater centrality of Saudi Arabia to regional and global politics should Islam become an even more integral element of international politics within the region and beyond. Precisely because of the Persian Gulf’s tremendous—and growing—strategic significance, the security system prevailing in the region has been subject to considerable stress and contestation. Not surprisingly, at different periods in modern times, two global powers, first Britain and then the United States, have taken a special interest in the region and have become intimately involved in articulating a regional security system designed to safeguard their own and their allies’ interests. As the bulk of the chapters in this volume make clear, currently this regional security system stands on the threshold of major change, the exact direction and nature of which are yet to be determined. T h e Pe r si a n Gu l f’s Ch a ngi ng Se c u r i t y Syst e m The earliest paramount power in the Persian Gulf in modern times was Britain, seeking, as chapter 2 chronicles, first to protect its crown jewel India and then to ensure control over, or at least easy access to, the region’s vast deposits of oil. When Britain withdrew from the Persian Gulf in 1971, it did so knowing that its erstwhile ally, the United States, would fi ll the ensuing vacuum of power, thus ensuring the continued protection of Western interests in the region. Up until the late 1970s the United States did so, relying on the twin pillars of Iran and Saudi Arabia to ensure regional stability and to contain threats to the status quo. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79, the United States replaced Iran with Iraq, still relying on regional allies—now joined by the wealthy states of the Gulf Cooperation Council—and using balance-of-power calculations to keep regional threats in check. But Iraq proved equally unreliable, in August 1990 attacking its

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former ally and neighbor to the south, Kuwait. It was at this point that the United States entered the region directly, its strategy shift ing from reliance on regional friends to an even more muscular forward presence. This involved a large-scale build up of U.S. forces in the region, as well as basing, prepositioning, and exercises to support reinforcements in crises. Th is forward presence was accompanied by even larger arms sales to the GCC states (notwithstanding their inability to use what they had previously bought) in the attempt to provide some pro-U.S. indigenous military capability to complement U.S. forces.23

The 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq once again changed the Persian Gulf’s strategic balance and the prevailing security system, at once also removing one of the two targets of the “dual containment” strategy that the United States had begun employing during the Clinton administration in its efforts to contain the powers and regional influence of both Iran and Iraq.24 The US war in Iraq brought with it a deepening of sustained foreign military presence in the Persian Gulf unprecedented in the region’s modern history. Even after a substantial draw-down of US troops in Iraq, with the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan the US military presence in the Persian Gulf region is likely to remain far more extensive than any time in the past.25 This has resulted in the emergence of three poles of power in the region: an American pole, anchored in hard power; a GCC pole, flanked on one side by Saudi military power and on another by Qatari-Emirati financial power; and an Iranian pole, anchored in Tehran’s hard power in the Persian Gulf on the one hand and its apparent soft power in Iraq and Afghanistan on the other.26 For reasons outlined throughout this book—especially in Fred Lawson’s discussion of regional security dilemmas in chapter 3—the American and the GCC poles have entered into a security alliance, one that over the years has become increasingly deepened both militarily and diplomatically. Three primary reasons underlie this alliance. First, logistically, given the strategic shift of the United States away from reliance on regional allies to a more direct military presence, it needs local bases and facilities for stationing, servicing, and operating its forces. The resulting protective umbrella is welcomed by the GCC states themselves, who are keenly aware of their physical and military vulnerabilities against Iran or

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other threats, not the least of which is Al-Qaeda. Second, the US-GCC alliance is designed to safeguard the region’s vast oil resources and facilities, especially in times of tension and crisis. Third, US security protection and the safety of oil resources—and thus revenues—bring a measure of psychological comfort to ruling elites that their regimes’ survival is not in peril and that, similar to outside threat, potential domestic opponents are kept at bay and prevented from openly challenging the political establishment. The irony that US military presence seems to aggravate rather than to impede the possibilities of domestic opposition is one of the central dilemmas with which local ruling families grapple endlessly.27 To be certain, there is no power symmetry among the three poles. Prior to 2003, Iran’s geography and population gave it “a naturally dominant position and strategic depth” in relation to its neighbors.28 After 2003, Iran greatly improved its relations with the new Iraqi and Afghan states—some would say Iran has actually enhanced its influence in both Iraq and Afghanistan. As I argue in chapter 9, Iran has pursued a pragmatic, carefully calibrated regional foreign and security policy in Iraq and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf aimed at maximizing its interests while avoiding a potential overreach. How much of this translates into soft power is difficult to determine. What is certain, however, is that two of Iran’s most troublesome strategic rivals, the Taliban in the east and Saddam Husayn’s regime in the west, no longer exist, thus strengthening Tehran’s regional posture. On its own, the GCC feels insufficiently empowered to counter what it perceives as Iran’s hegemonic aspirations in the Persian Gulf. In chapter 5, Joseph Kostiner outlines the obstacles to the GCC’s efforts at coordinating policies and responses to regional developments. At the same time, the United States cannot maintain a forward presence without access to what the US military calls “footprints” across the region, namely military bases and facilities. This convergence of interests has brought the two powers together in what has become for the GCC states an often politically costly marriage of convenience. It is unclear exactly how long this marriage will last. In fact, some observers have gone so far as to maintain that “the role of the United States under present conditions is not sustainable and that the period of clear US strategic dominance in the Gulf region is coming to an end.”29 Citing the GCC’s subtle reevaluation of its ties with the United States, coupled with the Persian Gulf’s steady internationalization, Christian Koch, for example, argues that “international politics in the Gulf is indeed undergoing a fundamental transformation.”30 How soon this transformation will

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result in a lessening of America’s weighty presence and footprints in the region is an open question. Several conclusions regarding the Persian Gulf’s security system can be drawn from this discussion, perhaps the most obvious being the complex and intertwined nature of the region’s security architecture. Broader strategic considerations and specific foreign policy initiatives are formulated as part of a puzzle into which various pieces are assumed to play particular roles and functions. Sometimes the pieces fit in nicely and complementarily—as in the convergence of US and GCC security interests—but at other times they do not—as is the case with the United States and Iran. Th is leads to a second conclusion, namely the fluidity and changeable nature of the region’s security system. The animosity between the United States and Iran is unlikely to last forever, even in the unlikely event that the tensions of the Bush-Ahmadinejad era somehow revived. If, as some policy advocates in both Tehran and Washington argue, a “win-win scenario” ever develops between the two sides, the prevailing security system of the Persian Gulf as described here will most certainly undergo modifications if not outright change. Equally fluid is the trajectory of Iraqi foreign policy, and especially the degree to which a strategic alliance, or at least a synergy of sorts, develops between Iraqi and Iranian regional interests as Iraq stabilizes. The same can be said of Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan. Finally, as alluded to above, the growing influence of small states in the Persian Gulf, especially that of Qatar, cannot be overlooked. Reliant for security as Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait may be on the United States, they are not without influence in their own right, and the bigger players in the region—Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United States—cannot afford to sidestep the smaller states in carving out a viable security system. Any discussion of the international relations of the Persian Gulf would be incomplete without mentioning some of the likely major challenges to the region’s stability and security in the coming years and decades. In particular, much of the discussion above is based on state-centric conceptions of international relations and national security. As the Al-Qaeda phenomenon has amply demonstrated, however, one of the biggest challenges to regional security, and indeed to global security, is the emergence of nonstate actors for whom national boundaries matter little. Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups emerge in the context of absent or imploding political authorities. The contagion of Al-Qaeda

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has spread widely into those polities in which central authority was either absent or at best ineffectual in large swaths of the country. And there—in the potential for the collapse of central authority and the appearance of more failed states— lies perhaps the biggest challenge to the security of the Persian Gulf, and for that matter to Middle East and beyond. Failed states are not common to the Persian Gulf or the Middle East. But neither are democracies. And so long as the region is governed by “securocrats”31 fi xated with holding on to power domestically and fending off adversaries internationally, it runs the risk of serious political instability and chaos. Katja Niethammer (chap. 11) explores these issues more fully in relation to the states of the GCC. T h i s Volu m e The book begins by laying the historical context within which the international politics of the Persian Gulf has taken place, looking specifically at sovereignty and boundary issues, some of which remain unresolved to this day. It is worth remembering that all states of the Persian Gulf save for Iran achieved their formal independence sometime in the mid– to late twentieth century, and that processes of state building, and of crafting national identities, is for many still an ongoing and deliberate project. As such, boundary and territorial issues remain one of the central preoccupations of the states involved and go to the core of the dynamics governing relations among regional actors. In chapter 2, J. E. Peterson proposes five categories that help explain the various natures and causes of boundary evolution and border disputes: (1) boundaries as an aspect of state formation; (2) boundaries as assertions of historical rights; (3) boundaries as imperial remnants; (4) boundaries as claims to natural resources; and (5) boundaries as manifest destiny, particularly in reference to Saudi Arabia. Based on this typology, he argues, interstate dynamics greatly influenced the settlement or nonsettlement of boundaries. Boundary issues remained contentious, Peterson maintains, and had consequences that were territorial as well as political in nature. In many instances, border disputes were not settled until a number of other points of contention were already resolved. The book then turns to examining the various aspects of those dynamics that govern the contemporary international relations of the Persian Gulf, beginning with Fred Lawson’s analysis of the “security dilemmas” that shape the

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region’s international politics. Offering a more robust conception of security dilemma than is prevalent in much of the literature, Lawson employs Snyder’s notion of “alliance dilemma” to explore more fully the risks of “entrapment” or “pre-emptive realignment” that are likely to result from alliances or adversarial relationships.32 Insofar as the states of the Persian Gulf are concerned, Lawson sees four specific dilemmas with which they have to contend: the dilemmas associated with investing in security-producing programs, and thus risking the ire of neighboring states; those dilemmas that are inherent in dealing simultaneously with allies and adversaries; the dilemma of whether to develop their own armed forces or instead to rely on outside protectors; and the dilemma of having to choose between keeping the Persian Gulf as insulated as possible from global rivalries or constructing strategic partnerships with external patrons. At best, according Lawson, these dilemmas can be managed but not resolved. One of the ways in which the smaller states of the Persian Gulf have sought to ameliorate their security and alliance dilemmas is through the establishment of a political and security collective called the Gulf Cooperation Council. In chapter five Joseph Kostiner examines the efforts of the GCC states aimed at forging a common security arrangement. Headquartered in Riyadh, the GCC’s establishment in 1981 was meant to counter mounting perceptions of Iranian and Iraqi threats by the countries of the Arabian peninsula—namely Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. That Iran and Iraq were embroiled in a bloody confl ict of their own at the time did little to assuage the worries of the GCC members. When in 1991 Iraq invaded Kuwait subsequent to the end of its inconclusive war with Iran (1980–88), the GCC’s inability to provide a viable defense arrangement for its constituent members became painfully obvious. But to see the GCC as a means for ensuring external security is to overlook an important dimension of its existence, namely the conflation by state elites of “regime security” with “national security.” As Ulrichsen has observed, “external security alliances, both bilaterally with the United States and multilaterally through the creation of the GCC, met internal needs by reinforcing regimes’ security, as much against their own societies as against neighboring states.”33 Despite its apparent domestic political utility, some three decades after its establishment the GCC is still in the throes of defining itself, cognizant that without extensive reliance on the Untied States it could not viably provide for

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its members’ security. The need for extensive reliance on a superpower for security needs is largely a product of the impulse by small states to place themselves under the protective umbrella of a powerful patron. Bandwagoning aside, however, the GCC suffers from somewhat of an identity crisis: is it a collective security arrangement, or a political and monetary union of sorts, or a combination of both? Partly because of its own youth as a collectivity, partly because of the youth of its constituent states, and partly because of the larger international environment within which it has operated, the GCC has yet to articulate meaningfully its primary mission and objective in substantive and systematic ways. That the Persian Gulf has turned into one of the key tension areas between Iran and the United States, one with regional and other with global hegemonic aspirations, has not helped the GCC’s navigational abilities as it seeks to map out a course for its evolution. From its inception up until the end of the 1990s, the GCC saw two primary sources of threat to its member states: Iran and Iraq. But the dawn of the new century confronted the group with a changing regional climate and, correspondingly, presented it with new security challenges. Some of these new challenges include domestic terrorism, Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism, and uncertainty over the intentions of a newly resurgent Iran with a suspicious nuclear program and regional agenda. Despite these common threats, the GCC has yet to develop a concrete framework for military cooperation. Instead, moderating its aspirations, it has sought to articulate a common threat perception and a unified response. Steven Wright, in chapter 4, provides an overview of the foreign policies of the GCC states and explores the intraregional diversities that often complicate policy coordination and collective agenda setting. At the most fundamental level, Wright argues, Islam and tribal heritage can act as potentially unifying forces among the GCC states. But whatever potential these two dynamics have had for fostering collective actions or agendas among the states of the GCC, it has been eroded by an array of countervailing, centrifugal forces. The forces accounting for the diversity of foreign policies of the GCC can be categorized into those that are contextual, institutional, and geopolitical. The larger historical and political contexts within which the states of the Arabian Peninsula have evolved and operated, featuring multiple and often intimate linkages between the various ruling families, inform the broader parameters of domestic and foreign policymaking across the states of the GCC. Correspondingly, according to Wright, the strength

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and viability of domestic political institutions often depend on the personalities occupying them. Not surprisingly, the personal preferences and idiosyncrasies of ruling elites all too frequently determine the direction and nature of foreign policy throughout the GCC. Adding to the fluidity of inter-elite relationships is the variable of state capacity, particularly as rooted in the depth and strength of rentier arrangements underwriting the polity. Qatar, for example, exhibits far greater autonomy from those powers that could potentially block its foreign policy pursuits—the United States, Iran, and Saudi Arabia chief among them—largely because of the enormous capacity of its state to withstand political pressures from within and economic pressures from abroad. The Bahraini and Kuwaiti states, however, feature a number of internal fissures, sectarian and ideological respectively, that often inhibit their institutional capacity and thus their ability to articulate clearly and pursue foreign policy objectives. Not surprisingly, Wright correctly concludes, the articulation of common foreign policy objectives by the GCC is an exceedingly difficult task, its likelihood hampered by multiple layers of differences rooted in political evolution, institutions, capacities, and geopolitical position and priorities. Building on Wright’s analysis of the causes for the diversities that characterize GCC foreign policies, Joseph Kostiner focuses more on unofficial manifestations of Persian Gulf collective security, especially common views, the like-mindedness of strategic outlooks, and similar political approaches among GCC leaders. According to Kostiner, the GCC’s failure to forge a united military and/or diplomatic policy reflects differences in the interests of its individual constituting states. There is, to be certain, a “high level of like-mindedness regarding regional security,” and both collectively and individually, the GCC states have consistently demonstrated a preference for amicable relations with various, often conflicting, international and regional actors. This preference has resulted in a continual balancing act designed to offset cross-pressures emanating from the United States and Iran, and at the same time striving to cultivate an Arab consensus. The GCC’s efforts at forging “a functional middle-ground” have been largely responsible for its difficulties in articulating unified foreign and security policies. These difficulties in creating a viable, indigenous security architecture, as detailed in the Wright and Kostiner chapters, have added greater significance to

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the continued, historic role of the United States in the Persian Gulf. This is the topic of Mohammad Ayoob’s chapter, which examines the strategies, effectiveness, and consequences of American foreign policy toward the Middle East in general and the Persian Gulf in particular. Ayoob argues that the international politics of the Persian Gulf, and more specifically American policy toward the Gulf, cannot be understood in isolation from the two contiguous subregions— the Arab heartland of the Middle East and Pakistan and Afghanistan—to the west and east of the Persian Gulf. The three subregions, together constituting west Asia, are joined not only by common cultural and religious bonds, such as Arabism and Islam, but are also perceived as a unified strategic theater by the United States. This perception is clearly evident through the constitution of CENTCOM and through the US response to some of the most serious crises it has faced in recent decades, namely the 1973 Arab oil boycott, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the September 11 attacks on US soil by the Afghanistanbased Al-Qaeda. Ayoob also traces the evolution of US policy toward the Persian Gulf once Great Britain abdicated its “managerial power” in the West Asian region. The Persian Gulf, Kishore Mahbubani has argued, is one of the two regions of the world that have experienced “continued American political domination in the postcolonial era,” the other one being Latin America.34 Up until the 1970s and the 1980s this was done through local surrogates—Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq—an approach whose obvious failure in 1991 led to massive and direct military involvement by Washington in the region beginning with the first Gulf War and culminating in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This strategy has turned the United States from being an offshore balancer into the military hegemon of the region. But such military hegemony has hardly produced commensurate political benefits. Today, Ayoob argues, the United States “is stuck” in the Iraq and Afghan quagmires, and its stock in the entire region, including the Persian Gulf, has declined precipitately during the past decade. Unquestionably, the United States’ single most consequential initiative so far in relation to the Persian Gulf, and in fact for the entire Middle East and the Muslim world, has been its March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. The regional consequences of the US invasion of Iraq are examined by Daniel Byman in chapter 7. Although Iraq is no longer on the verge of civil war as it was in 2006, Byman argues, it is still far from being a stable country. Terrorism

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continues to plague Iraq, and suicide bombings and other attacks occur on a regular basis. Warlordism and lawlessness are rampant in much of the country. Indeed, many American initiatives aimed at working with local leaders to defeat extremism have exacerbated the problem. Wide chasms and chronic tensions continue to divide the country’s various communal groups. The economy remains largely dysfunctional, and the middle classes, always central to processes of development and state building, have been greatly reduced in size and ability. None of this bodes well for regional stability, and the central task confronting the United States, according to Byman, is to ensure that there is no spillover of the Iraqi conflict into regional states. This would require preventing neighboring states from interfering in Iraq’s domestic politics, stemming the tide of Iraqi refugees streaming into Jordan and Syria, and closing down terrorist havens. In chapter 8, Gregory Gause examines Saudi Arabia’s regional security strategy, which, he maintains, has remained remarkably consistent over the last few decades. Regime security has been the dominant driver of Saudi foreign policy, a policy that has been formulated in the face of both conventional military threats and transnational ideological challenges to the regime’s legitimacy. Gause calls attention to the nexus between domestic and transnational ideological currents that could emerge as threats to the Saudi regimes on the one hand, and the more conventional military threats that the regime fears on the other. According to Gause, Saudi regional security policy cannot be understood in terms of national security alone. The ruling elite also use its regional policy to ensure the regime’s stability and to guard against potential foreign and domestic opponents. Iran’s regional and security policies are the focus of chapter 9. A history of territorial and other disputes, often made all the more intractable by the advent of the modern state and by age-old cultural and linguistic differences, has resulted in deep-seated mistrust, suspicion, and acrimony between Iran and its Arab neighbors. Ultimately, pragmatic concerns and pursuits, rooted in ongoing assessments of Iran’s capabilities and needs, have guided the country’s foreign and national security policies, both in relation to the larger world and, particularly, insofar as the Persian Gulf region is concerned. Thus guided, Iranian foreign and security policies vis-à-vis the Persian Gulf region have featured certain consistent themes, or, more aptly, areas of continued attention as well as tension. The first feature revolves around the broader military and diplomatic position that Iran occupies in relation to the Persian Gulf itself. Equally

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influential in Iran’s regional diplomacy is what Tehran sees as “the Saudi factor,” namely Saudi Arabia’s posture and pursuits in the region. Iran’s regional security policy, meanwhile, is largely determined by the role and position of the United States in what Iran considers as its rightful sphere of influence. By extension, for Tehran, questions about Saudi diplomatic and American military positions and intentions bear directly on the nature and direction of Iran’s relations with Iraq and Afghanistan. Apart from the usual suspects, there are, to be certain, new actors on the Persian Gulf stage, and the growing regional importance of Asia’s two powerhouses, India and China, can no longer be ignored. N. Janardhan’s chapter looks at emerging critical links between India and China on the one hand and the countries of the GCC on the other. There are multiple commonalities and points of synergy between the GCC states and Asia, according to Janardhan. While the Persian Gulf–Asia interface has a long and vibrant past, the interactions between the two sides suffered during the colonial era. In the recent past, however, several regional and international events have given scope for the reestablishment of the old bonhomie. Janardhan sees economic factors as the bulwark of the emerging relationship, with Persian Gulf–Asia trade having risen markedly in the last several years. Asian markets remain thirsty for Persian Gulf energy, and investors from the Persian Gulf increasingly look to Asia as a preferred option to the West. Janardhan also explores the multiple factors that condition Chinese and Indian roles in the Persian Gulf region, especially US-Iran ties, GCC-Iran ties, the US approach towards China and India, Iran’s relations with China and India, US-India versus China, and, finally, the relation between India and China itself. This exploration gives rise to several key questions, some of the more critical of which are whether India and China are willing to play a security role in the region, whether they will take the same path as the United States or decide to adopt a distinct and noncontroversial approach, and how they will balance their ties with Iran and Israel on one side and the GCC countries on the other. The book’s final chapter, by Katja Niethammer, examines the nexus between domestic political dynamics—more specifically processes of reform—and foreign policy pursuits. According to Niethammer, the recent political reform projects Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have undertaken have challenged earlier views of these political systems as fundamentally backward. The six Persian Gulf monarchies have started to experiment with elections

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and have introduced or expanded advisory or parliamentary councils. Niethammer examines the degree to which these domestic reforms potentially affect the GCC states’ foreign policies. In order to produce such effects on foreign policy discourses, strategies, and outcomes, she maintains, domestic reform projects would have to generate significant changes in three interrelated areas. First, reforms would have to introduce checks and limits on executive powers. Second, the degree of competitiveness in the selection of the executive would have to be altered, leading to the emergence of new sets of political elites. Third, political participation would have to be broadened in a way that would increase competition on the normative level. In practically all of the chapters that follow, issues of internal and international security are at the forefront of the region’s politics. As briefly mentioned above and discussed more thoroughly in Niethammer’s chapter, the traditional security challenges confronting Persian Gulf states, which for the most part have been state-centric, are now being compounded by additional pressures emanating from within societies and show great potential for reinforcement by a regional domino effect. Not surprisingly, the securitization of regional foreign policies is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, as is the critical nexus between domestic politics and foreign policy behavior. Neither domestic pressures from within the regional actors nor the tensions and frictions that often characterize their interactions show any signs of dissipating anytime soon. The United States, meanwhile, will continue to play the role of the regional gatekeeper, but its role will experience stresses emanating from within the region as well as from Europe, India, and China. How the combined effects of all these brewing developments will play out remains to be seen. For now what is certain is that change is in the offing, magnifying all the more the manifold strategic significances of the Persian Gulf and the critical vitality of this troubled region to Middle Eastern and global politics.

2 Sovereignty and Boundaries in the Gulf States Settling the Peripheries J. E. Peterson

The concept of territorial boundaries for the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (also referred to in this paper as the Gulf states) is a relatively new phenomenon. Until recently, a principal difficulty in conceiving of territorial boundaries, let alone defining them, was the alien nature of boundaries themselves, the lack of any need for them, and the absence of putative states in most of the Peninsula. It was not until well into the twentieth century—and in some cases late in the century—that the nature and the form of today’s seven states became clear. In large part, the dynamics between present states derives from the jostling that took place as the states began to differentiate themselves. In 1952, Saudi Arabia intensified its claims to the Eastern Arabian oasis of alBuraymi by occupying militarily one of the villages of the oasis. After three years of fruitless negotiations, the British-officered Trucial Oman Scouts evicted the Saudi garrison and reestablished Omani and Abu Dhabi control over the oasis. Yet even after the bilateral settlement of Saudi-UAE and Saudi-Oman borders, the issue remains contentious, particularly in the context of other unresolved border questions. Al-Buraymi is but one example of the long history of contentious border disputes involving the Gulf states. Boundary questions have frequently been the source of complications, frustration, and outright hostility. Land boundaries, which scarcely mattered a century ago, have provoked skirmishes up to recent 21

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years. Saudi Arabia’s relations with Qatar and the UAE are still colored by the claim of all three states to the coastal region of Khawr Al ‘Udayd and internal boundaries within the UAE still are not entirely settled. And Iraq’s claims to Kuwaiti territory provided a potent excuse for its invasion of its smaller neighbor in 1990. The extension of Saudi control over regions adjacent to its border with Yemen as a result of a war in 1934 still provokes resentment by many Yemenis, who still consider these territories as lost Yemeni territory. At the same time, for most of the twentieth century, ownership of islands has been a source of vexation. Bahrain and Qatar surprisingly settled their differences only a few short years ago, and many of the other contentions over small, uninhabited islands—unimportant except for their role in determining maritime boundaries and thus control of offshore oil and gas deposits—were amicably settled decades ago. However, the unresolved dispute between the UAE and Iran over three small islands is a good example of the continuing power of boundary questions to disrupt relations between states, not only between the UAE and Iran in this case but also in UAE’s relations with its fellow GCC members. These examples clearly illustrate that the health of bilateral relations between all of the Arabian Peninsula’s seven countries have been determined most critically by boundary issues for most of a century, and the story is not finished yet. Any examination of borders and boundary disputes should also consider the wider impact of the establishment of boundaries, as well as the persistence and sometimes resolution of disputes, on broader interstate relations. In addition, it should be noted that the patchwork quilt of boundaries in the Peninsula are not conclusive or watertight, and many observers consider that they would not stand the test of international law. In most cases, the settlement of frontier arrangements between any two countries was achieved without reference to their neighbors, even in areas where their common border touched that of a third state.1 T h e E volu t ion of B ou n da ry Pe rc e p t ions a n d R e qu i r e m e n t s Prior to the mid–twentieth century, territoriality was not an important element of sovereignty in the Gulf states. Instead, sovereignty depended principally on control of or influence over people. The territory controlled by a leader, whether dynastic or tribal, depended on his ability—through either the strength of

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personality or use of force, or both—to hold the allegiance of townspeople and tribesmen. His hold on territory was extremely fluid and, apart from control of strategic geographical assets such as ports or oases, was of importance only insofar as his sphere of influence abutted that of a rival. In pre-state or minimal state environments, tribes have generally exercised some sort of sovereignty over their own affairs. Most tribes had territory of some sort, a dirah, over which they exercised control or at least rights—strongly so if the tribe was capable and united. The dirahs of settled tribes were generally quite distinct. Still, their peripheries might be fluid or in flux, depending on the strength of the tribe vis-à-vis the strength of its neighbors. Boundaries were fi xed at some points (as watchtowers often testified) but constantly shift ing or disputed at others. It should be noted as well that over time even settled tribes were capable of shifting their territory, by absorbing neighboring tribes or sections or by migrating to a new location. The dirahs of nomadic tribes were somewhat more amorphous.2 The overall geographical dispersion of the tribe’s territory was quite indistinct because it generally shared grazing areas, migration routes, and even water holes with other tribes. Nevertheless, there were often rooted points that the tribe adamantly claimed as its territory. These may have been oases with date palms or small coastal settlements that were occupied for only part of the year. Most nomadic tribes had at least some element of transhumance. That is, while they followed grazing through much of the year, they moved to their palm gardens at harvest time and to the coast during pearling season. Not surprisingly, sovereignty was more often associated with rulers. For the most part, rulers of states along the Arab littoral of the Gulf derived their position as sheikhs of principal tribes or as heads of prominent families in communities where the other families acquiesced in acknowledging their political leadership in return for freedom to concentrate on commercial affairs. This was most clearly seen in Kuwait. In addition, settlements were inhabited largely by nontribal elements that were directly under the rulers’ protection and thus owed their complete allegiance to these rulers. Sovereignty was not a major priority or indeed a necessity for these protorulers of protostates. They continued to function as they always had as either the sheikhs of predominant tribes or as prominent families. In some cases, rulers only required a base or two since their interests were maritime. A prominent case in

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point is that of al-Qawasim, for whom Ra’s al-Khaymah and Sharjah served as headquarters for their extensive maritime commercial operations and naval fleets. Until well into the twentieth century, the concept of nation-state was alien to the Arab littoral. States were either dynastic, ebbing and flowing with the strength of particular leaders, or tribal, equally fluid. The territorial extent and boundaries of such states fluctuated on a regular basis and represented relative strength of the neighboring actors far more than any legal, recognized format. The fluidity and ambiguity of pre-states in the Gulf was altered in recent centuries by the intrusion of external imperial powers. The last of these, and the one with the greatest impact, was the British Empire, represented in the Persian Gulf by the Government of India. As a consequence, the transformation of pre-state leaders into rulers of states owes much to the British role in the Persian Gulf, although that does not explain all cases. The British naturally treated with whichever leaders they found along the Arab coast. Until the mid–nineteenth century, British concern with the Arab littoral was focused principally on ensuring the freedom of maritime trade from what they regarded as piracy. To avoid launching punitive expeditions after every incident, arrangements with local states were needed—and where these states did not exist, leading personalities along the Arab littoral were engaged to act as rulers. Accordingly, a number of treaties were arranged with coastal leaders to obtain their cooperation in suppressing piracy and foreswearing war by sea, culminating in the perpetual treaty of maritime peace in 1853. The signatory leaders were charged with responsibility over those people that owed loyalty to them. A secondary goal of British policy was eradication of the slave trade, and similar agreements were made with littoral leaders to the same end. These treaties and agreements marked a qualitative difference in the status of littoral leaders. Most had become for the first time parties to international treaties that were permanent and binding on not them alone but on their heirs and successors. Although there was some impetus in this direction through their relations with the Ottoman Empire, neither sovereignty nor boundaries had been clearly defined. This new process reached an apex in and around the 1890s when gradually all of the littoral leaders were transformed into local rulers through the treaties of protection, by which the British assumed responsibility for their foreign affairs and defense.

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Gradually through the twentieth century, Britain acquired increasing reasons to insist that leaders with whom it was in treaty relations exercise more control over territory as well as people. In part, this policy was a natural continuation of efforts to ensure that treaty signatories observed their obligations. But it was also due to new circumstances. The development of British civil and military air routes through the Persian Gulf in the 1920s and 1930s necessitated the establishment of a series of aerodromes on the Arab side and an even greater number of emergency landing grounds. The safety of these aerodromes and especially the landing grounds, typically located in remote areas, required that the rulers in whose territories they were located assure their safety from theft or destruction by the rulers’ subjects. This meant that for the first time rulers were made responsible for all activities throughout their territories. The next important step concerned oil concessions, which in the early period of exploration were primarily held by British companies. Concessions, particularly when they involved active exploration and then exploitation, required that rulers’ territories be precisely defined. At this point, exact boundaries were first required for the new territorial states in the Gulf. Although disputes over certain features, such as oases or islands, had figured in interstate relations before, the need for fully defined boundaries along the entire length of borders had not been present heretofore. In addition, the search for offshore oil meant that maritime boundaries also became an issue for the first time. Independence and membership in the international community added its own impetus to the solidification of territorial nation-states. One aspect was the introduction of the concept of citizenship. The relationship between the leader and those inhabiting the territory he controlled was transformed immutably into a relationship between ruler and ruled. Dissident tribal groups could no longer decamp to neighboring states in times of dispute. They had become citizens of a particular state and were the responsibility of that state no matter where they resided. Geographically imprecise refuges had become either mutually recognized territory of one state or sensitive places of contention. Furthermore by 1971, all six states of the Arab littoral, which formerly had dealt with each other informally or through British channels, had become internationally recognized nation-states and members of both the Arab League and

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the United Nations. Each recognized the others legally and entered into formal diplomatic relations in addition to preexisting informal means of interaction, creating an extra spur to settling boundary issues. It was also recognized that mature states have definitive borders and that border disputes during a period of Arab “cold war” provided extra grist for progressive Arab republics and ideologies that saw the Persian Gulf states as political anachronisms. For the most part, it was recognized that negotiation was the accepted way of settling border disputes and that the use of force was counterproductive and exposed the attacking state to the approbation of the international community. The establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) further cemented ties between the six states and created its own momentum for the settlement of disputes in order both to enhance the group’s external security and to facilitate political, economic, and social integration. The settlement or nonsettlement of boundaries owed much to the perpetuation of interstate dynamics over the course of the past several centuries and into the independent period. That is to say, boundary issues had baggage, of both territorial and political natures. In some or many cases, the settlement of specific disputes had to await the normalization of broader relations between the concerned parties. One of the principal dynamics was evident between the Al Sa‘ud and the small Gulf entities. Ever since the creation of the First Saudi State in the mid– eighteenth century, the Al Sa‘ud had seen themselves as an expansionist force. While their expansion was omnidirectional, one specific tangent was directed at the Gulf littoral. Oman in particular experienced Saudi raids and Abu Dhabi struggled for more than a century to avoid the extension of Saudi sovereignty over its entire territory. Even after the ‘Uqayr Conference to settle the SaudiKuwaiti boundary resulted in the halving of the territory of Kuwait, the Al Sa‘ud blockaded Kuwait in an apparent attempt to wrest away more territory. Another dynamic was the question of what constituted Oman. Oman today consists of the area of the Sultanate including Dhufar. But in the past, the geographical definition of Oman excluded Dhufar but included the territory of what is now the UAE, which was sometimes referred to as the Oman Coast. British action was responsible for the transformation of the Trucial Coast (previously known by the British as the Pirate Coast) into a subordinate region with local rulers beholden only to the British. Thus by the time of British withdrawal and

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independence in 1971, there was no longer any serious question of unification with the Sultanate of Oman. Yet another dynamic that has played an important role in boundary questions is the “leap-frog” pattern of relations among the Gulf states. This derives from the endemic difficulties and sometimes hostilities between neighbors and the attendant truism that “the neighbor of my neighbor is my friend.” Thus, Dubai feuded with next-door Abu Dhabi, which in turn feuded with Qatar. But Qatar and Dubai enjoyed good relations. In the 1960s when the Indian rupee was withdrawn as the currency of the Gulf, the two sheikhdoms jointly issued the Qatar-Dubai riyal. The Emir of Qatar until 1972, Sheikh Ahmad bin ‘Ali, married the daughter of the ruler of Dubai, and when he was deposed as emir he took up residence in Dubai. When Sheikh Khalifah bin Hamad, who had initiated the 1972 coup, was in turn overthrown in 1995, he sought refuge in Abu Dhabi and allegedly attempted to mount a countercoup from there. Sheikh Khalifah also garnered some support from the Al Khalifah in Bahrain, who were mired in a century-long series of boundary disputes with Qatar. Sheikh Hamad bin ‘Isa, who succeeded as emir of Bahrain in 1999 (and later anointed himself king), visited Abu Dhabi regularly while Sheikh Zayid was ruling and presumably departed with sorely needed promises of cash. Some mention should be made of a number of underlying factors, not always expressed, that undoubtedly have provoked or exacerbated boundary disputes. Economic competition and resources, fishing and pearling, were an important ingredient. National security was another. It may have played a role in Saudi Arabia’s insistence on a strip of land at Khawr Al ‘Udayd (between Qatar and Abu Dhabi) as another route for getting out its Gulf oil. National or personal prestige was also important: no ruler could be seen as backing down over a territorial dispute. The circulation of a photograph of Sheikh Saqr bin Muhammad, the heir apparent in Sharjah, shaking hands with the head of the Iranian troops moving onto Abu Musa Island in 1971 quite likely doomed his prospects of succession. Control of population (especially tribes) was also important, and the presence of tribes from another state was often a source of friction between neighbors. Finally, as it has been noted elsewhere, the role of Britain in creating boundaries in the Peninsula was based on protecting spheres of influence, which have no standing in international law. This gives the very nature of borders in the area an ephemeral and de facto air.3

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T h e Pro c e s s of De l i n e at i ng C om mon B ou n da r i e s By the mid–twentieth century, “traditional” states such as Oman and new “artificial” states such as Qatar and the Trucial States/UAE were equally confronted with the emergence of new requirements for exact territorial limits because of air routes, oil concessions, and harmonious relations between full-featured independent states. The settlement of boundaries was based on a variety of factors, partly following lines of natural geography, partly linear projections drawn on a map, and only partly to accommodate tribal and similar considerations. But tribes constituted one of the principal reasons for prolonged, often seemingly intractable, border disputes. Other factors also existed, such as the desire to control oil reserves as well as historical claims and animosities. A primary question arises of what processes were at work in the delineation of boundaries and on which basis borders were negotiated and determined. Richard Schofield cites the French geographer Jacques Ancel as having once observed that there are no problems of boundaries, only problems of nations.4 Land boundaries have been the most troublesome of boundaries in the Gulf. In the early stages, Britain, because of its predominant political and legal position in the region, played the strongest role in determining these boundaries. Not surprisingly, the boundaries were sketched out according to varied criteria depending on the individual circumstances. Stephen Whittemore Boggs has categorized boundaries by their physical characteristics: (1) physiographic (following physical features such as rivers or pronounced upland ridges); (2) geometric (straight line boundaries linking fi xed boundary points or sometimes longitude and latitude); (3) anthropogeographic (following manmade features such as roads, railways, canals, or alternatively tribal, ethnic, or religious divisions); or (4) complex (combining features of all other three criteria, as occurs along the Iran-Iraq border).5 The most prominent feature of Gulf boundaries may be said to be geometric, particularly as introduced by the Anglo-Ottoman convention of 1913 (the Blue and Violet Lines of 1913–14), carried through protracted Anglo-Saudi border negotiations over the dividing lines between the kingdom and various protected states in the Gulf of the middle of the twentieth century (the Red and Riyadh Lines of 1935–37), and largely confirmed by the general demarcations concluded

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in the late years of that century. Physiographic boundaries are in short supply in the area, in large part because of the absence of notable features suitable as division points, while anthropogeographic boundaries, although they form the basis of most of the persistent disputes, really have had only a minimal impact. An alternative way of looking at boundary classifications was devised by Richard Hartshorne. He proposed five classifications according to the cultural landscape: pioneer, antecedent, subsequent, superimposed, and relict. Of these, Richard Schofield contends only the superimposed (such as the application of European conceptions of linear boundaries) and antecedent (a boundary drawn prior to the development of the surrounding cultural landscape, as in the case of Qatar) categories hold relevance for Gulf.6 Marine boundaries were a later phenomenon, required in large part because of offshore oil concessions. It should not be forgotten, however, that some sense of maritime boundaries, particularly in areas close to mainland features, had long existed, primarily connected to fishing rights and pearling beds.7 The preceding categorizations are obviously useful for clarifying the processes by which the actual drawings of borders are made. However, they do not adequately explain the various natures and causes of boundary evolution and border disputes. Therefore, a more appropriate schema is proposed here, consisting of six elements. 1. Boundaries as an aspect of state formation. This category essentially comprises the broader view of comprehensive border exploration and demarcation. Ipso facto, this is a twentieth-century phenomenon dependent on the emergence of today’s states. While certain marker points may be based on specific features, comprehensive borders rely more often on Boggs’s geometric explanation. 2. Boundaries as assertions of historical rights. Borders of this type concentrate on such anthropogeographic criteria as fishing rights, pearling beds, water sources, and tribal dirahs. As such, they typically center on geographical points. Most have their roots in the nineteenth century or earlier but have depended for their resolution on the emergence of nation-states in the twentieth century. 3. Boundaries as imperial remnants. Some boundaries owe their existence to being leftover elements of imperial ambitions and rivalries. The principal source of such boundary criteria was Britain, often in conjunction with the rivalry with the Ottomans, but also to a certain extent Iran. Most often, these boundaries also have a specific geographical focus rather than borders in general.

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4. Boundaries as claims to natural resources. This category principally consists of boundaries that result from claims staked to oil or gas resources, often the actual driving force behind either real or dubious border claims. Individual cases falling into this category may be geographically specific or broader in geographical terms. 5. Boundaries as strategic requirements. In some cases, states have pursued territory or boundary limits to satisfy their perceived strategic requirements, sometimes aggressively. These requirements may be seen as providing strategic depth, ensuring access to the sea or maritime chokepoints, or securing national defense against real or potential rivals. 6. Boundaries as manifest destiny. This category refers to expanding boundary perceptions as part of the manifest destiny of Saudi Arabia. That is, Saudi perceptions of their borders have tended to rely on the principle of whatever was once controlled or conquered by the Al Sa‘ud in the past is Saudi territory forever. This attitude even survived Ibn Sa‘ud’s crackdown on the Ikhwan (thus asserting the primacy of the state over the ideology, much as the Marxists were forced to choose in the Soviet Union), and it still surfaces in the various disputes surviving in one form or another today. R e pr e se n tat i v e B or de r I s su e s The process of complete boundary delineation was slowed considerably by the existence of a number of seemingly intractable issues, the resolution of which faltered because of political factors as much as practical considerations. The brief examination of a number of case studies below illustrates the nature of boundary formation and disputes in the Gulf. They also serve as pertinent illustrations of the importance and pervasiveness of the categories elucidated above. Most of these disputes have been settled in recent years but some remain unresolved. In addition, they are distinguishable as two distinct categories in that some are intra-GCC matters while others involve one or more GCC members with outside actors.8 The Hawar Islands and Other Bahraini-Qatari Boundary Disputes The history of relations between Bahrain and Qatar has been one of competition and sometimes hostility. Arriving from Kuwait, the ruling family of Bahrain settled in Qatar in 1766 and used it as a base to conquer Bahrain in 1783. The

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Al Khalifah family continued to assert their sovereignty over Qatar. This claim was contested by the Al Thani family of Doha, which came to prominence in the 1860s. The following decades saw a struggle between the two families for control of Qatar, and, even after Al Thani rule was recognized, the Al Khalifah continued to lay claim to territory in Qatar. This contention, combined with contested ownership of various islands between the two states, bedeviled bilateral relations throughout the twentieth century.9 The small and basically uninhabited group of Hawar Islands, nestled under the western flank of the Qatar Peninsula, was long a bone of contention between Bahrain and Qatar. In 1939, the British Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (PRPG) was forced to mediate between the two countries. Bahrain, with a British adviser and more advanced administrative approach, provided the Resident with a more cogent and better prepared defense of its position while Qatar’s ruler insisted that the islands were Qatar’s simply because they had always been Qatar’s. Not surprisingly, the Resident ruled in favor of Bahrain (a decision that also favored the interests of a British oil concession holder).10 This ruling did not satisfy Qatar, however, and relations between the two countries continued to be soured over this issue, among others. The status of Zubarah, farther up the western side of the Qatar Peninsula, was another contentious issue. A ruined settlement in the twentieth century, Zubarah had served as the headquarters for Bahrain’s Al Khalifah from the time they settled in Qatar until their departure for Bahrain in 1800. Although the Al Khalifah never resided there again, they considered Zubarah their ancestral home, and hostilities broke out between the Al Khalifah and Qatar’s Al Thani more than once during the nineteenth century. Although the Al Thani moved to assert their sovereignty over Zubarah in 1937, Bahrain continued to claim jurisdiction throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Compounding these two issues was ownership of several small shoals or reefs submerged at low tide. While fishing rights and a Qatari tit-for-tat for Hawar were factors in the competing claims, Qatar’s action when it occupied Fasht alDibal and Qit‘at al-Jaradah for a period in 1986 seemed to be based principally on safeguarding its claims to territorial waters and offshore oil concessions. After his accession in 1995, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah in Qatar began to pursue a bold series of domestic and foreign policies. Among them was a more activist and more conciliatory approach to the issues with Bahrain. Qatar had

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sought to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in 1991. This attempt to resolve the issue failed when the court ruled that the application was incomplete because Qatar had not mentioned Bahrain’s claim to Zubarah. Bahrain’s suggestion to return to Saudi mediation was rejected, but Qatar resubmitted a separate application in 1995 that the ICJ agreed to hear despite Bahrain’s objections and even though Qatar reluctantly agreed to a resumption of Saudi mediation at the same time. Recriminations between the two countries continued throughout the following years, culminating in Bahraini convictions of two Qatari citizens on charges of spying and Qatar’s accusation that Bahrain had participated in the failed 1996 coup attempt aimed at bringing the previous emir back to power, as well as the defection of a Bahraini air force officer to Qatar with his helicopter. Bahrain boycotted the 1996 GCC summit in Doha because of the dispute. In 2000, in anticipation of an ICJ ruling, an attempt by the two countries to improve relations, including the exchange of ambassadors, foundered, although the two rulers met to discuss the issue. Finally, in March 2001, the ICJ made its binding ruling in what had become the longest case in its history. The Hawar Islands were concluded to belong to Bahrain, while Qatar retained sovereignty over Zubarah. The court also ruled on ownership of the minor islands and shoals and set out the maritime boundary between the two states.11 This denouement provided a dramatic and encouraging solution to a seemingly permanent and intractable problem. From grudging and sometimes hostile allies within the GCC, the solution of their common border issues transformed the relationship between Bahrain and Qatar very positively. Further encouragement was marked by plans to construct a thirty-kilometer causeway between the two countries that would create the longest bridge in the world. This project would seem to benefit Bahrain economically in particular because it would encourage more Qatari tourism (it would be a shorter and more convenient route), it would obviate the need of Qataris to pass through Saudi immigration posts to reach Bahrain, and it would make it practical for Bahrainis to commute to work in Qatar. The final agreement to build the causeway was signed in 2006, and survey work began in 2008. In addition, plans were made to include the shipment of Qatari gas to Bahrain as part of the Gulf gas grid. Although minor problems continued to affect bilateral relations—such as the occasional arrest of fishermen—overall relations were never better.

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Khawr Al ‘Udayd As might be expected from the leapfrog pattern of bilateral relations along the Gulf, Qatar’s relations with Abu Dhabi have traditionally been strained. The relationship has been made even more complicated on those occasions during the past two centuries when the ascending fortunes of the Saudis extended their influence into the littoral areas. The Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi tended to regard the Saudis as a foe, intent on annexing the emirate, while the Al Thani in Qatar saw them as allies in their struggle against Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and the Ottomans. These three countries—Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia—have long been involved in contesting ownership of a seemingly unimportant area of sea and land around Khawr Al ‘Udayd at the southeastern base of the Qatar Peninsula. In the mid–nineteenth century, the ruler of Abu Dhabi sought to extend his control over Al ‘Udayd in large part because of tribesmen who had moved there to escape his influence. It was the traditional fishing grounds for al-Qubaysat, a tribe within the Bani Yas confederation. Abu Dhabi claims were contested by the ruler of Qatar, who considered the territory to lie within his domain. The Qatari ruler sought to enlist Ottoman support for his claims (as the Ottomans considered all of Abu Dhabi to be subject to the Sublime Porte), while the Abu Dhabi ruler made entreaties to the British to back his claim (these entreaties resulted in little more than British enforcement of the prohibition on maritime warfare). Ownership of the area had not been resolved by the beginning of the twentieth century, when the resurgent Saudi state expanded toward the Gulf shores. Kept at bay by the British presence, Riyadh nevertheless never abandoned its ambitions in the Khawr Al ‘Udayd area. An unpublished border agreement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in 1965 apparently included Qatari recognition that its land borders were only with the kingdom. After British withdrawal, a welcome development seemed to be the signing of a border treaty between Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia in 1974. Although the terms of the treaty were never made public, Abu Dhabi appeared to have traded away its claims to a narrow twenty-five-kilometer strip of shoreline between Khawr Al ‘Udayd and Sabkhat Mutti in return for a final Saudi renunciation of any claims to al-Buraymi/al-‘Ayn oasis. That was not, however, to be the end of the dispute. Saudi insistence on retaining access to the sea at Khawr Al ‘Udayd, presumably to provide it with an additional avenue of exporting oil

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should its main terminal at Ra’s Tanurah be blocked, had the additional effect of interrupting direct access from Abu Dhabi to Qatar by the imposition of Saudi border controls. The 1974 settlement of the Saudi Arabian-Abu Dhabi border continued to fester in Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Zayid was said to be very upset when he discovered that Khawr Al ‘Udayd had been signed away in the negotiations. Allegations flew that money had changed hands to settle the treaty, and it undoubtedly had a negative effect on the career of Ahmad Khalifah al-Suwaydi, the UAE foreign minister and Sheikh Zayid confidant, who signed it. Furthermore, Saudi development of the Shaybah oil field along the border area in the late 1990s provoked Abu Dhabi complaints and demands for a sharing arrangement. This dissatisfaction was coupled with Abu Dhabi’s refusal to provide Saudi Arabia with air and maritime corridors through Abu Dhabi territorial waters off Khawr Al ‘Udayd. It allegedly took only a few weeks after the death of Sheikh Zayid in 2004 for his son and successor, Sheikh Khalifah, to raise the matter with Riyadh. The Saudis subsequently objected to plans for a causeway connecting Abu Dhabi with Qatar and sought to prevent completion of the Dolphin gas pipeline between Qatar and Abu Dhabi. At the time of writing, prospects for resolution of the problem were slim, although it had not proved to be a significant obstacle to good relations between the two countries. Abu Musa and the Tunbs Islands Like Saudi Arabia, Iran has long pursued aggressive claims in the Gulf. Many of these have acquired a nationalistic, superhistorical quality, such as the Iranian claim to Bahrain based on its control of the archipelago prior to the mid– eighteenth century. That claim was abandoned in a face-saving manner when, prior to British withdrawal in 1971, the shah agreed to and accepted the results of a UN mission revealing Bahrainis’ overwhelming desires for independence. Other than Bahrain, Iran has not exercised any large-scale claims to territory on the Arab littoral. Its sovereignty over Khuzestan/‘Arabistan and the long and tortured dispute over the Shatt al-‘Arab lie outside the scope of this paper. Therefore, Iranian disputes with the Gulf states primarily concern sovereignty over islands in the Gulf and the demarcation of territorial waters, all of which have potential implications for ownership of oil and gas deposits.

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The three islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, have been a matter of contested sovereignty between Iran and the Qasimi state for well over a century.12 Iranian claims are based on ownership during the eighteenth century and before, as well as for a short period of time in the late nineteenth century when a branch of the Qasimi family held the islands while also paying tribute to Tehran. Despite the lengthy origin of claims, in truth ownership was not seriously contested until the late nineteenth century. Periodic attempts at negotiation by Iran and the British, on behalf of Sharjah and Ra’s al-Khaymah, foundered. Iran attempted to introduce a customs post in 1904 but withdrew it following a British protest. Reinforcement of Britain’s recognition of Arab claims to the islands came in 1913, when the British erected a lighthouse on Greater Tunb. In 1921, a split occurred within the Qasimi family, leading to the establishment of the separate Qasimi states of Ra’s al-Khaymah and Sharjah. From this point, the British recognized Abu Musa as belonging to Sharjah and the two Tunbs as the property of Ra’s al-Khaymah. Although the islands were actually administered by the Qasimi states, their status remained unsettled in legal terms despite the matter being raised occasionally. Still, the issue remained more or less dormant until the 1960s when Tehran’s interest was revived by such factors as the possibility of oil, increasing awareness of the islands’ defensive potential in preventing the closure of the Gulf to shipping, and the specter of a political vacuum raised by the British announcement in 1968 of their impending withdrawal from the Gulf. Early in 1970, Iran once again raised its claim to ownership of all the islands, warning Britain to stop oil exploration near Abu Musa and threatening to use force to regain the islands if necessary. As the date for Britain’s withdrawal drew near, Iranian statements became more insistent. A British envoy was dispatched to Tehran in mid-November 1971, and subsequent negotiations produced an agreement between the shah and the ruler of Sharjah for sharing Abu Musa. The day before Britain officially withdrew (Dec. 1, 1971), Iran moved to occupy both the Tunbs despite the resistance of Ra’s al-Khaymah officials. To forestall a similar attack, the ruler of Sharjah had acceded on the previous day to Iranian demands that the island of Abu Musa be shared between the two states until its fi nal status was agreed. It later transpired that this agreement had been negotiated by Britain. The Iranian actions inspired an uproar throughout the Arab world. There the matter remained for some time. The persistence of Iranian claims was undoubtedly due primarily to the islands’ strategic position near the exit

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from the Gulf. In 1992, the Islamic Republic of Iran abruptly sent military units to take over full control of Abu Musa despite fierce UAE objection. Since 1992, both Iran and the UAE have maintained staunch claims to sovereignty over the three islands. For the UAE, relations within the GCC have often been measured over perceptions of the strength of support other members have given to their claims. The UAE has pressed the issue in the media, before the Arab League, and at the United Nations. Iran, however, has continued to assert its full sovereignty over the islands and so has refused any negotiations over their status. The issue seems intractable, with neither side budging on its claims. While the UAE is adamant about pursuing what it sees as its rightful ownership, it has very little leverage. The GCC combined is unable to pressure Iran effectively, and the Arab world has not taken any practical interest in resolving the issue. The UAE’s foremost Arab champion was Iraq under Saddam Husayn, probably cynically as part of a strategy to gain Arab support for the regime’s actions. Post-Saddam Iraq has taken little interest, its attention being understandably consumed by pressing internal affairs. The UAE has also sought to gain American support because of the latter’s antipathy to the Tehran regime, but the United States is unlikely to take any action on what it regards as a tangential issue to the more pressing one of Iranian nuclearization. As a consequence, the Iranian occupation continues to fester in UAE attitudes, but it is unlikely to force a real confrontation because of its impotence and the more important requirement that relatively good relations be maintained with Iran. Good relations are important, partly because Iran is a much more powerful neighbor and partly because Dubai’s economy is intricately linked with Iran. Qaru and Umm al-Maradim Although the Saudi-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone was partitioned in 1965 without much difficulty, the status of several adjacent islands was left unsettled. Kuwait has claimed ownership of Qaru and Umm al-Maradim on the grounds that they have always been part of Kuwaiti territory.13 Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, thought that they should be considered part of the two countries’ Neutral Zone. The division of the Neutral Zone in 1965 renewed the airing of differences over ownership.

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The islands remained under nominal Kuwaiti authority although Saudi Arabia continued its claims and may have occasionally sent armed patrols to the islands in the following years. While the islands remained in dispute, they did not have a major impact on Kuwaiti-Saudi relations. In 2000, settlement of the two countries’ maritime boundaries left the islands under Kuwaiti sovereignty. Although Saudi Arabia and Kuwait reached an amicable understanding over the islands, the situation remained confused because of conflicting claims to ownership of the offshore al-Durrah gas field in the immediate area. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait protested in 2001 over Iranian drilling in the disputed area. Al-Buraymi Oasis Al-Buraymi is located in the interior of Oman between the Sultanate of Oman’s al-Dhahirah region and the emirate of Abu Dhabi. It has long been an area of settlement and key center of routes between interior Oman, the Gulf of Oman coast, and the Gulf coast because of the presence of abundant water and the extensive cultivation. The oasis was fitfully under the control of the Omani state for centuries but it was occupied for several years in the 1860s by the Second Saudi State. With the emergence of Abu Dhabi as a political entity, several of the villages were brought into the fold of Abu Dhabi’s Bani Yas tribe in the late nineteenth century. The location of the oasis at the point where the adjoining reaches of Oman, Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia converged meant that ownership was key to controlling potentially productive oil areas. For this reason, the Third Saudi State maintained its claim to the oasis based on the allegiance of some of its tribes. Riyadh sent a military detachment to occupy one of the central villages in October 1952. Britain, acting on behalf of Abu Dhabi and Oman, protested this action to Riyadh, and both sides agreed in 1954 to submit the dispute to an arbitration tribunal. When the tribunal eventually met the following year, Britain withdrew after charging that the Saudi member of the tribunal was attempting to direct witnesses and that Riyadh was bribing tribes in the area.14 In October 1955, units of the British-officered Trucial Oman Scouts ejected the Saudi detachment from the oasis. Since then, the oasis has been administered by Oman (al-Buraymi town) and Abu Dhabi (al-‘Ayn town).

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Saudi Arabia’s dormant claims appeared to have been dropped when the kingdom reached agreements on its borders with the UAE in 1974 and with Oman in 1991. While the demarcation of the length of the Saudi-Omani boundary has apparently put a permanent end to those two countries’ differences over al-Buraymi, the 1974 treaty between Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia continues to resonate, particularly over Khawr Al ‘Udayd (discussed elsewhere in this paper). Saudi claims to al-Buraymi/al-‘Ayn were apparently put to rest in return for Abu Dhabi’s renunciation of a strip of land at Al ‘Udayd in favor of Saudi ownership. The resolution of competing claims regarding al-Buraymi cannot be said to be final until border issues between Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia are settled. Although Saudi Arabia registered the treaty, along with 1993 modifications, at the United Nations in 1995,15 the UAE still did not consider the matter over. More agitation arose after the death of Sheikh Zayid. While the area of contention remains Khawr Al ‘Udayd, the continued disputation mars bilateral relations, particularly with regard to the UAE’s perceptions of lukewarm Saudi support for the Emirates’ pressing of its claim to Abu Musa and the Tunb islands. United Arab Emirates Internal Boundaries and Boundaries with Oman A British official, Julian Walker, was responsible in the 1950s and 1960s for the sorting out of myriad boundaries between the various statelets of the Trucial Coast and between them and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman.16 Not all boundaries lent themselves to demarcation. Hostilities broke out between Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the late 1940s over a disputed slice of territory, and agreement on making it a neutral zone was not reached until 1968. Alignment of the road connecting Dubai and Sharjah was held up in the 1970s by a dispute over claims of both emirates to the land on which a shopping center was planned. The lack of territorial contiguity for five of the seven member states complicated matters, as did the matter of sorting out tribal allegiances to various rulers, allegiances that heretofore had often been changeable according to prevailing circumstances. Furthermore, the truculence of the Qasimi sheikhs of Sharjah and Ra’s al-Khaymah prevented the drawing of accurate boundaries for their states with Oman. In some cases neutral zones were created, and in others enclaves were recognized. One of the more prominent of these is Wadi Hatta on the main road

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between Dubai and Suhar in Oman. The traveler on the road passes into Oman before emerging in Wadi Hatta and then plunging back into Oman for good. To the north, the Omani enclave of Musandam (properly Ru’us al-Jibal) is entirely cut off from the rest of the Sultanate. Much of the Musandam’s population comes from the Shihuh tribe, which historically was allied with Muscat against the Qawasim. But since the 1970s, Oman has contended that Ra’s al-Khaymah (and Abu Dhabi to a lesser extent) actively encourages the Shihuh to emigrate to Ra’s al-Khaymah and then take up UAE citizenship in order to protect their jobs. At the same time, while Omani private and official travelers must pass through UAE checkpoints to reach Musandam by land, there has been dispute over exactly where the borders on the Gulf of Oman lie. The settlement of Dibba at the northern end of UAE territory is particularly fragmented. Oman’s part was previously known as al-Bay‘ah but in the 1980s the government insisted on using the name Dibba, thus raising potential confusion with Dibba al-Husn (Sharjah) and Dibbah al-Fujayrah (al-Fujayrah). There were also a fair number of minor border incidents between Abu Dhabi and Oman through the 1980s amid Omani accusations that Abu Dhabi was “poaching” Omani soldiers to serve in its armed forces. Abu Dhabi and Muscat did not exchange ambassadors until 1992 and it took until 1999 for the UAE-Oman border to be agreed. Abu Sa‘ fah Offshore Oil Field (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia) Saudi Arabia and Bahrain provide one of the biggest contrasts between members of the GCC in terms of size, power, and wealth. Nestled under the Saudi arm, Bahrain has always sought to maintain good relations with the Al Sa‘ud in nearly all matters and the determination of boundaries (necessarily maritime only since Bahrain is an archipelago) between them has not caused great controversy.17 Bahrain and Saudi Arabia negotiated a maritime boundary in 1958 but the area in which the Abu Sa‘fah oil field lies was the subject of earlier negotiations about 1954. In these, it was agreed in principle that either the area should be shared in a “development zone” or eventually divided. But it was not until 1958 that the ruler of Bahrain agreed to concede the zone to Saudi Arabia in return for an equal share of income from the oil field, which the Saudis administered.18 Final agreement on ownership and disposal of the oil field was relatively harmonious. Because of Bahrain’s greater need for income from the field, Saudi Arabia

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agreed in subsequent years to increase the Bahraini proportion. In 1993, Riyadh raised Bahrain’s share to 100,000 barrels per day leaving the kingdom with roughly 40,000 barrels per day. In 1996, Saudi Arabia assigned the entire output from the field to Bahrain, which used the crude to feed its oil refinery at Sitrah. There was some fear, however, that this decision would lead to greater Saudi influence over Bahrain, particularly since the 100 percent income from Abu Sa‘fah would provide nearly half of Bahrain’s government revenues. However, in 2004, Saudi Arabia cut Bahrain’s oil allocation by 50,000 barrels per day. It was not clear from news reports whether this represented a cut in the share of Abu Sa‘fah production or was a reduction of the Saudi contribution to Bahrain from other sources. In any case, the field’s production had been doubled by this time to 300,000 barrels per day so that Bahrain’s receipt was still more than the original production from the field. Despite periodic reports of Saudi anger or uneasiness with political developments in Bahrain, the two countries get along quite well. Although the permanent distribution of oil production from Abu Sa‘fah field has not been determined, the oil field is unlikely to be a source of dispute in the future since Bahrain is clearly dependent on Riyadh and takes considerable care not to upset its much larger neighbor. Saudi largesse regarding oil is only one way in which Bahrain is economically dependent on Saudi Arabia. Much of the tourism industry’s earnings come from Saudi visitors, Bahrain’s international banks do business in Saudi Arabia and with Saudi clients, and Saudis are heavy investors in Bahrain. North Field Gas Field (Iran/Qatar) The world’s largest gas field lies in the waters between Qatar and Iran and is known as the North Field in Qatar and the South Pars field in Iran. The two countries’ offshore boundary was determined in a 1969 agreement. But this agreement did not specify how revenues from the gas field were to be allocated.19 That was not a problem until the early 1990s, when Iran made pronouncements that the field would be developed jointly with Qatar, an approach that did not seem to be shared by Doha. Although Qatar was keen to keep on the good side of its much more powerful neighbor across the Gulf, relations were troubled by political differences.20 In the end, both sides developed their portions of the field separately after agreement that exploitation should begin in the middle of the field in order to defuse any possible dispute. Although the structure had been discovered about

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1971, Qatar did not begin exporting its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) until 1997. A decade later, however, Qatar became the largest LNG producer in the world, and it is continuing to grow. At present there do not seem to be any significant differences between Iran and Qatar over the North/South Pars field. This may be in large part because of the enormous costs involved in bringing an LNG train into operation, thus slowing Iran’s exploitation of its portion. But if and when Iran does become active in production, disputes over ownership may arise. Above all, political issues—such as Iranian nuclearization and the Abu Musa/Tunbs issue—continue to dog Iran’s relations with all the GCC, including Qatar, which may add another element of tension to Iranian-Qatari relations. The Iraqi-Kuwaiti Border Iraqi-Kuwaiti relations have long been troubled by Iraqi claims to all of Kuwait.21 This arose from nineteenth-century Ottoman claims to sovereignty over Kuwait. This became particularly contentious in the 1890s when Britain began to take a particular interest in Kuwait because of the possibility that it might become the terminus of a German-built railway from Europe to the Gulf. While Kuwait’s Sheikh Mubarak accepted some Ottoman terms, Kuwait was never actually under Ottoman control. Mubarak’s acceptance of an Ottoman title seemed geared more to his efforts to play off the two imperial powers in order to retain his independence. In the end, he was forced to accept protected status under the British, a situation that lasted until independence in 1961. The Iraqi successor governments to the Ottoman presence continued to claim Kuwait as legitimately Iraqi territory. While such claims were little more than pro forma under the monarchy, the post-1958 revolutionary governments were far more activist in their claims. These claims were indelibly fused with the Qasim and Ba‘thist goals of encouraging “progressive” revolutionary movements throughout the Gulf, for which they gave extensive if clandestine support. Thus the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border issue was in many respects more comprehensive than just a border dispute and in many ways was raised simply as a provocation for the larger Iraqi claim to all of Kuwait. There were two significant border issues, however. The first was ownership of Umm Qasr and the exact placement of the border. Umm Qasr had first come into prominence as a temporary port

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built by the British for the war effort during World War II. Its postwar dismantlement led to controversy over which country’s territory it was. It may have been a minor issue, but its importance was compounded by Iraqi geography and its strategic location. Iraq’s only other outlet to the sea was through the Shatt al-‘Arab. But ownership and use of the shatt was a matter of perpetual and bitter contention between Iran and Iraq. Successive Iraqi governments quite understandably sought an alternative safe outlet and so constructed a new port for both military and civilian use at Umm Qasr. The route from Umm Qasr to the waters of the Gulf passed by the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan, which had been under Kuwaiti control since the Ottoman period. Kuwaiti ownership of the islands was explicitly conceded by Iraq as part of the 1963 agreement by which Iraq recognized the sovereignty of Kuwait. Nevertheless, Iraq continued to press for some accommodation, particularly when the Rumaylah oil field along the border was developed and required a terminal on the sea. While Iraqi claims to the islands could be made only under the rubric of claimed sovereignty over all of Kuwait, Baghdad pressed Kuwait for the purchase or lease of the islands. These overtures were resisted by Kuwait, partly because it would significantly reduce its territory but, even more important, it might encourage further Iraqi claims on Kuwaiti territory. A final point of dispute was the alignment of the land border between the two states. The extent of the dispute was illustrated by an Iraqi attack on Kuwait’s al-Samta border post in 1973, resulting in two Kuwaiti deaths. It became increasingly contentious during the Saddam Husayn regime and particularly in the years prior to his invasion of Kuwait. In large part, the insistence of Iraqi claims owed much to the presence of oil fields in the border area and Iraq’s claim to the entirety of the Rumaylah oil field. In addition, in 1990 Iraq added to its claim by alleging that Kuwaiti was violating the existing border by using slant drilling to exploit oil on the Iraqi side of the border. The resolution of the border followed the dramatic events of 1990–91, when Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, and multinational forces subsequently liberated the country. The reaction seemed to guarantee Kuwait’s independence and eliminate any credibility to Iraqi claims. A UN-sponsored effort to determine the rightful border resulted in a permanent demarcation in 1992 that was marked on both the map and the ground. Saddam’s government had no alternative but to accept the demarcation, but its acceptance undoubtedly was no more certain

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than its acceptance of the 1975 Algiers accord on the Shatt al-‘Arab. After the Islamic revolution had weakened the Iranian regime, Saddam declared that the Algiers agreement had been signed under force and declared it void before his attack on Iran. Although the status of Kuwait and Iraqi-Kuwaiti border alignments had been legally settled in the first few years after the 1991 Kuwait War, Baghdad’s lasting adherence to the arrangements remained doubtful. The emergence of a new government in Baghdad under American tutelage has raised expectations that the sovereignty and boundary issues will remain permanently closed. Al-‘Arabiyah and Farsi Islands (Saudi Arabia/Iran) Ownership of a number of small islands in the Gulf has been disputed. Some of these islands may have had some importance in the past because of fishing and pearling rights, but for most of the twentieth century and beyond their ownership was significant because they determined maritime boundaries and thus potential control of offshore oil and gas deposits. That is true of various small and uninhabited islands in the northern part of the Gulf. The case of Warbah and Bubiyan has been discussed above.22 The two small and uninhabited islands of al-‘Arabiyah and Farsi are located directly in the center of the northern part of the Gulf. They engendered little interest until British officialdom discussed the ownership merits of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait in the 1930s. When the Kuwait Oil Company raised a beacon light on Farsi in the mid-1940s, both Saudi Arabia and Iran complained. The islands slumbered again until the early 1960s when the possibility of offshore oil deposits in the northern Gulf attracted the attention of the neighboring countries. Saudi Arabia and Iran began talks on the question of ownership and demarcation of their common boundaries in 1963, but disagreements scuttled an agreement. However, the two countries were able to decide in 1965 that Saudi ownership of al-‘Arabiyah would be recognized while Iran assumed sovereignty over Farsi. The 1968 demarcation of the two countries’ continental shelf boundary confirmed the division, even though the median line had to be adjusted to account for the split in ownership of the two islands. There have been no problems since the peaceful and harmonious settlement of this dispute. Settlement of the islands issue turned out to be a relatively minor

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aspect of the far more important demarcation of Saudi-Iranian maritime boundaries, which determined the division of offshore oil and gas deposits. Neutral Zones There have been two significant Neutral Zones concerning Gulf states, both involving Saudi Arabia. One has been shared with Iraq and the other with Kuwait. Both Neutral Zones derived from British efforts to define the territorial limits of the Third Saudi State earlier in the twentieth century. Drawing precise boundaries was regarded as nearly impossible since the region comprised multiple traditional migratory routes and grazing lands of nomadic tribes. When the 1922 boundary conference at al-‘Uqayr (now on Saudi Arabia’s Gulf coast), involving Iraq, Kuwait, and Najd (later Saudi Arabia), became stalemated over this issue, Sir Percy Cox, the High Commissioner of Iraq, drew two Neutral Zones: an inland zone to be shared between Iraq and Najd and another zone along the Gulf coast between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Cox also awarded Iraq a considerable amount of territory claimed by Najd and compensated by signing over about two-thirds of Kuwait’s territory to Najd. The Iraqi-Saudi Neutral Zone was divided equally and permanently in 1980. The Kuwaiti-Saudi Neutral Zone was more complicated since several oil concessions for the territory had been awarded. An offshore oil concession was awarded jointly to the Japanese-owned Arabian Oil Company, which discovered oil in 1960 but lost the concession in 2000. The income from this concession continues to be shared equally between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, except during the Iran-Iraq War, when the proceeds were given to Iraq. Onshore concessions belong to Kuwait Oil Company (following the nationalization of the interests of the previous holder Aminoil) and Getty Oil (now a subsidiary of TEXACO) on behalf of Saudi Arabia. The disposition of both Neutral Zones was conducted harmoniously, and there have been no subsequent territorial disputes regarding them, with the exception of the islands off the Kuwaiti-Saudi zone, as discussed elsewhere. ‘Asir, Najran, and Jizan (Saudi Arabia/Yemen) Mutual suspicions and enmity between Saudi Arabia and Yemen has a long history. Much of this has been focused on the three regions of ‘Asir, Najran, and

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Jizan. ‘Asir is a highland region, contiguous to Yemen and with a strong Yemeni flavor. Its capital Abha sits on the edge of the precipice that falls away to the Tihamah coastal plain. Najran is farther inland and is centered on the ancient city of Najran, presently with a large Isma‘ili population. Jizan is a region on the Tihamah abutting Yemen and its capital Jizan provides an important port serving a wide hinterland.23 In the early twentieth century, the border regions between the two countries fell under the control of local dynasties. In particular, the area of ‘Asir had formed the nucleus of the realm of the Idrisi emirs, which extended into the areas of Jizan and Najran (subsequently forming separate Saudi provinces). The decline in Idrisi power following World War I led to increasing interest in control over the area by both the Zaydi imam in Sanaa and the Saudi emir in Riyadh. By the late 1920s, the Al Sa‘ud had assumed effective control of ‘Asir while the imam continued to intrigue in Najran and elsewhere. By 1934, enmity broke out into open warfare and Saudi forces routed the imam’s forces and ranged deep into Yemen. The cessation of hostilities was followed by a treaty recognizing Saudi Arabia’s retention of the three regions of ‘Asir, Najran, and Jizan. The Treaty of al-Ta’if confirmed Saudi authority in these areas for a forty-year period, which would then be renewable at twenty-year intervals. Renewals took place in 1953 and 1973 against considerable popular outcry in Yemen. The subsequent assassination of the Yemeni prime minister who signed the 1973 renewal has been ascribed by some to his signature. A further renewal was signed in 1995, even though talks on the settlement of the Saudi-Yemeni border had begun in 1992. The Saudi-Yemeni border talks in the 1990s covered the entire expanse of shared boundaries from the Red Sea to Najran (the border covered by the Ta’if treaty) and from there to well into al-Rub‘ al-Khali desert (where discussions centered on modifications to the Blue and Violet Lines drawn up by Anglo-Ottoman discussions in 1913–14). The alacrity with which negotiations progressed during this decade owed much to the discovery and exploitation of oil in Yemen and the awarding of concessions in the undetermined border zone. Despite the continued obstacles of an atmosphere of enmity and a succession of border incidents, Saudi Arabia and Yemen signed a comprehensive border treaty in 2000 that explicitly stipulated the legality of the Treaty of al-Ta’if and demarcated the inland length of the boundary. Placement of boundary markers was completed in 2004, although minor adjustments were made in subsequent

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years. Despite extensive negotiations, the final boundary split up tribal territory between the two countries, particularly that of the Wa’ilat tribe. The so-called “lost provinces” are more of a symbolic issue for Yemenis than a serious attempt to redress past territorial grievances. Saudi domination of the Yemen republic (first north Yemen and then unified Yemen) has resulted in a popular backlash against the northern neighbor. While the immediate issue of ownership of these three territories seems to be permanently resolved, their occasional invocation as the “lost” territories of Yemen speaks to a deeper Yemeni resentment of Saudi Arabia and its policies. The border arrangements are unlikely to be challenged in the foreseeable future but the air of tension between the two countries is unlikely to subside. Oman/Yemen Border Oman and Yemen touch along a line dividing al-Mahrah country of former South Yemen and the Dhufar province of Oman, whose people culturally were closer to Yemen than to Oman.24 The border lies in inhospitable terrain, very mountainous at the Arabian Sea and bisected by deep wadis inland before fading into the sands of al-Rub‘ al-Khali. A haphazard line was drawn on maps but a tribal incident in 1955 sparked the initial attempt to establish boundary lines on the ground and a representative of the Sultanate of Oman and officials of the Government of Aden met on the border in 1961. An administrative border was drawn in 1965. Apart from the Sultanate’s construction of a fort in the middle of a wadi at Habrut, opposite an Adeni fort, the matter was allowed to languish until British withdrawal from Aden in late 1967. By that time, a full-scale rebellion was under way in Dhufar, and Oman veered close to hostilities with South Yemen over the latter’s support for the Dhufari rebels. An Omani military post was constructed on the escarpment above the sea just inside its reckoning of the border and was precariously maintained throughout the remainder of the war. Although the Dhufar War was declared finished in late 1975 by the Omani sultan, remnants of the leftist rebels continued to subsist in the mountains and Omani–South Yemeni relations remained tense for years. The normalization of relations between Oman and South Yemen did not begin until 1982, and border talks did not get underway until 1983. Protracted negotiations were required before a border agreement was reached in 1992

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between Oman and the unified Republic of Yemen. Agreement came about because of the Omani sultan’s willingness to slide the border slightly to the west, but with the exception of his insistence on retaining the area of Habrut as a symbol of South Yemen’s attack upon it in 1972. Two years after the border was agreed, the former South Yemen attempted to secede from the Republic of Yemen and was defeated in a brief civil war. Like many of the other GCC states, Oman provided some behind-the-scenes assistance to the south and gave refuge to the erstwhile secessionist president. Nevertheless, this action has not seriously affected Omani-Yemeni relations and the border remains open to traffic and trade. Any disruptions to good relations between the two countries are unlikely under present conditions. Be yon d B or de r s : Sh i f t i ng Dy na m ic s i n t h e P o st-B ou n da ry-Is su e E r a Even a cursory comparison of the preceding exposition of boundary issues shows the interlinking of many of the factors identified in the earlier schema of the nature of boundary disputes. In many cases, it is impossible to say that a particular issue arises from only one or two of the categories. Classification is complicated further by the bundling of a number of distinct issues into a single broader package, as can be seen in the disputes between Bahrain and Qatar and between Iraq and Kuwait. In general, it can be postulated that “state formation” played a role in nearly all of these issues—an impetus to sorting out territorial matters as part of the completion of the state-formation process. Nearly all offshore boundaries are the product of this impulse in combination with another factor, “claims to natural resources.” It can also be argued that most of these issues stem from the pressing of “historical claims” and even “imperial remnants” given Britain’s historic role in the Gulf (and, to a lesser extent, that of Iran). Boundary claims based on “strategic requirements” can be seen most clearly in the Abu Musa and Tunbs dispute, as well as in Khawr Al ‘Udayd. Perhaps Oman’s claim to the Musandam applies as well because shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz lie within Omani territorial waters. On the other hand, Oman would probably be just as—if not more—secure if it did not bear responsibility for the safety of navigation in the strait, as it nearly discovered during the

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Iran-Iraq War. The final category of “manifest destiny” is present in a number of cases but the most obvious is al-Buraymi, followed by Khawr Al ‘Udayd and perhaps the provinces of ‘Asir, Najran, and Jizan. A similar impulse might be ascribed to Iran in its claim to Bahrain and insistence on sovereignty over Abu Musa and the two Tunbs. The settlement of many of the border disputes afflicting the region, in addition to the maturation of the GCC, has led to an observable improvement in bilateral relations all around. This does not mean that the “leapfrog” effect has disappeared entirely. But in the opening years of the twenty-first century, the likelihood of open enmity, let alone hostilities, between any of the GCC states seemed unlikely. Those border issues that remained unresolved were far more likely to be the subject of open-ended negotiations than causes for “cold war” reactions.25 The pattern of “leapfrog” relations within the Gulf continues fundamentally unchanged, although more subdued in public. Bahrain works best with Abu Dhabi while Dubai and Qatar are sympathetic. On the other hand, Oman’s relations with Ra’s al-Khaymah continue to be troubled, particularly over Ra’s alKhaymah’s persistence in wooing Shihuh tribesmen from the Ru’us al-Jibal into taking up Ra’s al-Khaymah residence and UAE citizenship. It is obvious that border issues, albeit in combination with other factors of contention, not only affect the parties involved but have a negative impact on GCC unity. A case in point is the refusal of Bahrain’s emir to attend the 1996 GCC summit because it was being held in Doha while the two countries were in the midst of an acrimonious border dispute. Although Saudi Arabia and Qatar had had no major border issues, a skirmish at a Qatari border post in 1992 left several Qatari soldiers dead and provoked Qatar into suspending the two countries’ 1965 border accord. A settlement apparently recognizing Qatari sovereignty over the border post and the Saudi position in Khawr Al ‘Udayd allowed the Qatari emir to back down from his threat to boycott the GCC summit of that year. But the incident was followed by several episodes involving fishing boats in 1994 and may have contributed to Saudi support of ex-Qatari Emir Sheikh Khalifah’s efforts to regain his throne in 1996 and later the extent of Saudi pique at the reporting of Al Jazeera television.26 At the same time, it can be noted that the dispute of one GCC member with a non-GCC neighbor may have a serious impact on all the GCC states. The most prominent illustration is the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which required the

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involvement of all five remaining members in the liberation of Kuwait. Similarly, the UAE’s dispute with Iran over the three islands forms part of a larger picture of adversarial relations between the GCC as a whole and the Islamic Republic. The mention of Iran leads to the observation that the GCC has been blessed with a minimum of onshore borders with other countries. Most of these belong to by far the largest GCC member, Saudi Arabia. It borders Iraq and Jordan on the north (with a close near-border with Israel) and Yemen on the south. Kuwait borders Iraq and Oman borders Yemen. Consequently, many but not all of the problems afflicting borders elsewhere in the region have been serendipitously averted by the GCC. In recent years, the “island fortress” aspect of GCC security has led to a seemingly relatively straightforward priority of collective “national” security: walling the GCC off from its poorer and fractious neighbors. In this sense, Kuwait has expended much time and money on building an impenetrable fence along its Iraqi border. Saudi Arabia has also fenced off its common border with Iraq and sought in 2004 to build a border fence along its Yemen frontier. The UAE notably has stiffened all its border precautions, not only physical borders with neighboring Oman but intensified protection at air and sea ports. While most border disputes have been ostensibly laid to rest, the remaining ones, not surprisingly, remain intractable. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that disputes resolved will not break into the open again, as Abu Dhabi’s dissatisfaction with Khawr Al ‘Udayd illustrates. The role of boundaries as a contentious factor between the Gulf states and with their neighbors has slipped into the shadows but it has not disappeared.

Security Dilemmas in the Contemporary Persian Gulf F r e d H . L aw s o n

Central to the study of international relations is the concept of the security dilemma. This concept can be formulated in two complementary ways. On one hand, it implies that in an anarchic environment, states enjoy no obvious, unproblematic path to safety. Instead, the steps that any country takes to maximize its own security prompt others to respond by implementing measures that leave it no better off, and sometimes in a considerably worse position, than it was at the outset.1 On the other hand, any policy that a state adopts in an attempt to protect or advance its strategic interests generates direct, but unintended, consequences that could be handled more effectively through a much different kind of policy. As a result, there turns out to be no single, straightforward course of action that a government can pursue in order to guarantee the security of its territory, population, or economy from external threat. Unfortunately, the term “security dilemma” is most often deployed in a loose or simplistic fashion. Instead of examining the dynamics of the irresolvable dilemma(s) that states confront when dealing with one another in an anarchic arena, observers of world politics tend to use “security dilemma” as a synonym for “security problem” or “security challenge.” Richard Russell, for instance, asserts that in August 1990 Iraq’s “bid to usurp the Gulf balance of power triggered an acute security dilemma for regional powers, including Iran and the other Arab states, particularly those in the Gulf.”2 Jamal al-Suwaidi describes “the Gulf security dilemma” as “a complex set of interactions among regional and extraregional states that poses a range of formidable obstacles on the road to lasting [regional] 50

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stability.”3 James Russell notes that “strategic, regional and domestic factors are all combining and overlapping to create a profound security dilemma both for the [Saudi] regime and the nation.”4 And Gawdat Bahgat observes that “Saudi Arabia and the other GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] states have no easy option in the intensifying dilemma over Iran’s nuclear ambition.”5 Many other such examples could be adduced. In this chapter, I explore how a more rigorous notion of the security dilemma sheds light on crucial aspects of international politics in the contemporary Persian Gulf. I lay out four fundamental dilemmas with regard to security that overlap with one another to drive relations among states in this pivotal part of the world. The first might be called the classic security dilemma, in which governments choose whether or not to allocate resources to programs that might increase their security relative to others. The second involves what Glenn Snyder calls “the alliance dilemma,” whereby states work out how to manage relations with allies and adversaries simultaneously. The third entails the trade-off that many regimes in the Persian Gulf face between relying on outside powers for protection and maintaining domestic political stability. Finally, Gulf states face a paradoxical choice between forging strategic partnerships with external patrons and keeping the region insulated from global rivalries and disputes. Each one of these decisions poses a true dilemma. In all four cases, neither one of the available options results in a sustainable solution to the problem at hand. Thus none of these security challenges can in any meaningful sense be “resolved.” They can only be mitigated or managed for a limited period of time before other, related problems arise. Furthermore, the dynamics that are associated with these four dilemmas generally end up leaving all parties worse off than they would have been if they had been able to refrain from making a choice in the first place. The conjunction of these four security dilemmas severely diminishes the prospects for peace and stability in the Persian Gulf for the foreseeable future. T h e Cl a s sic Se c u r i t y Di l e m m a States in the Persian Gulf confront the fundamental choice of whether or not to carry out what Robert Jervis calls “security-producing programs.”6 Given the anarchic nature of the regional arena, every Gulf state is forced to look out for its own interests; no overarching authority exists to provide security either for

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individual countries or for the area as a whole. Yet it is not at all clear how the Gulf states can best secure their interests vis-à-vis one another. So long as no country poses a direct threat to others, or to regional stability more generally, it makes good sense for governments to forgo investments in armaments and other preparations for external defense, and to devote their resources instead to other, arguably more productive, endeavors. But this is an inherently risky course of action because states can never be certain about the true intentions of actual and potential adversaries. Nor can they be sure how the strategic situation in the region might change in the future. Consequently, countries have a strong incentive to prepare for the worst by arming themselves, whether or not they harbor aggressive intentions.7 If, however, one state carries out security-producing programs in order to protect its interests, other states will at best find themselves at a growing strategic disadvantage and at worst interpret the actions of the first state as hostile. The others can then be expected to implement security-producing programs of their own. This interplay of action and reaction leaves neither side better off than it was at the beginning and is likely to engender mutual mistrust and precipitate arms races. Moreover, states that arm themselves against nonaggressive neighbors are apt to find it impossible to convince others of their peaceful intentions and are therefore likely to provoke neighbors to adopt measures that have the potential to put their own interests in jeopardy. As governments rarely engage in concerted campaigns to persuade others of their (self-evident) peacefulness, and as the very act of proclaiming one’s good intentions is almost certain to heighten misgivings in the target audience, tensions have a tendency to escalate.8 And the rising potential for conflict can only be moderated or reduced through deliberate, sustained effort and extraordinary concessions, which may or may not be reciprocated. That the contemporary Persian Gulf exhibits basic features of the classic security dilemma is unquestionable. None of the Persian Gulf states has found itself able to resist devoting substantial resources and energy to building up its military capabilities. At the end of the 1990–91 Gulf War, for instance, Saudi Arabia’s armed forces consisted of some 67,000 active duty personnel, 550 French and older American main battle tanks, no ground attack helicopters, and four Frenchmade frigates.9 By 2000, overall troop strength had jumped to over 110,000 active duty personnel, more than 300 new M-1A2 and 450 upgraded M-60A3 tanks had

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been added to the armored corps, a dozen AH-64 attack helicopters had been purchased from the United States, and three advanced frigates had been ordered from France. Five years later, Saudi Arabia’s total combat personnel, main battle tanks, attack helicopters, and frigates had all remained steady, but armored personnel carriers, antiaircraft missile batteries, naval helicopters, and fast missile patrol boats were being acquired and deployed in steadily increasing numbers. There were even reports that the kingdom was preparing to purchase three or four diesel-electric submarines.10 Between 2003 and 2007, total annual military spending jumped by almost 50 percent.11 Sharp increases in Saudi military capabilities prompted surrounding states to augment and modernize their own arsenals. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Oman boosted arms purchases the most in the years after 2000, with Bahrain and Qatar trailing behind.12 In February 2004, the governments of the UAE and Oman contracted with Abu Dhabi Ship Building Company to construct forty-two fast missile patrol boats.13 Two years later, the company began work on five Bainunah-class corvettes, the largest military ships ever built on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf.14 The UAE announced in October 2006 that it would purchase twenty state-of-the-art High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) batteries from the US company Lockheed Martin. This purchase made the federation the first country besides the United States to possess the new weapons system.15 By early 2007, a veritable arms race had taken shape in the region. Saudi Arabia was taking delivery of seventy-two Eurofighter Typhoon airplanes, twelve upgraded Apache AH-64A attack helicopters, advanced tanks, and cruise missiles.16 Kuwait had ordered two dozen AH-64As; the UAE placed orders for sixtyone Dassault Mirage 200-9s and eighty F-16 Block 50 fighters, a new-generation combat fighter that the US Air Force itself had not yet acquired. Toward the end of the year, the UAE added ten Sikorsky S-70A Black Hawk helicopters, along with amphibious armored personnel carriers.17 Bahrain signed on for nine UH60M Black Hawk helicopters. That October, Qatar issued tenders to replace its aging British- and French-built fast patrol boats.18 Doha added C-130J Hercules and C-17A Globemaster III transports in the summer of 2008.19 At the same time, it was reported that Saudi Arabia had signed a two-billion-dollar contract with Russia for several types of combat helicopters; the kingdom was also said to be interested in obtaining front-line Russian fighter-bombers and T-90 tanks.20

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Not to be outdone, Iran sent its fleet of obsolete former Iraqi Su-25 fighterbombers to Georgia for refurbishment in the fall of 2006. The upgraded aircraft were joined by a half-dozen newer Su-25s, and placed under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).21 The IRGC also developed a single-engine hydroplane, equipped with a new generation torpedo (the Hoot) capable of overtaking any warship.22 At the beginning of 2008, the Islamic Republic commissioned the first locally produced stealth submarine, the Ghadir, and then opened a facility to manufacture larger Qaaem submarines armed with both Hoot torpedoes and underwater-to-surface guided missiles.23 At the end of 2008, Tehran deployed a number of locally made fast missile patrol boats to four IRGC bases located east of the Strait of Hormuz.24 Meanwhile, the Iranian armed forces took delivery of 29 Tor-M1 air defense missile batteries from Russia, and installed them at sites around the major military industrial centers of Isfahan and Bushehr.25 Two things are remarkable about these developments. First, there can be little doubt that the dramatic increase in armaments that one sees in the Persian Gulf has failed to make the states of the region any more secure than they had been in 1990 and, in most cases, has left them distinctly more vulnerable. Fears that Iran intended to exercise greater muscle in its dealings with surrounding states started to be expressed more frequently and vociferously by political figures and commentators in the GCC states as the fall of 2008 went by.26 Parliamentarians in Kuwait charged that some 25,000 members of the IRGC had infi ltrated the Arab Gulf states and were preparing to undermine existing regimes across the region. In a remarkable statement, the foreign minister of Bahrain warned that if diplomacy proved unsuccessful in maintaining security in the Persian Gulf, “we should not hesitate for one minute to resort to force in order to preserve our key interests.”27 A columnist for a leading UAE newspaper warned that as long as the Arab Gulf states remained incapable of working together to meet common threats, Iran would continue to expand its “regional presence and influence.”28 Second, the kinds of weaponry that Persian Gulf states have put into service in the last decade are particularly well-suited to attack and a good deal less useful for territorial defense, making the regional security dilemma much more dangerous.29 Arguably the most significant weapons systems that have been introduced into the area are the intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) that can be

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found in Saudi and Iranian arsenals. The Saudi missile force consists largely of obsolescent Chinese CSS-2 “East Wind” IRBMs, based at al-Kharj air base and the oasis of al-Sulayyil. These weapons have been supplemented with 60 Brazilian-made ASTROS-2 missile launchers. Iran’s force includes 200 more advanced CSS-8 IRBMs, three or four dozen longer-range M-11s, 200–300 SCUD-Bs, and about 150 SCUD-Cs.30 More important, Tehran has been developing locally produced IRBMs, including the Shahab-3 with a range of 1,300 kilometers (almost three times that of the SCUD-3) and the Ghadr-1 with a range of some 3,000 kilometers. In the spring of 2006, several new missiles were tested, including the Fajr-3 and C-802 Noor. A two-stage, solid propellant missile with a range of 2,500 kilometers, designated the ‘Ashura, was spotted at the end of 2007, and the following year a trio of new shorter-range missiles—the Fateh, Zelzal, and Samen—was tested.31 A more sophisticated two-stage weapon, the Sajil, was tested in November 2008.32 The proliferation of IRBMs has led Persian Gulf governments to take steps to acquire state-of-the-art ballistic missile defense systems. Iran began negotiating with Russia in late 2005 to purchase TOR-M1 surface-to-air missile batteries; a contract to deliver the weapons was finally signed a year later.33 Tehran has subsequently requested that Moscow supply it with the more advanced S-300 air defense system.34 In the fall of 2007 Saudi Arabia and Bahrain made efforts to upgrade their respective anti-missile capabilities. That December, the UAE started to replace its outdated Hawk and Rapier batteries with Russian Pantsyr-S1 and US Patriot systems, while Kuwait upgraded its stock of Patriot-2s to the more compact and accurate Patriot-3s.35 In September 2008, the UAE contracted with US manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) and AMRAAM units and ancillary equipment. Three months later, the UAE added more than three billion dollars worth of Patriot-3 systems. Additional Patriot components were ordered by the UAE in early February 2009. None of these systems has yet demonstrated an ability to protect a country’s territory from attack, but governments facing the prospect of a ballistic missile strike have little choice but to order such weapons and hope that improvements in radar and guidance technology will one day make it possible to shoot down incoming missiles before they arrive. Almost as dangerous as IRBMs are the modern warships that have become more and more ubiquitous in local navies. It is not accidental that the fast missile

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patrol boats that are currently deployed by Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE are commonly designated “fast attack craft” (FAC). Naval exercises in the region have increased in both scale and frequency in recent years as well. Beginning in the spring of 2006, Iranian commanders have carried out a succession of large-scale maneuvers that combine naval exercises with test firings of a wide range of ground-to-ground and anti-ship missile systems.36 More recent exercises have involved submarines and aerial drones, as well as the fast missile boats favored by the IRGC.37 Armed skirmishes between combat vessels and fishing boats have also become increasingly common and alarming.38 Under these circumstances, the potential for military conflict in the Persian Gulf, whether intended or not, remains high and appears likely to keep rising for the foreseeable future. T h e A l l i a nc e Di l e m m a In addition to the classic security dilemma, states in the Persian Gulf confront a fundamental dilemma concerning how to deal simultaneously with allies and adversaries. If a state acts belligerently toward an adversary, that state’s allies will be reassured of the continuing importance and strength of the alliance and will be tempted to carry out risky foreign policy initiatives that drag that state into unanticipated and unwanted conflicts. Glenn Snyder calls this dynamic “entrapment” because simply by trying to deal effectively with adversaries, states can find themselves inadvertently entangled in disputes in which they have no intrinsic interest.39 If, on the other hand, a state takes steps to accommodate or conciliate an adversary, that state’s allies are likely to become concerned that it is preparing to change partners. Allies are therefore tempted to make overtures to the adversary as well, a dynamic that Snyder labels “pre-emptive realignment.”40 Alternatively, anxious allies might well build bridges to other potential partners, a course of action that Snyder denotes “abandonment,” on the grounds that it leaves the first state on its own to deal with the adversary. Furthermore, it is important to distinguish between moderate and inordinate belligerence toward adversaries, as well as between moderate and inordinate conciliation, in analyzing the alliance dilemma. Instances of moderate hostility toward an adversary can indeed be expected to lead allies to undertake adventurous initiatives that create the possibility of entrapment in an unwanted conflict.

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By contrast, an outbreak of severe hostility with regard to an adversary is more likely to alarm allies than it is to reassure them. Inordinate belligerence toward an adversary can therefore be expected to reduce the potential for entrapment because allies will most likely curtail their own initiatives whenever they find themselves both uncertain that the alliance will survive the crisis and confronted with a high probability of general war. Along the same lines, moderately accommodative actions toward an adversary may well give allies a strong incentive to restrain themselves and take steps to realign preemptively. Extremely conciliatory actions, by contrast, are most likely to lead a state’s strategic partners to make a concerted effort to prop up the existing alliance. They can be expected to do this in order to forestall the rapid emergence of some new arrangement that might prove to be detrimental to their interests than is the status quo. Furthermore, allies are less likely to restrain themselves under these circumstances because: (a) they stand to lose nothing if the initiatives they undertake further alienate their (soon to be former) alliance partner, and (b) dangerous initiatives might actually persuade straying partners to return to the fold.41 Frustrated by Washington’s persistent unwillingness to address the Palestinian-Israel conflict and worried about Russia’s deepening economic and military ties to Tehran,42 Saudi Arabia dispatched Minister of the Interior Sheikh Nayif bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ud to Iran in April 2001, where he signed an unprecedented bilateral security agreement with the Islamic Republic. The pact covered a number of territorial and border issues, the policing of financial transactions and the trade in narcotics, and arrangements for water sharing. It accompanied discussions of the possibility of collaboration between Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation and the National Petroleum Company of Iran, as well as coordination among the two countries’ public sector financial institutions. Taken together, this cluster of overtures marked a notable upturn in relations between the two regional rivals. Faced with Riyad’s accelerating rapprochement with Tehran, other Persian Gulf states took steps to improve relations with Iran as well. In early May, Kuwait’s foreign minister told the newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat that his country “was mistaken in supporting Iraq in its war against Iran.”43 “Today,” he went on, “we consider friendship and co-operation with Iran the cornerstone of our national policy.” Kuwaiti officials concluded a security agreement with the

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Islamic Republic along the same lines as Saudi Arabia’s that July.44 Oman and the United Arab Emirates sent positive signals to Iran during the spring and summer of 2001 as well, although Bahrain charged the government in Tehran with stirring up unrest among its Shi‘i community.45 The Bahraini defense minister continued to express mistrust of Iranian intentions a year later, and King Hamad bin ‘Isa Al Khalifah’s official visit to Tehran in August 2002 failed to produce a security pact similar to those of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.46 Qatar also trailed behind on the path to better relations with the Islamic Republic and did not start to engage in talks concerning security matters until late January 2002.47 By the spring of 2003, however, all six GCC states had turned in the direction of cultivating closer ties to Iran.48 Saudi Arabia adjusted its posture toward the Islamic Republic once again at the end of 2006.49 The next January, King ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz warned the Iranian government to stop fomenting the spread of Shi’i doctrine and political activism across the Arab world in general and throughout southern Iraq in particular.50 Officials in Tehran responded with both conciliatory and belligerent signals: on the one hand, Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki invited the members of the GCC to join his government in setting up a regional consortium to develop peaceful nuclear energy;51 on the other, the foreign ministry accused Riyad of conspiring with Washington to inject greater quantities of US armaments into the Persian Gulf.52 More tellingly, Saudi Arabia’s turn to a more hostile stance vis-à-vis Iran prompted Qatar to take steps to reconcile with Riyad.53 Bahrain, by contrast, unexpectedly charged that the ongoing Iranian nuclear research program was designed to create a nuclear arsenal and that more strenuous efforts needed to be made to prevent that from happening.54 Faced with this outburst on Manama’s part, the Saudi leadership moved to calm the situation by inviting President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to perform the pilgrimage.55 Iran in turn offered to supply natural gas to Bahrain at attractive rates and sent Foreign Minister Mottaki to inaugurate a joint Bahrain-Iran economic commission in mid-December.56 The restoration of a conciliatory atmosphere between Saudi Arabia and Iran encouraged Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar to boost ties to Tehran as well. Kuwait made it clear that it would not permit US forces to attack Iran from bases located on Kuwaiti territory, 57 while the UAE and Qatar sent their respective prime ministers to the Iranian capital to discuss ways to augment trade and investment.58 Similarly, the foreign ministers of Qatar

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and Oman traveled to Damascus in March 2008 to take part in deliberations concerning the crisis in Lebanon with their Iranian and Syrian counterparts.59 Saudi antagonism toward the Islamic Republic flared more seriously in August 2008, following a pair of provocative pronouncements by Iranian officials. Prominent members of the kingdom’s advisory council (Majlis al-Shura) told reporters that such statements reflected Iran’s long-standing objectives of undermining neighboring governments and grasping at regional predominance, by force if necessary.60 As tensions escalated between Riyad and Tehran, the UAE reasserted its claim to the Iranian-occupied islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, charging that Iranian officials had abrogated the memorandum of understanding that governed affairs on the islands.61 The UAE authorities then implemented new restrictions on financial and commercial transactions involving Iranian companies.62 Qatar, by contrast, responded to Riyad’s escalating antagonism toward Tehran by inviting the Islamic Republic to send a representative to the 2008 GCC summit in Muscat.63 Whereas moderate Saudi overtures to Iran prompted the kingdom’s allies to move in the direction of preemptive realignment with Tehran, closer relations with Baghdad on the part of the smaller GCC states seem to have been driven by inordinate Saudi hostility toward Iraq. In June 2001, the government in Riyad charged that Iraqi troops had carried out a dozen armed incursions across the border into Saudi territory, and it retaliated by seizing control of a major oil pipeline linking southern Iraq to the Red Sea.64 At almost the same time, a high-ranking Omani delegation visited Baghdad to revive the joint committees that had been inactive for a decade and to discuss the possibility of setting up a bilateral free trade area.65 Faced with the possibility that other GCC states might engage in some sort of preemptive realignment, Saudi officials hastily changed course and exhibited an unusual degree of warmth toward Iraq’s representatives at the March 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut.66 This unexpected rapprochement with Baghdad pulled Saudi Arabia’s allies along in its wake. At the Beirut summit, Kuwaiti officials agreed to accept an Iraqi pledge to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighboring states.67 Qatar went even further and signed a free-trade pact with Iraq in the aftermath of the meeting.68 Such enthusiasm for heightened cooperation with Baghdad set the stage for a falling-out between Doha and Riyad, which took shape later that summer.69

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As the clouds of war darkened over the Persian Gulf in the fall and winter of 2002–3, the Saudi government reverted to a posture of guarded antagonism in its dealings with Iraq.70 Such moderate belligerence on Riyad’s part opened the door for Kuwait and Qatar to engage in remarkably provocative initiatives. The authorities in Kuwait flatly rejected an unprecedented apology from Iraqi president Saddam Husayn regarding the 1990 invasion and demanded that Baghdad immediately account for hundreds of Kuwaiti citizens whose whereabouts remained unknown. The hostility of Kuwait’s response caught Iraqi officials offguard and led a prominent member of the National Assembly to remark that Baghdad now “had the right to view Kuwait’s hosting of US troops, as well as Iraqi opposition leaders (‘traitors’), as a ‘lack of respect for our security and sovereignty.’”71 At the same time, Qatar concluded a military pact with the United States that reaffirmed Washington’s prerogative to use local facilities to carry out operations against Iraq. Even as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Qatari foreign minister were affi xing their names to the document, US commanders were engaged in a large-scale simulated war game at the headquarters of the Central Command at Al ‘Udayd air base.72 Such moves significantly aggravated the gathering crisis across the region. Riyad adopted a largely passive policy toward Baghdad following the overthrow of Saddam Husayn.73 Bahrain took advantage of the lull in Saudi-Iraqi hostility to build bridges to Baghdad and to strengthen existing ties with Washington. Manama welcomed Iraq’s interim president, Ghazi al-Yawwar, in November 2004 and set up one of the first postwar Arab diplomatic missions in the Iraqi capital. In January 2004, Bahraini and US representatives began meeting to work out the terms of a bilateral free-trade agreement, which was finalized that September. The pact antagonized the Saudi government, whose spokespeople condemned the agreement on the grounds that it interfered with long-standing plans to set up a GCC free-trade area. Nevertheless, the UAE almost immediately started negotiations with Washington to create a similar bilateral arrangement. Officials in Abu Dhabi likewise permitted US commanders to undertake improvements to the air base at al-Dhafra that would enable the facility to support US warplanes more effectively. By mid-2008, even Kuwait had taken steps to strengthen relations with Iraq.74 Such initiatives not only undermined Saudi Arabia’s dominant position in inter–Arab Gulf affairs but also, and more important, undercut whatever unity the GCC states might have pursued in their dealings with Iran and

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Iraq and threatened to drag the region into a wider range of global rivalries and disputes than ever before. E x t e r na l De fe nse V e r sus I n t e r na l Sta bi l i t y A third dilemma related to security in the contemporary Persian Gulf is one that Clive Jones highlights in analyzing Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy during and after the Second Gulf War.75 When Iraqi troops overran Kuwait in August 1990, Riyad confronted the crucial decision of whether to build up its own armed forces or to turn to the United States and other outside powers for protection. The Saudi government ended up choosing to rely on the US armed forces to provide defense from the pressing external threat because ramping up the kingdom’s own military establishment would have been almost prohibitively expensive, would have taken too long to implement, and might well have upset the domestic order by strengthening the Saudi officers’ corps in unprecedented ways. Nevertheless, overtly relying on the US military greatly diminished the internal legitimacy of the Saudi regime. The kingdom therefore found itself a good deal less secure in the wake of the 1990–91 war than it had been before.76 In other Arab states of the Persian Gulf, the legitimacy of the political system has been considerably less tightly bound up with claims of religious purity than it is in Saudi Arabia. Establishing ties to a great power patron as a means to defend the country from outside threats has therefore had less direct impact on the regime’s inherent right to rule. Such connections have, however, tended to mobilize popular discontent in ways that the authorities did not anticipate and generally lacked the ability to suppress without resorting to force. As the US military presence in Bahrain increased in size and visibility at the turn of the twenty-first century, for example, popular protests against the government’s strategic partnership with Washington became more frequent and widespread. Some five hundred protesters took part in a demonstration organized by Islamist activists in October 2002, which culminated in a public rally at which speakers demanded that the authorities terminate the US navy’s use of headquarters and docking facilities at al-Jufair.77 Three months later, more than a thousand people, including parliamentary representatives and human rights activists, marched through Manama to protest preparations for the military offensive against Iraq. One of the slogans that was chanted by the participants

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was “No US bases in Muslim countries.”78 These demonstrations reinvigorated grassroots collective action in the country, which had dissipated in the wake of the 1994–99 uprising.79 Kuwait illustrates a different way in which overt reliance on the US armed forces has created domestic political difficulties for the regime. Only a small minority of Kuwaiti citizens harbors anti-American sentiments in the wake of the 1990–91 Iraqi occupation of the country. Nevertheless, the long-term presence of large numbers of US military personnel has accompanied, and arguably even produced, a steady shift in general political attitudes from fervent nationalism to heightened religiosity.80 The change has boosted popular discontent and galvanized rival Salafi and Shi‘i forces, thereby contributing to an increase in radical Islamist influence in local politics.81 Immediately after the May 2008 parliamentary elections, Salafi representatives set up a commission charged with investigating “the negative effects of foreign phenomena” in the country.82 It is not inconceivable that the current leadership in Tehran faces a similar predicament. One of the central tenets of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic has been to avoid relying on either “east or west.” Over the last five years, however, shared strategic and economic interests have drawn Iran and Russia ever closer together. Moscow’s commitment to assist Tehran’s nuclear research program has even survived the otherwise universal opprobrium that the project has elicited in the international community.83 Well-placed Russian commentators have taken advantage of the burgeoning alignment to broach the possibility that Russian military forces might gain access to bases on the Iranian shore of the Caspian Sea and Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf, perhaps in return for delivering advanced missile defense systems.84 Any further tightening of Russian-Iranian ties can be expected to exacerbate criticism of the Ahmadinejad administration, particularly among bazaaris and fierce nationalists who supported the president’s 2005 campaign.85 The dilemma of external defense versus internal stability entails a further paradox: to the extent that states in the Persian Gulf implement securityproducing programs of their own, rather than contracting with extraregional powers to provide defense for them, they are likely to pay a higher price for external security but will be better able to keep domestic dissidents in check. Radical opposition groups can be expected to respond by moving their operations to neighboring countries. If, on the other hand, Persian Gulf governments

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construct strategic partnerships with outside powers, they are almost certain to enjoy less expensive and more effective military capabilities, but they will also face higher levels of dissident activity. Radical organizations will have much less incentive, however, to move to neighboring countries. Governments thus face an impossible choice between a policy that entails substantial cost and effectively exports dissidents, thereby jeopardizing regional stability, and one that is much cheaper and generates significant opposition at home, but poses less of a threat to the region as a whole. Saudi Arabia’s effort to curtail security ties to the US beginning in mid-2003 illustrates this dilemma. In the wake of the 1990–91 Gulf War Riyad opened the door to a massive US military presence, precipitating both vocal criticisms and sporadic attacks on government installations by radical Islamists of various stripes. Such attacks escalated in both scale and frequency shortly after the outbreak of the Third Gulf War in March 2003, prompting the Saudi government to initiate a concerted campaign to squeeze US troops out of the kingdom and to augment its own military and internal security apparatuses. As the US presence rapidly diminished, militant Islamist activity just as abruptly trailed off.86 Yet in July 2004 the security services in Bahrain announced that they had uncovered and rounded up a previously unknown cell of Islamist militants, whose members had trained in Saudi Arabia.87 Shortly thereafter, the Bahraini authorities signed a free-trade agreement with the United States, which effectively undercut long-standing GCC plans to set up a free-trade area. The Saudi finance minister immediately condemned the pact and threatened to impose duties on all goods entering the kingdom through Bahrain.88 The row soured Bahraini-Saudi relations for almost a year and significantly delayed progress toward regional economic integration. Ou tsi de Pat ronage V e r sus R e giona l I nsu l a r i t y The contemporary Persian Gulf states face a further dilemma in their relations with extraregional powers. So long as all of the governments in the region refrain from forging partnerships with powerful countries outside the Persian Gulf, it remains possible for this part of the world to avoid the complications associated with rivalries and disputes in the broader global arena. If, on the other hand, any state chooses to create an alliance with one or more external powers, that state

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is likely to gain a strategic advantage in regional affairs. And if one country does establish a firm relationship with an outside patron, the other Persian Gulf states will have a strong incentive to construct partnerships with extraregional powers as well. The resulting proliferation of entangling alliances can be expected to inject global conflicts into the regional arena, to the detriment of overall Persian Gulf stability. For three decades after British forces pulled out of the region, the United States was the only great power to play a major role in Persian Gulf affairs.89 Local governments took pains to keep their strategic ties to Washington as limited and low-key as possible, and although the Ba‘thi regime in Baghdad did welcome economic and military assistance from Moscow, it did little to encourage a sustained Soviet presence in the northern Persian Gulf.90 The post-revolutionary leadership in Iran pursued a strict foreign policy of “neither East nor West,” which in practice led it to shun connections with any extraregional power. Not even the Second Gulf War of 1990–91, which attracted elements of the German and Japanese armed forces to the area, persuaded the Persian Gulf states to pursue alliances with any country besides the United States. Under these circumstances, diplomacy in this corner of the world remained safely insulated from a host of global rivalries and disputes. By the last decade of the twentieth century, however, the Persian Gulf’s splendid isolation had started to deteriorate. As early as 1987, the Saudi armed forces had taken steps to reduce the kingdom’s dependence on the US for armaments by purchasing three dozen CSS-2 intermediate range ballistic missiles from the People’s Republic of China.91 Saudi commanders initiated negotiations with Beijing about replacing these weapons with newer Chinese missiles in 1995.92 Meanwhile, Kuwait signed a long-term defense pact with Washington that provided for the prepositioning of US arms and supplies, unrestricted US access to Kuwaiti ports, the construction of “inter-operable” air bases, and a series of joint military exercises. Bahrain concluded a parallel agreement, according to whose terms the United States set up a forward headquarters for the Central Command on the islands. Subsequent bilateral security accords were drawn up with Qatar and the UAE.93 To offset US military predominance in the area, the government of Iran purchased a large quantity of HY-2 “Silkworm” ship-to-ship missiles from China in the late 1980s. Tehran contracted with China in 1997 to supply twenty fast patrol

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boats equipped with more advanced C-802 ship-to-ship missiles.94 Tehran welcomed China’s foreign minister in February 2000; Iranian president Muhammad Khatami returned the visit in June, and then traveled to Tokyo that November. At the same time, the new regime in Baghdad initiated contact with China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India. These ties were primarily commercial and financial in nature, but they laid a foundation for strategic relations in the future. During the fall of 2001, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation started work on a prototype missile attack catamaran that was designed specifically for use in the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf.95 Earlier that same year, a Japanese task force consisting of the destroyer Yamagiri and the training ship Kashima called at the port of Bandar ‘Abbas as part of a year-long familiarization cruise. An Iranian military spokesperson told reporters that the purpose of the stop was “to convey a message of peace and to introduce the cultures of other countries to the Japanese officers.”96 US military activity in and around the Persian Gulf surged in the wake of the September 2001 attacks on New York and northern Virginia. New large-scale army and air force bases were constructed for US forces in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Additional US naval units were deployed to the Persian Gulf on a rotating basis throughout 2002–3. Shortly after American troops moved into Iraq in March 2003, officials in Washington announced plans to build four major military installations in that country and to station troops there for the foreseeable future.97 The announcement coincided with steps to transfer US command and control operations in the Persian Gulf from Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia to Al ‘Udayd air base in Qatar. US military engineers subsequently upgraded port and runway facilities in the UAE to support American warships and transport aircraft. In short, the American presence in the region became both more comprehensive and more firmly entrenched around the time of the Third Gulf War and showed every sign of persisting indefinitely. The dramatic expansion of the US military in the region sparked efforts by other great powers to offset Washington’s predominance. Six Japanese warships took up positions north of Diego Garcia during October and November 2001, and Japan’s high command apparently put pressure on Washington in April 2002 to invite Tokyo to deploy additional Aegis destroyers and P-3C patrol planes to forward stations in the Indian Ocean.98 In the midst of these moves, Chinese president Jiang Zemin paid an official visit to Tehran, telling his hosts that “Beijing’s

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policy is [to stand] against strategies of force and the US military presence in Central Asia and the Middle East region.”99 Japan responded to China’s increasingly activist policy by dispatching one thousand combat troops to Iraq, marking the first time since 1945 that Tokyo had deployed ground forces overseas except under the mantle of United Nations peacekeeping operations.100 Tehran scrambled not only to strengthen ties to China in the winter and spring of 2003 but also to build bridges to India. A cluster of bilateral agreements, including one to share intelligence on radical Islamist organizations, was signed that January and February.101 It was also reported that the authorities in Tehran had agreed to permit Indian forces to use bases on Iranian territory if war erupted between India and Pakistan.102 Even as US troops launched the assault on Baghdad at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, warships from the Iranian and Indian navies carried out joint maneuvers just outside the Strait of Hormuz.103 Iranian commanders subsequently arranged for Indian companies to modernize their aging military aircraft and naval vessels and to develop a new generation of batteries to replace the ones that had come with their former Soviet submarines. Tehran also contracted with New Delhi to improve the port of Shahbahar at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. In return, the Islamic Republic offered to share details of its Fajr-3 missile system and Hadaf-300 drone aircraft.104 Saudi Arabia’s King ‘Abdullah undertook an official tour of China, India, Malaysia, and Pakistan in January 2006, stopping first in Beijing. Observers speculated that one item on the king’s agenda was the possibility of purchasing CSS-5 or CSS-6 intermediate-range ballistic missiles.105 In the Indian capital, ‘Abdullah signed the “Delhi Declaration” that inaugurated a formal partnership in energy, investment, and combating terrorism. Russian president Vladimir Putin visited Riyad early in 2007. The president discussed with the king long-standing differences of opinion between Russia and Saudi Arabia over optimal levels of oil production, and then broached the touchy topic of what kind of advice Moscow might be willing to provide concerning nuclear power.106 Putin also engaged in preliminary negotiations to supply the Saudi armed forces with 150 T-90 tanks and a number of Mi-17 attack helicopters. From Riyad, the Russian president flew to Doha, where he discussed the possibility of setting up an international natural gas cartel along the lines of the Organization of Petroleum Export Countries. Tehran countered by consolidating its partnership with India and resuscitating relations with Russia. A second round of combined Iranian-Indian naval

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maneuvers took place in March 2006. Indian intelligence agents subsequently set up listening posts at Bandar Abbas and Zahedan to keep track of military and commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf.107 The two countries also stepped up joint projects in the areas of missile and satellite development and space research.108 In January 2007, the secretary of Russia’s national security council visited Tehran and met with Supreme Leader ‘Ali Khamenei. The latter reportedly proposed that the two countries enter into a “strategic alliance against common adversaries.”109 The proposal was fleshed out when Iran’s former foreign minister, ‘Ali Velayati, met with Putin in Moscow in February. October 2007 brought the Russian president to Tehran to attend the second meeting of Caspian heads of state. The summit issued a declaration that pledged Russia and Iran to work together to prevent the area around the Caspian Sea from being “used by other states.”110 President Ahmadinejad then met privately with Putin, and told reporters afterward that “Russia’s power is our power and vice versa.”111 Two months later, the Iranian minister of defense announced that his country’s armed forces were going to take delivery of Russian S-300 air defense batteries, although this statement was quickly denied by the Russian government.112 The UAE joined the rush to cultivate additional great power patrons as 2007 drew to close. President Putin visited Abu Dhabi in September, bringing with him the head of the state company that supervises Russian arms exports. Details of Putin’s discussions with President Khalifah bin Zayid Al Nuhayyan were not disclosed, but earlier reports that the UAE was interested in obtaining advanced Sukhoi fighter-bombers and air defense missile batteries were not denied. The two leaders signed a number of agreements concerning security and intelligence sharing.113 In February 2008, the UAE concluded a bilateral security pact with France, which authorized the French armed forces to construct two military docking facilities and housing for four hundred troops.114 That October, the French air force stationed three Mirage 2000-5Fs at al-Dhafra air base “as part of the effort to establish a permanent presence in the UAE.”115 In addition, the UAE concluded a defense agreement with China in April 2008; the Chinese defense minister toured the Persian Gulf seven months later, making stops in the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman.116 Finally, Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding with the GCC countries in September 2008, which was “aimed at achieving two goals: balancing the rising and provocative Iranian weight, and preparing against any ‘power vacuum’ in the Persian Gulf that might arise due

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to dramatic developments that could befall the American military and political presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.”117 By aligning with such a wide range of extraregional powers, the Persian Gulf states have catapulted themselves into a maelstrom of global rivalries and disputes, which these governments had previously been able to sidestep or ignore. Among the most intense stands the contest between China and India for strategic advantage in south and southeast Asia.118 These two giants continue to harbor conflicting views as to where the precise territorial boundary between them should be drawn.119 Tensions escalated as New Delhi steadily moved closer to Washington and Canberra and made unprecedented overtures to Vietnam and the Philippines.120 Beijing responded to India’s diplomatic and military initiatives by aligning itself more closely with Myanmar and Pakistan. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) now enjoys access to new deep-water ports at Hainggyi island and Gwadar, which were constructed by Chinese engineers to PLA-N specifications.121 And as China closed ranks with Pakistan, India launched a major campaign to spread its influence across central Eurasia, in a bid to outflank its two primary adversaries.122 Relations between Russia and Japan remain precarious as well. The two countries continue to dispute sovereignty over the southern Kuril islands, a latent conflict that came close to erupting into a military confrontation in the summer and fall of 2006.123 Indications that the Japanese government plans to augment the country’s armed forces and grant it greater latitude in defining its overall mission and specific operational tasks has further fueled mutual mistrust and friction.124 More pronounced than the simmering Russian-Japanese rivalry is the ongoing struggle between Moscow and Washington for influence over central Eurasia. US commanders gained access to air bases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan shortly after the September 2001 attacks. In February 2002, some two hundred US Special Forces personnel arrived in Georgia as part of a comprehensive training mission to improve the antiguerrilla capabilities of the local armed forces.125 A month later, US officers held exploratory talks with their Azerbaijani counterparts concerning joint training exercises around the Caspian Sea.126 Six months after that, US officials earmarked five million US dollars to upgrade an abandoned Soviet air base on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast, so that it could handle frontline military aircraft.127 “American intrusion into what was previously

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regarded as a Russian preserve [immediately] raised alarms in Moscow.”128 Pushed by the general staff, President Putin negotiated agreements to set up new air bases in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan and sharply augmented Russian forces in Tajikistan. Moscow sponsored the creation of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in April 2003 to coordinate military operations on the part of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia.129 Meanwhile, US and Turkish advisers were becoming more deeply entrenched in the military establishments of Georgia and Azerbaijan.130 At the same time, Russia and China have become more rivals than partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). As Russell Ong observes, “China has taken an active role in promoting the SCO, largely out of self-interest. Beijing’s aims in the region are three-fold: to weed out separatist activities on its western front, to counter US and Russian influence in the region and to act as a responsible great power in Central Asia.” More important, “promotion of the SCO means the Central Asian countries will be less reliant on Russian-sponsored plans for achieving state and regional security. . . . In general, China aims to pull the former Soviet Central Asian republics further away from the grip of their ex-overlord. The SCO has in many ways served as a device for Beijing to increase its influence over Central Asian states while checking Russian hegemony in the region.”131 The struggle for preeminence within the SCO has led Beijing to push for Pakistan to be included in the organization, while Moscow has lobbied for India to be permitted to join.132 And it has also prompted Russia to ramp up the CSTO as a counterweight to the SCO.133 Jockeying among Russia, China, and the US for influence in central Eurasia has already had a direct impact on the security of Iran. In 1998, Azerbaijan declared that the Caspian Sea should be divided up among the five littoral states, in strict proportion to the length of each country’s coastline.134 Iran and Russia quickly denounced the proposal and insisted that control should instead be allocated in accordance with a pair of treaties that had been signed by Tehran and Moscow in 1921 and 1940. The Russian government then made a deal with Kazakhstan to split up the northern half of the sea between themselves. Iran responded by demanding that the Caspian either be exploited in common or divided into five equal shares. This regional dispute heated up and took on wider geopolitical implications as the US bolstered its strategic partnership with Azerbaijan. US commanders

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provided the Azerbaijani coast guard with fast patrol boats and proposed that Baku serve as headquarters for a Caspian Guard to monitor all air and maritime activities in the area.135 Emboldened both by its tightening connections to Washington and by Moscow’s strenuous attempts to woo it away,136 Baku has persistently raised the stakes, thereby threatening not only Tehran’s long-run interests but also the immediate safety of Iranian commercial shipping and oil exploration crews. The Iranian government’s attempts to conciliate Azerbaijan by offering to supply the country with oil and gas at substantially reduced prices have so far failed to diminish the potential for armed conflict around the Caspian Sea.137 C onc lusion Four crucial security dilemmas confront the contemporary states of the Persian Gulf. These dilemmas force governments in this part of the world to choose between fundamentally incompatible courses of action. First, each state must decide whether to forgo security-producing programs and trust that surrounding states will take no steps that threaten its strategic interests or instead to devote significant resources to implementing such programs and run the risk of antagonizing its neighbors. Second, each country finds itself torn between adopting a belligerent posture toward its primary adversary, thereby reassuring its strategic partners of their continuing importance and raising the possibility that allies will entrap it in a tangential conflict, or instead taking steps to conciliate the adversary, thereby tempting allies either to realign preemptively or to carry out dangerous initiatives in an attempt to convince it to preserve the status quo. Third, Persian Gulf governments face the choice between building up their own armed forces or contracting with outside powers to provide for their defense; the former is both costly and inefficient, while the latter may well undermine the legitimacy of the regime or ignite dissident movements that jeopardize domestic stability. Finally, states in the region confront the dilemma of whether to forge partnerships with extraregional powers or instead to try to keep the Gulf insulated from long-standing global rivalries. For the most part, the Arab Gulf states and the Islamic Republic of Iran alike have opted to engage in high levels of military spending, to contract with external powers to provide key elements of their defense, and to open the Gulf to broader international rivalries. These decisions raise the potential for conflict

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in regional affairs, while at the same time increasing the likelihood that outside powers will be drawn into local disputes. Yet alternative courses of action entail equally problematic outcomes. Any state that chooses not to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles or to build up a modern navy would quickly find itself at a disadvantage in dealings with its neighbors; a government that attempted to protect its territory and population by its own devices would leave itself vulnerable to neighbors that cultivated great power patrons; and leaderships that tried to keep global tensions at bay would almost certainly be caught off-guard when broader struggles at last crashed through the door. It remains to explore precisely how these four dilemmas interact with one another. There can be little doubt that they generally work to prevent the Gulf states from achieving, and maintaining, a satisfactory level of security. But which dynamic will be the most important, and under what circumstances it dominates policy-making, must be a task for future research. Scholars have started to investigate the factors that mitigate the most dangerous aspects of the classic security dilemma. One can only hope that future studies will uncover parallel dynamics that can contribute to the effective management of the other three.

Foreign Policy in the GCC States Steven Wright

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have a unique importance in terms of foreign policy in that despite their small size, their role as strategic energy exporters has allowed them to assume and cultivate power on the international level. The monarchial states of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar are by no means militarily powerful, or indeed hegemons within the region, yet their reach is considerably beyond their respective geopolitical positions. They play critical roles throughout the wider Middle East and are collectively power brokers in their own right. Intellectual interest in these monarchial states is well established, yet debate exists on the most appropriate means of analyzing them, that is to say, the process of drawing useful conclusions and identifying potentially predictive indicators concerning their foreign policies. Security studies and analyses of oil geopolitics have dominated recent work on the collective foreign policies of the Persian Gulf states. Yet few studies have been conducted on the GCC states’ individual foreign policies. This chapter seeks to offer an overview of the conceptual frameworks for analysis of the foreign policies of the GCC states, while also drawing attention to the need for both a multilevel and a multicontextual analysis. Indeed, it is argued here that this recent approach, adopted notably by Ehteshami, Hinnebusch, and Nonneman, is the most appropriate form of analysis for examining the GCC states.1 This objective of this chapter will be first to provide an overview of the competing conceptual frameworks on the foreign policies of the GCC states, attempting to justify a particular foreign policy analysis methodological framework. It will then survey three levels of analysis (domestic, regional, and international) to demonstrate why and how they are relevant to looking at GCC foreign policies. 72

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C om pet i ng C onc e p t ua l F r a m e wor k s Most commonly in foreign policy construction, the character of the geopolitical neighborhood and the question of relative power constitute the historical basis on which both threats and opportunities are calculated. Much scholarship on the Gulf region has generally been a reflection of this, as there has been a tendency to offer a realist analysis through the perspective of state-driven power interests or through the role of oil geopolitics.2 The dominance of the realist approach has led to a focus on power balancing relationships and security studies and on the analytical treatment of states as entities with a degree of uniformity whose rational calculations take place on an anarchic chessboard. In certain respects, this overuse of the realist perspective was a product of the analytical lens with which North American and European academics have traditionally viewed international relations, given the benchmark set by the long-standing backdrop of cold war power relationships. Within such a prism, the question of the Gulf states’ relative power in the international sphere, as well as within the region, was understood more by their role, capacity, and international security backing as oil producing nations than by national capacity in a traditional sense.3 Such Hobbesian interpretations view a security dilemma as a natural product of international relations, an assumption particularly applicable to the Persian Gulf subregion given the area’s regional militarization and endemic insecurity. The Middle East can, after all, lay claim to the long-standing and intense Arab-Israeli confl ict, in addition to a range of security challenges in the Persian Gulf, not the least of which involve the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even with the nuanced approach of neo-realism, different levels of analysis or structure-agency debate retained a system-level focus, despite recognition by Kenneth Waltz that structural factors operating below the traditional sphere had a degree of influence. Although Waltz highlights different levels of causation, he argues that the systematic nature of the international level of analysis renders it the most appropriate means for explaining the restrictions and imperatives by which states operate.4 While such an analytical framework can offer useful explanations for regional and global phenomena, especially in the form of predictive generalizations, it suffers from a lack of detail and can be overly general.5 When applied to the Persian Gulf region, the weakness of such an approach lies

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in its lack of ability to explain the way in which the six GCC states displayed friction and cooperation simultaneously, while coalescing around common security issues. This behavior, through which the Gulf states selectively “bandwagon” together, coupled with a historical tribal context in which decision making occurs, raises concerns that a more region-suitable and contextual analytical framework is needed for the Persian Gulf region. Despite the relevance of such theories to security-driven analysis of the Gulf region—an area that is anarchic in character because of a number of protracted insecurity issues—the applicability of these approaches must be questioned. As Hinnebusch reminds us, the states in question are largely “unconsolidated” sovereign states, thus their behavior in responding to such insecurity is less affected by system-level factors than realists would have us expect.6 Such states are said to be in the process of consolidating their foreign policies, so the realist expectation of a system-level rational actor must be called into question. For this reason, realism’s rival theories are better suited for explaining certain foreign policy behavior prevalent in the Persian Gulf region. J. David Singer’s classic study of the problem posed by differing levels of analysis suggests that a more balanced approach, one incorporating nationallevel analysis in a realist framework, will provide a better understanding of state action.7 Only through appreciating policy formation on a national level can its origins and context be truly appreciated. In some respects, this is commensurate with Stephen David’s model of omnibalancing, which seeks to incorporate both systematic and domestic political levels for explaining the foreign policy behaviour of developing countries.8 Although the model is highly useful in drawing attention to context, it falls short of being a comprehensive analytical framework. Constructivism, as defined by Wendt, among others, offers an additional critique of the assumptions of the realist school. Constructivism focuses on the social construction of assumptions through continuously shared ideas, social practice and interactions. By viewing the structure of international relations as a social construct rather than a Hobbesian product, constructivist assumptions are viewed as theoretically subjective and thus of little value in offering useful, predictive conclusions. Although such an approach has clear merits in that it recognizes and gives equal weight to both the domestic and system-level analysis, it is nonetheless challenged by structural approaches that examine materialistic core-periphery relations through an often broadly labeled Marxist perspective.

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Although the premise of a Marxian perspective remains at a structural level, as it does in realist interpretations, the focus here is on a capitalist economic, or materialist, lens. While such dependency frameworks have applicability in the Persian Gulf context, they should not be over-relied upon. In their role within the international economic system as strategic energy suppliers, the Gulf region’s rentier oil monarchies show a compatibility of interests between the core and the periphery rather than a clear confl ict. Indeed, the ruling elites of the GCC states are integrated through an increasingly globalized world to the core. Still, the Marxian grounded perspective remains useful in that it draws attention to the domestic dynamics within the oil monarchies, highlighting the ways in which rapid economic development through oil rentierism has played a role in inspiring reactionary forces such as political Islam—Iran being a case in point.9 Evidently, such domestic political forces have significant bearing on foreign policy outcomes. The approaches outlined above underscore the complexity of foreign policy determinants and outcomes in Middle Eastern states, and the states of the Persian Gulf in particular. “Foreign policy analysis” as a tool of analysis has evolved in the literature on the international relations of the Middle East as a more suitable conceptual framework and appropriate means of overcoming such inherent theoretical limitations when examining the Persian Gulf subregion.10 The systematic attempt by Korany and Dessouki to provide a body of work that analyzed Arab foreign policies in a clear regional subsystem represents the benchmark for scholarship on Middle Eastern international relations.11 It is, however, only with the more recent approaches offered by Hinnebusch and Ehteshami that an alternative and more region-suitable approach has surfaced.12 This foreign policy analysis approach to the Middle Eastern rests on many of the same premises as does the realist approach insofar as it recognizes the anarchy and insecurity inherent in the international system and acknowledges the rational power balancing strategies of states. At the same time, it appropriately recognizes that the extent to which a state is consolidated has a bearing on the way in which the state interacts at the system level. Given the historical backdrop, endemic insecurity, and ongoing state-building strategies, the states in the Middle East, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula, should not be viewed as consolidated entities in their own right. With this in mind, the foreign policy analysis approach seeks to offer a multilevel and multicausal analytical framework

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that can be placed in context.13 By appreciating simultaneously the domestic, regional, and international spheres, a more nuanced analysis can be undertaken, yielding a richer—and ultimately more valid—understanding of foreign policy determinates and practice in the Persian Gulf subregion. It is within this conceptual understanding that the next section of this chapter will seek to demonstrate how these contextual and multilayered factors have relevance to understanding the foreign policies of the GCC states. The discussion will begin with a look at domestic-level factors. It will elucidate the continued relevance of domestic history, decision-making processes, and sociopolitical and economic contexts. The chapter will then analyze the regional context, and will conclude with a discussion of international-level factors. H istory a n d For e ign P ol ic y History plays a key role in understanding driving forces and outcomes, a concept that is commonly acknowledged in the course of foreign policy analysis.14 Each country in the Persian Gulf subregion can claim a shared regional history, but also a unique, long-standing, and rich domestic history of its own. Geopolitical rivalries and shared interests commonly flow from such legacies. For the Persian Gulf region, Islam has proved to be both the overarching, unifying force among the GCC states and a source of rivalry and hostility, given the Sunni Arab and the Shi‘a Persian divide. Indeed, this divergence has been felt within the GCC itself, given Bahrain’s unique sectarian character and turbulent internal history, which has sparked that nation’s domestic challenges. Iran’s well-documented backing of a coup attempt in Bahrain in 1981,15 in the wake of the trauma and turbulence created by the Iranian revolution, illustrates the way religion proves a driving force for foreign policy, not only for Iran, but also for Saudi Arabia, who led a response to this challenge to their domestic legitimacy and national identity.16 Islam has also proved to be a unifying force within the southern Persian Gulf region. This is particularly evident among the GCC states, whose state apparatuses have the Shari‘a as a clear source of legislation.17 In many respects, Islamic identity and the upholding of its virtues is uniformly linked to the legitimacy of the governments and ruling elites in this context. Indeed, Hassan al-Alkim draws attention to the manner in which Islam has been used as a force to combat Nasser-inspired Arab nationalism,18 in addition to the cold war threat of secular

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communism, vigorously opposed by Saudi Arabia in particular.19 Although religion has played a critical role in the development of the Persian Gulf subregion, the presence and activities of foreign powers in the area have historically also been equally important forces in shaping the contemporary character and interstate challenges in the area. Several nonregional powers have been able to achieve a decisive presence in the subregion. Even in more recent times, the presence of the United States underlines the continuing cycle of foreign powers exerting their influential, and sometimes commanding, presences in the region, all the while maintaining the status quo. This region has historically been the staging ground for geopolitical and foreign power competition. In 1507, the Portuguese became involved in the Persian Gulf region to further their security interests by protecting their merchant shipping routes, and also to continue what they saw as the natural expansion of their colonial domains.20 For the Portuguese, the Persian Gulf “was always that of an outpost in a border zone that served as India’s first line of defense, and at the same time functional as the tap to control the traffic of goods monopolized by the Crown.”21 Similarly, the Dutch relationship with Iran, stemming primarily from trade interests, allowed Holland to become an ancillary power to the Portuguese following the Portuguese-Dutch peace treaty of 1661.22 Such external powers not only came to be dominant military forces within the region, but, given their monopoly over trade from the area, also the area’s primary commercial powers. With the entry of the British East India Company to the Persian Gulf in 1618 in Jask, and the subsequent establishment of the British Residency in 1763, relationships crafted with particular tribes emerged through a series of Maritime Treaties. These relationships are critical to understanding how and why the state system came into being in the Arabian Peninsula. The smaller oil-rich Arab monarchies were able to survive in the turbulent and competitive region thanks largely to the protection they received from Britain. In several respects, the desire of the smaller states to seek protection from a foreign power has a historical legacy.23 World War I presented an opportunity whereby the interests of the Persian Gulf’s smaller Arab states and the British Crown coalesced: Britain’s desire for a greater controlling influence within the Gulf was compatible with the small states’ objective of achieving security. In the case of Qatar, this ultimately led to the signing of a special “protectorate” treaty with Britain in 1916, similar

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to the treaties that the other Gulf states had signed previously.24 The increased commitment from Britain to the Persian Gulf was clearly a result of its own national interest in the new era of mechanized warfare. For the small sheikhdoms, the relationship offered the security they badly needed in order to survive as fledgling states against the geopolitical weight of Saudi Arabia.25 These long-lasting relationships continued until the protectorate relationship ended with the withdrawal of the British from the region in 1971. Even though the protectorate relationships placed the smaller, less powerful Gulf states under the security umbrella of a Pax Britannica, the perception of threat from Saudi Arabia was significant enough to prompt repeated requests from local rulers for greater protection guarantees from their hegemonic neighbor, lending historical currency to tribal competition. The potential threat was acknowledged by Britain, and a provision for safeguarding the small oil monarchies’ sovereignty and security was included in the Anglo-Saudi agreement of 1927 (the Treaty of Jeddah). It called for peaceful relations to be maintained between Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf sheikhdoms. Despite the treaties of 1916 and 1927, the smaller Persian Gulf states faced ongoing battles for greater autonomy from these limiting geopolitical pressures. Examining this historical context demonstrates that the primary driver of foreign relations for the Persian Gulf states has been security, manifested especially in overlapping alliances. These alliances have played a determinative role in the region’s foreign policy by propagating conflicting impulses for safeguarding security and maximizing autonomy, and, as much as possible, ensuring independence of action. E l i t e-L e v e l A l l i a nc e s a n d t h e De c i sion-M a k i ng Pro c e s s A clear difference between the formulation of foreign policy in the states of the Persian Gulf and in most other states, particularly Western ones, is the character of the decision-making process. The politics of foreign policy tends to be far more personalized in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf than in most other states, and, typically, involves only a small number of elites. Foreign policy is commonly the preserve of a very small number of officials, despite the appearance of a large bureaucratic foreign ministry. The level to which foreign policy

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making is personalized depends largely on the forcefulness of a leader’s personality and the level of support he enjoys from elite-level tribal alliances.26 Given the strategic importance of foreign policy making, and the status and benefits that flow from involvement in it, the activity is often dominated by key sections of the ruling families. The UAE must be considered an exception in this regard, as it is a confederation of seven emirates, and consequently a different dynamic exists within the UAE that would require additional focused analysis to decipher what is a unique case in the GCC.27 Overall, while security issues inform the broad parameters of foreign policy across the GCC, given the small circle in which foreign policy is usually formulated, and the concurrent underdevelopment of foreign policy bureaucracies across the region, GCC international relations often closely mirror the idiosyncrasies of the leader in power. Equally important is generational outlook as reflected in the person of the leader. The examples of Qatar and Bahrain are quite telling in this respect: far-reaching political reforms followed the coming to power of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani in Qatar in 1995 and Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa in Bahrain in 1999.28 Interdynastic power struggles have also exerted important influence in foreign policy formation across the Persian Gulf subregion. Decision-making processes are commonly conducted by elite-level alliance networks, and even within particular ruling groups, marked variances in foreign policy direction can become apparent.29 Elite-level alliance networks have been particularly well documented in Saudi Arabia, where intrafamily dynamics have frequently had direct consequences for policy formulations. In fact, given the preponderance of family tensions over matters of policy, in the kingdom foreign policy outcomes often do become a reflection of those elite decision makers and their supporting allies, who can effectively sidestep their competitors. As Tim Niblock remarks, for example, “King ‘Abdallah has often been described as representing the more conservative side of the family, closer to the traditional Islam and tribal hierarchies, more attuned to Islamic values, more at one with Arab nationalism, less supportive of the relationship with the United States.”30 King ‘Abdallah’s perspective is well known to have been the source of disagreements between himself and the late King Fahd, who was generally perceived, often with justification, as more pro-American.31 This perception was reflected in the position he took during the Iran-Iraq War, during which his position was consistently closer to those of the United States. In sum, especially in relation to personalized polities such

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as those across the Arabian Peninsula, foreign policy analysis needs to take into account the importance of interdynastic rivalries, the agendas of the personalities involved in the decision-making process, and their capacity to influence the national agenda through elite-level alliances. Intellectuals and technocrats provide additional input in the decisionmaking process. While such officials and public figures may not be the actual decision-makers, they often do play a role in shaping public opinion and, in some cases, also legitimize a particular course of action. Since the late 1990s, a number of GCC states have invited and housed an array of Western research institutes, think tanks, and educational establishments. The UAE and Qatar are especially notable for having established or invited a wide range of both governmental and nongovernmental associations, with the Gulf Research Center in Dubai and the Brookings Institution and the RAND Cooperation offices in Doha being cases in point. Nevertheless, given the small size of the societies in which they operate, and the even smaller size of elite decision makers, their publications, editorials, and public lectures often become well known within the elite circles. Their purpose is ultimately to influence government policy in a particular direction. Some focused associations may enjoy the patronage of particular elites or a particular arm of the state bureaucracy, such as the office of the prime minister or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and thus the output of the given intellectuals or technocrats feeds into both domestic and foreign affairs decision making. The bureaucratic framework is normally recognized as being key in foreign policy making. This was amply demonstrated by Graham Allison in his seminal study of the US foreign policy bureaucracy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.32 Allison employed a three-tiered approach to explaining US foreign policy by examining it through the complementary lenses of the rational actor, the organizational process, and bureaucratic or governmental politics.33 Although the methodology employed by Allison and the bureaucratic approach in general are highly informative, they have also been subject to a number of substantive criticisms, and their applicability and usefulness in the Persian Gulf context is open to question.34 The bureaucratic approach, in fact, has been viewed as applicable only in isolated cases: the need for detailed information on the decision-making process is a clear methodological limitation because of the restricted availability of data.35 Because of this very limitation, al-Alkim is dismissive of the usefulness of the bureaucratic approach in foreign policy analysis in the GCC states. “The

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bureaucratic structures are handicapped by many factors,” he maintains, “especially the fact that the mode of governing in the GCC states is very personalized. To put it more succinctly, policy decisions are made through personal bargaining and compromise.”36 With that in mind, analyses of the foreign policies of the states of the Arabian Peninsula must put greater weight on the idiosyncrasies and personality of the elite decision makers, while also paying attention to the larger regional and global contexts within which foreign policy is made. The personality, outlook, and idiosyncratic factors of the elite decision makers are of understandable importance to an analysis of foreign policy. Within the Persian Gulf, the homogeneity of certain characteristics such as tribal, Islamic, and Arab identity is often taken for granted, although significant divergences exist. The differences in outlook between King Abdullah al Saud and the late King Fahd al Saud represent a clear example of generational influcences.37 Such an example would naturally draw from a psychological perspective in order to identify the background, personality, worldview, and leadership style of key individuals in the foreign policy decision-making process.38 This type of analysis is a useful means of explaining why decision makers may favor certain policy directions. It is also useful in explaining a long-term strategic vision because of the longevity of rulers and elites in the seats of power. Such factors are also a useful means of explaining seemingly irrational foreign policy trajectories.39 Yaacov Vertzberger’s seminal study on this level of analysis asserts that idiosyncratic factors do not necessarily determine a particular foreign policy, so the conclusions it offers are not always complete or accurate.40 T h e S o c iop ol i t ic a l C on t e x t At its most basic level, the GCC states’ political character is shaped by the deeply rooted linkages between ruling families and the state itself. Although this linkage is long-standing, it must be understood through the context of both Islam and tribalism, which constitutes the internal political character and identity of the Gulf states.41 Abdullah Baabood remarks that, “the GCC states’ basic political tenets and their foreign policies objectives can be seen within the overall framework of their Arab and Muslim identity and heritage, which sometimes are not coincident with those of other political and economic power blocs.”42 With such normative values constituting the essence of social and political organization

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within these states, it is reasonable to assume that such forces have permeated their foreign policy. Changes to this dimension of society may alter the domestic context into which foreign policy feeds, affecting outcomes. With the onset of a new world order following the end of the cold war, the 1990s signaled a new spirit of political activism within civil society across the region. This brought a new period of sociopolitical change, but also fresh challenges. The occupation of Kuwait by Iraq under Saddam Husayn, and its subsequent liberation by a UN coalition, brought a clear social trauma for some of the regional states. With such trauma taking place only a little more than a decade after the regional turmoil of Iran’s Islamic revolution, the tribal elites of the Persian Gulf states had to cope with an increasingly vocal wave of political activism and upheaval, spurred on not only by the occupation of a GCC state, but also by the presence of non-Muslim military forces in Saudi Arabia.43 In several respects the ensuing crisis energized civil society groups across the Peninsula, proving to be an important issue in future international relations between the GCC states and foreign powers, the United States in particular. The invasion of Kuwait also resulted in a considerable economic burden on the oil-rich monarchies and created economic disruption throughout the other GCC states as well. It was a period of socioeconomic upheaval, as land valuations, resources, and the actual cost of financing the liberation of Kuwait had a clear impact on the states’ political economies and capacities.44 In Saudi Arabia, the presence of Western troops galvanized public opinion across the kingdom. The presence of Western forces in the kingdom also catalyzed the formation of various groups, encompassing liberals and Islamists, that applied increasing pressure for fresh debate on the political dynamic between the ruling elite and the people to the monarchy.45 These events seemed to demonstrate that an overly close relationship with Western powers could provoke sometimes-unwelcome activism. With the onset of the Global War on Terror a mere decade after the invasion of Kuwait, combating the causes of radical and violent political Islam became a strategic priority for both the West and the GCC states. Although a clear, synergetic strategic objective had become apparent, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought with it new political tensions in the region, affecting the closeness of the relationship with Washington that GCC elites were willing to undertake.46 An unintended consequence of the invasion and occupation of Iraq was that it heightened insecurity among local elites who worried about a possible domestic

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backlash, reinforced by the devastation brought on Iraq and the resulting loss of life as graphically displayed on the region’s media channels. In this context, it would have been seriously problematic for the GCC states to appear overly aligned with Washington, both on a domestic level and on an inter-Arab level. Across the societies of the Arabian Peninsula, tribalism remains one of the strongest forces, and its consequences for the region’s foreign relations should not be overlooked. Tribal identity is deeply rooted in the region’s heritage and history and is often manipulated by the regional leaders for purposes of political legitimacy. With political parties almost uniformly outlawed across the GCC, one’s tribe or extended family is often seen as a viable tool for political mobility and expression and as a means through which family leaders or tribal elders can represent individual or corporate political interests. GCC states frequently perpetuate this means of sociopolitical mobilization, and, given the absence of competing mobilizing agents that could cross-cut tribal boundaries, the role of tribal identity is a well-established feature of Gulf subnational identities.47 To a certain extent, this both benefits and hinders interstate and inter-elite relationships among the GCC states, which remain very much the preserve of ruling elites who sit atop a clearly hierarchical social structure. Within each country, the political legitimacy of the ruling families has been evolving over time, and one that is based on tribal authority and is supported by Islamic precepts.48 The reflection of Islamic and Arab identity is therefore a powerful force, commanding historical currency that feeds directly into the construction and articulation of foreign policy. A clear commonality stemming from the shared Islamic heritage of the GCC states is the importance of political participation. In a formal sense, the process of popular voting and elections has been long-standing, as in the case of Kuwait, and there have been very small steps recently toward political liberalization in Bahrain and Oman.49 Qatar has also drafted a new constitution that makes provisions for the establishment of a parliament.50 Although such reforms are recent and in most cases cosmetic rather than substantive, it would be a mistake to assume that the GCC states have not provided any space for political participation. In fact, there has been a well-established practice of informal participation across the region. Traditional rule rested upon Islamic and tribal norms, both of which upheld the importance of political participation and consultation. The decision-making process reflected in the foreign policy process is thus one based

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on the culture of political compromise among factions, and compromise through discussion both in a formal setting and through informal connections. Th is context of decision making is of relevance to the manner in which the GCC states engage in formulating collective policies and also in their bilateral relationships. Although Islamic identity is clearly a powerful force in the dynamics of the GCC states’ foreign policies, the issue of sectarianism and the small size of what are generally heterogeneous societies has also been significant.51 In terms of the demographics in the GCC states, national populations are dwarfed by those of the larger regional powers of Iran, Iraq, and Egypt. Such comparatively small populations create a number of fundamental security problems. For example, the GCC states are clearly constrained in their capacity to organize a credible army or any credible defensive force that could repel acts of aggression. However, this security divide encourages closer relations with a foreign power who might offer external protection; for the smaller GCC states, this vulnerability lends itself to a necessary reliance on Saudi Arabia or the United States as regional protectors. Such limited capacity explains the smaller GCC states’ tendency to bandwagon on certain issues of common concern, though they also desire autonomy from Riyadh and Washington wherever possible.52 A further relevant factor in contextualizing the GCC states is the composition of their small populations. The fact that nonnational expatriates constitute a majority of the population plays a decisive role in the international relations of the Gulf states with those countries whose nationals form a significant number of the expatriate labor force. This is particularly acute in the UAE. Hassan al-Alkim initially drew attention to this phenomenon: in the UAE in 1992, thousands of illegal Pakistani and Indian migrant workers were expelled for demonstrating in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah after the destruction of the Ayodah mosque in Uttar Pradesh.53 The expulsion led to a serious deterioration in UAE-Pakistani relations and resulted in a private visit to Pakistan by the UAE president in order to resolve what devolved into a bitter bilateral dispute. With foreign nationals often constituting majorities across the GCC, the character of the bilateral relationship becomes at the very least susceptible to, and at most determined by, the domestic situation. A final key feature of the populations within the GCC states that has had bearing on the GCC states’ foreign policies is the sectarian nature of their

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societies. In the case of Bahrain, a majority of citizens belong to the Shi‘a sect. As highlighted earlier, Bahrain experienced proxy interventionism by Iran in 1981 in support of Shi‘a groups in an unsuccessful coup attempt.54 Bahrain has experienced frequent internal unrest. When these unrests have taken on a sectarian character, they have complicated the country’s relationship with the Islamic Republic.55 The other Gulf states all have minority Shi‘a populations. The picture is somewhat more complicated for Saudi Arabia, however, given that most Saudi Shi‘as are concentrated in the Al Hasa region, where the country’s oil fields and other hydrocarbon industries are concentrated. During the Iranian revolution in 1979, there was social unrest led by Shi‘a groups in the Al Hasa region, prompting the deployment of the Saudi National Guard.56 Given the GCC states’ shared desire for stability, such sectarian considerations are an important and unavoidable feature of their relations with Iran.57 In Oman, a rather unique sectarian character exists, with a majority of population being composed of the Abadhies, and with the Sunnis constituting the second largest group. The majority Abadhy sect presents a special situation, which, in the past at least, has had a bearing on Oman’s foreign relations. As one observer notes, “[t]he desire to protect Abadhy identity from either Sunni or Shi‘ite domination inspired the Omani policy of isolationism in the past.”58 Yet more recently, much has changed, primarily owing to the pragmatism of Sultan Qaboos bin Sa‘id Al Bu Said. Joseph Kechichian’s study into Omani foreign relations is instructive: the ability that consolidation and legitimacy gave Sultan Qaboos enabled him to move Oman beyond what was previously an isolated and unstable country.59 This change shows that domestic dynamics and sectarian forces can at times have a forceful bearing on foreign relations but need to be assessed in light of a range of other internal dynamics such as the power the leader enjoys and role played in domestic and foreign policy. It is with these internal sociopolitical dynamics in mind that it now seems appropriate to begin an examination of the manner in which economics has a role in foreign policy making. The following section will therefore offer analysis on how and why in the Gulf states different political economies play a role in their respective foreign relations, but also on how on a wider collective level their economic capacities remains a critical piece of the varied chessboard in which foreign policies are made and played out.

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T h e R e n t i e r C a paci t y a n d For e ign R e l at ions All GCC states, with the possible exception of Bahrain, have a unique political economy in that there is a disproportionately high level of public expenditure arising from rentier economics. Given this paternalism, which generally affords its citizens exceptional living standards, governments have been able legitimately to hold a monopoly over the security apparatus in all of these states and ensure stability, the exception of course being Bahrain, where the internal economic situation has fostered discontent.60 In many respects, the GCC welfare system has made states more resilient to domestic sociopolitical pressures, on the one hand affording them autonomy of action and regime security, but on the other making them more sensitive to the domestic need to maintain the status quo. Given their dependence on oil revenue, the conduct of diplomacy with fellow oil producers, with consumer countries, and also with influential multinational oil companies has become intertwined with their national interests. In other words, despite relative freedom from domestic pressures, the GCC states have become vulnerable to external pressures and market forces. With oil and gas revenue constituting the main sources of income among the GCC states, all GCC states except Oman and Bahrain play a key role in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Saudi Arabia’s conventional military forces are not as extensive as those of Iran, and the other GCC states are too small to deter any potential aggression from the regional hegemons. Yet their role as major oil exporters has allowed them to craft a special and important presence on the international stage. In times of regional crisis, the GCC states have been able to exploit their excess production capacity as a means of ensuring that the price of oil does not escalate to unsustainable levels or jeopardize the health of the global economy to which consumption is inherently linked.61 Increasingly, the GCC states have made themselves central to global energy security calculations. Not surprisingly, most have undertaken efforts to coordinate their foreign policies with their energy and export portfolios. On a regional level, GCC oil monarchies play an important role within the greater Middle East as aid donors and investors. Indeed, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have historically played a role in these types of activities because of their economic capacity, principally directing aid and investment toward other Arab states, followed by Asian non-Arab states, and then African

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states.62 During the Iran-Iraq War, the total aid in question amounted to just under $50 billion.63 The importance of the levels of fi nancial assistance that the GCC states are able to deliver lies in the capacity it provides them to conduct “dollar diplomacy.” The commercial investments in what can be described as the subregional periphery around the commercial core of the oil-rich GCC states provides these states with leverage in the diplomacy they conduct. Such sovereign wealth fund investments can take place in the inter-Gulf region also, often accompanying other bilateral agreements. Significantly, the wealthier GCC states often have the capacity to broker difficult diplomatic agreements, given their ability to offer a clear commercial incentive to states that are often in dire need of foreign direct investment. The clearest example of this capacity is the successful role Qatar has carved for itself in confl ict resolution. Qatar’s brokerage in mediation was evident in the high profi le Doha-brokered agreement between the contesting parties in Lebanon in 2008. Similarly, its role in mediating in Sudan shows that given the economic capacity and peaceful agenda the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, is actively promoting, the Gulf states can take on a unique and active role in foreign policy based on a fi rm economic capacity to adopt such roles. Here Qatar used its economic capacity combined with its good offices to help an agreement being reached. Appreciating the aid and character of sovereign wealth investments on a bilateral basis is thus of obvious contextual relevance to these states’ international relations. T h e R e giona l Ge op ol i t ic a l C on t e x t : R e l at i v e Au t onom y a n d S e c u r i t y Although Saudi Arabia claims a hegemonic role in the region, it is weak militarily when compared to its regional neighbors. In population terms, Saudi Arabia is the largest of the GCC states but is dwarfed by Egypt, Iran and Turkey. Within the Arabian Peninsula, the population of Yemen is a close rival.64 The hegemonic role that Saudi Arabia claims is not based on traditional factors, but instead is derived from the size of its economy, which is the largest in the region in terms of GDP, and also from the special role it plays within Islam as home to both Mecca and Medina. Such factors give it a special position within the Middle East, and a dominant position within the GCC.

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Other members of the GCC commonly “bandwagon” alongside Saudi Arabia (or other international powers) in order to maximize their positions within the regional or international system on issues where there is a convergence of interests.65 Such alignment has aided them in deterring unwelcome political interventionism from such forces as pan-Arabism or Islamism. By diplomatically aligning themselves with Saudi Arabia, they place themselves in a stronger situation vis-à-vis Iran. At the same time, however, the price of having Saudi Arabia play this role can be a relative loss of autonomy of action, hampering efforts to exercise an independent foreign policy or pursue policies where interests diverge. The history of tribal relationships within the Arabian Peninsula underlines the looming threat of Saudi Arabia to its smaller neighboring states, even as Riyadh has been a necessary ally in helping other royal families in their dynastic security.66 Policymaking in the Gulf is a delicate balancing of contradictions, marked by diverging and converging interests.67 Crosscurrents in the GCC states’ foreign policies are identifiable. The overarching goals of the six states in question are to ensure domestic regime security and to prevent foreign domination. Foreign policy is a tool by which the GCC leaders seek to achieve these goals. In this regard, governments must balance several issues: (1) with the exception of Bahrain and Oman, their role as strategic energy exporters; (2) the GCC states’ strategic relationship in security, political, and economic terms with the United States; (3) their collective and independent roles within the Middle East subregion; and (4) their domestic social, political, and economic dynamics. Foreign policies must balance this multilayered chessboard against their own capacities, so the foreign policies of the individual GCC states do show clear differences in spite of their commonly held goals of maximizing security and relative autonomy of action. The challenge rests in appreciating the factors that lead to foreign policy divergence among the GCC states. At a collective level, the GCC states share a number of geopolitical concerns over Iran, which has special geopolitical importance within the Persian Gulf region by virtue of its size. Its regional foreign policy is representative of this privileged geopolitical position, and fears and prejudices about Iran that are common among the Persian Gulf monarchies predate the Islamic revolution. Indeed, ever since the rule of Shah Abbas I during the sixteenth century, Iran has come to be seen by the states of the Arabian Peninsula as a geopolitical and cultural heavyweight with clear-cut regional aspirations for dominance.68 That

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Iran markedly differs from the Arab states of the Persian Gulf culturally, linguistically, and religiously has contributed to the lack of trust between Iran and its Arab neighbors to the south. There has been divergence among the GCC states in their relations with postrevolutionary Iran. A prime example is Qatar, which has enjoyed a more tempered relationship given the shared strategic asset of the vast North Field/ South Pars natural gas field (the largest nonassociated field globally). Qatar and Iran’s mutual economic interest in the natural gas field has developed progressively based on this shared resource, especially since the mid-1980s, when Qatar took the strategic decision to view its economic future as resting on the reserves held in the field.69 Qatar’s relations with Iran are thus based on this calculation, so Doha is more willing to engage pragmatically with Tehran than are its GCC counterparts. Indeed, Qatar’s willingness to engage with Iran is often a prominent departure from the common foreign policy stances of the GCC. By contrast, UAE relations with Iran are hampered by the territorial dispute they have over Abu Musa and the Tunb islands, and Bahrain continues to deal with intrastate security concerns about Iran.70 After 1971, Saudi Arabia replaced Britain as the Persian Gulf states’ external security guarantor. However, given the geographic location of the smaller GCC states and their shared borders with Saudi Arabia, this change has meant that a very different set of dynamics have come to characterize the relationship between Riyadh and the other GCC states than the one that existed between them and the British Crown. Riyadh is in a position to exercise pressure on the other Persian Gulf monarchies and to press them to follow a Saudi position when needed, something it has done with varying degrees of success. Therefore, the GCC states have on the one hand sought to enhance their ability to exercise full autonomy in their foreign relations, while on the other hand have used Saudi Arabia to extend their international reach on common issue of concern.71 It was with the Iranian revolution in 1979 that these oil monarchies diverged in their shared understanding of external and intrastate security from Tehran’s Islamic theocracy. The decision to form part of the collective security voice of the GCC, established in 1981, was based on each state’s perceived national security needs and interests. That was particularly so given Iran’s apparent willingness to interfere in their domestic affairs, evidenced by the alleged backing of an attempted coup in Bahrain in 1981.

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It is worth mentioning that the GCC as an organization is a useful tool for cooperation, though it should not be viewed as playing a decisive role in foreign policy formation either at the level of each individual state or on a regional level. Indeed, its output is purely advisory, not binding in any political or legal capacity. A further feature of the GCC is that states are able to have their own foreign policies but may use the GCC apparatus to help coordinate foreign approaches. With the Iran-Iraq War commencing in 1980, and related threats posed by Iran to regional oil supply routes, it is understandable that the GCC states’ foreign policies largely endorsed the collective GCC response on the basis of national interest. Closer relations with Saudi Arabia were part of the GCC states’ adoption of a clear, pragmatic strategy, all the while careful not to serve as vassal to Saudi Arabian foreign policy: autonomy and regime security undoubtedly remain the cornerstone of the decision-making objectives of ruling elites in all of the smaller Persian Gulf monarchies. Ol d Ru l e s a n d N e w Ga m e s: R e l at ions w i t h t h e U n i t e d Stat e s Despite its chronic instability, the Persian Gulf region is an area of great strategic importance. The region’s security challenges, ranging from Iraq, to Iran, to the Arab-Israeli dispute, in addition to the specter of instability in Yemen, have been discussed in detail in chapters by Byman, Lawson, and Kostiner in this volume. It would be beyond the scope of this article to provide analysis on these issues; however, the context of the GCC states’ interaction with the United States merits some discussion here. It is important to recognize from the outset that the paramount national security interest of the United States in the region has historically been “[an] unhindered flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the world market at a stable price.”72 The stability of the Persian Gulf is very much a national security interest of the United States. During the cold war, the containment of communism was the overarching global strategic consideration that characterized US foreign policy, reflected in its policy toward the region’s states, forming a key part of the Persian Gulf states’ own policies against the threat of secular communism. Throughout the cold war, there was a clear convergence of interest between the United States and the Persian Gulf states in security terms.73

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With Britain having decided to withdraw from the east of Suez in the 1960s, President Richard Nixon was prompted to develop a “twin-pillar” security strategy of promoting Iran, and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia, as guardians of regional security and bulwarks against Soviet expansionism.74 For the smaller GCC states, Saudi Arabia was not to become their regional protector until after the British had ended their protection agreements in 1971. The twin-pillar strategy faltered when Iran, the key pillar of the US policy, witnessed a mass-based revolution in 1979 that resulted in Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s overthrow. For the other Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia fell naturally into the role of regional protector, in the face of a new threat posed by the Iranian hegemon. The dramatic overthrow of the shah ushered in a new era for regional politics and, concurrently, for US strategic policy in the region. The subsequent seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and the ensuing hostage crisis were crucial in affirming the perception of the Islamic Republic as hostile to US interests. It was as a result of the anti-American position of the new regime in Tehran that the revolution necessarily ushered in a reassessment of Iran’s role in US policy toward Persian Gulf security. That Iran became an asymmetric threat to Israel—long one of the United States’s main concerns—through its support for Hezbollah and its influence on the internal affairs of Lebanon, also greatly influenced American policies in the region. With the election of the Reagan administration in 1981, US policy toward the Persian Gulf was formulated within the context of the Iran-Iraq War, and through perceived Iranian links to international terrorist attacks against both American and Israeli interests.75 Although the United States professed neutrality in the bloody conflict between Iran and Iraq, Reagan’s policy was biased, as it offered support to Iraq given the perceived threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran to wider US interests.76 Following the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991, President George H. W. Bush used the unprecedented consensus within the international community against Iraq to impose sanctions on the country and to subject it to extensive weapons inspections by the United Nations. Washington’s postliberation agenda was based on multilateral efforts aimed at ensuring that Iraq did not possess or develop unconventional weapons. The key by-product of this effort was that it framed Persian Gulf security in the form of containment. The US Congress branded Iran as a “rogue state” and imposed restrictive unilateral sanctions

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against the Islamic Republic. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration’s initiative toward regional security confirmed this position and articulated it as a “dual containment” strategy designed to contain threats from both Iran and Iraq to US interests in the Persian Gulf and beyond. Dual containment rested on the premise that both states had a history of aggressive action in a variety of spheres and posed threats to both the GCC states and Israel.77 In some respects, dual containment grew out of the new regional context after the end of the Iran-Iraq War and the new military presence of the United States across the Persian Gulf region. American policy toward Persian Gulf security fundamentally changed as a consequence of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The neoconservative response to the attacks promoted counterterrorism as the primary national interest of the United States.78 The means by which the Bush administration aimed to counter the root causes of terrorism was through the promotion of Western-style freedom, liberty, and democracy throughout the world, and within the Persian Gulf region in particular.79 The 9/11 attacks in essence prompted the rejection of the balance of power approach in favor of a wider transformation of the Middle East, an integral component of which included achieving Persian Gulf security on the one hand and countering the root causes of terrorism on the other. For the GCC states, this strategic policy translated into pressure on the GCC states to implement domestic political reforms, at least in rhetoric if not in substance. Iraq’s failure or inability to comply with UN resolutions gave the Bush administration the pretext it needed to initiate its forced transformation of the Middle East. Although Iraq did not pose any imminent threats to the United States, under the rubric of the Bush Doctrine, the use of preventative force was seen as justified.80 In the Obama White House, the picture remains unclear for now (as of early 2011), as a regional security strategy akin to what both the Bush and Clinton administrations developed has not yet materialized. For the GCC states, the role of the United States within the region is a double-edged sword. It has acted in the traditional protector capacity to the GCC states against the regional hegemons of Iraq and Iran. At the same time, American involvement in the region has also come at a relatively high price. The upheavals brought on the Middle East by the Bush Doctrine and by Israeli policies, which are generally perceived in the region as being supported by the United States, have had deep impacts on popular social and political perceptions toward the United States. Th is complex history needs to be appreciated when

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understanding how the GCC states interact with US foreign policy initiatives, especially insofar as contentious issues such as Arab-Israeli relations or the stationing of American forces in the region are concerned. C onc lusion The foreign policies of the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council present a highly complex subject for study. The difficulty is very much one of appreciating and applying the most suitable analytical approach to lead to worthwhile conclusions and potentially predictive outcomes. This chapter has demonstrated that a multilevel and multicontextual analysis must be adopted in analyzing the foreign policies of GCC states. The analysis would necessarily require detailed attention to domestic forces that exert considerable influence on the articulation and execution of foreign policy. Current decision-making processes are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. The linkage between heritage, culture, and social norms and values is deeply engrained. Throughout the Arabian Peninsula, sociopolitical organization at the domestic level is unique in several respects. It is tempting to draw linkages between political liberalization on the one hand and potentially changed foreign policy outcomes on the other. However, given the strategic importance of the GCC to global and particularly American policy calculations, and the fact that GCC political elites remain firmly in control of their respective states and the direction of the GCC states’ foreign policies, the direction and essence of foreign policy across the GCC is unlikely to undergo any substantive changes in the near future. In the final analysis, GCC foreign policies are far more likely to be effected by state capacities rooted in their economic prowess rather than by other factors. Other international developments with consequences on domestic public opinion are also likely to be influential. This is the “wild card” that makes predictability tenuous at best.

GCC Perceptions of Collective Security in the Post-Saddam Era Joseph Kostiner

The beginning of the twenty-first century has confronted the GCC with a changing regional climate that has presented new strategic challenges to the GCC’s security and stability. In the 1990s, the primary challenges facing the Persian Gulf states included the aggression of Saddam Husayn’s Ba‘thist regime and the implication of UN sanctions, a lesser threat of Iranian aggression (which manifested in the 1992 seizure of Abu Musa from joint control with the UAE), sporadic outbursts of terrorism, and a brewing disagreement between the United States and the Gulf states regarding the efficacy of the “dual containment” policy toward Iran and Iraq. The practical beginning of the twenty-first century’s strategic conditions came in the aftermath of the United States’ invasion of Iraq and the collapse of the Iraqi Ba‘th regime in 2003, which gave way to the rise of a number of new challenges, including domestic religious terrorism, Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism, and the uncertainty of the intentions of a newly resurgent Iran. In light of a changing regional landscape and in response to these new challenges, the GCC has been forced to re-evaluate its traditional strategic perspectives and to develop new methods of addressing these threats.1 Traditionally, Iraq constituted a primary threat to Persian Gulf security, culminating in its occupation of Kuwait in 1990. While none of the Gulf leaders was particularly distraught to see Saddam’s regime fall, the subsequent power vacuum in Iraq gave rise to a multiplicity of new threats. First and foremost, the outbreak of sectarian violence in 2004, mostly between the Shi’a and Sunni communities, caused the Gulf states to fear a parallel outbreak of sectarian violence within 94

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their own borders. Gulf states with large Shi‘i populations, notably Saudi Arabia (approx. 10-15 percent), Bahrain (approx. 70 percent), and Kuwait (approx. 20 percent), feared that radical Shi‘is would attempt to stir revolution amongst their own Shi‘a. This threat became even more pronounced in 2005, with the election of Nuri al-Maliki, heading a Shi‘i-dominated government in Iraq, which the Gulf states feared would support the installation of Shi‘i dominance in the Persian Gulf hostile to the GCC. In addition to the threat of Islamic terrorism such as Al-Qaeda, the situation in Iraq resulting from the American occupation produced new waves of both Shi‘i and Sunni sectarian militancy. The GCC states have been aware of the migration of Sunni Islamists from the Gulf states to Iraq in order to fight alongside Iraqi Sunni forces. Gulf states have worried that these militants would return to the Persian Gulf and begin to direct violence at Gulf regimes and their subjects.2 It would be a case of history repeating itself, as Gulf regimes still remember the return of Arab mujahideen from Afghanistan, who were to constitute the nucleus of Al-Qaeda in the mid-1990s. As had been the case with Al-Qaeda, Gulf regimes see the present generation of returning Sunnis as a real threat to their rule. Exacerbating the threat of indigenous terrorism is the response to the support that Gulf states have given to the United States during their war and occupation of Iraq. Gulf subjects consider the US occupation of Iraq with suspicion of Washington’s imperialist intentions in the Persian Gulf. Their perception of Gulf regimes’ collaboration with the Americans has been a major source of internal opposition since 2003. In addition, certain Middle Eastern states including Syria and Iran have been public in their criticism of the Gulf states for this divisive orientation. Especially for the Saudis, whose legitimacy is significantly based on their Islamic heritage, cooperation with a Western power against a fellow Muslim state undermines the legitimacy of their Islamic political establishment.3 Iranian ascendancy, the newest strategic threat to the Gulf states, is the subject of uncertainty and disagreement within the GCC, as the Gulf states are unsure as to the specific nature of the threat that Iran poses. Certain signs have pointed to attempts by Iran to become a regional hegemon, in a position to dominate the GCC. While the GCC states question Iranian intentions in the region, they nevertheless worry about the possibility that Iran will maneuver itself into a position to dictate oil prices and fuel Shi‘i terrorist attacks. The Gulf states’ foremost concern with regard to Iran is the escalating tension between Iran and the

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United States over the development of the Iranian nuclear program, which has the real possibility of erupting into a military conflict. This war would inevitably be centered in the Gulf and involve the GCC states. That is something that the GCC hopes to avoid at all cost; however, the GCC would be powerless to prevent the situation from escalating to war. In light of these threats, the GCC has had to address the issues of collective security and regional defense cooperation. The GCC was founded in 1981 as a diplomatic and economic organization; it does not have a specific military mandate, as do organizations of collective security such as the cold war–oriented NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organization). The GCC is an organization consisting of conservative, dynastic monarchies in the Middle East. Therefore, a major goal of the GCC regimes is to protect their image and legitimacy. The GCC states have developed modern armies and also rely on the United States for military defense and armaments. The GCC’s defense force, Peninsula Shield, is essentially an amalgamation of military forces from individual Gulf states, and it lacks the cohesion or organization of a more centralized military coalition. Other than Peninsula Shield, unified strategic planning and defense cooperation among GCC members has been weak. Their first preference is to approach strategic challenges favoring diplomatic solutions over military solutions, a result of their self-image as small states with relatively small armies, as well as an attempt to portray themselves as peaceful monarchies.4 Thus collective action by the GCC over the past decade and a half has been based on the attempt to develop common perceptions of emerging threats and unified responses to them, primarily in the form of diplomatic initiatives to prevent regional conflicts from erupting into violent confrontations. The GCC states have not developed a concrete framework for military cooperation or strategic implementation. Only individual GCC states relied on military defense agreements, notably with the United States; collective military agreements were not conceived. GCC collective security cannot, therefore, be measured simply according to military cooperation or strategic pacts. This chapter thus focuses more on unofficial manifestations of Gulf collective security, especially common views, like-mindedness of strategic outlooks among GCC leaders, and similar political approaches to conflict resolution. Each section of this study focuses on a different level of collective security perceptions of the GCC states.

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R e l i a nc e on U S De f e n s e s: Be n e f i t s a n d L i m i tat ions The GCC’s security strategy has been two-pronged. First, the states have come to rely on the United States as their main military defense against regional military threats, including invasion and occupation by a hostile neighbor. They have also relied on the United States as their main supplier of arms and military hardware. The second prong has focused on Gulf reliance on other, mainly diplomatic, means to overcome certain liabilities associated with too close a military relationship with the United States. This liability is due to three factors. First, in some GCC states, notably Saudi Arabia, there emerged a strong internal opposition to military cooperation with the United States. Second, the United States has proven itself unable to address all of the threats directed against the Gulf states, such as the propaganda campaign directed against the GCC because of their cooperation with the West, the possibility of a regional coalition hostile to the Persian Gulf states, or a terrorist campaign, which would only grow worse if confronted by United States forces. Finally, the US physical presence has presented tangible targets for Islamist terrorist groups, especially since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As a response to Iranian and Iraqi attacks on oil ships in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, in 1987 the United States assumed an active role in protecting Gulf shipping and the movement of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, named the “re-flagging operation.” Since that time, the United States has maintained an active presence in the Persian Gulf. As a response to Saddam Husayn’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and his subsequent, latent threat to invade Saudi Arabia, the United States offered military assistance to the Saudi government to protect against Saddam’s belligerency. In addition to this defensive role, the United States led a military coalition against Iraq, driving its occupying forces from Kuwait, effectively guaranteeing Kuwaiti sovereignty. Saudi Arabia followed suit, even though Saddam never attacked them; the Saudi perception was that the only thing preventing an Iraqi attack was the military presence of the United States and other coalition member forces. Since that time, the Gulf states have been almost entirely reliant on the United States for military protection against external military aggression. In addition to the United States’ role as military protector in the region, Washington has also been the GCC states’ primary source of weapons and military technology. This first reached its peak in the 1980s with the US sale of

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advanced AWACS aircrafts to the Saudi government. The AWACS, or Airborne Warning and Control System, is an advanced aircraft-mounted radar system used at high altitudes to map tactical situations and relay information to allied forces. Additionally, the United States has since supplied antiaircraft and antiballistic Patriot missile batteries to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and a new potential Patriot missile defense system for the UAE is currently up for debate in Congress. The Patriot missile defense system is currently the United States’ primary antiballistic missile platform. The United States has shared this technology with its close allies, including Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The United States has also been a major supplier of aircraft, ground vehicles, and other military armaments to GCC states. This relationship has provided the United States with a unique role in regional security and diplomacy. Because of this perceived level of success, many GCC states, including Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait, actively pursued and achieved their own formal, bilateral defense agreements with the United States that mapped out the specific nature of their military arrangements, including weapon sales, logistical support, and their physical military presence within the individual countries. Despite GCC states’ almost complete reliance on the United States for military protection, this relationship has proven to be a liability for neutralizing other threats, generating domestic instability in Saudi Arabia. In 1990, the Saudi invitation to the American forces marked the beginning of the Islamist opposition to the Saudi regime for allowing infidel forces onto holy Islamic land, undermining the Saudi position of a holy and pious Sunni Muslim state. It soon became evident that this reliance on the United States for military protection posed a serious liability for internal security. This opposition escalated to overt violence, beginning with spectacular attacks on Western compounds in Riyadh and al-Khubar in 1995 and 1996, and the violence soared after the US invasion of Iraq, as Islamists accused the Saudi royal family of supporting a foreign attack against a fellow Sunni regime. Al-Qaeda, the radical, militant Islamic movement emerging from Usama Bin Laden’s Afghan mujahideen, whose forces returned to Saudi Arabia after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, began agitating against the Saudi-American relationship in the Kingdom. Beginning in 2003, after the United States invasion of Iraq, Al-Qaeda began attacking both Saudi and American civilian and military targets, triggering a cycle of violence in

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Saudi Arabia that lasted about three years. In addition to Al-Qaeda’s heightened belligerency, other sources of domestic opposition to the US-Saudi relationship emerged, including a number of prominent Wahhabi clerics and tribal movements in certain regions of the Kingdom, notably the ‘Asir region. United States presence created concrete targets for Islamist terror attacks. While this threat was more pronounced in Saudi Arabia because of the specific religious nature of the Kingdom, it also existed in other GCC states that house US forces or support other US interests within their borders. For example, the Qatari air base housing US forces has been the target of a number of terror attempts since 2003, when the United States began to occupy it.5 Thus, the GCC states continued to rely on US defenses on one hand, but they regarded the US presence and its policies in the region as a liability on the other. Because of the inability of the United States to protect GCC regimes from this type of threat since the 1990s, GCC states have had to address the problem by keeping their relationship with the United States somewhat restricted, at least in the eyes of domestic public opinion. While the majority within Gulf society recognizes the strategic defensive necessity of the United States’ relationship with their governments, the presence of US forces in the Gulf and in Iraq, as well as America’s support for Israel against the Palestinians, has led to two additional important sources of domestic opposition. First, certain local groups view US military personnel on Muslim holy soil as unwelcome guests. This invasion has stirred public opposition to GCC regimes, which they view as a threat to internal stability. Second, subjects question whether the United States used the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as an excuse to exploit GCC weakness to insert itself into the region, which the United States considers a necessary foothold in the Middle East.6 Furthermore, Gulf regimes were critical of US policies toward Iraq and Iran from the mid-1990s, characterized by the dual containment policy toward Iran and Iraq.7 Gulf leaders and societies preferred to balance Iran and Iraq off of each other rather than rely on the United States to suppress both. This policy was reflected by mounting criticism in the Arab media, particularly in the Gulf, voicing popular opposition to the United States and their actions in the region. The association of the Gulf regimes with the United States on this issue proved to be an embarrassment to GCC leaders and prompted them to consider distancing themselves from such close alignment with the United States, especially in the public eye.8

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Particularly alarming to GCC leaders was the American policy of democratization in the Middle East, which they perceived as a direct threat to their traditional, dynastic style of rule as well as a boost to opposition groups, and which became a source for Gulf reservations regarding their relationship with the United States. Although the United States has, for some time, pressed GCC states to undertake democratic reform, they have been extremely apprehensive and have resisted embracing these measures. Because of US democratization measures in Iraq, GCC states feared the United States could become more aggressive in their pushes for democratization in the region. Saudi and GCC perceptions can be summarized as follows: “It was exactly the way they had seen and feared the Soviets for so long. But now . . . the dangerous revolutionary and unstable ideology that an alien and secular superpower was determined to unleash upon the region was not communism, but democracy, on US terms.”9 Reservations Concerning US Policies in Iraq In the run-up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the GCC states displayed subtle, behind-the-scenes support for the US intentions regarding Iraq. However, American conduct in Iraq soon became yet another source of friction between the GCC and the United States. Despite their initial support for the United States, the GCC states made no public declarations supporting the US-led war. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, still affected by Saddam’s aggression in 1990, were the most outward in their support for the US operation. These two countries opened their borders and allowed the United States to set up military bases and deployment points within their countries. However, after the Saudis requested that the United States remove their air force from the Daharan air force base in Saudi Arabia, Qatar enthusiastically encouraged the United States to set up a major air force base in Qatar and provided a space for the American Regional Headquarters, where it has been located ever since.10 In addition to providing the United States with this support, the GCC also deployed Peninsula Shield forces, comprising soldiers from all six member states, to Kuwait during the US invasion of Iraq. The importance of this deployment was mostly symbolic of Gulf solidarity with Kuwait. As the war progressed, the Gulf states began to distance themselves from the unpopular US occupation of Iraq in their public declarations and have privately criticized the United States for strategies that have led to increased threats to regional Gulf stability.

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Gulf leaders regarded US policies in Iraq as a primary cause of the sectarian violence that erupted in 2004. As the United States became more deeply embroiled in the Iraqi quagmire, sectarian violence reached such high levels that GCC states became concerned with the possibility of this sectarianism spilling across the borders from Iraq onto their own soil, where the threat of Shi‘i unrest grew to be a grave concern for the Sunni ruling regimes. In 2004, amid US attempts to bring stability to Iraq and forge a working government, the nature of the conflict took on a specifically sectarian character as Sunni and Shi‘i militias began attacking each other, catching civilians in the crossfire and further destabilizing the already fragile situation in Iraq. While the violence was confi ned to Iraq, the Sunni-Shi‘i conflict had the potential to expand beyond the Iraqi borders as many Arab Sunni Islamists began pouring into Iraq from the Gulf, Jordan, and Syria, while Iraqi Shi‘a were aided by Hizbullah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. GCC states, some of which have significant Shi‘i populations, feared the expansion of sectarian conflict to their own territory, especially a Shi‘i revolt against the Sunni GCC rulers. The sectarian conflict in Iraq has been a primary arena of conflict between the GCC and an ascendant Iranian power, whom some fear is bent on attaining regional hegemony. Saudi Arabia has, on occasion, accused Iran of stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq and attempting to infiltrate agents into Saudi Arabia for the purpose of inciting unrest among its Shi‘a. As for Bahrain, Iranian incitement of its Shi‘a population is perhaps the greatest strategic threat faced by the small island nation, as 70 percent of its population is Shi‘i, ruled by a Sunni minority. This is a valid fear considering that the Iranians have made claims to the island and in 1996 may have supported a Shi‘a-led movement that attempted to overthrow the Sunni regime. “The fear of a sectarian shake-up in Bahrain resided among the Bahraini Sunni minority government, and part of the Shi‘i majority population, also in the 21st century.”11 Consequently, GCC leaders feared that returning Sunni militants would turn against the GCC governments in a repetition of the aftermath of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, which led to the creation of Al-Qaeda. These fears were perceived as resulting from US policies in Iraq.12 Moreover, as Al-Qaeda-initiated terrorist campaigns in Saudi Arabia (2003–6) demonstrate, US citizens, military personnel, and fi rms were targets of terrorist attacks, demonstrating how the US presence has become a liability for Gulf regimes.

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Despite these security concerns, the GCC did not develop a coherent alternative strategy to defuse the raging sectarianism that was fueling the rapid deterioration of an already tumultuous Iraqi society. Instead the GCC relied on the United States to remain in Iraq and maintain stability by force. This policy was threatened in 2006 with upcoming midterm elections in the United States and the recommendations of the American Iraqi Study Group both suggesting increasing antiwar sentiments in the United States that raised the possibility of a US withdrawal. The GCC, fearful of a power vacuum in Iraq and the possibility of the rapid escalation and spread of sectarian violence to the GCC states themselves, staunchly opposed any US drawdown or withdrawal from Iraq. To GCC states, notably Saudi Arabia, a Shi‘i government in Iraq was unacceptable, because it would orient Iraq too closely to the Iranian axis and condone Shi‘i unrest in the Gulf states.13 Already, the Saudi government had been giving tacit support to Iraqi Sunnis, allowing radical Saudi Sunni Islamists to fight alongside their Sunni Iraqi counterparts, and had turned a blind eye to private Saudi monetary donations to Iraqi Sunni militant groups fighting against the Shi‘a.14 However, the possibility of a US withdrawal forced the Saudis to confront the United States head-on. In 2006, on a visit to Riyadh by American vice president Dick Cheney, Saudi king Abdullah warned that the Saudis viewed an American withdrawal from Iraq under present circumstances as being unacceptable in light of Saudi security concerns. In the event of an American withdrawal from Iraq under these circumstances, the Saudis would have no choice but to intervene on behalf of Iraqi Sunnis, supplying them with weapons and financing to thwart the reprisals on Iraqi Sunnis by Iranian backed Iraqi Shi‘i militias. Even more fundamentally, the GCC states sought to prevent the consolidation of a Shi‘i regime in Iraq. This reflected not only the Saudi attitude, but also the growing regional Sunni concern, prevalent not only in the Persian Gulf, but in other Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan, that a Shi‘a-led government in Iraq would not work to prevent attacks against Sunni Iraqis.15 The GCC states, furthermore, failed to formulate a constructive policy to develop diplomatic relations with the new Iraqi government. The Iraqi government, democratically elected with US backing in May 2006, was representative of the Shi‘i majority in Iraq and therefore did not gain the support of the Sunni Gulf governments.16 The United States, through diplomatic pressure spearheaded by

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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pressed its regional allies, notably the GCC states, to aid in stabilizing the new Iraqi government through diplomatic means. American officials pressed Gulf governments to establish diplomatic ties with the Iraqi government in order to foster development and stability. In addition, the United States hoped that the GCC states would lead initiatives to support the al-Maliki government by inviting him to the region and making a public showing of their support. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, is himself a Shi‘i and the head of the Iraqi Da‘wa party, which Sunni groups accuse of having ties with Iran. The United States has continued to support al-Maliki’s government strongly, but the GCC states did not fully accept the legitimacy of the new administration. While all GCC states expressed common attitudes toward the current Iraqi government, they have not attempted to formulate a strategy for collective diplomatic action aimed at developing relations with the al-Maliki government. In September 2006, al-Maliki visited Tehran to meet Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei amid reports of a strengthening relationship between the governments of Iraq and Iran.17 Furthermore, the al-Maliki government did not indicate a willingness to take action to suppress Shi‘i violence against Iraqi Sunnis, and he was even accused of aiding militant Shi‘i groups in the sectarian strife within Iraq. This prompted GCC states to further accuse al-Maliki of being an Iranian agent, which has been a major factor in GCC states’ refusal to recognize his government.18 The GCC’s policies proved only semiclear regarding Iraq. Over the question of sectarianism, the GCC states continued to rely on American military force but continuously criticized the American execution of the occupation. As for support of al-Maliki’s government, GCC leaders simply failed to make an effort to incorporate the new Iraqi government into the Arab fold. In 2007, it became evident that the threat of sectarian violence had abated, and the GCC shifted its perception away from the fear of sectarianism.19 Opposing US Attitudes Toward Iran The GCC states each have a very different relationship with Iran, which has complicated the attainment of a joint GCC perception of the threat that Iran may or may not pose to the region. Qatar has viewed Iran as a threat but has maintained generally cordial relations with Iran and has cooperated with Iran in natural

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gas production. And because of the occasional tension between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Qatar has been more willing to pursue an independent policy, which would allow it to distance itself from the perceived Saudi and Iranian influences.20 Iran occupied two islands in 1971 and a third in 1992 that overlook the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz and that were claimed by the UAE. The UAE continues to claim these islands as their own and pushes Iran to settle the ongoing dispute through negotiations or in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and the GCC Supreme Council issues regular statements supporting the UAE’s claims.21 Despite this support, the UAE has forged and maintained military and economic ties with the Iranians. Out of all of the GCC states, Oman is the most conciliatory toward Iran. Geographically distant from the Iraqi crisis and predominantly Ibadhi Muslim, Oman is rightfully less concerned than Saudi Arabia and Bahrain about sectarian conflict in Iraq. Because of its geostrategic location, across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, Oman is primarily concerned with maintaining strong and cordial diplomatic relations with Iran in order to ensure the continued open passage through the Strait of Hormuz.22 Despite the differences between the GCC states and their perceptions of the Iranian threat to GCC interests, GCC states have all shared a common concern regarding Iran’s increasing influence over elements in the Arab world, notably the Syrian regime, Lebanese Hizbullah, and Palestinian Hamas. While some regional leaders in conjunction with the United States viewed this increasing influence as the emergence of a pro-Iranian Shi‘i crescent to challenge the established Sunni political order led by Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, perhaps a better characterization of this alignment would be a counteralliance challenging the US military, political, and economic domination of the region.23 This alliance undermined GCC stability and cast Iran as a symbolic threat, much like Abd alNasser’s counterimperialism undermined the stability of moderate pro-Western regimes in the 1950s and 1960s.24 The greatest gap between US and Saudi policies have come vis-à-vis Iran. US policy has been one that has favored the isolation of Iran both in the region and in the international political arena, as the United States sought to unite international political opinion in order to counter Iranian nuclear development and Iranian aspirations for regional hegemony. This initiative included all members of the GCC. In a specifically GCC-oriented approach, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pushed for the renewal of the

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Gulf Security Dialogue, the main US mechanism for security coordination with the GCC, to ensure regional stability and to confront Iran.25 The United States was not proposing a military initiative regarding Iran; rather, Gates hoped to organize a coalition critical of Iran’s policies. Along these lines, Gates has exerted pressure on the GCC states to join with the United States and other powers in condemnation of the Iranian nuclear program, in the hope that this would put increasing pressure on Iran to meet international demands. It should be noted that since Gates’s assumption of office in 2006, the United States had tried to assemble an anti-Iranian coalition that would include the GCC. Therefore, GCC leaders did not feel that the United States was pressuring them to take an antiIranian position at all costs. Moreover, GCC states, not wanting to antagonize and isolate Iran, even diplomatically, rejected these calls and did not pursue the American Gulf Security Dialogue to avoid the appearance of collaborating with the United States against Iran. The breakthrough in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran came in March 2007, when Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad traveled to Riyadh to meet with Saudi king Abdullah for the first time. This meeting signaled a working relationship between the two regional powers. The Saudis maintained their tough position on Iranian interference in Arab politics, signaling that Riyadh was seeking to contain Iranian influence in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. However, their invitation was a clear signal to the Iranians that they did not support American aggression toward Iran and wished to foster cooperative relations under these pretenses. This meeting demonstrated that the Saudi ruler was ready to view the Iranian leader as a partner in sharing and shaping spheres of influence in the Arab world. Efforts were undertaken by other GCC states that reflected the desire for warmer GCC-Iran relations, notably Oman and Qatar, which developed closer economic connections with Iran. Simultaneously, the GCC states publicly distanced themselves from US attempts to draw them into an anti-Iranian coalition, prompting Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institute and a former high-ranking diplomat in the Middle East to President Bill Clinton, to conclude that “The honeymoon’s over for Bush and the Saudis.”26 During the inter-Arab summit of March 2007, King Abdullah declared the US occupation of Iraq “illegal,” reflecting the Iranian position on the matter. The Saudi rejection of the American initiative was spearheaded by King Abdullah against the urging of national security advisor Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, who was in strong favor

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of joining the American coalition against Iran.27 Furthermore, in December 2007, the GCC invited the Iranian president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, to the 2007 GCC summit in Doha as a display of friendship, showing Iran that the Gulf states were not simply following the American lead, and also showing Iran that they were not interested in getting involved in a diplomatic or armed conflict in the Gulf.28 Despite the GCC states’ close cooperation with the United States, they publicly distanced themselves from unpopular American policies. Regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the perceptions of the GCC states differed drastically from those of the United States, prompting the GCC to take a different approach to engage Iran. While the foremost US concern with Iran has continually been its nuclear program, by the end of 2006 the GCC’s greatest fear had shifted from Iranian fomenting of sectarian instability in Iraq to the possibility of an outbreak of war in the Persian Gulf between Iran and the United States or possibly Israel. GCC leaders have regarded the greatest threat that Iranian ascendancy poses not Iranian nuclear development but the possibility of either a US or Israeli military strike on Iran, which has the potential to spark a military conflict in the Persian Gulf. In the event of an American attack on Iran, Iran would almost certainly retaliate against US military bases in the Gulf, notably their air force headquarters in Qatar.29 That could lead to both the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, in a situation similar to that of the Iran-Iraq war. Either would be economically devastating for the Gulf states. Thus GCC states vehemently oppose any acts of US aggression against Iran to avoid provoking Tehran into carrying out such retaliation. The US National Intelligence Estimate of 2007, which emphasized that Iran has not begun work on a nuclear weapon, seems to have strengthened their view that Iran’s nuclear program is not an existential threat to the GCC. The GCC states made various declarations supporting a nonproliferation zone within the Middle East, redirecting the criticism away from Iran and connecting Iranian nuclear development to the issue of Israeli nuclear proliferation.30 GCC states have publicly and actively criticized the United States for what they consider to be a double standard that rejects Iranian nuclear aspirations and at the same time tacitly condones Israel’s nuclear program, which is believed to have produced a formidable stockpile of nuclear weapons.31 The GCC states have asserted that Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal is just as destabilizing to regional

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stability as Iran’s would be if it were to attain such capabilities. The GCC has continued to issue statements calling on Israel to accede to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.32 The opinion of leading Saudi officials appears to be one of doubt that Iran would actually use a nuclear weapon in the region. Responding to the question of where Iran would use this weapon, Ambassador Turki al-Faisal stated, “If their intention is to bomb Israel, then they will kill Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians and Saudis as well. If they intend to bomb the United States, for example, they will kill other people as well. Where is the value of having a weapon of destruction that people know you are not going to use?”33 As opposed to the United States, whose focus is Iranian verbal and symbolic belligerence, the GCC states perceive Iranian strength through the lens of a declining Iranian economy with a diminishing oil supply. This situation restricts Iran’s policy options and limits its strategic flexibility. According to Saudi analyst Nawaf Obaid, Iran is in no position to seek Middle Eastern hegemony and, furthermore, would never use a nuclear weapon even if it had one in its arsenal. In addition, ethnically Persian and religiously Shi‘i, Iranians do not share the same identity as the rest of the Middle East. Gulf states see this difference as an obstacle to Iran’s hegemonic aspirations in the region.34 In this way, the Gulf states have developed a perception of Iran that is significantly different, and based far less on confrontation, from that of the United States. Accordingly, GCC leaders believe that the threat of an American or Israeli strike on Iran is far greater than an Iranian nuclear strike. The threat of a US attack on Iran was the GCC’s greatest concern, as they feared the provocation of an armed conflict between the United States (or Israel, for that matter) and Iran in the Persian Gulf. This conflict would have devastating consequences for oil shipping in the Gulf and in turn threaten the stability of the GCC regimes. GCC states also fear Iranian military retaliation against US military targets stationed on GCC soil. Thus, instead of joining the United States in an attempt to thwart Iranian nuclear development, they have gone to great effort to defuse tensions between Washington and Tehran in the interest of preventing a military confl ict that would be of detriment to their strategic and economic interests. GCC states have actively opposed United Nations measures to place economic sanctions on Iran, asserting that diplomacy had not yet been exhausted and that the use of sanctions was still premature.35 Highlighting the understanding between the GCC and Iran, the Saudis coordinated an initiative to provide

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enriched uranium to states in the Gulf according to their energy needs, highlighting the GCC’s understanding that civilian nuclear energy is an essential element in attaining economic sustainability within the Gulf.36 All of these initiatives reflect a conciliatory GCC position toward Iran opposed to the US approach of confrontation. All of these initiatives reflect the GCC states’ changing relationship with the United States, as reservations regarding US policies emerged in reaction to the liabilities faced by the continuing ties of military dependence. G C C Pr e f e r e nc e f or Di pl om ac y ov e r M i l i ta ry C on f ron tat ion Despite the salience of military forces and equipment presently located in the GCC region, Gulf states have traditionally confronted external threats through diplomacy and mediation rather than aggressive confrontation. Saudi Arabia, a prominent voice in the nonrevolutionary, moderate Arab world, has taken a leading role in pushing for diplomatic solutions to regional conflicts. In recent years, this role has been limited not only to mediation of conflict, but to the development of close diplomatic and economic ties with radical powers in an act of conciliation. Saudi Arabian policies are a case in point. The preference to pursue diplomatic solutions over military action serves two notable functions. First, the Saudis’ preference for diplomacy is aimed at defusing regional friction before it erupts into conflict, and in this way, the Saudis can avoid military confrontation altogether. The Saudis can also address budding confl icts in their local zones and prevent them from spreading into the Persian Gulf. Second, this stance allows the Saudis to maintain their position at the forefront of regional politics by playing the role of indispensable mediator. This stance is meant to ensure Saudi security, as it would be imprudent to attack the regional and helpful mediator. The smaller GCC states supported the Saudi initiatives and followed suit by proposing similar initiatives of their own, displaying a certain like-mindedness for diplomacy. One academic attempted to portray Kuwait’s regional policy in the Gulf before 1990 as the role of a “donor/mediator.”37 Qatar also followed policies of mediation in the twenty-first century, as will be addressed below. This stance demonstrates that all GCC leaders had an interest in addressing regional confl icts from the perspective of small states, preferring diplomacy over confrontation.

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Regional Mediation In 2007, the Saudis expanded the scope of their diplomatic efforts to include conflicts that spanned the entire region and in which Iran had vested interests. In 1971, the Iranian military seized control of two islands near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz (and finally a third in 1992), which had previously been under the control of the UAE. Despite attempts by the UAE to submit this issue to international arbitration, Iran has continuously refused to relinquish control. While this territorial dispute remains unresolved and the UAE displays the frostiest of attitudes toward Iran out of all the GCC states, not a single member of the GCC is interested in coming into any sort of conflict with Iran, be it military, economic, or diplomatic. Iranian cultivation of Islamist militant opposition movements in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq was another challenge to the GCC states as it disturbed the regional calm in which GCC monarchs lived. The IsraelHizbullah war of 2006 was deemed by them as dangerously destabilizing for the entire region. Earlier, in October 2006, at the height of sectarian violence in Iraq, which the GCC states accused the Iranians of stoking, Saudi king Abdullah invited Iraqi Sunni and Shi‘i clerics, as well as the secretary general and other officials of the GCC, to Mecca in an endeavor to bridge sectarian and religious differences in Iraq. While the agreement that was then achieved did little to change the situation on the ground in Iraq, it demonstrated the GCC states’ preference for diplomatic negotiations as opposed to aggressive confrontation, even regarding an issue as threatening to the Saudis as Iraqi sectarian violence.38 In the beginning of 2007, Saudi Arabia inserted itself in the middle of two major regional conflicts (in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories) that could be described as confrontations between a moderate camp supported by the West (March 14 coalition and Fatah) and a radical, Iranian-supported camp (Hizbullah and Hamas). In this effort, the Saudis calculated that their intervention in these conflicts would result in a functional compromise that would prevent continued armed conflict and support an Arab consensus. For the GCC states, a compromise represented the best-case scenario, as Iran’s clients, Hizbullah and Hamas, had both a military advantage and higher level of popular Arab support than the increasingly unpopular and dysfunctional Palestinian Fatah and Lebanese March 14 groups, whose Western support undermined their positions

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at home. The GCC states intervened in an effort to prevent Iranian clients from consolidating power in Lebanon and Palestine, furthering their influence in Arab affairs. The Saudis chose to intervene in these two diplomatic conflicts with the specific intention of rolling back Iranian influence and preventing the emergence of an Iranian-led axis in the Middle East. In the case of Lebanon, the Saudis negotiated directly with the Iranian government, who had the ability to ensure the compliance of Hizbullah in order to break the political stalemate that had paralyzed Lebanese politics. The Saudi ambassador to Beirut, Abd al-Aziz Khuja, was highly active in seeking a consensus settlement.39 In the case of Palestine, US attempts to isolate Hamas after its electoral victory in the Palestinian authority elections led to extremely violent factionalism that threatened to deteriorate into a civil war. The Saudis recognized the need for a diplomatic resolution to a conflict that had the potential to draw the region into a broader Arab-Israeli war. The Saudi-brokered Mecca agreement between Hamas and Fatah, signed in February 2007, provided a blueprint for a Palestinian national unity government and attempted to frustrate Iranian attempts to scuttle the Arab-Israeli peace process by supporting militant, anti-Israeli groups. Hamas ultimately abrogated the agreement and overpowered Fatah in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, marking the failure of the Saudi initiative. However, all of the GCC states continued to favor diplomacy and have supported Saudi initiatives.40 Qatar, in addition to Saudi Arabia, has taken its own initiatives in forging regional reconciliation in the aforementioned confl icts. While the Saudis took the lead in mediating the Lebanese and Palestinian confl icts, it was in fact the Qataris who brokered the power-sharing deal that brought a settlement to the immediate Lebanese political crisis. While Saudi Arabia used these diplomatic initiatives to establish a leading position in the GCC and among moderate Arab states, Qatar pursued diplomacy as a means of exerting its autonomy within the GCC, notably against the dominating position of Saudi Arabia.41 Following a Hizbullah-led siege of western Beirut, in response to government measures aimed at attenuating Hizbullah’s political control in Lebanon, the Qataris intervened to bring the political stalemate to an end in May 2008. The outcome of the agreement amounted to political recognition of Hizbullah and its attainment of a veto in the Lebanese cabinet. This was a significant political victory for Hizbullah, somewhat calming the situation in Lebanon. Additionally, the Qataris exerted a serious effort to work with the Palestinians to develop their

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unity government, as stipulated in the Mecca accords, but with little effect. While Qatar’s reasons for its diplomatic intervention were perhaps different from those of the Saudis, sometimes even approaching competition with them, both states’ use of diplomatic initiatives highlights a common approach to conflict resolution in the GCC region.42 Other Spheres of Diplomacy Diplomatic activities have been essential in another security sphere, that of conflict management among the Gulf states themselves. Under the banner of the GCC, the member states were often engaged in mutual mediation of disagreements over policies, territorial disputes, and/or residual suspicions and distrust. They did so through shuttling and conciliatory visits, summits of GCC leaders, and reformulation of arrangements. Such activities were manifested in the mid 1990s, with border disputes involving Qatar, Bahrain, and the Saudi Kingdom. There were disputes that followed the rise to power in a coup d’état of Hamad bin Khalifa in Qatar in 1995, in which the UAE was also involved. Those disputes were managed diplomatically, involving the GCC as well as Egypt.43 Similar examples existed in later years. In 1999, the Qatari leader Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani helped settle a dispute between the UAE and Saudi Arabia resulting from the UAE’s accusations that, under Saudi leadership, the GCC states were moving too deliberately to thaw relations with Iran, especially before the islands dispute was resolved.44 Likewise, in June 2005, Kuwait hosted the Qatari leader in an attempt to improve relations between Qatar and the Saudi Kingdom.45 However, only after the two states coordinated their policies regarding regional issues in September 2007, after the al-Jazeera television attacks on Saudi Arabia eased and the border between the two states was demarcated in late 2008, did the relationship between the two states improve.46 Thus, the GGC states demonstrated persistence and perseverance in their efforts to maintain calm and stable relations within the GCC, with reasonable results. Another area of diplomacy concerned the GCC’s responses to an Iranian proposal for Gulf security. It was submitted by Hasan Ruhani (Iran’s chief negotiator under President Khatami) during an economic forum that met in Doha in April 2007. The proposal included ten points covering security cooperation between GCC states and Iran on the basis of the withdrawal of all foreign security forces

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from the Gulf. In addition, it included a pledge to establish a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). For Gulf leaders, the option to relinquish the US security umbrella was a nonstarter. In this case, diplomatic language formulated by the GCC Secretary General, Abd al-Rahman al-‘Attiyah, focused on the GCC’s readiness to cooperate with Iran, precluding any practical steps to advance the Iranian proposal. The GCC states were careful to avoid any formal or actual reliance on Iranian security initiatives.47 Although GCC states actively pursued channels of mediation to diff use Middle Eastern conflicts and prevent the emergence of regional threats, these efforts were led by Saudi Arabia and the GCC did not cooperate in an effort to draft a joint diplomatic initiative. The GCC states were united in terms of like-minded support for diplomacy over confrontation. The GCC also lacked a vision for a reorganized Middle East, and their diplomatic efforts were aimed at preserving the status quo. On one hand, the GCC states still relied on the United States for regional defense, and they did not enter into a security arrangement with Iran. On the other hand, the GCC did not attempt to bring Iran into alignment with the moderate Arab world, and instead they attempted to placate Iran through diplomatic incentives aimed at dampening Iran’s aggressive posture. Mode s of A l l i a nc e s To what extent has institutional cooperation, in terms of strategic coordination and military and political alliance building been achieved within the GCC and between the GCC and the other states in the region? These ventures emanated from the contradictory conditions of the GCC’s realities: GCC leaders have harbored similar attitudes toward their defenses but did not want to acquiesce to each other’s leadership and strategic supremacy. Increasing pressure has been mounting for the GCC states to create an integrated regional defense network, including a fully integrated missile and air defense system. Between 2000 and 2004, the GCC developed a number of programs to achieve such regional defense; however, certain structural problems have impeded progress toward the actualization of these goals. In terms of missile defense, only two GCC states, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have Patriot missile systems, and any new systems added would be the latest generation of Patriot technology, which is not easily integrated with the previous generation of

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Patriot defense technology. In terms of air defense, Saudi Arabia is the only GCC state with an advanced communications and radar platform, in the form of the AWACS airplanes acquired from the United States during the Reagan administration in 1981. However, Saudi Arabian AWACS are insufficient to cover the entire GCC region, and no other GCC state has attempted to procure such technology, leaving vital gaps in Gulf air defense.48 An integrated missile defense system became increasingly important to GCC regional defense beginning in 2004 with the increased threat of Iran’s strengthening ballistic missile capacity. While progress is slow, this goal remains a high priority for the GCC states.49 Because of frustrated attempts to integrate defense systems in the GCC, individual states have placed higher priority on acquiring advanced weaponry, turning to the United States for the latest military technology. Saudi Arabia has been particularly interested in upgrading its AWACS capabilities, while the UAE has been pressing the United States for the latest generation of Patriot missiles. These requests, however, are not being made with the intent of creating an integrated defense system. The major factor thwarting these attempts is the preference of the individual Gulf states for relying on the United States to fulfi ll their defense needs over reliance on each other. In the summer of 2007, the United States announced a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia (parallel to a $30 billion arms sale to Israel). It was announced in the context of balancing Iran and reassuming the future US commitment to Gulf security and existence.50 Thus the Gulf states’ reliance on US defense has not subsided. This reliance is symptomatic of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the smaller GCC states. Owing to Saudi Arabia’s larger size, population, and political influence, the smaller GCC states have been suspicious of Saudi Arabian intentions and have no desire to allow military cooperation that could lead to Saudi regional military hegemony. According to the researcher Matteo Legrenzi, “Saudi hegemony would be too high a price to pay for a truly integrated defense policy.”51 If this is indeed the case, prospects for regional integration or the development of a truly centralized GCC command, along the lines of NATO, are slim. Since 2000, GCC states have ratified various joint-defense pacts, but they have not made significant progress toward the implementation of these initiatives. GCC leaders (as well as the United States) have been placing increasing pressure on the GCC in the field of intelligence sharing. This area has been problematic for the GCC because their intelligence services have, until recently, focused

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primarily on addressing domestic threats, specifically the suppression of internal opposition and threats to individual regimes. Information sharing on terrorist activities has existed for decades. However, the rise of the dual threats of Iraqi sectarian violence and increased Iranian aggression necessitated a shift in the focus of GCC intelligence and provided an impetus to the GCC states to restructure and improve their existing intelligence systems to promote better cooperation between the GCC states. At the September 2003 GCC summit, and again at a GCC conference on counterterrorism in February 2005, GCC states pledged to pursue better avenues of intelligence sharing to address external threats.52 Although these are pressing issues, the actual steps taken to share information have not resolved the GCC’s problem of establishing an adequate system of intelligence sharing. The one successful measure of security cooperation has been Peninsula Shield, the GCC’s multinational defense force. Established in 1986, Peninsula Shield is a force comprising military units from all six GCC states, operating under the flag of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Peninsula Shield participated in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and it was recently deployed in Kuwait in 2003 to protect the Kuwaitis from a possible Iraqi backlash during the initial US invasion of Iraq, as well as to act as a symbolic display of GCC solidarity. Thus, troops from all six member states participated in the operation, in a symbolic political gesture of solidarity among GCC states.53 In 2001, the GCC announced a plan for a new Peninsula Shield framework with a 22,000-man force, enlarged from its previous level of 5,000; this was accomplished in early 2003, coinciding with the American invasion of Iraq.54 In November 2006, Saudi king Abdullah proposed an expanded Peninsula Shield in order to bolster regional security.55 The proposal was met with skepticism, especially on the part of Oman, which asserted that the removal of Saddam’s regime reduced the need for an expanded regional military force. Given Oman’s cordial policy toward Iran, it is reasonable to conclude that Oman perceived Iraq to be the primary threat to the region but had since faded away, and the new Saudi proposal as merely aimed at augmenting Saudi regional influence. Although Peninsula Shield reflects concrete measures toward regional cooperation, disparate strategic perspectives among the Gulf states continue to prevent the adoption of a common alignment, allowing strategic cooperation. Above and beyond Peninsula Shield, GCC states have attempted to cultivate regional allies. In addition to military relationships within the GCC, the

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Gulf states have sought strategic relationships with other Arab states; cooperation with Syria and Egypt was significant. Support from these two leading Arab states for Gulf policies was instrumental in bestowing prestige and legitimacy to their positions, and it went a long way in refuting Iraqi and Iranian media criticism directed at the Persian Gulf. GCC states wanted Syria and Egypt to side with them politically to justify their positions, as they had in 1990–91. During the Iraq-Kuwait War, the Saudis used financial incentives to engineer a broad anti-Iraq coalition, composed of Western and several Arab states, notably Syria and Egypt. Through the use of economic incentives, including the writing off of a four-billion-dollar Egyptian debt, Saudi Arabia was able to bring inter-Arab legitimacy to Desert Storm and reject the accusations that it was merely a US and Saudi plot based on foreign interests.56 During and after the Gulf war, the Saudis assumed and maintained the role of financial benefactor and used their petrodollars to maintain a united Arab front with the goal of boosting Arab stability. In March 1991, the Gulf states signed the Damascus Declaration, pledging to combine Gulf armies with large Egyptian and Syrian military contingencies. Additionally, the agreement stipulated that Egyptian and Syrian troops would replace US forces to uphold Gulf security. Th is would spare Saudi Arabia from radical Arab criticism, since Arab-Muslim forces, rather than Westerners, would be its defenders.57 However, the Gulf states were reluctant to rely on Syria and Egypt in military terms, necessitating the shift away from military cooperation. They distrusted Egyptian and Syrian military capabilities and were unwilling to bear the high expenses involved. Their reliance on Egypt and Syria involved only the diplomatic sphere to generate public legitimacy and positive propaganda.58 Syria and Egypt became diplomatic partners to the GCC, manifest in the GCC’s economic aid to Syria and Egypt. GCC policies during the 1990s to minimize the UN sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq were a guideline for most GCC states (with the exception of Kuwait). Later, Syria and Egypt were major supporters of Saudi king Abdullah’s 2002 peace initiative to bring the Israel-Palestinian conflict to a close. Events in 2005–8 led to a rift between Syria and Saudi Arabia. It resulted from the killing of Saudi-supported former Lebanese prime minister Rafi k alHariri in a 2005 terrorist attack attributed to Syria. Moreover, Syria’s support for Hizbullah’s war against Israel in 2006 and in its bid for power against the Lebanese government in 2007–8 led to an exchange of insults and accusations

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between the two states. The GCC nevertheless maintained some lines open for Syrian participation in regional politics. Qatar hosted Syrian president Bashar al-Asad for the holidays, and the Saudis insisted that Condoleezza Rice invite the Syrians to the Annapolis peace talks in December 2007 in order to maintain an inter-Arab consensus in the peace process with Israel.59 Thus, the GCC states have undertaken alliance-building measures in two spheres. For military defense, the GCC states have favored close bilateral alliances with the United States to provide for their military needs. This association has frustrated the development of strategic military cooperation between the GCC states, exacerbated by perception of the smaller GCC states that Saudi Arabia is attempting to attain a position of military domination over the rest of the GCC, highlighting a certain level of unwillingness to trust their security to regional initiative. The GCC pursuit of close ties with Arab powers, notably Egypt and Syria, has aimed to offset criticism from Iraq and Iran that they have been too closely aligned with the United States and not the Arab camp. These alliances have been strictly economic and diplomatic, aimed at garnering Arab support for GCC measures and maintaining the cooperation of the “Arab Triangle,” namely Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Their alliance-building measures have been pursued with the intention of developing an intricate system of strategic balances within the Middle East that allows the GCC to confront various regional threats. C onc lusion In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the GCC states have still not developed a uniform policy or common institutional framework to address emerging threats, and they continue to hold different views on both the identity of their primary enemy and the nature of the threat posed, reflecting differences in the interests of the individual GCC states. The most recent set of threats emerged from the American occupation of Iraq and the rise of Iran as a regional power entertaining aspirations of nuclear development. The states of the GCC had differing priorities with regard to these threats. States such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have focused primarily on threats emanating from Iraq, such as terrorism and sectarian spillover, while states such as Oman, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain are more concerned with the ascendance of Iran, especially the possibility of physical Iranian expansion into GCC territory. Some of the smaller GCC

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states have even identified Saudi Arabia as a threat because of its size and increasing assertiveness within the GCC. In spite of these differences, in practice the Gulf states have displayed a high level of like-mindedness and related views, stemming from their shared tribal traditions, monarchical values, and awareness of their vulnerability regarding regional security, and all of the Gulf states have preferred diplomatic action to maintain amicable relations with various, sometimes confl icting factions. It can be argued that GCC strategic planning is an exercise in disparate security, displaying similar perceptions but particular priorities, pointing to the individual states’ military developments and bilateral ties with outside powers, especially the United States. Notably, the GCC states have all maintained close ties with the United States, continuing to rely on it as their primary line of defense against external military threats. That does not necessarily mean that Gulf states have agreed with US policy in the region, and at times they have even implemented policies that the United States viewed as detrimental to Washington’s interests. Despite these differences, the United States has continued to rely on the GCC states as important strongholds in the Middle East, and neither the United States nor the GCC has allowed differences of opinion to frustrate strategic ties. These strategic ties have not always been sufficient to address additional threats to the GCC, and they have led to internal opposition and criticism, as well as hostile propaganda from some neighboring states that has undermined GCC states’ standing in the region. However, strong regional diplomatic initiatives have been taken by all the GCC states in order to counter the liabilities posed by the GCC’s relationship with the United States. Thus, to address the threat of terrorism, the convention of Sunni and Shi‘i factions in Mecca in 2006, as well as direct dialogue between the GCC and Tehran, are characteristic of the approach that the GCC states have taken. Other regional mediation initiatives, including intervention in Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts, have not only aimed at diff using regional political violence, but were also calculated attempts to confront Iran’s increasing influence in a nonaggressive manner. The second method of confronting threats has been through acts of conciliation. The invitation of Iranian president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, to Riyadh and Doha in 2007 signaled that while the GCC harbored concerns regarding Iranian intentions, the GCC planned to address them in a nonthreatening and constructive way that would allow for the strengthening of relations

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between Iran and the GCC.Beginning in 2004, the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq led the GCC states to view sectarianism within their own borders as a primary security threat.60 This threat resulted in diplomatic initiatives that targeted sectarian intentions with the goal of attenuating the threat to Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia even threatened to intervene on the part of Sunni groups. However, by the end of 2006, sectarian violence began to abate, and the GCC shifted its focus away from domestic sectarian fears to increasing Iranian influence in the region and the growing fear of a showdown between Iran and the United States. GCC diplomatic initiatives were not only aimed simply at befriending Iran on a bilateral level, but they also aspired to frustrate Iran’s developing regional influence. Thus, despite the good relations that the GCC sought to develop with Iran, Iran’s 2007 proposal to establish a regional security pact with the GCC to substitute for GCC reliance on the United States was met with a GCC refusal.61 In addition, Saudi and Qatari interventions in the Lebanese and Palestinian crises were aimed at balancing, if not rolling back, increasing Iranian influence in the region in a way that was not overtly hostile.62 To maintain their nonaggressive posture, the GCC states placed themselves in a tenuous and perpetual balancing act, intended to offset cross-pressures emanating from the United States and Iran. While they hosted the American secretaries of defense and state, not only did they reject the 2007 American proposal to participate in a coalition to diplomatically isolate Iran, but they also hosted the Iranian foreign minister and president in March of 2007. Later in 2007, the GCC held meetings that Robert Gates attended, calling for the establishment of an anti-Iranian camp to condemn Iranian policies; again, the GCC refused to budge. Simultaneously, the GCC leaders avoided Ahmadinejad’s overtures to form a Persian Gulf security pact linking Iran to the Arab Gulf states. In this way, the GCC has chosen to maneuver between the two powers, as is manifested by the GCC states’ attitudes toward the Iranian nuclear project. On one hand, the GCC demonstrates less concern regarding Iran’s nuclear program than the United States would hope and has even reached out to Iran against US wishes. While the Gulf states have obviously remained concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, several important factors have caused them to distance themselves from the US position regarding Iranian nuclear development. First and foremost, the Gulf states are concerned with avoiding a war in the region between the United States and Iran, which they believe would have a devastating effect on the Gulf.

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Second, Arab public opinion has been generally sympathetic to Iranian attempts to develop nuclear power, especially in light of what is generally believed to be a strong Israeli military-nuclear capability. It is also generally believed among the Gulf states that a nuclear Iran would perhaps not present a direct and immediate threat to the Gulf. On the other hand, owing to Gulf support for a nonproliferation zone in the Middle East, it does not appear as if the GCC states are preparing to begin a nuclear arms race in the region. Moreover, they do not support Iran’s attempts to develop its own nuclear capabilities. In addition, they have signaled that they are unwilling to rely on an Iranian-designed security plan. Thus, GCC policy has aimed at finding a functional middle ground between similar but individual state interests, and this is demonstrative of the difficulties of establishing a clear and coherent policy among GCC states. Some observers have regarded this policy as a weakness of the GCC as a cooperative body, asserting that they have been too reactive and failed to take the initiative in strategic matters, and that they have wavered between poles.63 However, this conduct may also be a mode of conflict avoidance within the GCC itself. It seems that for the GCC states, collective security is the security of each state individually in a manner that reflects the similarity of its leaders’ perceptions and maintains a certain level of cooperation among them. Disagreements often arise, but they find methods of reconciling these differences and ensuring that the security of any single member is not threatened by the policies of the group. If there is a threat facing them all, they find ways of mediating among themselves so that they maintain a united front to address common threats. The design is improvised and informal, but it is accepted by all members of the GCC. Thus, the GCC states have not functioned as members in a strategic pact or as a unified political community, but rather as states with common features and similar interests, which they have often exercised individually and then bridged their differences.

American Policy Toward the Persian Gulf Strategies, Effectiveness, and Consequences Mohammed Ayoob

Pe r si a n Gu l f a s a Su br e gion of W e st A si a Any discussion of American policy toward the Persian Gulf must begin with the recognition that the Persian Gulf is a subregion of a wider region, most appropriately called West Asia, which stretches from Pakistan in the east to Egypt in the west. The political and strategic dynamics of the Gulf subregion cannot be insulated from those of this larger region and the two contiguous subregions—comprising Afghanistan and Pakistan (AFPAK) to the east and the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and Turkey to the west (the Middle East heartland or MEH)—that together with the Gulf constitute the larger West Asian region. Th is conclusion is borne out by the fact that analysis of American policy toward the Gulf almost inevitably entails discussion of the two contiguous subregions and how they affect and have been affected by American strategies toward the Persian Gulf. Just as the American invasion of Iraq cannot be decoupled from American military strategy in the Persian Gulf, the American-led war in Afghanistan has had major strategic and political consequences for the Persian Gulf subregion. Both these ventures have influenced regional perceptions of the United States to a very substantial extent. They have also changed the balance of power in the Persian Gulf in a way that may be considered deleterious to American interests. 120

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That does not mean that the Persian Gulf subregion is totally devoid of autonomous dynamics. Issues such as energy resources that drive American policy toward the subregion in substantial measure are largely unique to the Gulf for the simple reason that over 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves and over 40 percent of natural gas reserves are concentrated in the Persian Gulf.1 But even the energy issue, as the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 demonstrated, easily becomes entangled with problems and concerns of the contiguous subregions to the west and the east. In the first case, Arab oil producers led by Saudi Arabia attempted to use Gulf oil to influence American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. That embargo made “clear that the oil weapon is a blunt instrument that cannot be applied in a focused manner for any sustained period.”2 Nonetheless, it also demonstrated the interwoven nature of the political dynamics of the Gulf and of the Arab heartland. In the second case, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was widely interpreted in the West as part of a Soviet drive toward the energy-rich Gulf and its warm-water ports. In this instance, the Persian Gulf was seen as the final target of the Soviet move, with Afghanistan merely a stepping stone to the vast energy resources found therein. According to Dennis Ross, who was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State in 1981 when he wrote these words, “[T]he Soviet invasion of Afghanistan served to crystallize American concerns about, and commitment to, countering Soviet threats in the Persian Gulf.”3 No matter how flawed this understanding of the linkage of the reasons behind the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and Moscow’s interest in the Persian Gulf may have been, it became conventional wisdom in important policy-making circles in the United States and Western Europe. In addition to the strategic connection among the three subregions constituting West Asia, the Arab and Islamic character of the Persian Gulf provides myriad linkages with issues ranging from Arab nationalism to political Islam that have had and continue to have a major impact on the Persian Gulf’s perception of the United States and vice versa. In the past this was demonstrated when a leading Persian Gulf country, Saudi Arabia, was a major protagonist during the “Arab cold war” of the 1950s and 1960s that pitted Arab nationalist regimes led by Egypt against the Saudi-led Arab conservative monarchies.4 A major battleground between the two camps was Yemen, where thousands of Egyptian troops were deployed to fight a Saudi-supported insurrection, thus depleting Egyptian

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resources that could have been mobilized against Israel. In the final analysis it was the oil wealth of the conservative monarchies that decided the contest in their favor after 1967, when Egypt and Syria were defeated by Israel. Political Islam was used as a potent ideological weapon by the Saudis in this contest against secular Arab nationalism and has since become a major instrument for the spread of Saudi influence in West Asia and beyond.5 Arabism and Islam connect the Persian Gulf with neighboring subregions in complex emotive ways. These connections are often reflected in popular opinion on issues considered significant to the Arab and Muslim world even when regime attitudes on such issues reflect regime security considerations and, therefore, do not adequately reflect the public’s opinion. This difference was demonstrated very clearly during and after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 when Hizbullah’s standing among the public in the Arab world, including the Gulf, skyrocketed despite many Arab regimes’ unfavorable attitude toward the organization.6 The linkages between the three subregions that constitute West Asia have become increasingly salient over the last decade with Washington’s decision to launch a “war on terror” that has been principally conducted through the twin military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Sandwiched between the two theaters of war and vulnerable to political and military fallout from both theaters, the Persian Gulf subregion has witnessed unprecedented levels of military deployment by the United States on land, sea, and air. At the same time it has experienced unprecedented levels of anti-Americanism at the popular level. A recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s Sadat Chair for Peace and Development in cooperation with Zogby International in March 2008 in six Arab countries with regimes friendly to the United States found that 83 percent of the public has an unfavorable view of the United States, 70 percent say they have no confidence in the United States, and 88 percent consider the United States to be one of the two major threats to the Arab world.7 The events of the last decade have also demonstrated that Iran, the preeminent indigenous power in the Persian Gulf, has become a major, in fact indispensable, political player in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States is militarily involved.8 Washington cannot formulate policies toward either of these conflicts without taking into consideration Iranian reactions if not Iranian interests. The pro-American Iraqi regime is beholden to Iran in substantial measure for its very survival, and the Iranian potential for stirring up trouble in

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western Afghanistan, especially Herat, and among the Shi‘i Hazaras in central Afghanistan against the pro-American Karzai regime in Afghanistan cannot be underestimated.9 With Kabul increasingly under pressure from a resuscitated Taliban, an adversarial Iranian role can easily sound the death knell for the Karzai government. In short, of late Iran has come to provide the crucial link between the three subregions of the area referred to as West Asia in this chapter, thus further demonstrating that security issues among these subregions are inextricably intertwined with each other. H ist or ic a l Bac kgrou n d Although Washington’s interest and investment in Gulf oil goes back to the 1930s, when exploration by American oil companies began in Saudi Arabia, its strategic and political involvement lagged behind the development of similar ties to the east and west of the Gulf. America’s involvement in Pakistan to the east of the Gulf started in the early 1950s and was formalized in the Mutual Defense Assistance Pact signed by the two countries in 1954 and the subsequent Pakistani membership in the Baghdad Pact later renamed CENTO. American involvement to the west of the Persian Gulf was codified in the Truman Doctrine of 1947 and the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957, both conceived in the context of the cold war—the former to combat the spread of Soviet influence in Greece and Turkey and the latter in the context of the rise of Soviet influence in the Arab Middle East through its support of Egypt, then the leading Arab power and standard bearer of Arab nationalism.10 The Soviet-Egyptian linkage, especially in the context of Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, was perceived in Washington as threatening Western strategic and economic interests in the Arab world, including the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The major exception to this rule of late involvement in the Persian Gulf subregion was America’s role in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran and the subsequent return of the shah to the throne in 1953. This involvement was the result in large measure of urgings on the part of the British following Iran’s nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. This action came to be seen in London and Washington as undertaken at the behest of Moscow and, therefore, as part of the cold war competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. Washington bought into this distorted logic at great cost to its

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long-term interests in Iran, as demonstrated by the breakdown of relations with Iran after the Islamic Revolution.11 In fact, some analysts have argued that 1979 was an inevitable if delayed reaction to 1953. That was the case not only because unwarranted American intervention in the form of the coup established a highly negative image of the United States among most Iranians, but also because it paved the way for the shah’s autocratic rule, which decimated all secular opposition, thus providing the politically active clergy the opportunity to arrogate to themselves the role of primary opponents to the unpopular regime.12 Although both America’s strategic involvement with Pakistan and its support to conservative Arab regimes had strategic implications for the oil-rich Gulf monarchies, the states of the Persian Gulf were perceived by Washington as Britain’s exclusive preserve. Major American involvement with the small sheikhdoms began only after the British announcement that London was withdrawing from “east of Suez” in 1971. This implied, among other things, handing over its traditional managerial role on the Arab side of the Gulf to the United States, which had already replaced Britain in large measure in Iran and the Arab East as well as in Pakistan as the principal defender of Western strategic interests in the cold war against global and regional adversaries.13 N i xon D o c t r i n e a n d t h e “T w i n Pi l l a r” St r at e gy It is interesting to note that Britain’s handing over of the Gulf baton to the United States in the early 1970s coincided with the peak of the Vietnam trauma in the United States, which had led to the Nixon Doctrine in July 1969. According to common understanding, this doctrine’s “key principle was that the United States would call on its allies and friends to supply their own manpower to ‘defend’ themselves against ‘Communist aggression,’ while America provided only advice, aid, and arms.”14 It implied America’s intention to groom regional surrogates to protect Western interests principally by supplying them with arms and equipment while desisting as far as possible from direct military involvement in regions outside of Europe, Japan, and the Korean peninsula, where America’s vital interests were involved and for whose defense the United States had made explicit military commitments. The Nixon Doctrine was implemented by Washington in the Gulf in the form of a “twin pillar” strategy according to which Iran and Saudi Arabia were to act as

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America’s surrogates in the subregion, protecting both the West’s strategic interests and their own state and regime interests that were perceived as being inextricably linked to the former. Given the imbalance in Iranian and Saudi capabilities, it quickly became clear that Iran would act as the West’s primary regional gendarme, with Saudi Arabia cast in a supporting role. Iran’s preeminent position in America’s Persian Gulf strategy was demonstrated above all by the fact that “Arms sales to Iran accounted for one-third of US sales to the world between 1973 and 1978. Indeed, arms transfers rose from $750 million in 1969–71 to an annual average of more than $2 billion in the 1970s. Not only did the quantity of arms sales increase massively, but so did the quality of weapons sold. The shah was sold F-15 and F-16 fighters, which represented cutting-edge technology in global weaponry.”15 Such farming out of responsibilities suited the shah’s grandiose ambitions as well and led to Tehran having free access to the most sophisticated weapons in the American armory that it could buy with the massive amount of petrodollars it had accumulated following the quadrupling of oil prices in 1973. This created some tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as between the former and the statelets of the Persian Gulf on which Iran had territorial claims. But such intra-alliance tensions were perceived in Washington as an affordable price to pay in the context of the grand strategy that the United States had designed for the Persian Gulf and the larger West Asian region. This strategy included preventing the rise of radical nationalist movements in the region that could act as Moscow’s potential allies, as for example in Oman, countering Soviet influence especially as exercised through the Soviet-Iraqi Defense Agreement of 1972 and preventing oil from being used again as a political weapon against the United States and its European allies, as had been the case in 1973. The “twin pillar” strategy brought the largest repository of oil—Saudi Arabia—and the most powerful military power in the region—Iran—together into a web of strategic relationships with the United States that was underpinned by the sale of sophisticated arms provided as a quid pro quo for their cooperation in defending Western interests in the energy rich Persian Gulf and beyond. T h e I r a n i a n R e volu t ion a n d A m e r ic a’s I r aqi Op t ion Unfortunately for the United States, this strategy unraveled in 1978–79 with the Iranian revolution, which transformed the main pillar of American strategy in

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the Gulf into its principal regional adversary. The Iranian revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis signaled the abject failure of the twin pillar policy. This failure combined with greater Soviet involvement in the Horn of Africa and in Afghanistan in the late 1970s led to the American decision to acquire forwardbasing facilities in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf in order to protect and enhance its own interests and directly to project power in the absence of a credible regional surrogate. This policy included the upgrading of the Diego Garcia base acquired from the British in the 1970s as well as on-shore and off-shore basing facilities in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Consequently, “Washington’s ability to project force improved considerably between 1980 and 1991, aided by the development in Saudi Arabia of a $200 billion military infrastructure.”16 Furthermore, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 led to the enunciation in early 1980 of the Carter Doctrine, which committed the United States to respond to or deter “outside” threats to Gulf security. Enunciated by then president Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union speech in January 1980, the doctrine defines Persian Gulf oil as a “vital interest” of the United States that must be defended “by any means necessary, including military force.” In the words of Michael Klare, [S]eeking to implement his doctrine, Carter established the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and established a web of U.S. basing arrangements in the greater Gulf region. The process was accelerated in 1983, when Reagan transformed the joint task force into the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), giving it the status of a major unified combat force like the U.S. European Command, the Pacific Command, and the Southern Command. CENTCOM’s principal mission is to protect the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the United States and American allies around the world.17

It is worth noting that the CENTCOM covers a wide array of countries from Yemen in the south to Kazakhstan in the north and Egypt in the west to Pakistan in the east. The US 5th Fleet, whose establishment preceded that of CENTCOM, acts as the naval arm of the latter. Its area of responsibility encompasses about 7.5 million square miles and includes the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean. This expanse, comprised of 27 countries, includes three critical choke points at the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Bab al Mandeb at the southern tip of Yemen.

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Although in the early 1980s substantial American military deployment in the Gulf began, direct intervention was seen only as a distant possibility in Washington. The Carter Doctrine, and the subsequent establishment of CENTCOM, was perceived more as a warning to the Soviet Union not to overstep certain boundaries in the context of the latter’s military intervention in Afghanistan. Despite the fall of the Iranian pillar, Washington continued to put faith in surrogates acting on its behalf if not to counter Soviet power at least to neutralize threats from regional adversaries such as Iran. However it also realized that the mammoth Saudi investment in developing military facilities principally to enhance American force projection capability was not sufficient to turn Saudi Arabia into the principal pillar of American strategy in the Gulf. Riyadh’s ability to act in this capacity was restricted because of the limits imposed by demographic and developmental factors. Consequently, the United States had to seek a new partner in the Gulf whose interests coincided with its own, especially in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. Iraq turned out to be the obvious choice because of its antagonism toward revolutionary Iran, which it saw as threatening the security of the Ba‘thist regime in Baghdad. Although this abetment of Iraqi ambitions in the Gulf came to haunt Washington from 1990 onward, it appeared to be a good bet in the immediate aftermath of the hostage crisis in Iran. The Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980 provided the opportunity for the United States to develop this new relationship with its former adversary in order to contain its new foe.18 Revolutionary Iran’s political and ideological threat to Saudi Arabia and the smaller sheikhdoms of the Gulf made this American switch palatable to them as well, despite their reservations about radical nationalist Iraq, which was seen as harboring expansionist ambitions on the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf. In fact, the Saudi and Kuwaiti regimes bankrolled Saddam Husayn’s invasion of Iran to the tune of billions of dollars, while the United States provided “agricultural credits” as well as crucial military intelligence to Baghdad to stave off an Iranian victory. To add to this, France and the Soviet Union provided Iraq with top-of-the-line weaponry to fight the ayatollah’s Iran. It seemed as if a global and regional consensus had developed for identifying revolutionary Iran as the common enemy.19 The presumed Iranian threat to the conservative monarchies also led to the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on the Arab littoral of the Gulf with Saudi Arabia the leading power in the group. At

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its founding the GCC’s primary aim appeared to be ensuring the security of the conservative monarchical regimes of the Gulf, an objective dear to Washington’s heart as well.20 This American strategy of supporting Saddam’s Iraqi regime against revolutionary Iran seemed to be not only a reaction to the presumed Iranian threat to American interests but also an attempt to create a balance of power in the Persian Gulf by preventing an Iraqi defeat, which seemed a distinct possibility between 1982 and 1984, and thus the emergence of a regional hegemon in the Gulf in the form of Iran.21 However, American actions and those of other powers supporting Iraq ended up not only preventing such an outcome but also whetting Iraqi appetites at the end of the war. American support to Iraq during the war and American statements thereafter regarding Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait convinced Saddam Husayn that the United States would not militarily oppose his own grand design vis-à-vis the Gulf, which included political if not military dominance over the entire Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf. This assumption, plus desperate financial need following the mammoth expenditure on the war against Iran and the reluctance of Kuwait and other oil-rich kingdoms to further subsidize the Iraqi economy, led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and its annexation to Iraq.22 This in turn led to the massive American deployment to defend Saudi Arabia from Iraqi designs and subsequently to the war launched by the United States and its allies to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait. America’s Iraqi option had created a Frankenstein’s monster. T h e F i r s t Gu l f Wa r The United Nations authorization for the war, based upon the reasoning that Iraq had violated the sovereignty of a member state, Kuwait, provided the Americanled war against Iraq international legitimacy under the guise of a “collective security” operation. However, it was clear that the fundamental American interest in launching the war was to prevent Iraq’s direct or indirect control of the vast energy resources on the Arab littoral of the Gulf.23 Although the war achieved that goal, it had other consequences for American policy that are with still us today. First, by destroying Iraqi capabilities it rendered Iraq marginal to the balance of power in the Gulf, thus resurrecting prospects of Iranian hegemony in the Gulf. Tehran has deft ly taken advantage of this fact over the past two decades by

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attempting to create a circle of amity in the Gulf with Iran at its core. Its “softer” approach toward the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, has included several high-profile visits by Iranian dignitaries, including President Ahmadinejad, to its Gulf neighbors. The Iranian president also visited Doha, Qatar, to speak to the GCC summit in December 2007 and, addressing the inaugural session, called on Gulf leaders to create an integrated economic bloc and a collective security arrangement that would include the six GCC states and Iran.24 This conciliatory approach is part of the Iranian strategy of seeking legitimacy for its preeminence, if not predominance, in the Persian Gulf by assuring its neighbors of its friendly intentions. Such an Iranian objective has been aided by American policies in the past several years that have removed Iran’s two principal adversaries—Saddam Husayn and the Taliban—from the regional scene, thus tremendously improving Iran’s regional security environment.25 Second, the only other major Persian Gulf state, Saudi Arabia, emerged from the war increasingly internally divided and domestically insecure. The deployment of half a million American troops in Islam’s “holy land” provided ammunition to radical Islamists, many of them Saudis, to attack the Saudi regime for its deviation from presumed Islamic teachings that non-Muslims not be allowed into the Arabian Peninsula. Th is set in motion a clash between radical neoWahhabism, which combined the cultural and social conservatism of the Peninsula with the political radicalism preached by Syed Qutb’s disciples who had been given refuge in the Kingdom, and the establishment of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia that has come to form a part of the clash within the Islamic world in which the United States has become embroiled. The Saudi clout in the Muslim world has, therefore, diminished considerably, which is likely to have consequences for American standing in the Muslim world as well.26 Third, the deployment of American troops in the Arabian Peninsula also provided transnational jihadis, who had emerged triumphant but underemployed after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, with a new agenda and a new enemy against whom they could launch a jihad. As a result of the American military deployment, but also of several other interrelated factors, America, the “far enemy,” now became the primary object of their ire.27 A series of terrorist acts undertaken by these elements in East Africa, Yemen, and other places against American targets culminated in the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. This last event triggered President

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Bush’s “war on terror,” which has become the shorthand for American policy in much of the Muslim world and spawned the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.28 Fourth, and most important in terms of long-term American policy toward the Persian Gulf, the war set the precedent and the stage for direct American military involvement in the Gulf in order to create and protect a regional security environment favorable to Washington. The days of surrogates and pillars had irrevocably ended. In this sense the post–First Gulf War context dramatically changed the character of the American involvement in the energy-rich region. Large troop deployments on land, on the sea, and in the air became the norm, and the United States came to be seen not as an offshore balancer but as an integral part of the regional balance of power and, in fact, as the military hegemon in the Gulf. This direct involvement in the Persian Gulf meant that the United States increasingly focused more on regime change issues—“those who are not with us must be overthrown”—than it did with balance-of-power concerns, namely playing one regional power against another and keeping a rough balance so that no hegemon emerged in the region. From the 1990s onward the United States came to see itself as the regional hegemon and consequently expected all others to fall in line behind it. The overthrow of the Saddam regime in Iraq in 2003 was a culmination of this trend, as is the current posturing vis-à-vis Iran. This qualitative shift in American policy toward the region has had major implications, both for the region and for the United States, that are currently being played out in the international politics of the Persian Gulf. Dua l C on ta i n m e n t u n de r C l i n t on This shift in policy was presaged during the Clinton administration through the adoption of a “dual containment” policy toward Iran and Iraq, the two regional powers competing for regional preeminence in the Persian Gulf. It was argued by the advocates of dual containment that since both regimes were equally unsavory, the emergence of either of the states as the preeminent power in the Persian Gulf was unacceptable to the United States. This argument led to the conclusion that Washington should contain both Iraq and Iran rather than play one off against the other, either by choosing sides or by changing sides irrespective of the nature

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of regimes, as a balance of power policy would have prescribed.29 In operational terms that meant instituting stringent economic sanctions against Iran, isolating it diplomatically, and preventing technology transfer as far as possible. In the case of Iraq, it meant establishing a heavily intrusive weapons inspection regime as well as enforcement of no-fly zones in the north and south of the country in addition to instituting crippling economic sanctions against it. The policy of dual containment meant the investment of considerable military resources in the region, including the airpower needed to enforce no-fly zones in Iraq. Moreover, it ended up simultaneously alienating the two most important regional actors in the Persian Gulf, thereby missing opportunities for the construction of a legitimate and credible security system in the region when such opportunities presented themselves, which turned out to be the case especially in America’s relations with Iran. As one analyst pointed out, “The extraordinary aspect of America’s position was that even the election of the dynamic and forthcoming Muhammad Khatami did not provoke a change in policy.”30 Neither did Iran’s largely constructive role during the US invasion of Afghanistan and in its immediate aftermath. This role included facilitation of US aid to the Northern Alliance, with which Iran had very good relations, and Tehran’s cooperation with the United States at the Bonn conference, which anointed the Karzai government that the United States favored. However, President Bush’s characterization of Iran soon after the Bonn meeting as part of the “axis of evil” with Iraq and North Korea put paid to any possibility of a cooperative relationship between Washington and Tehran taking root. As a leading analyst of American-Iranian relations pointed out, “Rarely has such a rhetorical device had such devastating consequences.”31 Furthermore, it played into the hands of hard-liners in Iran who “could barely contain their delight at the opportunity Bush had provided them . . . even moderates reluctantly accepted the notion that the only approach was to be tough and confrontational.”32 T h e I n va sion of I r aq a n d I t s I m pac t on t h e R e gion The investment of vast military resources in the Persian Gulf also sucked the United States into direct military conflict in the region. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was only partly a result of 9/11. It was as much the culmination of a directly intrusive military policy in the region that gradually built up a momentum of its

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own that could not be stopped short of regime change in Iraq irrespective of its political consequences. Although 9/11 may have provided the trigger, the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 was to a substantial extent a result of the combination of the obsession with regime change and of a military buildup considered necessary to maintain a favorable security environment in the energy-rich region. A number of factors, including the influence of the cabal in the policy-making machinery known as the neocons, the pressure of the Israeli lobby of which several of the neocons are prominent members, and concerns about access to and control of energy resources, have been analyzed as explanatory variables for the American invasion of Iraq.33 However, the momentum of the military build-up in the Persian Gulf, itself closely tied to American perceptions of hegemony in the region as well as globally, has not been adequately studied. When coupled with the Bush doctrine of “preventive war,” which espoused American military action against “presumed” and not just “actual” or “imminent” threats, such massive deployment could easily act as an incentive for military action, as it did in the case of the invasion of Iraq.34 It did not matter in this context whether Saddam possessed WMDs or not.35 There were other factors and forces that made war inevitable, and “facts” became merely inconvenient interlopers of marginal significance to decisions of war and peace. There is considerable apprehension that a similar hubris may lead the United States into a military conflict with Iran in the near future.36 The consequences of this policy that saw direct military involvement and forcible regime change as principal instruments for advancing American interests in the region are still to be fully played out, but we can assess their preliminary results on the basis of unfolding events and visible trends in the region. As stated earlier, the United States has become the predominant military power in the Persian Gulf in terms of deployed and deployable capabilities with massive naval and air power amassed on land and sea ranging from nuclear powered aircraft carriers to the most sophisticated bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other parts of the Gulf. Qatar hosts the forward headquarters of CENTCOM, and the headquarters of the US Fift h Fleet responsible for the Persian Gulf and beyond is located in Bahrain. The Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia and the Incirlik air base in Turkey add to America’s force projection capacity in the Gulf as well.37 American ground troops in Iraq, numbering over 140,000 according to current estimates, further augment the regional perception

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of overwhelming US power in the Gulf despite the fact that American troops are mired in what amounts to an unwinnable war in Iraq. This US military presence gives the impression that the United States has constructed a security umbrella in the Persian Gulf region. Although this is correct in military terms, the political impact of the military presence points in the opposite direction. The massive US military presence has, in fact, created a series of political conundrums for the United States. In Iraq it has turned counterproductive politically, and the harmful political impact of the Iraq war has permeated the entire West Asian region, indeed the entire Muslim world, shaping highly negative perceptions of US objectives in the region. These objectives are seen not merely in terms of American attempts to control the energy resources of the Gulf but also as a way of assuring the military predominance of Israel over the entire Arab world. It is commonly assumed in the Arab world that the American invasion of Iraq was aimed at decimating the residual capabilities of the only Arab country with the potential to balance Israel at some future date. The increase in sectarianism and tribalism in Iraq and the consequent ripping apart of that country’s social fabric are seen in much of the Muslim world, rightly or wrongly, as the deliberate result of American strategies aimed at weakening a major Arab/Muslim country. This anti-Americanism is demonstrated within Iraq not only in attacks on US forces but also in the growing opposition among both the Shi‘i and Sunni factions to permanent security arrangements with the United States, especially the leasing of “enduring” bases to the US military. Fourteen such bases were mentioned in 2005, although since then there has been little public discussion of the subject.38 The status of forces agreement signed in late 2008 requires American forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, but there is great skepticism that this is a realistic time frame.39 While some in the Iraqi government and military would prefer a US military presence beyond 2011, popular opinion seems to prefer an end to the occupation as early as possible.40 Any attempt by Washington to retain military bases beyond 2011 on a long-term basis is likely further to stir up highly negative feelings against the United States and create a major popular backlash against it in Iraq. America’s unpopularity in Iraq was demonstrated not only by the shoethrowing incident during President Bush’s last trip to the country but also by the treatment of the journalist who threw the shoe at the former American president as a hero during his appearance in court in connection with that incident.41

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T h e I r a n Fac t or America’s massive involvement in the Persian Gulf has created what amounts to a zero-sum game between the United States and the preeminent indigenous power in the Gulf, Iran, which sees itself as the potential managerial power in the Persian Gulf region (à la India in South Asia) and a major player in the broader Middle East. Iran’s tangible military capabilities, except in terms of manpower and surface ships, do not compare too favorably with that of the GCC states, especially Saudi Arabia, which have benefited immensely from supplies of sophisticated equipment from the United States and Western Europe.42 However, Iran’s large population and territory, a military that has been tried and tested in battle, and a relatively well-developed industrial and technological structure give it an advantage over all other Gulf littoral states combined. Moreover, the capacity of the Arab Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, to use the sophisticated equipment they have bought is highly questionable. Above all, Iran’s state tradition, which goes back five hundred years, gives its political and cultural elite a degree of self-confidence and its state institutions a resilience that the recently minted countries and their rulers on the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf cannot match. It also instills a feeling of cultural superiority and national pride in Iranian elites that cuts across political and ideological cleavages and helps in creating a national consensus on issues, such as Iran’s right to develop nuclear technology, that provides a solid basis of support to whoever is in control of the national government in Tehran. The decimation of Iraqi capabilities has made the contrast between Iranian potential and those of the Arab littoral states even starker. As stated earlier, the American invasion of Iraq (as well as of Afghanistan) has had contradictory effects on Iran’s security environment. On the one hand, by removing regimes antagonistic to Iran in both its neighbors, American actions have helped improve Iran’s regional security environment. On the other hand, America’s military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which flank Iran, is unprecedented. The Bush rhetoric on Iran convinced many Iranians that “Iran remains in America’s crosshairs, at a time when the U.S. military presence in the region has never been greater.”43 This conviction made the Iranian political elite apprehensive of a US pincer movement against Iran undertaken with the intention of doing an “Iraq” on Iran, namely, bringing about regime change by force and putting into power a group of people acceptable to Washington.

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Such Iranian apprehensions have created the desire to go “nuclear” as well as reinforced the American-Iranian standoff on the nuclear issue. Iran considers giving up its right to enrich uranium a major encroachment both on its right as a signatory of the NPT and on its strategic autonomy. It also considers it a blatant case of double standards applied by the United States and its allies to Iran while there is hardly any criticism of Israel’s considerable nuclear arsenal and its refusal to sign the NPT. In the context of Iraq, Iran paradoxically feels more emboldened as well as more threatened by the United States—emboldened because the United States is stuck in what amounts to a quagmire and threatened because of the escalation of Washington’s anti-Iranian rhetoric and frequent saber-rattling on Iran’s presumed interference in Iraq and on the nuclear issue. The massive US deployment in the Gulf makes the rhetoric sound very threatening to Iranian ears and has the potential of becoming a self-fulfi lling prophecy dragging Iran and the United States into a war that neither side may genuinely desire. The Iranian nuclear (weapons?) program, although originally motivated in the 1980s by the desire to deter Iraq, is now driven primarily by Tehran’s military vulnerability vis-à-vis the United States, its “foremost strategic challenge”, rather than by a competition with Israel.44 The differential (and deferential) treatment meted out to a nuclear-capable North Korea when compared to nonnuclear Iraq by the Bush administration convinced the Iranian elite that the only credible deterrent to American intervention in Iran was nuclear weapons capability, however opaque it may be for the moment.45 In addition, “A nuclear capability will give Iran the confidence to obstruct and challenge U.S. power and Western influence in the Middle East. A nuclear capability would also be an immediate guarantee against forcible regime change.”46 In short, Iran’s managerial if not hegemonic ambitions in the Persian Gulf and its nuclear ambitions, which are more for the sake of deterrence than aggression, bring it into conflict with American objectives in the Gulf at least as they are currently perceived in Washington. This is the reason Iran is seen as a greater threat and its policies perceived as more malevolent in the United States than they are in the region itself. Iran’s Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, although wary of Iran’s power, are much more willing to adjust to the reality of this power than is the case with Washington. At a security conference held in Bahrain in December 2007, the Qatari prime minister summed up the Arab neighbors’ sentiment toward Iran. In response to US Defense Secretary Robert

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Gates’s favorable comparison of Israel with Iran, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani declared, “We cannot really compare Iran with Israel. Iran is our neighbor, and we shouldn’t really look at it as an enemy.”47 This relatively benign perception of Iran around the Gulf is based on the calculation that Iranian ambitions will be restrained by the US military presence in the Gulf and, therefore, the Gulf states need not go out of their way to annoy Tehran. It is also based on long-standing cultural and economic interactions between Iran and its Arab Gulf neighbors and the presence of a substantial number of economically productive Iranians on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. Finally, the Arab states of the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, do not see Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to themselves. “They believe that if this program is for military purposes, it is not aimed at them. Tehran does not identify the GCC states as a threat to its national security.”48 This assessment also brings regime postures in the Gulf in consonance with public opinion in the Arab world, which “is largely sympathetic to an Iranian nuclear option, viewing it as a counter to Israel and a way to overcome the double standard of allowing Israel, but no others in the region, to get away with the bomb.”49 It also complicates matters for the United States in terms of garnering support from Arab governments in its standoff with Iran on the nuclear issue. Furthermore, it provides Iran greater diplomatic leverage in the region that it can use to stymie American efforts to circumscribe its nuclear program. Regional sympathy at the popular level with Iranian nuclear aspirations is one example of the bond, however intangible, that Islam provides among the countries of West Asia. Although Iran is not an Arab country, its support for Arab causes, especially that of Palestine, endears it to the Arab publics as well. As two astute observers of Iran point out, “After years of enmity, the Arab masses and Arab opinion-makers continue to perceive Israel as a more acute threat. Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad understands this well: he has been raising the heat on the Palestinian issue precisely because he wants to make headway among the Arab people and understands that they do not share the anti-Iranian sentiment of their governments. Along with his inflammatory denunciations of Israel and Tehran’s assistance to Hamas and Hezbollah, Ahmadinejad’s embrace of an Arab cause has garnered him ample support among the rank and fi le. In fact, Tehran enjoys significant soft power in the Middle East today.”50 Iran’s support

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of Hamas in occupied Palestine should, therefore, be seen as appealing to Arab popular opinion rather than as an example of affi nity between Islamist groups and regimes. A r a bism, Isl a m, a n d A m e r ic a n P ol ici e s Arabism and Islam also provide links between the Persian Gulf and the contiguous regions to the west and east—the Arab heartland of the Middle East and Pakistan/Afghanistan. It is another reason American policies toward the Gulf cannot be analyzed in isolation from Washington’s policies toward the broader West Asian region as a whole. Intra-Arab politics based upon a shared feeling of Arabism, even if weakened in recent years, has a substantial bearing especially upon popular opinion in the Arab littoral of the Gulf. Therefore, the politics of the Gulf, and especially popular perceptions of the United States, cannot be insulated from issues, such as the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine and the expansion of Jewish colonization therein, that are central to the politics of the Arab heartland. Palestine has become the “prism of pain” through which most Arabs see the world.51 This interwoven nature of intra-Arab politics has had a major negative effect on US standing in the Gulf because of its unquestioning support to Israeli actions that are considered injurious to Arab/Muslim interests. This perception is borne out by public opinion polls undertaken over successive years.52 If and when the polities on the Arab side of the Gulf begin to undergo democratic transition, such popular opinion is likely to influence policy making to a much greater extent than has been the case so far, further driving a wedge between the United States and the countries of the Persian Gulf. Similar to the pull of Arabism, the increasing attraction of political Islam in the wider West Asian region ranging from the Middle East through Afghanistan to Pakistan has an impact on the politics of the Gulf and US relations with and strategies toward the Gulf. Political Islam was initially nurtured by the US, first in the 1950s and 1960s as an antidote to Arab nationalism and then in the 1980s as a potent weapon against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and beyond. However, from the mid-1990s it has become an effective instrument to counter American hegemony in the entire region. Good Muslims have turned into bad Muslims.53 At one level this has led to the emergence of the Al-Qaeda network with its dramatic acts of terrorism against targets in the United States and in Europe.

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Far more important, mainstream manifestations of political Islam within discrete states have become the major vehicle for the opposition both to what are perceived to be American hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East and Southwest Asia and to the authoritarian and repressive regimes supported by the United States. As most Muslim regimes in the region are unable effectively to oppose American policies whether on Iraq, Lebanon, or Palestine because of their dependence on Washington, Islamist political formations have become the leading voice for opposition to American designs. This dual opposition to authoritarianism at home and hegemony abroad has provided Islamist formations great credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of Muslim and Arab populations, making them appear simultaneously as defenders of civic and political rights and inveterate opponents of US policies perceived as deleterious to Arab and Muslim interests. Political Islam in the Arab world today is in important ways the reincarnation of Arab nationalism and Third Worldism rolled into one.54 As such, Islamists reflect popular opinion in the Gulf and the Middle East more faithfully than do the regimes closely allied to the United States. The same is true in the Afghanistan/Pakistan subregion. In Pakistan Islamist groups, both mainstream and militant, have among other things become the new face of Pashtun nationalism as well as the main driving force behind escalating anti-Americanism in that country. The reemergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan is driven partly by the incompetence of the Karzai government, partly by the return of the warlords, partly by the resentment against foreign forces that often kill innocent civilians during their campaigns, and partly by Pashtun resentment against the reduction if not the reversal of their traditional role as the dominant ethnic group in the country. The cross-border ties between Afghan Pashtuns and Pakistani Pashtuns have created an almost ungovernable situation in the tribal areas in Pakistan and much of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Because the Taliban in Afghanistan and their equivalents in Pakistan uphold a form of Islam often linked to the Wahhabism practiced in Saudi Arabia, Islamic militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is likely to have more than just a ripple effect in the Gulf. According to one of the most astute analysts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, this subregion has now become the epicenter of international terrorism and a clear indicator of the failure of American policy.55 One can extrapolate that it is only a matter of time before instability from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region is

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exported to the Persian Gulf, where Islamic extremists have been active not only in Iraq but in Saudi Arabia as well.56 T h e Sh i‘i- Su n n i Di m e nsion The Shi‘i-Sunni dimension of the intra-Arab and Arab-Iranian relationships, exacerbated by the American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent chaos prevailing therein, also has major bearing on US policies toward the Gulf. On the one hand, the post-Saddam structure of power in Iraq and its impact on the rest of the region signals a revival of Shi‘i political fortunes in the Arab world.57 On the other, it highlights one of the major paradoxes of American policy that in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq identified the Iraqi Shi‘i as America’s natural allies while simultaneously declaring Shi‘i Iran to be part of the axis of evil and America’s primary antagonist in the Middle East. Given Iran’s influence with the Shi‘i parties in Iraq—all of whose major leaders were in exile in Iran during the Saddam regime and whose militia were trained and equipped by Iran to different degrees—this inconsistency, indeed contradiction, in American policy has cost Washington dearly in terms of controlling the situation in Iraq. It would have been much better for the United States to provide Iran with incentives to cooperate in Iraq rather than to treat it as a pariah state. This treatment in turn has led the Iranian elite to follow policies aimed at complicating American efforts to pacify Iraq. It has also provided the hard-liners in Iran the opportunity to characterize the United States as a permanent enemy of Iran. Moreover, such a sectarian depiction of political realities in Iraq turned out to be a huge political mistake especially when it turned into a self-fulfi lling prophecy. It drove Iraqi Sunnis into almost unanimous opposition to the American occupation while failing to co-opt important Shi‘i factions, such as that led by Muqtada al-Sadr, probably the most important Shi‘i political figure in Iraq, into the American fold.58 In fact, suspicion of the United States runs deep both among the Sunni and the Shi‘i in Iraq. The irony is compounded by the fact that, as stated earlier, the major Iraqi political players after Saddam’s downfall have substantial ties with Iran. They have, therefore, had constantly to balance these ties against American priorities. The Iraqis undertake this balancing act in full recognition of the fact that the American presence in Iraq is likely to be

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temporary while Iran will be a permanent fi xture next door. They are, therefore, extremely cautious about taking any stance that may in the long term alienate the Iranian political elite.59 Finally, the sectarian depiction that influenced America’s post-occupation policies in Iraq is very simplistic and does not recognize the multiple identities of most Iraqis—regional, ideological, tribal, class, etc. As a leading analyst of Iraq has pointed out, “Iraqis, like everyone else, have changing, overlapping, and plural identities, and it is a gross over-simplification to reconstruct the whole of modern Iraqi political history as a sectarian partitioning between rulers [Sunni] and ruled [Shi‘i]. The very term Shi‘i is a loose cultural designation and not a reference to a closely knit body of people.”60 The veracity of this statement is borne out by the intra-Shi‘i struggle for power, some of it driven by class considerations pitting the Sadrist underclass against the better off and, therefore, status quo oriented Shi‘i groups that support parties such as Da’awa and the Islamic Supreme council of Iraq. The American-engineered reversal in the balance of Sunni-Shi‘i power in Iraq is also likely to have profound effects on the domestic situation in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, where Sunni regimes that are allies or clients of the United States have often pursued repressive policies against their Shi‘i populations and kept the latter largely disempowered politically.61 Some of this is coming home to roost in 2011, particularly in the case of Bahrain. These regimes, as well as the authoritarian rulers of Jordan and Egypt, who are afraid of their own Sunni Islamists and their growing popularity, are running scared of political Islam of both the Sunni and Shi‘i varieties. They have, therefore, tried to sell the idea to the United States of an emerging Shi‘i crescent in the Middle East, led by Iran, that is likely to threaten American interests in the strategically important and oil-rich region. They have done so largely to convince Washington to continue its support for these regimes against popular expressions of dissent, despite the fact that Shi‘i populations are virtually nonexistent in Jordan and Egypt. This simplistic formulation that projects a monolithic Shi‘i threat to the United States and regimes friendly to it in the Middle East hides the diversity among the Shi‘i populations in the region and their discrete interests demonstrated above all by the policies pursued by Shi‘i factions in Iraq on the one hand and Hizbullah in Lebanon on the other. It also hides the fact that Shi‘i dissatisfaction with the United States in the Arab littoral of the Gulf is largely the result

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of Washington’s support of regimes that oppress and disenfranchise their Shi‘i populations. The American support to Israel against Hizbullah in 2006 has further alienated the Arab Shi‘i (and indeed the Arab Sunnis) from Washington. Iran is but one dimension of this problem; the more important one is the nature of regimes in the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf as well as American policies toward the Arab-Israeli conflict of which the Hizbullah-Israel confrontation is one facet. C onc lusion Despite underlying tensions, so far the United States has succeeded to a considerable extent in persuading Arab Gulf regimes to take stances on pan-Arab issues such as the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that do not directly challenge the American positions on such issues. However, American policies have not succeeded in influencing public opinion in the Arab littoral of the Gulf on such questions. If anything, American policies and America’s visible presence in the Persian Gulf have been counterproductive as far as public opinion is concerned, with the United States receiving highly negative ratings in opinion polls. The United States has, in fact, succeeded in widening the gulf between regimes and the public by its policies toward panArab issues. Unless the United States reevaluates its position on major pan-Arab issues, at some point such domestic considerations may turn out to be salient enough for the hidden tensions between the United States and the Arab Gulf monarchies to come to the surface and further damage American standing in the region. Overall, America’s direct military involvement in the Persian Gulf has created a major problem for Washington. It has been unable to translate its military dominance into corresponding political gains. In fact, flexing its military muscle has been politically damaging and counterproductive in the region. Arab and Muslim populations in the Persian Gulf and the rest of the Middle East see America’s presence in the region as an extremely unwelcome, in fact provocative, intrusion, especially because of its symbiotic relationship with Israel and its support for repressive and unrepresentative regimes in West Asia. Poll after poll has demonstrated that Arab and Muslim publics believe that American policies are antagonistic to the Arab/Muslim interests in West Asia, including the Persian

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Gulf and, indeed, that Arab populations view the United States as a major threat to their security.62 Washington cannot change this image just by undertaking cosmetic steps such as President Obama’s interview to an Arab satellite channel.63 This image can only be changed by a substantive reevaluation and reformulation of American policy toward the entire West Asian region, including Washington’s support for Israel and its backing for unpopular authoritarian regimes not only in the Persian Gulf but also in the wider region. A major part of this reassessment must also address the issue of Iran’s aspirations to be recognized as the preeminent power in the Persian Gulf and a reasonable formula found to accommodate Iran as a linchpin of the security structure in the region. A stable structure of security in the Persian Gulf cannot be established without Iranian participation. Antagonizing or even sidelining Iran while attempting to create such a structure is akin to establishing a security structure in South Asia without India’s willing participation in it. Eventually, it will turn out to be a mirage. The Obama administration’s early statements—the speeches in Istanbul and Cairo to Muslim audiences and the softening of tone toward Iran—initially raised hopes in the Arab and Muslim world of a fresh American approach to the Middle East, including the Persian Gulf. Unfortunately, such hopes have been dashed with Washington once again succumbing to the pressure of the American lobby on continued Israeli colonization of the West Bank and America’s return to a hard-line position on the Iranian nuclear program. Recent events in the Middle East, principally the toppling of pro-Western regimes in Egypt and the Maghreb, have had a major impact on the Persian Gulf region. While Iran has not been immune to the ripple effects of the democratic wave, the Arab kingdoms of the Gulf, all allied to the United States, are likely to be affected in greater measure from these upheavals. Bahrain is already in the throes of a revolutionary movement, which may well end up changing the balance of power in that country between the Sunni and the Shi‘a and moving it toward closer alignment with Iran. Saudi Arabia is likely to face a major challenge from the twin forces of Islamist radicalism and the democratic movements, emboldened by the success of their counterparts elsewhere in the Arab world. Kuwait, with its large Shi‘a minority, may well end up emulating Bahrain. All this is likely once again to redound to Iran’s benefit, no matter who rules in Tehran, and confirm the centrality of Iran in the international politics of the Gulf.

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Whether pro-American regimes in the Gulf are toppled or merely debilitated, the United States is likely to face increasing challenges in the Persian Gulf over the next decade. Given the close US ties to authoritarian regimes, its popularity will continue to be in single digits in the Arab littoral of the Gulf. The challenges that Washington is likely to face will only be exacerbated by its massive military presence in the Gulf, which will be seen as deliberate provocation not only by Iran, as is presently the case, but by many others in the region as democratic movements take hold. The intensity of these challenges is also likely to demonstrate the point that military might is no substitute for the recognition of regional power balances, for the accommodation of preeminent regional powers—in this case Iran—and for diplomatic and political sagacity.

Regional Consequences of Internal Turmoil in Iraq Da n iel L. Bym a n

Iraq is moving away from the abyss of all-out civil war on which it teetered in 2006, but it is still far from being a stable country.1 The Iraqi government and coalition forces have made considerable progress in defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and reducing the power of warlords in several areas. Yet the progress so far is fragile, and much remains to be done. Terrorism within Iraq remains a tremendous problem, with suicide bombing and other attacks occurring on a regular basis. Warlordism and a lack of the rule of law plague much of the country: the central government’s writ is weak and in many parts of the country clearly secondary to local figures. Indeed, the US effort to work with local leaders to defeat AQI has exacerbated this problem.2 Internal divisions, always considerable, are strong, with tension between communal groups—and just as important, within them—at times flaring up into violence. Iraq’s economy is stalled, and its middle class decimated by war and emigration. At the very least, Iraq will remain a limited source of instability for its neighbors and other regional states. Should Iraq return to the dark days of 2006, the risk of instability spreading from Iraq to neighboring states is far greater. Because stability in Iraq is so tentative, and because it depends on many factors that are difficult to predict and even harder to control, a US and regional priority should be to prevent the Iraqi conflict from spilling over and destabilizing neighboring states, an approach that requires preventing neighboring states from intervening, helping mitigate the risks associated with refugees, and striking terrorist havens, among other measures. 144

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This chapter examines different potential forms of spillover from the Iraq conflict should violence return to the high levels we saw in 2006. In doing so, it draws on lessons from other large-scale civil wars as well as on the conditions in Iraq and in neighboring countries. It concludes by offering recommendations for the United States and regional states to mitigate the problems of spillover. P o t e n t i a l For m s of Spi l l ov e r The consequences of the civil war on Iraq have been devastating. Although estimates vary widely depending on the methodology used, even a conservative methodology suggests that well over 100,000 Iraqis have died from the confl ict so far.3 Beyond the consequences for Iraq and the moral obligations this places on the United States, the greatest threat that the United States would face from an all-out civil war in Iraq is the problem of spillover—the tendency of large-scale civil wars to impose burdens, create instability, and even trigger civil wars in other, usually neighboring, countries.4 The Middle East is no stranger to spillover. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has produced a series of interlocking patterns of conflict, with one civil war effectively sparking others in neighboring states. The various wars produced many forms of spillover, including masses of Palestinian refugees (augmented in 1967 by Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza). These Palestinian refugees and their continued attacks on Israel contributed to the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, provoked a civil war in Jordan in 1970–71, and, when they were defeated and forced to flee to Lebanon, they then triggered the Lebanese civil war of 1975–90. In turn, the Lebanese civil war galvanized internal unrest in Syria, which only ended its own civil war in 1982 by employing horrific levels of violence against its own people. It is frightening that such patterns of interlocking civil wars are not uncommon. Genocide and civil war in Rwanda triggered the Congolese civil war that has been raging since 1996 and continues, albeit in a more muted form, today. Civil war in Croatia in 1991 triggered the subsequent conflict in Bosnia, which in turn fed the 1998–99 Kosovo war, which gave rise to the guerrilla war in Macedonia in 2001. Likewise, in the Caucasus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (a civil war within Azerbaijan that was at the heart of Baku’s conflict with Armenia) was an important spur to the fighting in Georgia, and both had an impact on (and were themselves affected by) the fighting in Chechnya.

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Unfortunately, Iraq appears to have many of the conditions most conducive to spillover because there is a high degree of foreign “interest” in Iraq. Ethnic, tribal, and religious groups within Iraq are equally prevalent in neighboring countries, and they share many of the same grievances. Iraq has a history of violence with its neighbors, which has fostered desires for vengeance and fomented constant clashes. Iraq also possesses resources that its neighbors covet—oil being the most obvious, but important religious shrines also figure in the mix. There is a high degree of commerce and communication between Iraq and its neighbors, and its borders are porous. All of this suggests that spillover from an Iraqi civil war would tend toward the more dangerous end of the spillover spectrum. Consequently, the United States needs to examine how best to deal with the most common and most dangerous forms of spillover. Refugees as a Security Risk Massive refugee flows are a hallmark of major civil wars. Afghanistan generated the largest refugee flow since World War II, with more than a third of the population fleeing. Conflicts in the Balkans and Somalia in the 1990s also generated millions of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs): in Kosovo, over two-thirds of Kosovar Albanians fled the country. In Bosnia half of the country’s 4.4 million people were displaced, and one million of them fled the country altogether. Comparable figures for Iraq would mean roughly 13 million IDPs, and over 6 million refugees running to Iraq’s neighbors. Congo, Tajikistan, Lebanon, Somalia, and other civil wars also produced massive refugee flows that fundamentally changed the demographics of the country and the region. Iraq has generated massive refugee flows, producing the largest refugee crisis the Middle East has known in recent years. The violence has produced over two million Iraqi refugees. Syria has taken in the majority of these refugees, with hundreds of thousands more going to Jordan. Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf states also have taken in thousands each. These staggering numbers actually understate the displacement levels, as they do not include those internally displaced by the conflict: almost three million more Iraqis. Cities like Baghdad, which had a high degree of mixing among communal groups in Saddam’s era, are now ethnically purged to various degrees.

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So far, in addition to the Palestinians and other foreigners, it is mostly the Iraqi upper and middle classes that have fled the country altogether. As one indicator of the size of this fl ight, the Ministry of Education has issued nearly tens of thousands of letters permitting parents to take their children’s academic records abroad.5 The sheer logistical burden of handling the sudden inflow of so many traumatized, impoverished, and desperate people can strain even wealthy and developed economies. Countries in the developing world that can barely provide basic services to their own people may collapse under the strain. Providing water, food, shelter, medical care, and other necessities is often just beyond them. Albania, for example, hosted over half of the 600,000 Kosovar refugees, amounting to roughly 13 percent of its total population—the equivalent of America suddenly taking in 38 million poor, brutalized people.6 When refugees flee the carnage of war, they bring with them a host of problems. Most important, refugees often continue the war from their new homes. At times, armed units simply move from one side of the border to the other. The civil war in Tajikistan, for example, forced perhaps five thousand fighters of the antigovernment Islamic Renaissance Party to organize and train from neighboring Afghanistan. Even more worrisome, the expulsion of refugees often swells the ranks of the fighters. Each round of new refugees brings with it stories of rape, murder, and pillage, generating new recruits for the militias. The millions of Afghans who fled to Pakistan during the anti-Soviet struggle illustrate the potential for violent transformation. Stuck in the camps for years while war consumed their homeland, many refugees were easily persuaded to join radical Islamist organizations in Pakistan that supported various mujahideen movements. When the Soviets departed, refugees became the core of the Taliban, a movement nurtured by Pakistani intelligence and various Islamist political parties that, beginning in 1994, steadily defeated its rivals in Afghanistan and, as it did so, opened the door for Usama bin Laden to make it Al-Qaeda’s new base of operations. The refugee camp, often under international protection, can become a sanctuary for militia groups, particularly if the state hosting the refugees is weak or supports the conflict. Militia leaders often become the new leaders of the refugee community. Because they have guns, they can offer protection to their kinsmen

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and impose their will on any rivals. In addition, many of the young men in the refugee camps become prime recruits for continuing the fight; they are angry and jobless, while tribal elders, peaceful politicians, or others who might oppose violence typically find themselves discredited and enfeebled by the flight and the loss of their traditional basis of power (typically control of land and jobs). The presence of militias among the refugees tends to embroil the country hosting them in the civil war. From the camps, the militias launch raids back into their homelands, killing and destroying property. When confronted, they retreat to their refugee camp, hiding behind their own civilian populations. Inevitably, the raids create an incentive for their enemies to attack the camps to get at the militiamen—or even to attack the host government to try to force them to deal with the problem, a pattern Israel repeatedly used to try to deal with Palestinian fighters in Lebanon. Host governments may also begin to use the refugees as tools to influence events back in their homeland, arming, training, and directing them, and thereby exacerbating the conflict. Perhaps the most tragic example of the problems created by large numbers of refugees occurred in the wake of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. After the Hutuled genocide unfolded and led to the death of 800,000 to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, which had “invaded” the country in 1990 from neighboring Uganda, intensified operations and toppled the Hutu government. The RPF was drawn from the 500,000 or so Tutsis who had already fled Rwanda from past pogroms and operated from Uganda. As the RPF swept through Rwanda, almost one million Hutus fled to neighboring Congo, fearing that the evil they did unto others would be done unto them. Mixed in with many innocent Hutus were the genocidaires. The international reaction to the genocide and RPF victory was muddled. Much of the world failed to recognize that the refugees were actually the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of the genocide. So out of revulsion from the Rwandan genocide, countries mistakenly gave humanitarian aid to the architects and implementers of that killing, many of whom had fled to neighboring Congo. For two years after 1994, Hutu bands continued to conduct raids into Rwanda and worked with Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who used them for his own purposes to wreak havoc among the Banyamulenge, a Congolese Tutsi community that lived along the Rwanda-Congo border. Naturally, the new RPF government of Rwanda did not take this lying down: it attacked not only the Hutu

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militia camps but also its much larger neighbor, bolstering a formerly obscure Congolese opposition leader named Laurent Kabila and installing him in power in Kinshasa after it fell to the Rwandan (Tutsi) Army. It was this move, coupled with subsequent machinations, that provoked the civil war in Congo in which perhaps four million people died. As the Congo experience makes clear, refugees can disrupt politics in their new host country with disastrous results. In this case, the refugees became the principal agent of spillover, spreading civil war in Rwanda to Congo. Spillover is a common consequence of large numbers of refugees. The influx of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of victims of strife often alarms and angers their kin and supporters in a different country. They may demand that their government take action against the perpetrators. They may directly aid refugee militias. Most worrisome, they may ally with the refugee militias and oppose their own government. Emboldened by the presence of thousands of potential fighters, disgruntled communities may believe they can challenge their own government. This risk of upsetting the demographic balance is particularly true in countries where there is a delicate demographic balance. In Lebanon, for example, the influx of tens of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled from Jordan in 1970 changed the communal balance of power in the country and sparked the Lebanese civil war that began in 1975. The Palestinians were well armed and organized, and they began to work with Sunni Arab sympathizers in Lebanon. At first, this was simply to allow them to continue their cross-border attacks into Israel from Lebanon—something that had started well before Palestinians were expelled from Jordan and increased after the 1969 Cairo Accords, in which the Lebanese government gave de facto control over the camps to Palestinian militants. Over time, however, they came into conflict with the Maronites who dominated the government. The Palestinians wanted to attack Israel, and the Maronite government tried to keep them from doing so for fear of provoking Israeli retaliation. In response, the PLO increasingly opposed the government (including by force), created their own autonomous enclaves within Lebanon, and encouraged Lebanon’s Muslim groups—particularly the Sunnis—to oppose the Maronites. Over time, the Palestinians focused more on Lebanon than on Israel. The Palestinians were heavily armed, which accelerated the Maronites’ mobilization. It was no accident that the Lebanese civil war began with a series of attacks and counterattacks between the PLO and the Maronite militias. Other

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groups quickly mobilized in response to this violence, and the weak Lebanese government looked on helplessly. Thus, in Lebanon, the “external” problem of Palestinian refugees became a principal source of internal conflict. So far Jordan has avoided measures to assimilate the refugees in the hope that they would soon return to Iraq. However, interviews in Jordan suggest that the country is not prepared for a long-term refugee presence. Services are at the breaking point, unemployment is high, and there is no long-term strategy for integrating the huge number of refugees. The flow of refugees from Iraq could worsen instability in all of its neighbors. Data on refugee conditions in Syria is limited, but the scale of the refugee crisis there is massive. Syria, a poor country, is facing severe strains on its schools, hospitals, and overall infrastructure. In contrast to Jordan, many of the refugees in Syria are less wealthy. Unemployment in Syria is already high, and the large number of refugees will increase the figure. In both Syria and Jordan, many of the refugees are concentrated in the capital cities. On the one hand, this is encouraging, as the refugees are not concentrated near the border, where they would be more prone to be part of conflicts in Iraq itself. On the other hand, their political importance grows, as they are a major population bloc in the country’s power center. If refugee flows increased and went to Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in greater numbers, they could destabilize these states and inflame sectarian tension there. Kuwait, for example, has just over a million citizens, roughly one third of whom are Shi‘i. The influx of several hundred thousand Iraqi Shi‘i across the border could change the religious balance in the country overnight. Both these Iraqi refugees and the Kuwaiti Shi‘i might turn against the Sunni-dominated Kuwaiti government if it were to back Sunni groups in Iraq (as seems most likely). The influx of fighters from Iraq could also lead Kuwaiti Shi‘i to see violence as a way of ending the centuries of discrimination they have faced at the hands of Kuwait’s Sunnis. Not surprisingly, the Kuwaiti government is highly concerned about refugees and might not let them enter the country. Terrorism Another vexing problem of civil wars is their close association with the problem of terrorism. Critics of the war in Iraq have argued, correctly, that it has proven

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to be a disaster for the struggle against Usama bin Laden and his allies, especially in the conflict’s early years. In Iraq, fighters received training, built networks, and became further radicalized—and the US occupation there proved a dream recruiting tool for radicalizing young Muslims around the world. Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA official and an expert on Al-Qaeda, acidly wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a dream “Christmas present” for Bin Laden.7 Peter Bergen, another expert on Al-Qaeda, argues that the war in Iraq may prove more valuable to the jihadist movement than the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan.8 Bergen and Paul Cruickshank found that jihadist terrorism has increased sevenfold since the US invasion of Iraq even if violence in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded.9 That should not be a surprise; many civil wars have proven to be breeding grounds for particularly noxious terrorist groups, while others have created hospitable sanctuaries for existing terrorist groups to train, recruit, and mount operations—at times against foes entirely unconnected to the civil war. Examples of this phenomenon abound. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), and Fatah were all born of civil wars. All eventually shifted from merely attacking their enemies in the territory in question (Sri Lanka, Algeria, and mandatory Palestine, respectively), to mounting attacks elsewhere. The LTTE assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi because of his intervention in Sri Lanka. The GIA also embraced international terrorism in the mid-1990s, beginning with the hijacking of an Air France flight and moving on to bombings in metropolitan France. In the 1970s various Palestinian groups began launching terrorist attacks against Israelis wherever they could find them—including at the Munich Olympics, the Athens airport, and the Rome airport—and then went beyond that to mount attacks on Western civilians whose governments supported Israel. Other terrorist groups that may have existed before a civil war broke out expanded their operations as violence at home intensified. As the “Troubles” persisted and led to a low-level civil war in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army decided that it had to take the war home to the British people and so began a campaign of attacks in Great Britain (and also on British targets in the Netherlands and Germany) in the 1980s. Over the past twenty-five years, however, the connection between terrorism and civil wars has become even more dangerous for the United States because of the rise of radical Islamist movements that have a strong anti-US agenda.

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The Lebanese civil war became a front in the war Shi‘i extremists were waging to spread Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. Most famously, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped create Hizbullah to secure Shi‘i goals in Lebanon and then turned it into an international terrorist organization that has attacked Americans, Israelis, and others on four continents. Hizbullah and a number of smaller radical Shi‘i groups found a cause, a sanctuary, and a recruiting center in the chaos of civil war in Lebanon. In recent decades, civil wars involving Muslims have also been used by the Sunni Salafi jihadist movement, inspiring young men to join the cause and serving as a place for them to arm, train, and organize. In Afghanistan, the Balkans, Chechnya, Kashmir, and elsewhere, insurgencies that grew out of local civil conflicts steadily became enmeshed in a broader international movement whose figurehead is Usama bin Laden. Th rough skillful propaganda, Bin Laden’s movement painted these struggles as instances of Western oppression of Muslims, inspiring young men to join the fight and other Muslims to give financially. Although many local insurgencies and civil wars added fuel to the fire, nothing compared with Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. The anti-Soviet struggle in the 1980s was a key incubator for the movement Bin Laden came to champion. The successful defeat of the Soviet superpower vindicated the jihadists’ struggle. During the Afghanistan struggle, Bin Laden, his deputy ‘Ayman al-Zawahiri, and many other senior officials and operators forged strong bonds that lasted after the battle with the Soviets ended in 1989. In addition, the Afghan war experience helped reorient jihadist ideology. Many young mujahideen went to Afghanistan with only the foggiest notion of what jihad was. They hated the Soviets, and they admired the mujahideen for fighting back, but they had few fi rm ideas beyond that. But during the course of the fighting in Afghanistan a frightening cross-fertilization occurred. Individuals took on the grievances of one another, such that Saudi jihadists learned to hate the Egyptian government and Chechens learned to hate Israel. Meanwhile, through intensive proselytizing, Al-Qaeda was able to convince them all that the United States was at the center of the Muslim world’s problems—a view that almost no Sunni terrorist group had embraced before. Although locals may not share the terrorists’ agenda, they still may seek their aid. Contestants in civil wars often cast about desperately for allies, regardless of how unsavory they are. Bosnian Muslims quietly invited jihadists from around

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the Muslim world to aid them: international censure of these groups meant little to the beleaguered Bosnians, who welcomed an ally who would fight. The most worrisome terrorism-related problem should Iraq descend again into civil war at the level seen in 2006—especially if, as seems likely, this were preceded or accompanied by an American military redeployment—is that Iraq could then become a sanctuary for terrorist groups of all stripes, possibly even exceeding the problems of Lebanon in the 1980s or Afghanistan under the Taliban. Iraq could become an Afghanistan-like field of jihad, a place where radicals come to meet, train, fight, and forge bonds that last when they leave Iraq for the West or for other countries in the region. Although many Sunni jihadists travel to Iraq to fight now, the situation could easily get worse. The Sunni jihadists would be particularly likely to go after Saudi Arabia given the long, lightly patrolled border between the two, as well as their steady interest in destabilizing the Al Saud, who rule the heartland of Islam. Ties are tight: Sunni resistance groups in Iraq have at times turned to Saudi religious scholars to validate their activities.10 Reuven Paz found that the bulk of the Arabs fighting in Iraq are Saudis. As he noted, “the Iraqi experience of these mainly Saudi volunteers may create a massive group of ‘Iraqi alumni’ that will threaten the fragile internal situation of the desert kingdom.”11 The turmoil in Iraq also energized young Saudi Islamists, who saw it as emblematic of broader problems facing the Muslim world. After 2003, many Saudi jihadists decided to fight in Iraq, in part because doing so is a clearer “defensive jihad” than struggling with the Al Saud.12 Al-Qaeda is now weak in Saudi Arabia after a sustained government campaign against it. However, in the future, the balance might shift from Saudis helping Iraqi fighters against the Americans and Iraqi Shi‘i (and Kurds) to Iraqi fighters helping Saudi jihadists against the Saudi government with Saudi oil infrastructure an obvious target. Indeed, in February 2006 jihadists launched a serious, but unsuccessful, attack on Saudi Arabia’s key oil-export node. The attack failed but still caused oil prices to rise by two dollars a barrel; a success would have led to a far bigger jump. Should the massive civil war resume, the November 9, 2005, attacks on three hotels in Amman, Jordan, that killed sixty people may be a harbinger of a broader terrorism problem to come. The attacks were carried out by Sunni Iraqis, though orchestrated by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. If the jihadists had even more freedom of action, the pace and scale of such attacks would certainly grow.

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Al-Qaeda in Iraq is small and weak, with the best current estimate of fighters in the hundreds. The vast majority of these are indigenous Iraqis, but the leadership tends to be of foreign origin. That this is an uncomfortable situation for Al-Qaeda is obvious from its effort to tag its leaders misleadingly with ostentatiously Iraqi names. Despite its small numbers, however, AQI served as a catalyst of violence, especially from 2003 to 2007, through its audacious and costly attacks against a range of targets considered taboo by other parties, including children and UN representatives. Perhaps most important, AQI consciously sought to foment a sectarian civil war in Iraq, both as a means of undermining the US presence and because of their fierce hatred of the Shi‘i population, whom they regard as apostates. AQI’s present weakness stems from overreach as well as from US action on the ground. More or less simultaneously, the group alienated unaffiliated Iraqis by brutally enforcing Wahhabi-style mores in neighborhoods under its control, usurping tribal smuggling routes, and attempting to assert control over the Sunni insurgency. These missteps impelled more mainstream Sunni leaders, whose forces had been badly beaten by the Jaysh al-Mahdi in the 2006 battle of Baghdad, to forge a tactical alliance with local US forces—an alliance the United States was far more willing to accept in the desperate days of 2006 than in the heady aftermath of the invasion itself. US efforts to reach out to Iraqi tribal groups, many of which were linked to various insurgent organizations, eventually paid vast dividends as these tribes “flipped” and began to work with the coalition against Al-Qaeda in Iraq.13 The combined efforts of the former insurgents (known as the Awakening movement) and the firepower of US forces inflicted serious damage on AQI. In October 2007, the US ambassador to Iraq declared that Al-Qaeda “simply is gone” in much of Iraq—a judgment shared by military and intelligence officials.14 This judgment was premature, as AQI still can attack, but its operatives have less time to plan, train, and recruit and engage in large-scale insurgent-like operations. Outside Iraq, AQI’s brutal tactics alienated many Muslims, who had originally seen some of the group’s actions as heroic as they were directed against the loathed US occupation. How will this turn of events affect Al-Qaeda’s fortunes outside Iraq? Whether the United States stays or goes, global jihadists and their supporters will claim that they have already won twice over: first, by virtue of the intervention, which they use to confirm their narrative of a United States bent on global occupation,

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and second, by creating the appearance of having thwarted Washington’s allegedly imperialist designs. A US decision to disengage militarily from Iraq will likely be pointed to as reaffirmation of these beliefs. On a propaganda level, AlQaeda will claim that it drove the United States from Iraq, regardless of the reality. In addition, a US withdrawal would reinforce the broader jihadist argument that the United States, if hit hard, will fold. However, given the size of the propaganda victory the United States has already conferred on Islamic extremists, and the way that US military operations continue to confirm the jihadist worldview, a decision to remain in Iraq solely to avoid emboldening radicals would be unproductive. Al-Qaeda’s challenge is to lock in the perception of victory despite a very real setback. The degree to which it succeeds will depend on the successful absorption of the Sunni Awakening movement into Iraqi security forces, the manner in which the United States withdraws, and the overall stability of Iraq after the US draws down. In addition, it depends on whether the United States takes highprofi le steps that will further alienate Muslims and again enable Al-Qaeda to claim that it is defending Muslims against oppressors. The blow to Al-Qaeda’s credibility is potentially large, but contingent on US actions. The Iraq conflict has highlighted several problems for the jihadist movement in general. First, AQI’s targeting of civilians—and not just Shi‘i, but also many Sunnis—has raised the question of the movement’s intolerance for supposedly deviant behavior and the limits of this concept that are politically possible. Second, AQI’s rejection of elections hurt the Sunni community overall and have brought its policies into conflict with popular Muslim Brotherhood–linked groups like Hamas that embrace elections. Third, part of the movement is now focused on sectarian conflict, but Al-Qaeda central prefers to focus on the United States and its allies. Whether Al-Qaeda can control the overall movement, or whether the emphasis on sectarianism grows, both have important implications for the jihadist movement in general. Fourth, the “action” of jihad is moving to Afghanistan and Pakistan, making the broader jihadist problem more of a South Asian one and less of an Arab concern. While the direction and narrative of the jihadist movement are more uncertain because of Iraq, in tactical terms the movement is far more dangerous. Iraq has helped disseminate a wide range of technologies and methods (improvised explosive devices, suicide bombing, and so on) that were known and used before

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but were not nearly as widespread. In addition, the war saw an explosion in jihadist propaganda. Radicalization of Populations One of the most insidious problems of spillover created by civil wars—and one of the ones hardest to quantify—is their tendency to inflame the passions of neighboring populations. At the most basic level, this is simply a matter of proximity: chaos and slaughter five thousand miles away rarely has the same emotional impact as massacres five miles down the road. It is far easier for people to identify and empathize with those they live near, even if they are on the other side of an imaginary boundary. When ethnic, religious, racial, or other groupings spill across those borders, the problem grows. Then the members of a group have a powerful tendency to identify with, take the side of, support, and even fight on behalf of the members of their group in the neighboring country. A sense of cross-border affinity, indeed kinship, is particularly strong in the Middle East. As one example, Arabs have embraced the Palestinian cause from Oran to Oman. Frequently, people demand that their government intervene on behalf of their compatriots embroiled in the civil war. Alternatively, and especially if they perceive that their government will be reluctant to do so, they may begin to aid their co-religionists or co-ethnics on their own—taking in refugees, funneling money and guns, providing sanctuary, furnishing information, or however else they can do so. The Albanian government came under heavy pressure from its people to support the Kosovar Albanians fighting for independence (or, at times, autonomy) from the Serbs. As a result, Tirana provided covert aid and overt diplomatic support to the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998–99 and threatened to intervene to prevent Serbia from crushing the Kosovars. Similarly, numerous Irish groups clandestinely supported the Irish Republican Army against the Orangemen and the British, especially during the early days of the Troubles. Irish Americans famously provided money, guns, and other supplies to the IRA and lobbied the US government to intervene on their behalf against the British government. Indeed, the signature IRA weapon—the Armalite—was a civilian version of the US-manufactured M-16. Sometimes, the radicalization works the other way around: rather than demanding that they or their country intervene on behalf of their compatriots

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enmeshed in the civil war, it can cause civil unrest and even conflict within the neighboring states. Oftentimes, the neighboring population feels the same or similar grievances as their compatriots across the border. Seeing them fighting to change their circumstances can provoke members of the same group in the neighboring country to do likewise. The Lebanese civil war furnishes an example of this dynamic. Although Sunni Syrians had chafed under the minority Alawite dictatorship since the 1960s, members of the Muslim Brotherhood—the leading Sunni Arab opposition group—were inspired to action by events in Lebanon. There they saw Lebanese Sunni Arabs fighting to wrest their fair share of political power from the minority Maronite-dominated government in Beirut. This spurred their own decision to begin organizing against Hafiz al-Asad’s minority Alawite regime in Damascus. Unfortunately for the Muslim Brotherhood, Asad’s regime was not as weak as the Maronite-dominated government in Lebanon, and at Hama in 1982, he infamously razed the center of the city, a major Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, killing twenty-five to fift y thousand people and snuffing out the Brotherhood’s revolt. In still other cases, radicalization is manifested in a combination of the two phenomena: a desire to help compatriots mired in civil war leading to demands on the government, only to have the government refuse to do so, which in turn provokes conflict with the government and its supporters in the population. Lebanese Muslims staunchly supported the Palestinians against Israel and cheered the efforts by other Arab states to aid the Palestinians. After both the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, they were appalled that the Maronite-dominated government did nothing to help the Arab cause against Israel. This refusal was part of the powder keg of animosity between Muslims and Christians that the PLO detonated after it fled Jordan for Lebanon in the early 1970s. Iraq’s neighbors are vulnerable to this aspect of spillover. Iraq’s own divisions are mirrored throughout the region: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain all have sizable Shi‘i communities. Kuwaiti officials are warning that the continued sectarian conflict in Iraq could spark similar problems in Kuwait, where 30 percent of the population is Shi‘i.15 In Saudi Arabia, the Shi‘i are only about 10 percent of the population, but they are heavily concentrated in its oil-rich Eastern Province. Bahrain’s population is majority Shi‘a, although the regime is Sunni. Likewise, Turkey, Iran, and Syria all have important Kurdish minorities, which are geographically concentrated adjacent to Iraqi Kurdistan. Jordan too

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has important societal cleavages (primarily between “East Banker” Jordanians and Palestinians), and factional conflict in Iraq could antagonize its internal relations as well. During the peak of the civil war in Iraq, populations in some of the countries around Iraq were already evincing disturbing signs of such radicalization. In Bahrain, organized confrontations between Shi‘i and government security forces have become matters of real concern. In March 2006, after the Sunni jihadist bombing of the Shi‘i Askariya Shrine in Iraq, over 100,000 Bahraini Shi‘i (along with a few sympathetic Sunnis) took to the streets in anger. In 2004, when American forces were battling Sunni insurgents in Fallujah, large numbers of Sunnis likewise came out to protest. Bahrain’s Shi‘i are simultaneously angry over the suffering of their co-religionists in Iraq and encouraged by the success of the Iraqi Shi‘i in gaining political power, enough so that they seek the same for themselves in Bahrain. Naturally, Bahrain’s Sunnis reject all of their demands and ascribe their unhappiness to Iranian machinations. The New York Times quoted one Bahraini Shi‘i politician as saying, “It is only natural that we’d be affected by Iraq, but that effect has begun to hurt us. Whenever things in Iraq go haywire, it reflects here.”16 Some Kurdish groups have called on their brothers in Iran to revolt against the Iranian regime.17 There has been unrest in Iranian Kurdistan, prompting Iran to deploy troops to the border and even to shell Kurdish positions in Iraq. The Turks too have deployed additional forces to the Iraqi border to prevent any movement of Kurdish forces between the two countries.18 Tension also rose between Sunnis and Shi‘i in the oil-rich eastern province of Saudi Arabia, where a Los Angeles Times report quoted a senior Saudi Shi‘i cleric as saying, “Saudi Sunnis are defending Iraqi Sunnis, and Saudi Shiites are defending Iraqi Shiites. There’s a fear that it will cause a struggle.”19 The horrors of sectarian war are only miles away. Religious leaders on both sides have begun to warn of a coming fitna, a schism within Islam.20 Turmoil in Saudi Arabia would be disastrous for the world economy and could send the price of oil soaring. Even limited strife is a problem for oil markets. The Wall Street Journal reports that oil has a “terror premium” because the fear of a supply disruption can often raise prices significantly even when an attack does not manifest itself.21

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Neighborly Interventions In part because of the problems enumerated above, another critical problem of civil wars is the tendency of neighboring states to intervene in them, turning civil war into regional war and often destabilizing the intervening states. Foreign governments may intervene to “stabilize” the country to shut down the masses of refugees pouring across their borders, as the European Union tried to do in the various Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Neighboring states will intervene to eliminate terrorist groups setting up shop in the midst of the civil war, as Israel did repeatedly in Lebanon. They may intervene either in response to the radicalization of their population (in other words, their population is angry at the misfortune of compatriots embroiled in the civil war, and their country is intervening to help those groups) or to end that radicalization by shutting down the civil war or to stop the flow of “dangerous ideas” into their own country. Iran and Tajikistan both stayed involved in the Afghan civil war on behalf of coreligionists and co-ethnicists suffering at the hands of the rabidly Sunni, rabidly Pashtun Taliban, just as the Syrian regime intervened in Lebanon for fear that the conflict there was radicalizing its own Sunni population. Governments afraid of secession movements in their country will often intervene to prevent groups from successfully seceding across the border. Pakistan repeatedly intervened in Afghanistan in part to forestall Pashtun irredentism that would claim parts of Pakistan’s territory. In virtually every case, these interventions only brought further grief both to the interveners and to the parties of the civil war. Of course, these are hardly the only reasons for foreign intervention in civil wars. At times, it happens for purely humanitarian reasons, although this tends to be half-hearted if there is no corollary, strategic motive. Thus international action in Darfur has been motivated almost solely by humanitarian impulses, but for the same reason has been rather pathetic. Opportunism is a more powerful motive. States often harbor designs on their neighbors’ land and resources and will see in the chaos of civil war the opportunity to achieve long-frustrated ambitions. While Hafiz al-Asad clearly feared the impact of civil war in Lebanon on Syria’s own internal stability, it also seems likely that he saw Lebanon as an illegitimate and artificial state wrested from Syria by Western imperialists in 1943, and that by invading Lebanon in

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1976 he could reestablish Syria’s dominance over its wayward province. Similarly, much as Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic may have felt the need to intervene in the Bosnian civil war to protect their fellow Croats and Serbs respectively, it seems clear that a more important motive for both was to carve up Bosnia between them. Fear of a new, radical, or hostile government prevailing in a civil war can also trigger foreign interventions. Rwanda’s repeated meddling in Congo after the fall of Mobutu led Angola and other neighbors of Congo to intervene to prevent the government from becoming Rwanda’s pawn. A motley alliance of Iran, Russia, and several central Asian states banded together to intervene collectively in Afghanistan because all of them shared the same fear that if the radical Taliban were successful, their success would create problems for all of them. The fact that the Taliban were seen as Pakistan’s creature was also a cause of concern. An element of Israel’s decision to invade Lebanon in 1982 was its fear that the Muslims (with Syrian and Palestinian backing) would win the civil war and a new Muslim-dominated government would take a more active role in the Arab conflict with Israel. Intervention can also take many forms. Many states attempt only to influence the course of the conflict by providing money, weapons, and other support to one side or another in the civil war. In effect, they use their intelligence services to create “proxies” who can fight the war and secure their aims for them. Frequently though, these proxies prove too weak or too independent to achieve the backer’s goals, which creates an incentive for the government to mount a more overt military intervention. Both Syria in 1974–75 and Israel in 1976–82 attempted to employ proxies in Lebanon but found them inadequate to the task, prompting their own invasions. Ethiopia used proxies to fight Islamists and other anti-Ethiopian groups in Somalia in the 1990s through today. In the Balkans, the United States provided some degree of assistance to the Croatian Army in 1995, which was one reason for the wildly successful Croat-Bosnian offensive that year. However, by October 1995, the Croat offensive had shot its bolt and was in danger of being rolled back by Serbian counterattacks had the Dayton Accords—and the deployment of 50,000 NATO troops, including a 20,000-man American division—not ended the war. It is interesting that states typically opt for covert intervention to try to limit the potential blowback against them, but that rarely seems to work. The best example of this kind of intervention is that of Pakistan in Afghanistan. Pakistan

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is one of the few countries to have succeeded in using a proxy force, the Taliban, to secure its interests in a civil war. However, this “victory” came at a horrendous price. Pakistan’s support of these radical Islamists affected its own societal balance, encouraging the explosion of Islamic fundamentalism inside Pakistan itself, increasing the number of armed groups operating from Pakistan, creating networks for drugs and weapons to fuel the conflict, and threatening the cohesion of the state. Today, Pakistan is a basket case and much of the reason for this state of affairs lies in its costly effort to prevail in the Afghan civil war. Pakistan is an extreme example, but all of these interventions—successful or unsuccessful, covert or overt—tend to impose painful or even debilitating costs on the intervening countries. Israel’s bitter experience in Lebanon from 1975 until 2000 illustrates the pitfalls that even a strong state faces when intervening in a civil war. Israel’s interventions led to political scandal, the downfall of the Begin government, estrangement between the Israeli officer corps and its political leadership, and growing public animosity with the government. From 1975 till 2000, nearly fifteen hundred Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon, making it the third most deadly conflict Israel fought.22 As every Israeli knows, Israel was attacked by the Arab states in the two most deadly conflicts—the War of Independence and the October War of 1973, while Lebanon was seen as a war of choice, making its losses even harder to bear. The expense of Israel’s twenty-five-year involvement in Lebanon is ultimately unclear, but the 1982 invasion alone cost it roughly $2.5 billion (at a time when Israel’s GDP was only $35 billion) and slowed growth to virtually zero while boosting its foreign debt and inflation to record highs.23 By the 1990s, it was widely called “Israel’s Vietnam” by Israelis themselves. Israel, of course, is a wealthy country; the effects on the poor neighbors of Somalia, Congo, Tajikistan, and other conflicts were even more devastating. Foreign intervention at the covert level is proceeding apace in Iraq. Iran has led the way and enjoyed the greatest advantage. American and Iraqi sources report that there are several thousand Iranian agents of all kinds already in Iraq. These personnel have simultaneously funneled money, guns, and other support to friendly Shi‘i groups and established the infrastructure to wage a large-scale clandestine war should they ever need to do so. Iran has set up an extensive network of safe houses, arms caches, communications channels, agents of influence, and proxy fighters and will be well positioned to pursue its interests in a fullblown civil war if it comes to that.

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Iran’s calculus for intervention in Iraq is complex.24 On the one hand, Iran has numerous strategic interests in Iraq. Saddam’s Iraq invaded Iran and sponsored various insurgent and terrorist groups against the clerical regime. The two powers have long been rivals for prestige and influence in the Persian Gulf region, and the fall of Saddam gives Iran an unprecedented chance to become the dominant local power. Domestically, many Iranians have close personal and family ties to Shi‘i in Iraq, and the presence of Shi‘i holy sites there makes the country of particular interest. Also, Iraqi Kurds have at times provided support and a haven for antiregime Iranian Kurds seeking independence. The clerical regime has a particular interest in ensuring that Shi‘i, particularly pro-Tehran Shi‘i, are the dominant community in the country. Although Iran is particularly close to several Iraqi Shi‘i groups, it has also tried to establish ties to groups throughout Iraq in order to protect its influence should power shift there. Although all these factors lead Iran to intervene, Tehran also has an interest in avoiding chaos and massive refugee flows—factors that at times lead Iran to try to mitigate the conflict in Iraq. The Iraq war has brought tens of thousands of refugees to Iran. In addition, Iran’s Kurdish population has become more activist. The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) has become far more active in recent years, in part because of its strong ties to the PKK, which has been rejuvenated by its bases in Iraq. PJAK has thousands of fighters in northern Iraq, and from there they have launched attacks that have killed dozens or perhaps even hundreds of Iranian soldiers.25 Moreover, Tehran is concerned about Sunni radicalism. Another reason Iran might seek stability is that Tehran has also been pleased with the results of elections in Iraq, which in general have led to individuals with close ties to Tehran having positions of power. Because of these multiple and at times conflicting goals, predicting Iran’s response to any increase in chaos in Iraq is difficult. At the very least, Iran will seek to ensure its influence and work with different militias and local powers. The threat of instability may lead Iran to try to calm down violence in Iraq and cooperate with other neighbors, but it also might lead Tehran to try to intervene more decisively in order to “solve” the problem. Tehran could conceivably make a broader play for influence if it believes it has an opportunity to dominate the country with relative ease. The Sunni powers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, and Turkey are all frightened by Iran’s growing influence and presence inside Iraq and have been

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scrambling to catch up. They have begun to create a similar network, largely among Iraq’s Sunni population. Nawaf Obaid, an adviser to the Saudi government, warned that an American departure from Iraq coupled with continued bloodshed there will lead to “massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.” Obaid notes that this intervention might lead to war and grimly adds “So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse.”26 Turkey may be the most likely country to intervene overtly. Turkish leaders fear both the spillover of Turkish secessionism and the fact that Iraq is becoming a haven for the PKK. In response to Kurdish activity in the past, Turkey has massed troops on its southern border, shelled Kurdish positions in Iraq, and mounted raids into Iraqi territory. Fearful of the impact on their own restive Kurdish population, the Iranians reinforced their troops along the northern border with Iraq and shelled a number of Kurdish villages.27 Thus, it seems highly likely that there will be a heavy international component should there be a renewed Iraqi civil war. None of Iraq’s neighbors believe that they can afford to have the country fall into the hands of the other side. Both Iran and the Sunni states would likely see victory in an Iraqi civil war for the other side as being an enormous boon in terms of oil wealth and geographic position. An Iranian “victory” would put Shi‘i (perhaps even Iranian) forces in the heartland of the Arab world, bordering Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait for the first time—several of these states poured tens of billions of dollars into Saddam’s military to prevent just such an occurrence in the 1980s. Similarly, a Sunni Arab victory (backed by the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Jordanians at the very least) risks putting individuals linked to radical Sunni fundamentalists on Iran’s own doorstep—a nightmare for the Iranians because many Salafi jihadists hate the Shi‘i more than they hate Americans. Regional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, have tried to increase ties to Washington to offset Iran’s perceived increase in influence. The United States has proposed increased arms sales (and, less publicly, reduced pressure for democratization). At the same time, however, several states are hedging their bets by trying to improve ties to Tehran. Turkey seeks to work with Iran to fight Kurdish separatism. In March 2007, Saudi king Abdullah met with Iranian president Ahmadinejad, a meeting widely seen as a goodwill gesture toward Iran. The recent reduction in sectarian violence in Iraq has reduced fears of Iran somewhat, in part because Shi‘i-Sunni violence is not constantly inflaming popular passions.

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C on ta i n i ng Spi l l ov e r : P ol ic y Op t ions If Iraq spirals into an all-out civil war, the United States will have its work cut out attempting to prevent spillover from destabilizing the region and threatening key governments, particularly Saudi Arabia. Even if the current level of instability continues, Washington will have to devise strategies toward Iraq and its neighbors that can deal with the problems of refugees, minimize terrorist attacks emanating from Iraq, dampen the anger in neighboring populations caused by the conflict, prevent an outbreak of secession fever, keep Iraq’s neighbors from intervening, and help ameliorate economic problems that could breed further political or security concerns. This section offers a number of policy options and broader observations on containing spillover. At best, the options discussed will solve only part of the problem. Moreover, all are difficult, and some are costly and require a large US military commitment. But planning now is essential. Iraq is descending into the abyss, and it risks taking its neighbors with it. Planning now will enable the United States to better limit the overall scale of the spillover and mitigate its effects on key US allies. A failure to begin planning, on the other hand, will lead to an ad hoc approach that will involve many avoidable mistakes and missed opportunities. Provide Support to Iraq’s Neighbors Radicalization of neighboring populations is frequently the most dangerous form of spillover, but it is also the most ineffable, making it very difficult to address. US aid can help reduce radicalization by improving overall levels of economic prosperity and social development. Aid also provides some leverage with the governments in question, making them more likely to hesitate before going against US wishes. Generous aid packages can be explicitly provided with the proviso that they will be stopped (and sanctions possibly applied instead) if the receiving country intervenes in the Iraqi conflict. Such aid could make a considerable difference to Bahrain, Jordan, and Turkey. Although it is often lumped in with the other Arab Gulf states, Bahrain’s standard of living cannot compare to that of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the UAE because its hydrocarbon production is a fraction of theirs. Although it does receive considerable subsidies from its fellow GCC members, Bahrain is still the

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poor relation of the Persian Gulf. As noted above, Bahrain is already feeling the heat from radicalization of its majority Shi‘i population from Iraq and is particularly vulnerable to anti-Americanism because it has been a reliable US ally and hosts the headquarters of the US Fift h Fleet. Economic assistance to Bahrain could help dampen internal problems there derived from or exacerbated by allout civil war in Iraq. Jordan is a small, poor country already overburdened by its long-standing Palestinian refugee population. Over time, absorbing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees could be the straw that breaks the back of the Hashemite monarchy. Turkey is far better off than Jordan, but it too could benefit from American economic assistance. In addition, aid for these countries sends a clear signal that the United States recognizes they are suffering from the war and seeks to help them, an important political message. It is hard to imagine the US Congress voting economic aid to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Nevertheless, there are steps that both states can take that would likely diminish the threat from radicalization, and the United States should both encourage them to take such steps and find ways to help them do so. Despite their wealth, neither of these societies is idyllic. Many Saudis and a lesser number of Kuwaitis feel frustrated because they are unable to get jobs and enjoy the privileged positions in society to which they believe that they are entitled. This is particularly true for the Shi‘i communities in both countries, who tend to be discriminated against in a variety of subtle ways. Most of the economic aid helps at the governmental level, demonstrating US support for its allies and helping leaders shore up their power in the face of the possibility of increased popular frustration. But it is also necessary to help governments build regime capacity, a key determinant of the likelihood of overall rebellion.28 Capacity has many forms, and the United States usually focuses on military capacity, in part because it has many programs in this area. But for internal rebellion, police and intelligence forces are usually more important than military ones, particularly in the early stages before a revolt becomes widespread. The United States should try to build up allied security services and administrative capacity, through training programs and technical aid. Aiding refugees is a particularly important form of support. Washington should assist Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other allies in managing refugee flows and policing refugee communities. Financial support is needed to reduce the strain on allied countries. The US should also increase the number of refugees

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it accepts as a matter of moral responsibility and to provide leverage on other wealthy states that receive them too. Dissuade Intervention The United States, along with its European and Asian allies, will have to make a major effort to convince Iraq’s neighbors not to intervene in an Iraqi civil war. Given the extent of their involvement already, this will be difficult to do. Only a combination of big positive incentives and equally large negative ones have any chance of succeeding. The positives should consist of the economic aid described above, as well as specific benefits tailored to the needs of the individual countries. For Jordan and Saudi Arabia it might be an effort to reinvigorate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations (something that should be done in any event), thereby addressing another one of their major concerns. For Turkey, it might be pushing harder for acceptance into the EU. For Syria and Iran, it might be an easier road to rehabilitation and acceptance back into the international community. Economic assistance will likely be important to some of these countries, but the United States should not assume that it will be sufficient for any of them. In addition, Washington and its allies are going to have to level some very serious threats at Iraq’s neighbors to try to keep them from intervening too brazenly. Multilateral sanctions packages could be imposed on any state that openly intervenes. At the very least, there should be a general embargo on the purchase of any Iraqi oil sold by any country other than the Iraqi government. This restriction would be hard to enforce because of the ease with which Iraq’s oil-rich neighbors could play shell games with oil stolen from Iraq if they chose to do so. However, it might help remove some of the incentive to seize Iraq’s oil fields, and every little bit helps. In addition, specific disincentives will have to be crafted to affect the thinking of specific states. Jordan could be threatened with the loss of all Western economic assistance and Turkey with its bid at EU membership. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait would be extremely difficult for the United States to coerce, and the best Washington might do is merely to try to convince them that it would be counterproductive and unnecessary for them to intervene—unnecessary because the United States and its allies will make a major exertion to keep Iran from intervening, which will be one of Riyadh’s greatest worries.

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Preventing Iran from intervening, especially given how much it has already intruded on Iraqi affairs, is going to be the biggest headache of all. Given Iran’s immense interests in Iraq, some level of intervention is inevitable. For Tehran (and probably for Damascus too), the United States and its allies will likely have to lay down “red lines” regarding what is absolutely impermissible. This should include sending uniformed Iranian military units into Iraq, laying claim to Iraqi territory, or inciting Iraqi groups to secede from the country. The United States and its allies will also have to lay out what they will do to Iran if it crosses any of those red lines. Economic sanctions would be one possible reaction, but this is only likely to be effective if the United States has the full cooperation of the EU—if not Russia, China, and India as well. On its own, the United States could employ punitive military operations, either to make Iran pay an unacceptable price for one-time infractions (and so try to deter them from additional breaches) or to convince them to halt an ongoing violation of one or more red lines. Certainly the United States has the military power to inflict tremendous damage on Iran for short or long periods of time; however, the Iranians probably will keep their intervention covert to avoid providing Washington with a clear provocation. Strike at Terror Facilities in Iraq Should Iraq fall into all-out civil war, Washington will have to recognize that terrorists will continue to fi nd a home in Iraq and will use it as a base to conduct attacks outside it. All of the different militias are likely to engage in terrorist attacks of one kind or another and will just as likely try to ally with transnational terrorist groups to enlist their support. And the more the United States recedes from an Iraqi civil war, the fewer the disincentives for them to do so. Nevertheless, the United States should continue to try to limit the ability of terrorists to use Iraq as a haven for attacks outside the country. The best way to do that will be to retain assets (air power, special operations forces, and a major intelligence and reconnaissance effort) in the vicinity to identify and strike major terrorist facilities like training camps, bomb factories, and arms caches before they can pose a danger to other countries. Thus, the United States would continue to make intelligence collection in Iraq a high priority, and whenever such a facility was identified, Shi‘i or Sunni, American forces would move in quickly to

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destroy it. When possible, the United States would work with various factions in Iraq that share its goals regarding the local terrorist presence. This requirement is difficult, however, as it does not remove the US military presence from the region. If such strike forces were based in Iraq’s neighbors they would upset the local population and likely face limits on their ability to operate in Iraq by the host governments. That was exactly the set of problems the United States encountered during the 1990s, which led Washington to eliminate many of its military facilities in the region after the invasion of Iraq. On the other hand, maintaining American troops in Iraq, even at reduced levels, will have negative repercussions on the terrorism threat as well. It will allow the Salafi jihadists to continue to use the US presence as a recruiting tool, although the diminished number will make this slightly harder. It will also mean that American troops will continue to be targets of terrorist attack, although redeploying them from Iraq’s urban areas to the periphery would lessen the threat from current levels. Finally, the United States will have to recognize the military limits of what can be accomplished. Terrorism in Iraq flourished despite the presence of 140,000 US troops; it is absurd to expect that fewer troops could accomplish more. The hope is to reduce the frequency of attacks and the scale of the training and other activities, but our expectations must by necessity be modest. A n U nc e rta i n E n d G a m e Even if taken together, the recommendations above are not a panacea. Those listed above could all help ameliorate the problems of spillover from a full-blown Iraqi civil war, but they are not guaranteed to solve the problems, and they will create other costs, risks, and complications of their own. Dealing with the problems of spillover is likely to be costly, painful, and bloody. But ignoring the risks could be even more dangerous.

Saudi Arabia’s Regional Security Strategy F. Gr e g ory Gause , I I I

Saudi Arabia’s regional security strategy has remained remarkably consistent in the decades since the Middle East emerged from colonial control as an autonomous regional system. The overriding goal of Saudi regional policy has been to maintain the security of the regime, in the face of both conventional regional military threats and transnational ideological challenges to the regime’s domestic political stability and legitimacy. The pursuit of that goal regionally has at times created tension for the Saudi leadership in their most important international security relationship—that with the United States—but Riyadh has more or less successfully managed those tensions. This chapter will assess the Saudi regional security strategy on two geographic levels: the Saudis’ immediate neighborhood, the Arabian Peninsula, where they assert hegemony, and the broader Middle East, where the Saudis have to deal with numerous powerful regional states. It will discuss the means used by Riyadh to secure Saudi interests in the region, including financial power, diplomatic balancing, and its own transnational ideological networks. It will conclude with an analysis of Saudi regional policy since the Iraq War of 2003. Nat iona l Se c u r i t y a n d R e gi m e Se c u r i t y i n Sau di R e giona l P ol ic y Like any regional power, Saudi Arabia’s security policy is aimed at maintaining the independence and security of the country itself. It seeks to prevent regional 169

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hegemony and to check stronger regional military powers through the classic balance-of-power policy of finding international and regional allies. However, Saudi regional security policy cannot be understood simply in terms of the framework of national security. The Saudi ruling elite also uses its regional policy to secure the political stability of the regime against both foreign and domestic challengers.1 Regime security can certainly be threatened by military invasion and conquest. But it can also be challenged by transnational ideologies and movements that can mobilize domestic opposition to the ruling elite. In the Middle East, there are powerful transborder identities grounded in Islam and Arabism that have attracted the political loyalty of publics across state borders. The Saudi regime has in the past been particularly vulnerable to such transnational ideological appeals, as a result of its own particular history of state building. The Saudi state is in no way a “natural” political unit with a long history of central governance and strong common identity, such as Egypt and Iran. On the contrary, Arabian history has been characterized by political fragmentation and decentralization for centuries. While the Al Saud have a 250-year history as a major political force in Arabia, the modern state of Saudi Arabia is less than 100 years old. It was united by force of arms, unassisted by any kind of regionwide sense of Arabian nationalism. The Al Saud justified their rule not by national identity but by Islam. However, the official interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, was not a unifying factor outside of central Arabia. It excluded the Shi‘a populations of eastern Arabia (Hasa and Qatif) and southwestern Arabia (the Ismaili population of Asir). It relegated to subordinate status Sunnis who did not follow the Hanbali school of legal interpretation, which included the vast majority of the population of western Arabia (Hijaz). Local and tribal loyalties and identifications remained strong through the early decades of the history of modern Saudi Arabia and persist up to today. Thus the Saudi rulers have had to confront a number of challenges to their domestic stability and security that sought from abroad to mobilize opposition to their rule among their subjects. Four such challenges stand out: The Hashemite challenge, from the late 1920s through the early 1950s. The founder of the modern Saudi state, Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman Al Saud (Ibn Saud), expelled the Hashemite rulers of the Hijaz in 1926, but British colonialism had installed Hashemites in power in their mandates of Transjordan and Iraq, presenting a dangerous irredentist threat to Saudi control over the Hijaz. The

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Hashemite rulers of those countries, particularly Prince Abdallah of Transjordan (after 1950, Jordan), maintained contacts with Hijazis for decades after the Saudi conquest.2 The Nasserist challenge, from the late 1950s through the late 1960s. Egyptian president Gamal Abd al-Nasir (Nasser) asserted his leadership of the Arab world by mobilizing Arabs across state borders in support of his Arab nationalist program of opposition to Israel and Western influence in the region and his support for Arab unity (at least when he was in charge of such unity plans). He was able to shake the stability of regimes across the Arab world, helping to bring down governments in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen and threaten rulers in Lebanon and Jordan. Nasser was popular in Saudi Arabia, among educated urbanites and military officers in particular. The Saudi rulers feared his ability to mobilize support both in the military, exemplified by a number of failed coup attempts by Nasserist sympathizers, and among the general population. The Nasserist propaganda machine made an active effort to delegitimize the Saudi regime from the breakup of the United Arab Republic in 1961 right up to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.3 The Islamist revolutionary challenge from Iran after 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution challenged the Saudi rulers on a number of levels. He demonstrated how a popular revolution could unseat an apparently powerful monarchy allied to the United States and thus provided a threatening demonstration to Saudi subjects of the possibility of political change. He spoke in the name of Islam, challenging the Saudis on the very ground they had staked out to legitimate their regime, and explicitly condemned monarchy as contrary to Islam. By making anti-Americanism a core element of his Islamist revolutionary ideology, he challenged the Saudis on their long-standing security relationship with Washington. Although Khomeini claimed that his revolution was for all Muslims, it had particular resonance among his fellow Shi‘a Muslims, and Iran during the 1980s (and, to a lesser extent, thereafter) actively encouraged opposition to the Saudi regime among the Saudi Shi‘a minority.4 The Salafi Islamist challenge represented by Al-Qaeda and its allies, including Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This is the most recent ideological challenge to Saudi rule, which emerged only after the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States in September 2001. Although Usama bin Laden challenged Saudi legitimacy in the 1990s from his exile in Sudan and then Afghanistan, it was only in 2003 that his local allies began a violent campaign within the country to bring down the regime.

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Bin Laden’s challenge, while militarily limited, was in many ways the most potent ideological threat to Saudi rule, as it questioned the sincerity of the Saudis’ adherence to their own Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It was also the most ironic of the challenges, as the Saudi regime had for decades encouraged the spread of the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam throughout the Muslim world.5 The regional strategies the Saudi rulers have pursued in dealing with these transnational ideological and political challenges will be discussed in more detail below. But it is important to note that the latter three challenges to Saudi domestic legitimacy all point to the close Saudi relationship with the United States as proof that the Al Saud have forfeited their claim to the loyalty of their citizens. There is a persistent tension in Saudi foreign policy between the maintenance of their ties to Washington as the cornerstone of their foreign policy at the international level and their desire to prevent the American link from becoming an issue that could mobilize domestic opposition and allow foreign powers to exploit domestic discontent to destabilize the regime. Some of the most notable periods of tension in the Saudi-American relationship have resulted from the Saudis prioritizing regional goals which run counter to American strategy in the region. In 1956, a CIA report labeled Saudi Arabia “a disruptive force in Western Arab relations” because Riyadh refused to support the Baghdad Pact, closed down the American aid mission in the country, and basically aligned with Nasser’s Egypt in inter-Arab politics. The guiding principle of Saudi regional policy at that time, balancing Hashemite power, (temporarily) trumped American views of how the region should be organized.6 The Saudi oil embargo against the United States in 1973–74 was in support of the Egyptian-Syrian war effort against Israel, with Riyadh willing to put at risk its ties to Washington in order to support leaders in Cairo and Damascus who were (unlike their predecessors) willing to cooperate with the Saudis rather than try to destabilize them. Saudi Arabia refused to support the American-brokered Camp David agreements and the Egyptian-Israel peace treaty of 1979 because such support would expose Riyadh to the hostility of Syria and Iraq, which could try to exploit domestic opposition in the country to Egypt’s separate peace. In general, the Saudis have been successful at riding out the contradictions in their regional strategy and their international strategy. After times of tension with the United States, they have always worked to repair the breach. When faced with contrary pressures from Washington and their regional and domestic demands,

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the Saudis have frequently split the difference. Their position on the Iraq War of 2003 is a good example of such a strategy. Riyadh publicly opposed the war, which was enormously unpopular in the Arab world, and privately counseled the Bush administration not to undertake it. However, it quietly allowed American forces access to Saudi bases and American planes access to Saudi airspace during the fighting.7 The Saudis have managed the tensions in their international and regional foreign policy strategies successfully, at least so far. The Saudi regional security strategy also dictates their positions on ArabIsraeli questions. Because of regional and domestic public opinion support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel, Riyadh will not take dramatic unilateral initiatives toward Israel. Even though at times Israel directly shared security interests with Saudi Arabia (against Nasser in the 1960s; against Iran in the post2003 Middle East), the Saudis would not deal directly with Israel. The Saudis feel most comfortable within an Arab consensus toward Israel, with less concern about the content of that consensus than with the fact that they are not exposed to Arab regional and domestic criticism for being too willing (at American behest) to deal with Israel. Thus King Faysal readily accepted, even helped to broker, the post–1967 War agreements with Egypt and Syria in which the Saudis agreed to help rebuild the Egyptian and Syrian armies, even though the Israeli defeat of Nasser greatly improved the Saudi security position.8 The Saudis refused to back the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord because it would expose them to the hostility of Iraq and Syria. When the Saudis do introduce Arab-Israeli peace plans (as they did in 1981 and 2002), they are in the context of the Arab League, to create an Arab consensus on peace moves, not as direct approaches to Jerusalem. Riyadh spends its diplomatic capital on Arab-Israeli issues in negotiating with other Arab states, not with Israel.9 T h e Sau di R e giona l St r at e gy: T h e A r a bi a n Pe n i nsu l a In the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudis seek hegemony. They do not want outsiders establishing themselves in positions of influence in what Riyadh sees as its backyard and its natural sphere of influence. They have been relatively successful at consolidating such influence, though not without numerous reverses and struggles. In the past they have confronted Egyptian military forces in the Yemen

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Arab Republic (North Yemen) in the 1960s, a Soviet client state in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) in the 1970s and 1980s, and forces from the shah’s Iran assisting the sultan of Oman in putting down the Dhufar rebellion in the 1970s. The unification of Yemen in 1990 was a blow to Saudi interests in keeping Yemen weak and divided. At various times the smaller Persian Gulf monarchies have asserted considerable independence from Riyadh— Kuwait in the 1970s and 1980s, Oman during the same period, Qatar in the late 1990s and 2000s. Yet as the 2010s get underway, the Saudis are unchallenged by regional competitors for influence in the Peninsula, though the American role in the smaller Persian Gulf monarchies provides them some support in maintaining a degree of autonomy from Riyadh. Saudi relations with each of the smaller Gulf monarchies (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman) have their own separate histories and particularities. At one time or another there have been tensions in each of those bilateral relationships, over border issues, oil policy, and the desire of the smaller states to develop close relations with other regional and international powers. But their common domestic political systems and their common interest in avoiding a Persian Gulf dominated by either Iran or Iraq have kept the Saudis and the smaller monarchies more together than they have been apart. It was just those common interests that led the smaller states to accept, however reluctantly, the institutionalization of Saudi leadership in the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981.10 The Iranian Revolution, in both its mobilization of Shi‘a discontent and its assertion that monarchy is illegitimate, was a threat to all the monarchies. Iraq’s assertion of military power in attacking Iran in 1980 was a frightening precedent. Faced with the instability created by the revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, the smaller states were willing to follow the Saudi lead in joining the GCC. The group has been the framework for joint responses to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and has fostered greater economic and security cooperation among its members. Its regular annual summit meetings, though sometimes marred by squabbles among the leaders, symbolize their commitment to continued cooperation and the continued acceptance by the smaller states, however grudgingly, of Saudi leadership. The GCC is probably the most successful institutional innovation in Saudi foreign policy history. Saudi desires to assert dominance in Yemen have been less successful. The Saudis have a long history of involvement in the domestic politics of both North Yemen and, to a lesser extent, South Yemen.11 They worked successfully

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in the 1960s to prevent the Egyptian-supported republican government in Sana‘a from defeating the forces loyal to the deposed Imam and helped to midwife the coalition government that ended the Yemeni civil war in 1970. They used their financial power and ties to important Yemeni politicians to scuttle the two unity accords in the 1970s and prevent the Soviet-supported South Yemeni government from extending its influence in the north. However, the Yemeni unity agreement of 1990 caught the Saudis unaware, and united Yemen’s position in the Gulf crisis of 1990–91, against Saudi preferences, redoubled Riyadh’s desire to punish Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Salih, a former Saudi client, and, if possible, scuttle the unity project. In 1994 Riyadh openly supported the effort by its former ideological adversaries in the Yemeni Socialist Party to break the south off from the united Yemeni state.12 After the failure of the secessionist plan, it took years for the Saudis to reconcile with Salih’s government. In 2000 the two states signed a border agreement, which seems to have eliminated a major bone of contention in the relationship. Although the Saudis do not have the kind of institutionalized leadership role in their relations with Yemen that they enjoy with the other Peninsula monarchies, they have been able over the past two decades to prevent any other power from building a base of influence in Yemen. T h e Sau di R e giona l St r at e gy: T h e L a rge r M i ddl e E a st In the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia is the dominant power by virtue of its size and its wealth. In the larger Middle East, the Saudis do not enjoy that kind of relative power advantage. They are rich, and that helps, but it is not enough to overcome the military and demographic advantages possessed by potential regional rivals. Iran and pre-2003 Iraq are also important oil states, and both possessed significantly more military power than do the Saudis, if not in the expensive weapons they could buy, then in their willingness to use their military outside their borders. Egypt, though poor, has more than three times the population of Saudi Arabia. Even Syria, smaller in population than Saudi Arabia and much poorer, is more than the Saudis’ equal in terms of military power and a significant competitor for regional influence. Israel is a vastly more effective military power, and Turkey is a major regional economic, political, and military force. In the larger Middle East, the Saudis are relatively weak militarily and face

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numerous competitors—some of which have on occasion been direct threats to Saudi state and regime security. Given its power position, the Saudi regional strategy has been one of balancing among potential rivals—seeking out regional and international allies against regional powers that directly threaten Saudi security and/or seem poised to dominate the area’s politics. But in a multipolar regional environment, where there are a number of potential threats and would-be regional hegemons, how do the Saudis prioritize among those threats? In other words, against whom do they choose to balance? Riyadh’s answer to this question is a variant on classic balance-of-power theory. The Saudis do not simply balance against the strongest regional power in terms of political/military capabilities. Rather, they balance against that power that presents the clearest challenge to their domestic regime security.13 The most serious threats to Saudi security are those where a major regional military power also directly attacks the domestic legitimacy of the Saudi regime and tries to encourage elements of the Saudi population to oppose the regime. In such circumstances, there is little doubt against whom the Saudis will balance. In the 1960s, when Egypt had troops in North Yemen and Nasser’s propaganda machine was regularly denouncing the Saudi leadership as reactionary stooges of the United States, Riyadh solidified its relationship with the United States and sought to broaden the scope of regional politics from an Arab framework to an Islamic framework, calling for the establishment of the Islamic Conference Organization, which would bring into the regional mix friendly, pro-American, non-Arab states like Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan. When Iranian forces were on the offensive in the Iran-Iraq War (from 1982 to 1987) and the revolutionary regime was questioning the Saudis’ Islamic credentials, Riyadh backed Saddam’s Iraq, repaired its relations with Egypt (despite the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty), and cooperated with the increased American military presence in the Persian Gulf. When Saddam Husayn invaded Kuwait in 1990 and called for popular uprisings against the Saudi regime, the Al Saud worked to build an anti-Iraqi Arab bloc with Egypt and Syria and invited American and other foreign forces into the kingdom to restore the status quo. The more interesting cases are those where the source of threat to the Saudis is not so clear. One regional power could present a threat based upon its superior military capabilities while another, seemingly less powerful military actor could be openly hostile to the Saudi regime on ideological grounds. In such cases, the

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Saudis have seen the ideological threat as more immediate than the potential military threat and have adopted a strategy of balancing against the ideological threat, even if that meant supporting what seemed to be a potential regional military hegemon. That was the case in the mid-1950s, when continued Saudi worries about Hashemite irredentist ambitions in Hijaz led Riyadh to align with Nasser’s Egypt, even as Nasser’s regional power and ambition grew. The Saudi leadership only began to reassess the Nasserist threat in 1957 and even then spent the following years dithering between confrontation with Nasser and appeasement of him. Although nervous about the shah of Iran’s regional ambitions, the Saudis aligned with him against the militarily weaker but more ideologically threatening Ba‘thist regime in Iraq during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Similarly, when Saddam Husayn launched his attack on Iran in 1980, it seemed that Iraq had the military advantage over the new Islamic Republican government in Tehran. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia cautiously backed the Iraqi war effort, seeing Iran’s revolutionary Islamist ideology as more threatening than Iraq’s military power. When Iran scaled back the revolutionary rhetoric and sought more normal state-to-state relations with its Persian Gulf neighbors in the 1990s, Saudi Arabia responded positively, despite the fact that Iraq’s defeat in 1991 and the crippling sanctions under which it was placed made Iran the largest regional military power. Ideological confrontation and open calls for regime change have been seen by the Saudi leadership as more threatening than military capabilities as they have assessed regional threats over the decades. Saudi Arabia cannot be the Middle Eastern hegemon. It does not have the military power, the population base, or the ideological disposition to make such a play for regional leadership. Like other relatively weak but important states, it balances within its region to block hegemonic plays by other states and to mitigate potential threats. It assesses threats not simply in terms of military capabilities, as classic balance of power theory would expect, but also in terms of ideological differences and the expressed hostility of regional rivals to the Saudi regime’s right to rule. T h e M e a ns of I n f lu e nc e i n S au di R e giona l P ol ic y Since Saudi Arabia is relatively weak militarily, it cannot use military power to achieve its aims in regional politics. Aside from the balancing behavior discussed

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above, the Saudis have two major tools through which they endeavor to achieve their foreign policy goals. The first is money. Financial power allows the Saudis to support regional allies as part of their balancing strategy. By their own admission, the Saudis gave and “loaned” Saddam Husayn over $25 billion during the Iran-Iraq War.14 They supported the “front-line” Arab states in the conflict with Israel from the Khartoum Conference after the 1967 war through the 1973 war and continued financial aid to Egypt through the Camp David accords and to Syria for some time thereafter. During the Gulf War of 1990–91, Riyadh “compensated” international and regional allies for their support.15 Saudi aid is not limited to fellow governments. Although it is much more difficult to document from public sources, it is widely acknowledged that Saudi funds have directly supported individual politicians and political groups in the Arab world and elsewhere, most notably in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s and subsequently. The second major method for advancing Saudi regional foreign policy interests is the transnational dissemination of their own interpretation of Islam, known variously as Wahhabism or Salafism, and their more general support for Islamist political organizations generally. As mentioned above, the Saudi promotion of the Islamic Conference Organization was, at least in part, an effort to balance against Nasserist pan-Arabism. The institutions of transnational Islam supported by Saudi Arabia, not only the ICO but also the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and various Saudi-based Muslim charities, endeavor to promote an understanding of Islam that not only is congenial to the Saudis ideologically but promotes Saudi Arabia as the center and leader of Islam. Riyadh has used these organizations to support their leading role in the Muslim world against the assertion of Muslim leadership by the Islamic Republic of Iran and to counter the challenge posed by Usama bin Laden to speak for the Salafi Muslim movement. The Saudis have also directly supported Islamist political groups in various regional countries, as levers of influence against the governments of those countries. Such efforts do not always work out as the Saudis hope. Many Islamist groups, including most national branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Saudi Arabia had close relations for decades, refused to support the Saudi position in the Gulf War of 1990–91.16 However, the Saudis have continued to maintain ties with Islamist political leaders and groups throughout the region.

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These tools of Saudi influence—financial power and the promotion of ideologically friendly groups—allow the Saudis to intervene in the domestic politics of weaker and conflict-ridden states to advance Saudi interests. The regional struggle for power and influence in the Middle East is played out as much, if not more, in battles over the direction of domestic politics in weak states like Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, and, since 2003, Iraq, as it is in the clash of regional armies in open war. The Saudis are not well positioned to play a military role in the region, but they are more than able to try to influence the domestic politics of other states, and they have done so for decades, with some successes and some failures. The problem for Riyadh is that their means of influence are not the most reliable. Local allies cannot be bought, they can only be rented. There are numerous examples of Saudi clients standing against Riyadh at times of crisis, after having received considerable Saudi support previously. The stance of Islamist groups in the Gulf War was mentioned above. One can also point to Anwar Sadat’s separate peace with Israel, Saddam Husayn’s attack on Kuwait after receiving billions in Saudi aid during the Iran-Iraq War, the stand of Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Salih and Jordan’s King Husayn against Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War, and the Taliban’s refusal to heed Saudi requests after 1998 to separate themselves from Usama bin Laden. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent violent Salafi campaign in Saudi Arabia against the government, Riyadh also faces new problems in using Islamist networks to exercise regional influence. The United States, which had previously either encouraged or been indifferent to Saudi promotion of Islam regionally and globally, has become much more suspicious of such activities. What had been an important part of Saudi Arabia’s regional strategy now creates tensions in the Saudis’ most important bilateral international relationship. Moreover, what would in the past have been natural Saudi allies in places like Lebanon and Iraq—Salafi Islamist groups—are ideologically and perhaps organizationally linked to Al-Qaeda, which has targeted the Saudi regime itself. S au di R e giona l P ol ic y si nc e 2 0 03 The Saudis do not seek out a regional leadership role. Regional leadership exposes their military weakness, highlights the tension between their international strategy of reliance on the United States and regional anti-American sentiment, and

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invites opposition from more powerful neighbors. However, at times such a role is thrust on them. That has been the case since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The rise of Iranian power that followed from the fall of Saddam Husayn and the subsequent increase in Iranian influence in Iraq, Hizbullah’s successes in Lebanon, Iran’s championing of Hamas in Palestine, and the development of Iran’s nuclear program confronted the Saudis with a rising regional challenger. Other Arab parties that might in the past have led a balancing effort against Iran were either consumed with their own domestic issues (Egypt), have already allied to Iran (Syria), or have been transformed from player into playing field (Iraq). With the confidence borne of rising oil prices and long-time crown prince and effective ruler Abdallah finally confirmed as king in 2005, the Saudis made an active effort to balance rising Iranian power. The problems and setbacks Riyadh has confronted in that effort highlight the limitations on Saudi regional power. The Saudi approach toward the rise of Iranian power, to the end of 2008, has been a subtle effort to both engage and contain Iran. The Saudis have avoided direct confrontation with Tehran. As recently as March 2007 they received Iranian president Ahmadinejad in Riyadh, as part of a series of visits between senior officials of the two countries. They have consciously avoided, in any official way, trying to depict the balance-of-power contest with Iran as a sectarian struggle, which could further inflame regional public opinion, and have made efforts in the 2000s to engage directly with the Saudi Shi‘a minority, rather than brand them an Iranian fift h column.17 The Saudi frame for dealing with post-2003 regional questions has been a classic balance-of-power strategy, tinged with the caution that has normally characterized Saudi foreign policy in the past. The problem for Riyadh is that the policy has not been very successful. The Saudi-Iranian contest has been played out in the domestic politics of Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, three weak Arab states (or proto-states, in the last case) whose political direction will help determine the future of regional politics. In each case, the Iranians seem to have the stronger allies. In Iraq, the Americanbrokered post-Saddam transition brought to power the Arab Shi‘a majority. Many of the Shi‘a parties and politicians already had close ties to Iran; others developed those ties after 2003. The Saudis, conversely, seemed to be paralyzed in their dealings with post-Saddam Iraq. Their natural allies in the Sunni Arab community were engaged in an anti-American insurgency and seemed, through 2006, to be increasingly identified with the radical Salafi jihadism of Al-Qaeda, which was

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presenting its own threat to the Saudi rulers domestically. For Riyadh to have supported insurgent groups would have created a crisis in its relations with the United States and given indirect support to the very groups that were trying to destabilize it at home. As the Iranians increased their influence in Iraq, the Saudis did little but offer symbolic gestures—refusing to receive Iraqi prime minister Maliki in Riyadh and refusing to reopen their embassy in Baghdad. Only with the emergence of the Awakening Movements among Iraqi Sunni Arabs, in late 2006, did the Saudis find local Iraqi clients with whom they could do business—Sunnis, hostile to Iranian influence in Iraq but cooperating with the United States. By then, however, Tehran had been able to consolidate its influence in the country. Saudi Arabia’s opposition to Maliki could not prevent him from winning a second term as prime minister after the March 2010 Iraqi parliamentary elections. In Lebanon, Saudi allies in the Sunni community, led by Saad al-Hariri, the son of the assassinated former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, seemed in a position to dominate Lebanese politics. The Hariri family is closely associated with Saudi Arabia. Rafiq al-Hariri made his fortune in Saudi Arabia and held Saudi as well as Lebanese citizenship. Hariri’s Future Movement and its allies were the leaders of the popular mobilization that forced Syrian troops to withdraw from the country in 2005. They won a majority in the subsequent parliamentary elections, making Hariri’s ally Fouad Siniora prime minister. Saudi Arabia was very supportive of the new government. However, the new government was unable to bring Hizbullah under its control. The 2006 summer war between Israel and Hizbullah showed the government’s irrelevance and strengthened the hand of Iran’s allies in Lebanese politics. Hizbullah’s assertion of military power against Hariri and his allies in the summer of 2007, with Hizbullah fighters routing Hariri’s forces and dominating the center of Beirut, confirmed where power in Lebanon lies.18 While the Saudi-supported Hariri bloc and its allies retained their majority in the 2009 Lebanese parliamentary elections, with Saad Hariri taking the prime ministership, by early 2011 Hizbullah was able to shift the parliamentary balance and force Hariri’s resignation. Similarly, in Palestine Saudi allies did not fare well against their Iraniansupported opponents. Saudi Arabia strongly supported Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, diplomatically and financially. When his Fatah movement lost the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006 to Hamas, Riyadh tried to bring the two sides together to forge a unity government and deny Iran

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the opportunity to intervene in Palestinian politics. However, the Saudi mediation effort was a failure. In the summer of 2007 Hamas asserted its military control over Gaza, consolidating the split in the Palestinian leadership. As 2008 ended, the Israeli assault on Gaza, following Hamas’ rocket attacks on southern Israel, promised to reshuffle the cards in the Palestinian political deck. What is not clear is whether Hamas, like Hizbullah in 2006, would benefit from the attacks politically or be weakened by them. But it is clear that Saudi Arabia was not a factor in this dynamic. This is not to argue that Iran will become the dominant power in the Middle East. It has its own problems, including falling oil prices, which will affect its economy much more immediately than the economy of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab producers. If the United States, with all its power, could not dominate the region post-2003, it is hard to imagine that Iran could. However, it must be acknowledged that the Saudi effort to contain Iran by playing in the politics of Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine had by the end of 2008 failed to achieve its objective. It is possible that the Saudis will employ a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the future. Such a policy would have two elements. The first would be strongly to encourage the United States to take military action against Iranian nuclear facilities. The second would be to play openly the sectarian card in regional politics. Some have accused Riyadh of doing just that in Lebanon, encouraging the Palestinian Salafi group Fatah al-Islam, which rose up in Nahr al-Barid refugee camp in 2007 against the Lebanese Army.19 Both of these courses of action, however, hold dangers for Saudi Arabia. To encourage an American strike against Iran would place Saudi Arabia in the front line of Iranian retaliation, in terms both of direct military strikes and of renewed Iranian efforts to stir up opposition among Saudi Shi‘a. To play the sectarian card and enflame regional Sunni-Shi‘a tensions creates an atmosphere conducive to the growth of Salafi jihadist sentiment and movements. The Saudis already have their own problems with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the recruitment of Saudis into Salafi jihadist militant groups in Iraq and Lebanon indicates that elements of the Saudi population remain sympathetic to this ideological trend.20 Encouraging Salafi groups abroad has itself become a source of potential threat to domestic stability in Saudi Arabia. As this book goes to press in May 2011, the Arab world is engulfed in a regionwide popular upheaval that has already brought down regimes in Tunisia

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and Egypt and threatens others. While Saudi Arabia itself has been, as of this writing, immune from the mass mobilizations other Arab states have seen, the “winter of Arab discontent” represents a new kind of transnational ideological challenge to the Saudi regime. Unlike other challenges discussed above, it is not connected to a particular state rival. But it has already changed the strategic landscape of the region. Saudi Arabia’s most important regional ally, the regime of former Egyptian president Husni Mubarak, has already fallen. The Al Khalifa family in Bahrain is under intense pressure. How the events of this period finally play out will determine the strategic balance of the Middle East for some time to come. Whether the Saudis will be able to exercise as much influence in a more democratic Arab world, if that is what the events of the winter of 2011 produce, is an open question. Whether the Saudi regime itself can fend off these regional pressures for political reform—the more immediate question of the Saudi leadership—also remains to be seen.

Iranian Foreign and Security Policies in the Persian Gulf M e h r a n K a m r ava

Some three decades into the life of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian regime has yet to devise and implement a coherent national security policy or even a set of guidelines on which its regional and international security policies are based. In relation to the Persian Gulf region and the country’s immediate neighbors, this failure has resulted in the articulation of regional foreign and security policies that at times have seemed fluid, changeable, and even inconsistent. The discrepancy between appearances of Iranian policy and its substance is primarily a function of the populist rhetoric through which most Iranian political leaders, particularly President Ahmadinejad, employ to enunciate Tehran’s position on various international and regional issues. As the foregoing analysis will demonstrate, however, Iranian foreign and national security policies, in relation both to Iran’s immediate neighborhood and to the larger global arena, are influenced far more by pragmatic, balance-of-power considerations than by ideological or supposedly “revolutionary” pursuits. Appearances to the contrary, therefore, Iranian foreign and security policies in relation to the Persian Gulf region have featured certain consistent themes, or, more aptly, areas of continued attention as well as tension. The first feature revolves around the broader military and diplomatic position that Iran occupies in relation to the Persian Gulf itself. Equally influential in Iran’s regional diplomacy is what Tehran sees as “the Saudi factor,” namely Saudi Arabia’s posture and pursuits in the region. Iran’s regional security policy, in the meanwhile, is largely determined by the role and position of the United States in what Iran considers 184

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its rightful sphere of influence. By extension, for Tehran, questions about Saudi diplomatic and American military positions and intentions bear directly on the nature and direction of Iran’s relations with Iraq and Afghanistan.1 Also important are Iran’s relations with its neighbors to the south, with a number of whom—namely Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates— relations have been tense and cooperative at the same time. The most problematic of these have been Iran-UAE relations and the tensions surrounding contending claims by both countries over the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Again, both in Iran-UAE tensions and in Iran’s regional diplomacy toward the other Persian Gulf states, the Saudi and American factors, especially the latter, are quite important. This chapter examines Iran’s regional foreign and security policies from the perspective of Iranian policy makers. Although in recent years there have been a proliferation of both thematic and empirical studies on Iranian foreign policy, the underlying visions and the pursuit of policy objectives as crystallized within Iranian policy circles remain understudied and therefore little understood. This chapter traces the evolution and outcome of some of the most important debates that have shaped Iranian policy toward the country’s Arab neighbors and in the Persian Gulf waterway. The ultimate outcome of these debates has been a steady trend toward pragmatism in Iranian diplomacy, both within the region and beyond, despite the sharp populist rhetoric that often emanates from Tehran. An examination of the task at hand begins with an effort at outlining the overall contours of Iranian foreign policy, looking more specifically at the two contradictions—one ideological and the other structural—that figure prominently in the ideals and outcomes of Iran’s diplomatic endeavors. Then attention is focused on the Persian Gulf region, examining the broader contexts of Iran’s relations with its Arab neighbors and its position within the waterway. Finally, three case studies are chosen in order to better illustrate the uneasy yet pragmatic relationships between Iran and its neighbors, namely Iranian-Iraqi, Iranian-Saudi, and Iranian-Emirati relations. De ci ph e r i ng I r a n i a n For e ign a n d Se c u r i t y P ol ici e s One of the most prominent features of Iran’s regional posture is the securitization of its foreign policy over the last three decades or so, itself a direct product

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of the militarization of the country’s immediate environment. Given the preponderance of open hostilities and military conflicts in the Persian Gulf region, many of which have either involved Iran directly or have occurred right in its immediate borders, the two issues of Iranian military and diplomatic positions in the Persian Gulf cannot be fully decoupled. When it comes to Iran’s broader global pursuits, particularly more recently in parts of Africa and Latin America, clear distinctions can be drawn between those endeavors traditionally considered as diplomatic—strengthening alliances with countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, for example—and those pursuits and alliances that are part of national security calculations, such as Iran’s position in southern Lebanon and its relations with the Hizbullah.2 In relation to the Persian Gulf region, however, given the steady securitization of the region’s politics since the 1980s, for both Iran and also for the other Gulf states, foreign and security policies are hardly separable.3 Insofar as Iran’s position in and relations with other Persian Gulf states is concerned, the US military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf; Iran’s dispute with the United Arab Emirates over three islands in the Gulf; and the potential for spillover from internal confl icts in Iraq and Afghanistan have all combined to create an environment in which security and diplomatic issues are intimately interconnected. At least for the foreseeable future, therefore, any analysis of Iran’s regional foreign policy needs to also take into account its security and strategic calculations. Iranian foreign and security policies in the Persian Gulf may be intertwined, but determining exactly what they are is not an easy task. There are, as mentioned earlier, two interrelated complications, one ideological and the other structural. Ideologically, the Iranian constitution simultaneously pledges that Iran will not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries but also commits the country to support “the just struggle of the oppressed against oppressors in any part of the world” (Article 154). The constitution further stipulates that while Iran rejects “all forms of domination” by outside powers, it will come “to the defense of all Muslims” whenever necessary (Article 152). Similarly, “in accordance with . . . the Qur’an, all Muslims form a single nation, and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has the duty of formulating its general policies with a view to cultivating the friendship and unity of all Muslim peoples, and it must constantly strive to bring about the political, economic, and cultural unity of the Islamic world” (Article 11).

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In practice, states seldom base their foreign policies on the ideals that are espoused in their constitutions. But in the context of Iran, where processes of political development and legitimation continue to evolve and to unfold, and where competing political factions often bitterly vie for power and legitimacy, resorting to the original ideals of the 1979 revolution as articulated in the country’s constitution is not uncommon. This is particularly the case given the vibrant and often-changing factional landscape in Iranian politics, in which various factions advocate what often amount to radically different approaches to foreign and national security policy issues.4 A further complicating factor is Iran’s dual executive office, which is split between the supreme leader and the president. Although the 1989 constitution created an “executive presidency” with substantially enhanced powers, it also kept largely intact the powers and decision-making purview of the supreme leader.5 Theoretically, foreign policy issues are deliberated and decided upon by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose head reports to the cabinet and the president.6 In practice, however, the Office of the Leader contains within it a number of influential foreign policy and national security advisors, and those issues deemed central to the long-term health and stability of the Islamic Republic system— such as the nuclear fi le and relations with the US—are not acted upon without the leader’s advice and consent. Also consequential in the decision-making process is the Supreme National Security Council, which is headed by the president and includes the heads of the two other branches, commanders of the armed forces, two representatives appointed by the leader, the ministers of foreign affairs, interior, and intelligence, and the head of the Plan and Budget Organization.7 While the Supreme National Security Council can serve as a mediating institution, much of the substance of Iranian foreign and national security policies—if not the style of their presentation to the outside world—depends on the nature of the relationship between the persons occupying the offices of the president and the leader. According to former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, for example, during his tenure in office from 1989 to 1997, the leader—Ali Khamenei—was seldom consulted about routine foreign policy issues and was brought in only when relations with important actors such as the US or Egypt were concerned.8 Nevertheless, during Rafsanjani’s presidency, although tensions surrounding Iran decreased as a natural result of the end of the war with Iraq, the basic nature and substance of the country’s foreign policy did not undergo substantive changes.

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Instead, it was only during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, from 1997 to 2005, that Iran’s relations with the outside world, and particularly with its neighbors to the south, improved substantially. Although Khamenei did not directly contradict or rebuke Khatami in his efforts to improve Iran’s relations with such traditional adversaries as the United States and the European Union, he neither did much to strengthen the president’s hands, nor did he try to silence Khatami’s innumerable and influential critics.9 Ultimately, however, the emerging détente between Iran and the southern states of the Persian Gulf was not necessarily a result of Khamenei’s support for Khatami’s so-called “charm offensive.” Instead, it was more a product of a policy consensus among Iranian elites that the best way to counter the effects of the US-imposed “dual containment” is by improving ties with neighboring states.10 The Ahmadinejad presidency has seen a level of likemindedness between the president and the leader that is unprecedented in the life of the Islamic Republic, perhaps a product of the two men’s ideological affinity as well as their mutual need for one another in the face of faltering popularity.11 The continuing legacy of the revolution, the securitized international and regional environments within which Iran finds itself, the institutional features of the Islamic Republic system, and the factional competition that characterizes Iranian politics have all combined to create two broad clusters of opinion concerning the country’s foreign policy. On the one side is a perspective that may be labeled as normative or idealist. The key principles of this normative foreign policy perspective include the promotion of norms and values that are consistent with the tenets of Islam, that help in the global strengthening of Islamic solidarity, and that give priority to policies that are based on justice and fairness.12 Underlying the whole approach is a strong sense of obligation—the obligation to oppose cruelty, foster Islamic unity, and spread justice.13 Since a foreign policy thus guided is bound to encounter the ire of great powers such as the United States and Britain, this normative foreign policy pursuit is also imbued with a fair measure of militarism, frequently emphasizing such themes as “defense against enemies” and the need for constant vigilance.14 On the other side of the spectrum stands the pragmatic perspective of Iranian foreign policy. This perspective’s emphasis is on the role and importance of diplomacy, cooperation and confidence-building, détente, and accommodation. What Iranian diplomacy needs, argue the proponents of this perspective, is a realistic assessment and “conceptualization” of the highly securitized international

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and regional environments surrounding the country. This assessment would include an accurate reading of America’s strengths and limitations both domestically and internationally; careful use of Iran’s strategic depth and soft power through resort to its cultural, geographic, and historical affinities with its neighbors and with others; not over-estimating the degree to which Russia, China, and the European powers are willing to part ways with the United States over Iran; maximizing the use of existing political and diplomatic venues to enhance Iran’s international image and posture; and creating an atmosphere of trust and confidence through the promotion of initiatives such as civilizational dialogue and alliance.15 The “paradox” of Iranian foreign policy in giving equal priority to both normative, internationalist pursuits and more pragmatic, national interests cannot be denied.16 What Iranian policymakers need to do is to recognize that such a paradox does indeed exist and to determine when and what conditions call for prioritizing one mandate over another. According to the pragmatists, Iran’s current predicament dictates greater attention to the country’s national interests.17 For the Islamic Republic, the upshot of these two at times highly contradictory perspectives has been what one observer has termed a “pragmatic idealism” that has run through the republic’s foreign policy pursuits ever since its establishment.18 As the rise of Iranian “principlists” showed in the 2005 presidential elections, capped by their implementation of populist domestic and foreign policies, many observers of Iran were too hasty in declaring the eclipse of ideologically driven foreign policy emanating from Tehran.19 In describing his ideal international order, for example, Manochehr Mottaki, Ahmadinejad’s foreign minister, calls for a complete restructuring of the bases on which the international system is currently organized: Some fundamental shift must take place. Epistemologically, [there must be a] switch from positivism to constructivism, from micro international history to [a] global one, from high politics to deep politics, and from the past to the future. . . . My argument is that to solve current challenges at the global level, we should think of an order that is based also on justice.20

Style and substance should not be confused, however, any more than rhetoric and deeds are, and, Ahmadinejad’s speeches notwithstanding, a measure of

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pragmatism has also characterized the foreign policy agendas of Iran’s resurgent principlists. The Iranian president’s 2006 letter to George W. Bush, and later his congratulatory message to Barack Obama on the occasion of his victory in the US presidential elections, are but two of the more notable examples of a pragmatic streak that is all too often masked by bombastic rhetoric.21 For a country like Iran to be able to realize its foreign policy ideals and its self-ascribed obligations to the global Muslim community, it needs to have far deeper logistical power and capability than is realistically the case.22 Therefore, a consensus has indeed emerged among Iranian foreign policy elites that when a threat poses itself to Iran, the country’s interests and its national security take priority over all else.23 The ultimate outcome, therefore, has been for Tehran to “adopt an elastic attitude to foreign policy, sometimes generating quick fi xes to what are often structural problems, and other times producing inconsistent, even contradictory, responses to presumed or actual threats.”24 I r a n a n d t h e Pe r si a n Gu l f R e gion Although détente and the pursuit of more pragmatic policies by the Khatami administration from 1997 to 2005 greatly reduced tensions between Iran and its Arab neighbors, areas of friction, as well as deep-seated mistrust, continue to characterize Iran’s relations with the other states of the Persian Gulf. Much of the tension and mistrust can be traced to the early years of the Iranian revolution, when Tehran was universally perceived to be an exporter of revolutionary religious extremism and a source of regional instability. With its war with Iraq as the backdrop, Iran was viewed as directly complicit in the unsuccessful coup attempt in Bahrain in December 1981, responsible for riots in Mecca by Hajj pilgrims in 1981 and 1982, behind the unrest among Kuwaiti Shi‘ites in 1983, and having a hand in the attempted assassination of the emir of Kuwait in 1985.25 Almost overnight, Iran’s image changed from being seen as a guardian of regional security and stability before the revolution to an existential threat to the region’s regimes and a disruptive force in one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes.26 Beginning in the 1990s, the Iranians were no longer seen as keenly interested in exporting their revolution, but by the early 2000s it was their nuclear program that became a source of worry for the regional states.27 Prodded mostly by the United States, starting in 2005, occasional statements of concern

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about the Iranian nuclear program have been heard from various Persian Gulf capitals, although the regional actors, for their own different reasons that will be discussed later, have deliberately shied away from coordinating efforts aimed at containing an alleged “Iranian threat”. Clearly, Iran and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf have fundamentally different conceptions of the security threats that face each of them individually and all of them collectively. For Iran, the biggest security threat in the Persian Gulf is the existence of foreign military and naval forces stationed across the region and in the waterway itself.28 In Tehran’s view, this is part of a broader effort by the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council to marginalize Iran and to harm its interests. Neither the presence of outside military powers nor the collective military capabilities of the GCC states on their own can guarantee the safety and security of the Persian Gulf region. Instead, Tehran argues, what is needed is a new security architecture for the region, either under the existing rubric of the GCC or in some other fashion, which also entails the military participation and cooperation of Iran with its neighbors to the south and with Iraq.29 In the words of one Iranian analyst, Iran considers the Persian Gulf its own “backyard,” and it gets worried whenever the region experiences instability. From Iran’s perspective, its interests are best served when the Persian Gulf continues to remain an open, international waterway that guarantees the free and unfettered passage of ships from everywhere. Iran has repeatedly expressed its interest in joining whatever collective security arrangement ensures the stability of the region and recognizes Iran’s rightful role and power in the Persian Gulf.30

Threat perceptions in Tehran grew exponentially in the aftermath of the post9/11 US posture, and especially after the fall of Baghdad and Iraq’s occupation by American forces. Overnight, Iran, now branded a member of an “axis of evil” by the US president, found itself at the center of a storm brewing in its own immediate neighborhood, and the many initiatives it undertook to improve its image and to help the US in its fight against the Taliban—including pledging hundreds of millions of dollars toward the postwar reconstruction of Afghanistan and an offer to help rescue American servicemen stranded near its border in Afghanistan—did little to allay fears that it might be the next target of President Bush’s

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War on Terror.31 A “new insecurity” began to grip Iran’s foreign and national security policy elites as they witnessed the country’s “complete encirclement by a pro-U.S. security belt comprised of Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Iraq.”32 Housing one of the largest US airbases in the world and the US Navy’s Fift h Fleet respectively, Qatar and Bahrain can also be added to this list. Further compounding Iran’s fears was the possibility, though remote, of the Gulf states cooperating with Israel militarily and providing possible cover for an Israeli military attack on Iran.33 The possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, and the more tangible military and diplomatic alliance of all GCC states with the United States, makes USIranian tensions an inseparable part of the calculus of Iran’s relations with its Persian Gulf neighbors. Not surprisingly, in Iranian policy circles, there is keen awareness of and deep sensitivity to the overwhelming US military presence in the region. Sensitivity to the issue does not mean unanimous agreement over the most prudent approach to it, and the US role in the Persian Gulf has emerged as one of the key points of contention between the different factions within the Islamic Republic. In fact, America’s role in the Persian Gulf—and the broader issue of US-Iranian relations—is one of those lingering areas of tension between the normative and the pragmatic strands of Iranian approaches to foreign policy. Broadly, principlists and other so-called hard-line radicals do not see any legitimate role for the US anywhere in the Persian Gulf region, whereas pragmatists— regardless of their political label as “conservative” or “reformist”—call for some sort of accommodation and modus vivendi that takes into account the regional interests and concerns of both Iran and the United States.34 There is a general consensus in Iran that there are a number of internal, structural shortcomings in the region’s “microstates” that necessitate their entry into some sort of collective security arrangement.35 There is also consensus, as mentioned above, that Iran should play an important role in this collective security umbrella. What there is disagreement over is what role there is for the United States alongside Iran and other regional players. Much of how this question is ultimately settled depends on the posture and policies of the United States itself and the extent to which it remains open or opposed to Iran’s active role in the Persian Gulf region and beyond.36 Similarly consequential are changing alignments and the position of Iranian factions in the country’s political constellation. As became amply evident in 2005 and again in 2009, elections can dramatically

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alter perceptions about Iran’s policies and intentions, and, as conventional wisdom has it, in diplomacy perceptions often become reality. There is, nevertheless, circumstantial evidence that seems to suggest a subtle shift in Tehran toward an acceptance of an American role in the Persian Gulf. According to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, formerly a high-ranking commander in the Iranian armed forces, mayor of Tehran since 2005, and a figure generally associated with the conservative right, “the new geopolitics of the Middle East” requires innovative thinking and a new, dynamic approach on Iran’s part. The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran at certain stages has unnecessarily reacted to the hegemonic strategies of extra regional actors in the Middle East. The aggressive policies of the United States during the [early] period of the revolution [resulted in great mistrust, which was expressed through] Iran’s foreign policy. No longer does the Islamic Republic need to be confrontational because it now has all the ingredients of power and the necessary confidence to deal with its neighbors and to compete with regional and international actors. Rhetoric cannot be a substitute to policy, and it cannot lead to a realistic understanding of geopolitical capabilities and limitations. Therefore, the desired capacity to defend Iran’s national interests can only be sustained through realizing domestic capabilities along with a dynamic diplomacy. Under these circumstances, the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic is in need of adopting a non-rhetorical view of its geopolitical exigencies. More importantly, Iran’s foreign policy must take into consideration the reality of the presence of other powers in the region while it incorporates its own capabilities and limitations into the larger skeleton of the Middle East.37

How representative Ghalibaf’s thinking is in relation to other Iranian politicians on the right of the political spectrum is difficult to tell. But his call for accommodating “external powers” comes amid a chorus of academic arguments that see the relations with the United States as key to enhancing Iran’s position and interests in the Persian Gulf.38 Even if the US-Iranian non-relationship of the Clinton and Bush administrations turns into dialogue and negotiations during the Obama presidency, the structural chasm that divides American and Iranian positions over the Persian Gulf is far too wide to be easily bridged. The stationing of US forces across the region, US and Iranian positions and intentions in Iraq and Afghanistan,

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Iran’s strategic priorities and capabilities in the waterway and in the Strait of Hormuz, and deeply entrenched feelings of mistrust and suspicion among all the actors concerned are some of the highly contentious issues that divide US and Iranian policymakers over the Persian Gulf.39 For now, there is broad agreement in Iran over the need to engage in building trust and confidence with the country’s neighbors to the south through proactive diplomacy and various forms of bilateral and multilateral cooperation.40 N e igh b or ly R e l at ions In the absence of multilateral relations between Iran and the rest of the Persian Gulf states through collective forums such as the GCC, attention must be paid to bilateral relations between Iran and its Arab neighbors. Of these, Iran’s relations with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates merit particular attention. With all three countries, Iran has had relations that have been complex, multilayered, and often bitterly acrimonious, at times in fact even violent. Significantly, however, the precise nature of the relationships that have existed between Iran and each of these three regional actors—and with the other states of the GCC for that matter—have depended more on the immediate domestic and international conditions each actor has faced rather than on larger ideological concerns and pursuits. As Gregory Gause has convincingly argued elsewhere, the most critical element in the international relations of the Persian Gulf is the imperative of regime security, and the GCC’s relations with Iran are by far one of the most security-driven, nuanced, and complex relations in the region.41 Even when Iranian foreign policy was normatively driven, in the 1980s, the imperative to consolidate revolutionary authority domestically and to curtail the Arab states’ staunch support for Iraq during its war with Iran was as big a factor in Iran’s regional policy as was exporting the Islamic revolution abroad. A detailed examination of Iran’s relations with each of its neighbors, Arab or otherwise, reveals a principal logic guiding the country’s foreign policy behavior, namely the maximization of national interests in a volatile region that all too frequently features rapid, often unpredictable change. Clearly, Iranian policymakers view their country as one of the region’s most powerful states in the region, if not its preeminent power.42 Within this context, Iran’s relations with its Arab neighbors are not based on any clearly delineated foreign policy doctrine. Instead, they are

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determined more by the ebb and flow of regional power politics, and by Iran’s attempts to play the role of a regional superpower, than by anything else. Iran-Saudi Relations Perhaps nowhere is the flexibility and changeable nature of Iran’s foreign relations more evident than in its relations with Saudi Arabia. As two of the three most populous and most powerful states in the Persian Gulf region—the third being Iraq—by virtue of their larger regional and international aspirations, their decidedly different political cultures and domestic politics, and interests and priorities that have not always converged, the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia has often been characterized by tension and friction. Although a number of observers, particularly in the popular media, have ascribed a religious aspect to this competition, with strong undercurrents of age-old rivalries between Sunnis and supposedly reawakened Shi‘ites, there is little evidence to suggest that at least in their mutual interactions, Iran and Saudi Arabia use religion for anything other than instrumentalist purposes.43 Instead, there is every reason to believe that the primary motivating factor for Iran and Saudi Arabia in formulating their policies toward one other is ensuring that the other side does not threaten its interests, domestically, regionally, and globally.44 Moreover, as aspiring regional superpowers, the two countries compete over defi ning the terms and conditions under which regional security is achieved, again motivated by balance-of-power considerations. The rivalry between the two powers is nothing new and predates the establishment of the Islamic Republic. In fact, up until the late 1960s, indeterminate borders and territorial disputes constituted a main area of friction between the two countries. By 1968, however, after negotiations that at times were difficult, a formal agreement was reached, and the issue was finally settled.45 From that point until the Islamic revolution in 1978, Iran-Saudi relations steady improved, driven by mutual interests to contain the spread of a number of common threats, chief among which were the Ba‘thist regime in Iraq, the radical policies of the People’s democratic Republic of Yemen, and the spread of Soviet influence in the region and beyond.46 This alliance was further cemented with Iran and Saudi Arabia forming “two solid pillars supporting the building of a conservative and pro-Western policy in the region.”47

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Iran’s 1978–79 revolution led to the dissolution of its marriage of convenience with Saudi Arabia. Throughout the 1980s, gripped with revolutionary fever and locked in a bloody war with Iraq—whom the Saudis supported with generous financial and diplomatic assistance—Iran-Saudi relations deteriorated.48 When in 1987, in the midst of the so-called “tanker war” and in response to Iranian attacks on Kuwaiti tankers carrying Iraqi oil, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait invited American military forces to protect their tanker fleet from Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the move as “disgraceful” and called on Iranian pilgrims performing the hajj in Mecca to protest against the Saudi-American military alliance.49 When some four hundred pilgrims died in the mayhem and the police attacks that followed, a senior Saudi official declared that “the Kingdom hopes, praise be to God, to remove from Iran the authority which sends the people of Iran to their deaths.”50 With Saudi support for Iraq continuing even after the war’s end, and with Iranian authorities boycotting the hajj for three years and accusing Saudi authorities of gross incompetence in being custodians of Islam’s holy sites, tensions between the two countries continued into 1990. Iraq’s invasion in August 1990 of Kuwait, its erstwhile ally in the war against Iran, once again changed the region’s strategic balance, and with it the nature of the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Throughout the 1990s, the relationship between the two states improved steadily, starting with an end to the Iranian boycott of the hajj in 1991, restoration of diplomatic relations the same year, visits by high-ranking senior officials to each other’s capitals, and Iranian president Rafsanjani’s state visit to Riyadh in 1997. The trend toward warmer relations deepened with the election of Mohammad Khatami to the presidency that same year. Also critically important in the deepening rapprochement was the rise in the prominence and influence in Riyadh of Prince Abdullah after King Fahd, his half-brother, suffered a stroke in 1995 and left most affairs of the state to others. Locked in a battle for succession and eager to demonstrate his relative independence from the US and to emphasize his Islamic credentials, one of Prince Abdullah’s main goals was to improve relations with Iran. As one observer has commented, “it takes two to tango. It is not at all clear that the rapprochement would have occurred between Fahd and Khatami as it has between Abdullah and Khatami. The impetus came as much from Saudi Arabian as from Iranian leadership.”51 In 2001, the two countries signed a symbolically important security agreement, designed to increase cooperation over

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border surveillance, combating money laundering, and the administration of water and territorial matters. Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 may have brought back the gruff rhetorical style of Iranian diplomacy reminiscent of the earlier days of the revolution, but it did not substantially change the nature of Iranian-Saudi relations or the overall positive trend between the two. Despite increased American efforts to further isolate and marginalize Iran over its nuclear program, and despite the Iranian president’s often incendiary and frequently insensitive remarks, Ahmadinejad made a highly publicized state visit to Saudi Arabia in March 2007.52 A brief glance at Iranian-Saudi relations in the context of and in relation to OPEC further demonstrates the underlying pragmatism that characterizes the relationship between the two countries. In broad terms, insofar as OPEC production and pricing is concerned, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which constitute the cartel’s first and second largest oil producers, follow somewhat opposing logics. Saudi Arabia often champions a position favored by its Western allies and by the many smaller oil sheikhdoms that are also members of the organization— namely Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman—advocating higher levels of production that would result in sudden spikes in the global price of petroleum and petroleum-related products. Many of the less wealthy OPEC members, on the other hand, chief among them Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Venezuela, and Libya, favor tighter controls over the global supply of oil through stricter production quotas that would, in turn, keep prices higher and more favorable to the producers. Not coincidentally, the latter group of OPEC producers happens to have less friendly relations with the West and is thus less likely to opt for economic policies that are favored by the European powers and the United States. Based on their overall preferences within OPEC, Iran and Saudi Arabia have frequently found themselves bitterly at odds over production quotas that affect oil prices globally. As far back as 1973–74, the shah of Iran privately complained that the Saudis were basing their oil policy solely on American preferences.53 Nevertheless, there have been a few critical instances when Iran and Saudi Arabia have seen eye to eye on the pricing issue and have stuck together despite pressure from others to break rank. In 1987–88, for example, amid an alarming fall in oil prices, Iran persuaded Saudi Arabia to lower its production in order to help prices up. Similar instances of Saudi-Iranian cooperation within OPEC could be seen in December 2008, when oil prices suddenly plummeted in the face of

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a global recession.54 This willingness on the part of the two states to side with each other when circumstances and interests dictate demonstrates the overall pragmatism that characterizes their foreign policies in general and their mutual interactions in particular. While common interests have drawn the two countries steadily closer together over the last couple of decades, Iran and Saudi Arabia do, nevertheless, hold fundamentally different visions of the security architecture best suited for the protection of the Persian Gulf.55 Motivated largely by deep-seated distrust of Iran and the prospects of lingering instability in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, Saudi Arabia sees the continued presence of American military forces in the Persian Gulf and in the littoral states as integral to regional security.56 Despite the move of the US airbase from the Saudi desert to Qatar in 2002, the Saudi leadership still considers the benefits of a close military alliance with the United States as outweighing the domestic political costs that it entails. In Iran, on the other hand, few voices do not criticize America’s heavyhanded military presence in the Persian Gulf. From Tehran’s perspective, the US military’s continued presence in the Persian Gulf has two deleterious effects. First, there is the short-term prospect of the United States launching an attack on Iran, which, at various points during George W. Bush’s presidency, was a very real possibility.57 With time, this threat appears to have receded, but it does continue to remain somewhat of a possibility. What is far more harmful, the Iranians maintain, is the widespread instability and tensions that result from the stationing of US forces across the region.58 Regional security arrangements must include all regional actors and cannot come about through the exclusion of a significant regional player like Iran.59 Therefore, any meaningful Persian Gulf security architecture has to necessarily include Iran, something which the United States, with Saudi acquiescence and support, has persistently, and so far effectively, opposed.60 Despite the persistence of disagreement over the Persian Gulf’s security architecture, the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is likely to continue in the future, at least in short and medium terms, as emerging dynamics within the Iranian polity are likely to strengthen the impulse toward greater regional cooperation and better relations with neighbors. As the Ahmadinejad presidency has so far demonstrated, even a return to the rhetorical populism of yesteryear has not changed the truism that Iran simply does not have the capability to take on the United States and its regional allies at the same time even if

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it wanted to. Ahmadinejad may have resurrected slogans such as “death to the Great Satan” that were beginning to die down under Khatami’s watch, but he has been careful not to condemn monarchy, much less Iran’s neighboring monarchies, as corrupt and un-Islamic, as was also popular in the early days of the revolution. Again, the instrumentalist use of slogans and radical rhetoric has not translated into commensurately “revolutionary” foreign policy pursuits, either with the outside world at large or especially in relation to Saudi Arabia. I r a n a n d I r aq Equally complex and multilayered has been Iran’s relations with Iraq. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran’s relations with its neighbor to the west can be divided into three phases. The first phase lasted from 1979 until Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and was punctuated by what turned out to be the longest war in the twentieth century, namely the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–88. The scale of the costs of the conflict, both in human lives and in physical infrastructure, was equally staggering—the highest in the Middle East up until the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. According to conservative Western estimates, the war dead included some 262,000 Iranians and 105,000 Iraqis, with the total number of casualties on both sides amounting to one million.61 According to one analyst, the aggregate costs of the war amounted to $627 billion for Iran and $561 for Iraq.62 The causes, process, and outcome of the war have been well-documented already.63 The shah’s departure in January 1979 had unleashed a frenzied race among contending revolutionary factions to consolidate power and eliminate opponents. Following the monarchy’s collapse, the consolidation of revolutionary power entailed two main elements. One was a compelling revolutionary ideology imbued with strong elements of Iranian nationalism and Shi‘ite messianic radicalism, and the other the systematic dismemberment of the Pahlavi state and its replacement with a new, increasingly theocratic one. The ensuing revolutionary frenzy gave the region’s conservative rulers cause for alarm. Meanwhile, the turmoil and power vacuum in Tehran gave Iraq’s Saddam Husayn the perfect opportunity to emerge as the new leader of the Arab world with what he assumed would be a lightening victory over Iran’s crumbling armed forces.64 But the war was anything but quick, and victory eluded Saddam Husayn to the bitter end.

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Despite Iran’s acceptance of UNSC Resolution 598 in July 1988, which brought a formal end to the hostilities, it was not until Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 that relations between the two countries began to change for the better. Thus began a second phase in the relationship between Iran and Iraq, lasting approximately from September 1990 until the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, during which the two former enemies maintained formal, though at times tense and difficult, relations. In order to secure the country’s eastern borders, in the early days of the invasion of Kuwait Saddam gave Iran a series of concessions, chief among which were the recognition of the 1975 Algiers Accord, withdrawal of all Iraqi troops from Iranian territories, an immediate exchange of prisoners of war, the establishment of full diplomatic relations, and an offer of $25 billion as reparations.65 For its part, Iran pursued a two-track diplomacy during the war, condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and also calling on foreign forces to leave the region as soon as the hostilities were over. Once the war was over, Iran-Iraq relations were marked by mutual distrust but also by recognition of the need to keep disagreements to manageable levels. Each side, for example, continued to provide sanctuary to the other’s main opposition group, with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) being based in Tehran and the armed Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO) operating out of Iraqi desert areas near the Iranian border. At the same time, depending on the temperature between them, Iran would either turn a blind eye to Iraqi oil smuggling operations (in defiance of UN Security Council sanctions) or would intercept tankers carrying Iraqi oil.66 The US invasion of Iraq and the collapse of the Saddam regime ushered in a third phase in Iranian-Iraqi relations. For Iran, the significance of the elimination of a major regional rival, and the subsequent political ascendance of Iraqi Shi‘ites, cannot be over-emphasized.67 Tehran is keenly aware that the US invasion of Iraq has presented it with a host of new security challenges, as well as with tremendous opportunities to advance its national and regional interests.68 Ethnic and sectarian strife, the real danger that Iraq might break up into smaller, unstable pieces, the potential for the spillover of insurgent activities into Iran, and the presence of hundreds of thousands of American troops within striking distance of Tehran are among the most serious threats that Iran faces as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.69 At the same time, however, the emergence in Baghdad of Shi‘ite political leaders sympathetic and even friendly to Iran has

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increased Iranian influence across the region and has, more broadly, redefined the hostile strategic landscape that seriously threatened Iranian interests since September 11.70 Thus Iran has proceeded with extreme caution in the new Iraq, aware of the multiple pitfalls that can entangle it into a quagmire of its own were it to overplay its hands or, alternatively, to let its guard down. This carefully calibrated foreign policy amounts to a deliberate, two-pronged approach, one geared toward longer term objectives and the other designed to address more immediate concerns. The first approach, which informs Iran’s longterm objectives toward Iraq and marks the most consistent feature of its policy toward its neighbor, has been to encourage the emergence of a viable, pluralist, and stable central government in Baghdad. This policy serves Iranian interests on multiple levels. A stable central government in Iraq ensures that the country remains intact, that the insurgency is contained, and that the American occupation forces are likely to withdraw from the country sooner rather than later. Not surprisingly, despite earlier concerns, Iran did not object to the signing of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States and Iraq in November 2008, which formalized the withdrawal of US troops from the country by 2011 and the stationing of a small US force afterwards.71 At the same time, an Iraqi government elected through pluralist means ensures continued Shi‘ite political dominance on the one hand and the relative weakness of the central state—the hallmark of which is a highly fractious parliament—on the other hand. Iran’s forceful advocacy of democratic pluralism in Iraq would also “contain the unruly ambitions of the Kurds and marginalize Iran’s Sunni foes.”72 As Ray Takeyh rightly points out, in the long term Iranian leaders are not interested in seeing another replica of the Islamic Republic in Iraq. Nor do they seek to turn Iraq’s two main Shi‘ite political organizations, SCIRI and the D‘awa, into surrogates of Iran.73 Instead, they hope that the “promotion of Shi‘ite parties will provide them with a suitable interlocutor” and will result in the emergence of “voices who are willing to engage with Iran.”74 This pragmatic policy is most evident in the nature of Iran’s relationship with Iraq’s highly influential Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Unlike Iran’s ruling clerics, Ayatollah Sistani rejects the notion of direct clerical involvement in politics. However, Iranian leaders have maintained very close, respectful relations with him, “and do not harbor illusions that he would serve as an agent for the imposition of their theocratic template on Iraq.”75

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The strategic advantages for Iran of a pragmatic alliance with Iraqi Shi‘ites are significant. Th rough cultivating close ties with Iraq’s moderate Shi‘ite forces, Iran can transform its traditional rivalry with Iraq into a relationship based on “balance of interests,” one that would enable the two countries to pursue complementary strategic objectives in relation to the rest of the region.76 With a powerful adversary having turned into a sympathetic ally, Iran can not only alleviate a number of regional pressures, especially exerted on it by the United States and its allies, but can, potentially, greatly enhance its own strategic goals and objectives. While Tehran’s long-term objective is to help ensure Iraq’s territorial integrity and political stability, its short-term strategy has been to ensure that the United States does not use Iraq—or Afghanistan for that matter—as a base for attacking Iran militarily. This deterrence has been accomplished through moral and financial support for the irregular Mahdi Army militia and the radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who heads it. The United States has often accused Iran of also training and arming the Mahdi Army and other groups that often oppose the US presence in Iraq, although no conclusive evidence of Iranian arms shipments to Iraqi insurgents has ever been presented.77 Nevertheless, Iranian influence among some of Iraq’s powerful nonstate actors cannot be denied. For example, in March 2008, when a week-long battle broke out in Basra between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi government forces, the fighting was brought to an end only through the intervention of the Iranian government, and, reportedly, through the specific mediation of the commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Forces, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani.78 According to one report, “The Basra ceasefire also confirmed Iran’s immense influence in Iraq, and the extent to which Suleimani’s organization has penetrated the country, from the leadership down to the grassroots, especially in the Shi‘ite dominated south.”79 In December 2008, weeks before the Bush administration’s tenure in office was to end, none other than the US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, claimed that Iran’s interference in domestic Iraqi politics had declined sharply.80 For its part, Tehran has long maintained its desire to see a stable and prosperous central Iraqi government. Whether or not Tehran is to be taken at its word, it is obvious that Iranian foreign and national security policies toward Iraq have been guided by pragmatic realism and by a sober assessment of the threats and the opportunities that have been presented to Iran as a result of the US occupation of Iraq.

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I r a n a n d t h e U n i t e d A r a b E m i r at e s For the past two decades, Iran’s relations with the UAE have been marked by tension over contending claims to ownership over three islands in the Persian Gulf, namely the Lesser and Greater Tunbs and the island of Abu Musa. Both Iran and the UAE have contending claims to the three islands and often point to different historical sources to justify their competing claims, or, alternatively, they interpret the same legal and historical sources differently in order to reach conclusions that best support their positions.81 Britain maintained control over the three islands, and upon its withdrawal from the Persian Gulf in 1971 the government of Iran, citing historical and legal justifications, took over the two Tunbs on November 30, 1971. A few weeks earlier, Iran and Sharjah had signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which they had agreed to the joint administration of Abu Musa Island and its division into areas of equal access to citizens from both countries. Oil revenues accrued from the island’s subsoil and subsea resources were also to be equally shared. Each country hoisted its flag on its side, and both, at least nominally, laid claim to the whole of the island.82 For much of the 1970s and the 1980s the issue of the islands lay mostly dormant. At the height of the Iranian revolution, realizing the weakness and chaotic nature of the Iran’s nascent post-revolutionary government, in 1980 and 1981 the UAE submitted two letters to the UN Secretary General in which it asserted its sovereignty over the three islands and rejected claims by Iran that they were integral parts of Iranian territory.83 For much of the remainder of the decade, however, prompted mostly by commercial and strategic considerations, the relationship between the two sides improved steadily, and the UAE often found itself at the forefront of the GCC-Iran rapprochement.84 Beginning in 1992, all three islands, particularly Abu Musa, once again became a major source of contention over an incident that remains, quite typically, shrouded in mystery. According to the Iranian narrative, in April 1992 Iranian authorities arrested a number of armed non-UAE nationals, including a Dutchman, trying to enter the island from the UAE side. The following August, a boat carrying (mostly Arab) migrant workers from the UAE to the island was refused permission to dock and was turned back on grounds that the migrant’s entry into the island contravened the terms of the 1971 MOU. Not surprisingly, the government of the UAE views the situation quite differently, maintaining

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that the Iranian government unilaterally abrogated the 1971 MOU by expelling the island’s Arab population. Since Iran had fortified its military presence on the island earlier, its takeover was premeditated and part of a new, aggressive posture in the Persian Gulf. Whatever the precise nature of the incidents that took place in 1992, the context within which they unfolded and their consequences ever since are key to understanding Iranian-UAE relations. With Iraq having been ejected from Kuwait and its military capabilities practically destroyed by the United States, the Gulf states remained quite concerned about a rising Iran and its military and hegemonic aspirations.85 Meanwhile, the growing presence of the US military across the Persian Gulf, solidified through the signing of various military cooperation treaties between the United States and the various littoral states, gave the UAE the necessary confidence to press its case against Iran whenever and wherever possible. The Clinton administration’s “dual containment” policy and perceived weaknesses in Iran’s regional and international diplomatic positions appear to have further encouraged the UAE in its repeated denunciations of Iran’s “occupation” of the islands in various international forums, especially in the GCC and the Arab League. In addition to raising the issue at the United Nations, the UAE has sought to take the matter before the International Court of Justice, a measure Iran has so far rejected, preferring bilateral discussions and negotiations. Both sides, meanwhile, remain steadfast in their conviction that the islands have been integral parts of their respective territories and, as such, remain inseparable.86 Paradoxically, there is another, equally significant aspect to the relationship between the UAE and Iran, namely the commercial trade between them. According to one estimate, the volume of trade between the two countries, both officially and unofficially, was around $11 billion in 2007.87 There are an estimated five hundred thousand Iranian residents in Dubai alone, of whom some ten thousand are registered owners of businesses.88 Dubai has emerged as perhaps the most significant entrepot used by Iranian businesses in their attempt to circumvent US and Western economic sanctions on Iran, with goods routinely reexported from Dubai to various destinations in Iran.89 Not surprisingly, by some accounts Iran has emerged as Dubai’s biggest trading partner.90 Despite persistent tensions over the disputed islands, therefore, relations between the two remain generally amicable because of their economic and commercial ties.

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C onc lusion In many ways, Iranian-UAE relations are emblematic of Iran’s relations with its other Arab neighbors, whether Iraq or Saudi Arabia or, for that matter, the other sheikhdoms of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman. A history of territorial and other disputes, often made all the more intractable by the advent of the modern state and by age-old cultural and linguistic differences, has resulted in deep-seated mistrust, suspicion, and acrimony between Iran on the one side and its Arab neighbors on the other. Iran-GCC relations are likely to remain tense for some time, complicated by Iranian soft power in such diverse places as Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. At the same time, the two sides have multiple points of convergent interests, not the least of which are strategic and commercial. Ultimately, as this chapter has demonstrated, pragmatic concerns and pursuits, rooted in ongoing assessments of Iran’s capabilities and needs, have guided the country’s foreign and national security policies, both in relation to the larger world and, particularly, insofar as the Persian Gulf region is concerned. With pragmatism as its primary guiding force, the substance and underlying logic of Iran’s relations with its Persian Gulf neighbors, and with the outside world at large, have remained largely consistent since the mid- to late 1990s, despite the tenure in office in Tehran of two very different presidents, one championing the cause of “dialogue among civilizations” and the other a radical rhetoric reminiscent of the early days of the revolution. This begs the question of why, then, did Iran’s relations with the European Union and the United States deteriorate so dramatically during Ahmadinejad’s presidency despite the continuity of his policies with those of Khatami? The answer has to do less with Iranian foreign policy than with larger international developments occurring around the time of changing administrations in Tehran, particularly significant improvements to US relations with a number of European powers that had become strained in the run-up to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Because France and Germany, and even Russia and China, among many others, had so doggedly opposed America’s single-minded march toward war with Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003, they were reluctant to enter into another row with their traditional ally over Iran’s nuclear program. In the meanwhile, Ahmadinejad’s tactless speeches and his confrontational personality made it significantly easier to vilify Iran and to present it as “a menacing threat” regionally and globally.91 In fact, at times Bush

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administration officials appeared far more concerned about Iran’s threat to its neighbors than did the neighbors themselves.92 In short, it was not the substance and nature of Iranian foreign policy or its security posture toward the Persian Gulf that changed from Khatami to Ahmadinejad. Rather, it was American foreign policy objectives, and with it the evolving nature of America’s relations with its allies in Europe and in the UN Security Council, that underwent dramatic changes before and after 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq. The future of Iran’s relations with its Persian Gulf neighbors cannot, therefore, be examined without also considering Iran’s relationship with the United States. It is difficult to imagine US-Iranian relations darkening any more than they had during the administration of George W. Bush. Any reduction of tensions between Iran and the United States is likely to be welcomed by the regional states, many of whom worried, with good reason, about the potential fallout of any open conflict between Tehran and Washington. But many regional actors also worry about the possibility that a warming of relations between Iran and the United States may lessen their luster in Washington’s eyes. A domestically weakened and internationally castigated Iran may be the preferred option of its neighbors, but whether that is a more likely scenario than an Iran more integrated into the international community, perhaps led by a different president, depends as much on larger international developments as it does on Iran’s domestic politics and policy preferences. As of this writing, it is unclear what the future holds for Iran’s Green Movement (Jonbesh-e Sabz), by far the most powerful and popular opposition movement the Islamic Republic has experienced since its inception in 1979. Regardless of the movement’s ultimate success or failure, its policy consequences for the country’s domestic politics cannot be denied.93 Changes are surely in the offing. What remains to be seen is their degree, intensity, and direction.

China, India, and the Persian Gulf Converging Interests? N. Janardhan

China and India, two modern states derived from great ancient civilizations with different postcolonial development models, different social and political setups, and most important, different economies, together account for more than a third of the world’s population. Both countries not only have consolidated their power in Asia, but are also making their presences felt on the global stage.1 China and India have a legacy of trade ties with the Persian Gulf countries dating back to the days of the Silk Road, when silk and spices were moved across the desert in caravans or shipped across the Indian Ocean in traditional boats called dhows. The discovery of oil and the ensuing economic boom led the Persian Gulf countries to shift their economic attentions to the United States and Europe, leading to a decline in interest in traditional trade with their Asian neighbors. While ties with China disintegrated following the shift to modern economy, India remained engaged with the region because of business interests, as well as historical ties, geographic proximity, people-to-people contact, and cultural affi nity. These and the presence of the Indian expatriate community, which grew consistently over decades and contributed immensely to the development of the countries in the region, ensured India’s continued relevance vis-à-vis the Persian Gulf. China’s recent reentry into the region and India’s recent renewed consolidation of ties with the GCC occurred as the rising stock of both countries coincided with the Gulf countries’ recognition of the significance of Asia as an important economic ally. This reentry occurred at a time when Persian Gulf economies 207

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were benefiting from unprecedented jumps in oil prices, until late 2008, and were looking for new avenues to invest and diversify. At the same time, Asia’s oil consumption grew rapidly amid an economic boom that has been only marginally affected by the global slowdown, compelling a strengthening of ties with the GCC countries. Rooted in the relevant economic dynamics, this chapter explores the future course of the relationship between the Persian Gulf countries—especially the bilateral ties between each of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries—and India and China. Iran also figures prominently in the following analysis because all these countries interact with the Islamic Republic to varying degrees, and the status of this relationship affects the course each one adopts in relation to the others in the long run. Two premises are fundamental to this chapter. First, the GCC states have adopted a “Look East” policy. This policy has so far been anchored in commercial and economic ties. However, whether the new policy orientation will address security arrangements other than those that have historically characterized the Persian Gulf region remains, for now at least, unclear. That leads to a second premise: despite extensive and growing commercial linkages, the GCC states will take India and China serious as strategic partners only if the linkages between them move beyond trade. In looking at the variety of forces that condition Indian and Chinese roles in the Persian Gulf region, the chapter will also explore some of the more important dynamics external to GCC-Asia relations, chief among them Iran-GCC ties, US-Iran ties, the US approach towards China and India, Iran’s relations with China and India, and bilateral ties between the United States on the one side and India and China on the other. L o ok E a st P ol ic y An exploration of these dynamics starts with an identification of the reasons for the revival of relations between the GCC countries and Asia in general and India and China in particular. This GCC-Asia relationship received renewed attention following the visits of King Abdullah bin Abd al-‘Aziz and Crown Prince Sultan bin Abd al-‘Aziz of Saudi Arabia to several Asian countries, including India and China, immediately after assuming their new positions in early 2006. Thereafter,

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leaders from both GCC and Asian countries have continued to undertake reciprocal visits, lending momentum to the newfound relationship. A growing number of Asian countries, among them China, South Korea, Singapore, and India, already exert influence in the political, economic, and military spheres. Demographically, Asia represents about half the world’s population and hosts more than 70 percent of the world’s Muslims, which adds to the significance of their associations with the GCC. The renewal of GCC-Asia ties signals a win-win situation economically, owing to the complementarity of both sides’ interests. The Persian Gulf countries have ensured that Asian economic growth depends on their participation through uninterrupted energy supply. Saudi Aramco does almost half of its business in Asia and has more offices there than anywhere else in the world. Guaranteeing oil supplies could be a calculated move on the part of the GCC countries to prompt some of the Asian countries, especially India and China, to tilt away from Iran, which is both a potentially powerful competitor in the energy market and a perceived security threat. The Iran factor is certainly one of the political motives behind the GCC’s “Look East” policy. While the policy may serve to erode Iran’s ties with India, China, and Japan, the GCC may also be attempting to use it to harness the influence of countries that have good relations with Iran to defuse the current standoff over the nuclear issue. In a similar vein, in dealing with India without linking it to Pakistan, and warming up to China, the GCC countries demonstrate a willingness to put economic pragmatism ahead of religious ideology. The GCC countries also realize that solutions to many of their problems— including unemployment, lack of education, lack of economic diversification, and stagnated advancement in the field of science and technology—lie in linking up with Asia. As part of “a new age of Arab-Asian cooperation,”2 for example, Saudi Arabia has included Japan, Singapore, Pakistan, India, and Malaysia among the new non-Western countries with which the Kingdom is keen to collaborate in critical areas such as higher education, information technology, and the fostering of knowledge-based economies. Over the last few decades, the GCC states have increasingly diversified their economic partnerships. This “shift” in approach is a reflection of the GCC’s ease in dealing with Asian countries. Most Asian trading partners, most notably China

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and India, are uninterested in linking political reforms in the region to economic ties. Asian countries—not just India and China but also South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia—have come to terms with the need for greater economic liberalization and are positioning themselves to take advantage of a globalized business environment. Their emphasis on economic liberalization over political reforms, and criticism of Washington’s anti-terror campaign in the Middle East, align well with the GCC countries’ articulated political positions. At a broader level, the GCC’s evolving shift toward Asia is logical. The data in figure 10.1 is revealing. Until the global economic slowdown that began in the waning months of 2008, Asia’s consumption of oil amounted to about 23 million barrels per day (MBPD), constituting 30 percent of the world’s demand. According to International Energy Outlook forecasts, world oil demand will increase by some 47 percent between 2003 and 2030.3 Increasing demands both globally and in Asia for liquefied natural gas (LNG) are only likely to deepen the economic and commercial ties between the GCC and Asia.4 Cooperation between the GCC and Asia in the oil sector is thus a key element in ensuring the security of both supply for Asian consumers and demand for GCC oil producers. Promoting cooperation between oil importers and exporters is at the heart of the new oil diplomacy. India and China are taking the lead in strengthening the “security of supply” by building emergency oil supplies and expanding the use of renewable fuels to ward off the impact of the use of

Fig. 10.1. World oil consumption by region and country group, 2005 and 2030. Source: International Energy Outlook, Sept. 2009.

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energy as a political lever in international affairs. Although China’s strategic oil reserves, which can hold about 100 million barrels, were built between 2007 and 2009, it plans to expand it to 280 million barrels by 2011.5 India’s plans include building reserves of five million tons to cover fi fteen days’ domestic demand for oil products. To achieve their missions, both countries are continuously searching for new reserves, augmenting supplies from traditional suppliers and sealing acquisition deals abroad.6 Thus, energy issues may continue influencing the political economies of the GCC states and shaping their international relations in the coming decades. More than half of Persian Gulf exports go to Asian countries, while a third of Gulf imports originate in Asia.7 The GCC-Asia trade bill tripled between 2000 and 2005 to reach $240 billion, and increased much more following high oil prices thereafter.8 In 2007, Asia accounted for 55 percent of the GCC’s total trade of $758 billion, which translates to about $400 billion.9 These trade networks are certain to grow as negotiations for free trade agreements with China, India, South Korea, Japan, and Pakistan, among others, bear fruit. Similarly important are GCC-Asia ties arising from a history of labor migration from South, and more recently Southeast, Asia into the Persian Gulf. Today, approximately 70 percent of the GCC workforce is made up of expatriates who send home over $30 billion in remittances annually. Of the 13 million expatriates in the region, approximately 70 percent are Asian.10 The new bonhomie has been termed “East-East opportunity.” Middle East buyers snapped up an estimated $20–30 billion in Asian assets in 2007, with a focus on real estate and industrial companies, while Middle Eastern countries accounted for less than one percent of $1.5 trillion of foreign direct investment in American businesses and real estate in 2006.11 These figures indicate that China and India have become the most important markets for Gulf investments.12 The two countries are forecasted to overtake the traditional markets for Gulf investment in Europe and the United States by 2015.13 According to a 2008 report, the amount of Middle Eastern money flowing into China could reach $250 billion by 2013. This compares with the $200 billion that Gulf investors have divested in the United States since 2003.14 A combination of the above factors, as well as the fallout from the events of 9/11—especially Western suspicion about the region and its fi nancial dealings— motivated the GCC countries to look with increasing favor at Asian markets. In

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2006 it was estimated that Gulf investors were set to shift their portfolio allocation toward Asia by 10 to 30 percent, which translates into about $250 billion being available for investment in Asia by 2011.15 The “Look East” policy in the economic realm also comes at a time of regional introspection in the political sphere, which is likely to influence the long-term political economy of the GCC countries and shape international relations in the coming decades.16 The 2006 Manama Dialogue conference endorsed this possibility: “Asian states have ever deeper economic and political links in the Gulf,” maintained the conference report, “and are likely to find that they will struggle to avoid involvement in the area’s delicate politics if they are to advance their commercial aims.”17 Pe r si a n Gu l f- C h i na E c onom ic T i e s China has not had strong historical ties to the Gulf, nor has it developed longterm strategic interests in the area until now. Its relationship with the region has assumed dynamic increasing significance beginning only in the mid- to late 1980s, chiefly because of its energy requirements for its rapidly developing economy. China’s attention to the Persian Gulf has steadily magnified since then, reinforced by a combination of energy considerations, commercial interests, and strategic calculations. Unlike China’s ties with Africa, which have been seen by some as “resource imperialism,” Beijing’s renewed interest in the Middle East and particularly in

Fig. 10.2. GCC-China trade, 2001–7. Source: International Trade Centre, UNCTAD/ WTO.

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the GCC countries has been termed a “joining of equals—newly rich Chinese manufacturers cutting deals with flush petro-princes from a tradition of unfettered trade as rich and old as China’s.”18 Starting with “exchange of Arab oil for Chinese capital,” over the last decade Sino-GCC relations have developed into a web of two-way deals in banking, property development, industrial ventures, and tourism.19 The high degree of liquidity of the economies of the countries involved facilitated this expansion, opening the doors for improving political ties as economic relationships grew deeper. Since 2000, the “new Silk Road” trade between China and the Middle East has doubled to $240 billion, according to the Dubai International Financial Centre.20 The GCC-China trade bill was about $57 billion in 2007, more than doubling since 2003 (fig. 10.2). According to consulting firm McKinsey, trade flows between China and the Middle East could reach between $350 billion and $500 billion by 2020, with GCC-China trade accounting for much of that growth.21 The UAE projected that its two-way trade with China will grow sevenfold by 2015, to $100 billion from $14.2 billion in 2006, and Saudi Arabia expressed a similar intent (fig. 10.3).22 Sino-GCC trade ties continue to be rooted in oil. China is the second largest oil importer in the world, accounting for at least 12 percent of the world’s energy consumption, with a third of its supply coming from abroad.23 The International Energy Agency predicted that by 2030, Chinese industry is expected to account for over 20 percent of growth in world energy demand. China currently imports 32 percent of its oil, with 58 percent of it coming from the Middle East, a figure that is certain to increase in the years ahead.24 Chinese gas consumption is rising at an even faster pace, with imports projected to increase from zero in 2000 to 20–25 million cubic meters by 2010.25

Fig. 10.3. GCC-China trade, 2007, in billion USD. Source: International Trade Centre, UNCTAD/WTO.

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As a result, China has adopted a strategy of diversification by investing in oil/gas fields in more than twenty countries around the world. Between 2006 and 2010, Guangdong Province was expected to invest $22.3 billion to build five petrochemical bases. In addition, five refining expansion and new refining projects, five ethylene projects, and some downstream chemical projects were in the planning stage with the assistance of foreign companies.26 China has forged several joint ventures to strengthen its energy ties in the region. For example, the Saudi state oil company Saudi Aramco, one of China’s biggest oil firms called Sinopec, and the US firm ExxonMobil signed a deal in 2007 which committed ExxonMobil and Aramco to help fund a Chinese petrochemical refinery in exchange for export rights (for Saudi Aramco), and rights to operate 750 gas stations in China (for ExxonMobile).27 In another arrangement, Chinalco, China’s state-run aluminum manufacturer, is funding phosphate projects in northern Saudi Arabia, and plans to set up a production facility in the Kingdom’s Jazan Economic City. Sinopec also signed a $5 billion agreement with the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation in 2005 to develop the southern Guangdong Province.28 China also seeks to import energy-intensive goods like phosphate and aluminum, which the energy-rich GCC countries can produce cheaply. Thus, experts assert, “the theory of comparative advantage would lead to a situation where energy-intensive goods from Saudi Arabia are traded for labor-intensive goods from China.”29 Given this strong synergy, GCC oil exports to China will grow by an average of 3.7 percent per annum until 2030.30 The growing presence of Chinese companies in the GCC has had a social impact, leading to a rapid increase in the number of Chinese workers in the region. The UAE is calling on Chinese authorities to provide capable manpower in the fields of health, medicine, tourism, hospitality, and construction, and is planning to increase the number of Chinese workers in the country, currently estimated at 80,000, to more than 200,000 over the next two years.31 The growing Sino-Saudi relationship is particularly noteworthy. Throughout the 1990s, Beijing cultivated its ties with Saudi Arabia, culminating in the 1999 Strategic Oil Cooperation Agreement. In return for opening their domestic market to Chinese investment and allowing China to pursue upstream oilfield activities in the Kingdom, Saudi companies have begun participating in China’s downstream refining business. China hopes this exchange will allow it to upgrade its refineries with Saudi finances.

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Although it could be argued that energy deals are simply a result of mutual economic interests, the possibility of them stemming from new strategic interests in both Riyadh and Beijing cannot be discounted. In fact, Saudi motives are both economic and political. Of concern to Riyadh are expanding Beijing-Tehran ties, already too close for comfort for Saudi Arabia and for most of the other GCC states, given their lack of confidence in Iran. Pe r si a n Gu l f-I n di a E c onom ic T i e s Relations between the Persian Gulf countries and India have evolved greatly since Bombay’s days as a premier marketing center for pearls and dates from the area, when Indian currency and postage stamps were in circulation in the region during the British domination of India and the region.32 India’s current economic relationship with the Persian Gulf countries is similar to China’s in terms of the trade basket, volume of trade, oil supply, as well as in investments and crossinvestments. Two-way non-oil trade turnover with the GCC countries in 2007–8 was $47 billion, more than doubling since 2005–6. If the oil bill and remittances are included, the trade volume was about $110 billion.33 The GCC countries account for more than 12 percent of India’s total global exports, supply nearly two-thirds of India’s energy needs, and host nearly five million Indians who contribute to the region’s economic development. The region’s importance lies in India’s increasing dependence on Gulf crude oil, which may grow to 90 percent by 2020.34 Apart from the UAE, which is India’s third-largest trading partner in the world after China and the United States and a major source for investment in India, the GCC countries together are emerging as India’s premier investment partner (fig. 10.4 and table 10.1). To meet its forecasted growth rates, India revealed plans to invest up to $25 billion for acquiring oil and gas fields overseas in a dozen countries, including some from the GCC bloc. According to the Indian External Affairs Minister, The challenge before us is to transform the present buyer-seller relationship into something more substantial and enduring. . . . Indian companies could participate in exploration and development projects in the Gulf, while Gulf companies could invest in India’s downstream and petro-chemical sectors. Both also recognize the need for trained personnel in the hydrocarbon sector. Thus, we

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Fig. 10.4. India-GCC non-oil trade. Source: Export Import Databank, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, 2008.

can collaborate in the development of educational and training institutions, not only covering the technological aspects of the industry, but also related areas such as health, safety, and environment sensitivity.35

Accordingly, Reliance India Limited has announced that it would reposition its global operation to Dubai before investing around $24 billion over the next ten years in petrochemical projects in the region.36 While real estate is the prime sector for investments, India has expressed interest in greater trade in agro products, in addition to oil, with the GCC countries. In fact, according to the Indian external affairs minister, “Today, we are a reliable supplier of food products to the Gulf countries and this will only expand in keeping with the expansion of Indian agriculture. I thus see India’s requirement for energy security and that of the GCC countries for food security as opportunities that can be leveraged to mutual advantage.”37 The GCC interest in India is also gaining momentum amid a changing perception of India and Indians throughout the Persian Gulf. A 2003 study by Goldman Sachs projected that over the next fift y years, India will be the fastest growing of the world’s major economies (largely because its workforce will not age as fast as the others).38 It is now evident to the GCC states that the beneficiaries of India’s knowledge economy include the United States and Europe, a dynamic that will help India play a bigger role in the region’s service industry.

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Ta bl e 10.1 I n di a- G C C t r a de (i n di v i dua l c ou n t r i e s ; m i l l ion USD) Country

Bahrain Kuwait Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates GCC

2005–6

381.81 975.59 674.02 1,160.96 3,442.11 12,945.90 19,580.40

2006–7

654.04 6,601.33 1,089.77 2,397.82 15,959.60 20,673.50 47,376.10

2007–8

1,081.52 8,375.75 2,071.87 2,995.55 23,118.90 29,111.70 66,755.30

Source: Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry Export Import Databank, New Delhi, 2008. Note: India’s total imports since 2000–2001 do not include import of petroleum products and crude oil.

Further, the expanding private sector across the GCC has given Indians a level playing field over Western expatriates and an opportunity to showcase their professional skills. After being the major source of unskilled and semiskilled workforce to the Persian Gulf for decades, India is now ready to increase its share of skilled and professional workforce in the region’s quest to build a knowledgebased economy, which is bound to alter the composition of the Indian workforce in the area to some degree.39 Given the global economic crisis, it would be worth noting here that GCC wealth, which will drive ties with Asia, remains healthy. After earning $364 billion in 2007, the Institute of International Finance estimates that the GCC countries will have earned about $2 trillion through oil sales in the last six years and that their public and private overseas wealth will have topped $2 trillion by the end of 2008.40 Nevertheless, the global financial crisis is bound to have an impact. Most Persian Gulf oil producers are certain to run budget deficits in the coming years (2011–13) because of both cuts in production and drastically low prices. Many GCC states have used previous surpluses to diversify their economies away from oil and gas revenues, turning especially toward finance, tourism, real estate, manufacturing, and petrochemicals. Aided by their sovereign wealth funds, many of them have committed to keep expanding public spending.41 The cumulative acquisition of foreign assets by the GCC countries exceeded $900 billion in the five years leading up to June 2008. While half the foreign assets accumulated

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were in the United States, the remainder comprised a variety of asset types originating in other parts of the world, including Asia.42 Se c u r i t y dy na m ic s The GCC states increasingly find themselves in a dilemma over choosing to ally with the United States, their traditional security guarantor, while maintaining their disagreements with many aspects of recent US policy. They are increasingly convinced that events in the region, especially in Iran and Iraq, have the potential to spin out of control beyond the US scope of influence. In light of the GCC’s leadership’s inability to provide the necessary vision, two schools of thought prevail in the region: urging less international involvement in the region’s affairs, and, alternatively, advocating for more. As Kamrava demonstrates in chapter 9, those advocating the withdrawal of external powers from the Persian Gulf feel that external powers have actually exacerbated tensions rather than fostering regional stability. They feel the region may be better off dealing with the crisis itself and that the regional states need to develop intraregional mechanisms for confidence-building measures and conflict resolution. For many in the region, “a lasting Gulf security system can only function if it is based on a regional initiative.”43 The situation on the ground, however, is not conducive to the complete removal of external forces. The GCC states “neither practice nor engage in any sort of cooperative security exchange,” and there is a sense of mistrust even among the members of the bloc.44 As a result, the initiation of an alternative and viable security architecture based largely on regional resources remains highly unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, either for purposes of domestic public consumption or as expressions of serious strategic intent, regional leaders often express their desire for a regional security structure different from the one currently in existence. According to Bahrain’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Mohammad Abdul Ghaffar, for example, there is need for “a more durable security order to place GCC members as main pillars of defense,” arguing that this defense “should be configured similarly to NATO with joint command between GCC members.”45 Similarly, Qatar’s emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani told the General Debate of the United National General Assembly in September 2007

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that “the major conflicts in the world have become too big for one single power to handle them on its own.”46 Not surprisingly, the GCC states are slowly seeking to build ties with a host of alternative powers, particularly in Europe and Asia. They are exploring various means of strengthening security ties with several international actors who could act as guarantors of a regional security arrangement. Some of the Asian and European countries under consideration for this role share a common feature: they are “regional plus” powers; their political weight goes well beyond their geographical borders, though not so far as to give them a global reach or global ambitions. This political power gives them somewhat of an ability to forge, as much as possible, a multipolar world that can resist any single nation’s efforts at achieving regional dominance.47 In cultivating these new relationships, the GCC states are linking their economic interests and security needs. Apart from the importance of energy, Europe and Asia are showing signs of relating the relevance of the Persian Gulf region to transnational security issues such as weapons proliferation, crime, drugs, and terrorism and their impact on their domestic scenarios. The fact that the regional states are willing to consider alternatives amid US displeasure is the “real strategic shift occurring in the region.”48 A si a n Pe r spe c t i v e Apart from Pakistan, which is seen by many as an Islamic superpower, other Asian countries that can be easily identified as having the potential and the inclination to play a security role in the region are China and India. Both are military powers in their own right, and given their current level of economic engagement both regionally and globally, they are bound to take part in any arrangement that safeguards their interests. Developments in these countries, combined with frequent statements from their capitals, suggest that the possibility of an Asian role in the security architecture in the Persian Gulf is more than just rhetorical in the long run. China The reasons for enhanced Chinese and Indian roles in the region overlap, namely energy security on one hand and the protection of supply routes on the other.

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For a long time, however, Beijing has been what historian John Gittings calls a “status quo power that often punches below its weight in international politics.”49 China’s current Middle East policy is just one element in its overall goal of carving out an international presence commensurate with its economic might. While Chinese policies are clearly aimed at ensuring energy security, China is equally interested in increasing its influence in a region that is increasingly weighing the US presence, thereby challenging American control to complement its own global ambitions.50 Beyond this interest, China is also beginning to look at protecting valuable energy routes to maintain its development needs. In the past, China raised some eyebrows with its sale of ballistic missiles and related technology to Iran and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq conflict, and of long-range CSS-2 missiles to Saudi Arabia.51 Such sales occurred in a different political environment. Although there is nothing to suggest that China is engaged in any form of military offensive, it will not be too long before it starts engaging increasingly in the security debate in the region in order to have its voice heard. It is estimated that by 2025, the Indian Ocean and the Straits of Malacca are likely to facilitate about 75 percent of China’s energy imports. This partly explains China’s plan to provide more than a billion dollars in aid and loan guarantees for building its “String of Pearls” at the Pakistani port of Gwadar, which is on the doorsteps of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.52 Beijing is keen to use Gwadar as a transit terminal for Iranian and African crude oil imports, leaving open the possibility of a role for Chinese naval patrol. A road, and eventually a pipeline, from Gwadar could give China the alternative energy route that it urgently needs and spur the development of the country’s western provinces. This route and the other surveillance stations, naval facilities, and airstrips that Beijing is either building or contemplating to safeguard the oil route have longterm strategic ramifications.53 The Chinese maritime profi le in the Indian Ocean now extends to the Cocos Island in Myanmar, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. China is also making efforts to develop strategic relationships with the Maldives, Mauritius, and Seychelles. Moreover, China has been trying to strengthen its military capacity along its Middle East oil supply routes from Central Asia through to Iran, a direct response to Chinese fears that the United States, as the preeminent power in the region, could check Chinese oil imports and, in doing

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so, severely damage the Chinese economy. Thus the Chinese government wishes to reduce the vulnerability of its Middle Eastern oil supply to US power. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Persian Gulf figures prominently in the Chinese strategic calculus. According to one observer, “the Gulf is no longer of peripheral strategic importance to China . . . Sino-Gulf relations have entered a new and important stage of development” that feature “complex energy linkages.”54 The current Chinese views on regional security were made public in a government “white paper” on national defense in December 2006. It provided a rare glimpse into the strategic assessments that underlie Chinese military priorities and decision making and that influence the Communist Party’s policymaking Central Military Commission. The main aim of releasing the contents of the white paper was to counter Washington’s accusation that Beijing had not explained the rationale behind its long-term military modernization program, which hiked its defense budget to $35.4 billion in 2006. Although the budget grew to $60 billion in 2008, the Pentagon estimates the actual spending to be between $105 billion and $150 billion.55 The document highlighted military improvements as part of the country’s overall modernization and economic expansion. Its stated goal was to “lay a solid foundation” by 2010, make “major progress” by the end of the next decade and “reach the strategic goal of building informationized armed forces and being capable of winning informationized wars by the mid-21st century.”56 The Chinese military aims to shift from infantry to high-tech naval and aerial warfare. It has replaced thousands of untrained foot soldiers with highly skilled technicians trained to operate computerized weaponry. The People’s Liberation Army “has made new progress toward the goal of being proper in size, optimal in structure, streamlined in organization, swift and flexible in command, and powerful in fighting capacity.”57 Another instance of Chinese efforts toward military modernization is the Chinese Navy’s renewal of its small force of nuclear powered submarines (SSN). The five boats of the old Han-class will be replaced by newly constructed Type 093-class SSN. The first of these is already operational and at least one more has been launched. The Chinese Navy will also deploy a Type 094 Jin-class nuclearpowered submarine carrying a nuclear ballistic missile, an effective nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). China is also modernizing its force of surface warships.58 China is also increasing its multilayered strategic engagement

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with Iran and Pakistan, reflecting another level of increased focus on military development. India While energy security is certainly a factor, India is also willing to showcase its power and influence in the region. This expanded security perspective is driven by necessity, ambition, and opportunity. India’s desire to lead coincides with its rise as a major power with continental aspirations. To this end, both former premier Atal Behari Vajpayee and prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh have advocated looking beyond the immediate neighborhood. In particular, Singh called for a focus on ties with countries in “the Gulf region, [an area that] is a part of our natural economic hinterland. We must pursue closer economic relations with all neighbors in our wider Asian neighborhood.”59 In addition to Pakistan, China, Russia, and the United States, the Persian Gulf region receives strategic attention from India in the government’s effort to ensure against any regional maritime or landward threat, establish new bases to pursue India’s interests, confront terrorism and extremism, and tap new investment potential. By focusing on the Persian Gulf and restoring traditional linkages with its immediate and extended neighborhood, India seeks to address its “four deficits” in the historical, security, economic, and global decision-making realms.60 With India’s new focus on “soft power” and diplomacy, the security of the Persian Gulf countries, as well as of the wider Middle East, is of “paramount concern.” According to Chinmaya Gharekhan, India’s one-time special envoy to the Middle East: “Linkages with illicit trafficking in narcotics, as well as in small arms have enhanced the destructive potential, and lethal reach of the terrorists. . . . The fight against terrorism has to be long-term, sustained and comprehensive. It cannot be ad hoc, selective or compartmentalized in terms of region or religion.”61 India is keen to cooperate with the Persian Gulf states in order to ensure safety and security of sea lanes and of communications, and safety and freedom of navigation in the shipping lanes and trade routes; to positively influence religious extremism and/or transnational terrorism, combat narcotics trafficking, and curtail the proliferation of weapons in the region; and to achieve peace in the subcontinent by strengthening ties with a region closely bonded with Pakistan.

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India’s national security adviser M. K. Narayanan confirmed the primacy of these goals, stating, “the key focus in our external relations today is ensuring the stability and security of the region comprising the arc of nations from the Gulf to East Asia. . . . India’s decision to enter into a cooperative strategic relationship with China fully mirrors this approach.”62 Although India’s latest military capacitybuilding plan dates back to 2001, in November 2003 the government launched “a 20-year program to become a world power whose influence is felt across the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf, and all of Asia” to further the government’s aim of regional dominance.63 On a visit to Washington, then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh explained, For a long time, India has not been seen in its true dimensions. How many people know that Indonesia is only 65 miles from the southernmost Indian island? Or that but for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Tajikistan is just 27 miles from India. That we had a border with Iran in 1947? Or that the legal tender of Kuwait was the rupee? So when we talk about Indonesia or central Asia or the Gulf, it is because of our interest and our sphere of influence.64

India’s desire to play an independent role in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf can be seen as an extension of the notion of maritime primacy that it inherited from the British Raj. Following several decades of dormancy after obtaining independence from the British, India is now in the advanced stage of pursuing foreign and security policy changes to realize this dream. Its new stress on regionalism rooted in economic integration has pushed India to look favorably on the entire Indian Ocean littoral, including the larger Middle East and especially the Persian Gulf.65 As economic growth helps India make rapid progress, its policymakers begin to lean toward greater strategic realism. The idea of solidifying an extensive ring of national security involving the Indian Ocean littoral and the Persian Gulf is fueled in part by the notion that India must play a more prominent role in the region, and the country’s present readiness to deploy the necessary resources for such a task has risen in prominence among India’s priorities.66 Again, the deliberate decision beginning in the late 1990s to import liquefied natural gas from the Persian Gulf provides the larger background within which India has paid increasing attention to the region.67

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The Indian navy plays a key role in the implementation of these shifts in the country’s policy pursuits. Since the late 1990s, India has aimed at “transforming itself from a ‘brown water’ coastal defense force to a formidable ‘blue water’ fleet.”68 In technical terms, a “blue water” navy is one that can operate over 320 kilometers from its shore. In political terms, a blue water navy is long-range extension of the state’s presence—“legitimate use .  .  . of a Blue Water navy is power projection which is necessary” for a “power like India.” Further, “an economically resurgent India has vast and varied maritime interests” necessitating “sea control in all three dimensions in the distant reaches . . . the will to project our power overseas .  .  . to safeguard our emerging vital interests overseas .  .  . to build adequate sealift and airlift capability to have a credible and sustainable trans-national capability . . . vital interest to us lies in the expanse of the seas.”69 The navy’s aim is not simply to patrol the seas, but rather to have the capacity to create and “deploy battalion-sized forces at various strategic points .  .  . [on] short notice, and disperse them quickly from the landing or dropping zone before any adequate enemy response.”70 In October 2003, then navy chief admiral Madhvendra Singh said, “Fulfi lling India’s dream to have a full-fledged bluewater navy would need at least three aircraft carriers, 20 more frigates, 20 more destroyers with helicopters, and large numbers of missile corvettes, and antisubmarine warfare corvettes.”71 The navy’s acquisitions program was then worth $20 billion. The plan includes acquiring or constructing a submarine that could launch nuclear missiles, aircraft carriers, and long-range missiles with a reach of over 2,500 kilometers. This ambitious program suggests that military decision makers envision the possibility of future Indian military interventions in countries within India’s “sphere of influence.” The Indian government’s Maritime Doctrine in 2004 reflects the same notion. A US War College study remarks that “the new doctrine attempts to deal with confl ict with (an) extra-regional power and protecting persons of Indian origin and interest abroad,” calling attention to the importance of the Persian Gulf.72 Maintaining that the “challenge” lies in India becoming a maritime power, former Indian navy chief admiral Arun Prakash promised in August 2006 a fully balanced, technologically fit, fighting force in the next decade.73 It is relevant here to recall that Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval officer and historian from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, said, “whoever controls the Indian Ocean dominates Asia. This ocean is the

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key to the seven seas in the 21st century, the destiny of the world will be decided in these waters.” 74 To address the need for greater collective security cooperation in the region, the Indian navy organized the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) in February 2007. The IONS is expected to be a regular conference facilitating sustained interaction among the naval chiefs of the countries along the Indian Ocean rim to develop “cooperative, consultative and inclusive” mechanisms to address threats to Indian Ocean security. In view of its growing responsibilities, the Indian navy deployed the long-range Russian-built Klub missile on INS Tabar. This “smart missile” was also capable of striking land targets located far away from the sea. Further, all new naval ships and those slated to be upgraded will be fitted with the latest Russian Brahmos antiship missiles.75 India’s naval plans and assertions have led some to ask, with concern, if India has designs on turning the Indian Ocean into India’s ocean.76 Apart from larger strategic considerations, a number of more immediate developments have added urgency to the Indian government’s need for increased reliance on its navy. The menace of Somali pirates, who attempted nearly one hundred hijackings in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean during 2008 alone— a 75 percent increase over the previous year—has hastened the involvement of the Indian and Chinese navies in the Indian Ocean. According to the International Maritime Bureau, Some 581 crew-members were taken hostage worldwide between January and September 2008.77 During the short period of November and December 2008, the Indian navy was involved in rescuing at least three hijacked vessels in the vicinity of the Yemeni port of Aden. In all three instances, armed choppers with marine commandos were pressed into operation.78 Moreover, in order to protect its container vessels from pirates, India sent one warship to the region’s waters and announced that it was willing to deploy up to four such vessels. In a sign of China’s increasing willingness to flex its military muscle, Beijing signaled in December 2008 that it may also send warships to help fight pirates off the coast of Somalia. As a “land power, China has spent little time through much of its history worrying about a significant naval capability,” but the Somalia mission “offers the Chinese navy new opportunities for training in extended operations far from the Chinese mainland.”79 The possible deployment is being seen as China’s “biggest naval expedition since the 15th century.”80 Attacks on three Chinese ships in the Gulf of Aden during the last two months of 2008 have

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fostered a new sense of urgency in the Chinese media, which has been rallying support for such a mission with editorials that refer to China’s “responsibility” as well as to the opportunity to “get into the thick of the action.”81 Fac t or s C on di t ion i ng I n di a- C h i na Rol e s While all these dynamics point to the possibility of intensified Chinese and Indian roles in the international affairs of the region, the following are some factors that are crucial to either promoting or hindering this prospect. US-China Ties For the time being, China maintains that it has no vital “strategic” interests in the Middle East that require military protection. The region, distant from China, is not an area from which hostile forces might threaten Chinese territory, nor is it a traditional Chinese sphere of influence. China’s interests in the Middle East are mainly commercial: oil and trade.82 Moreover, China does not want to get entangled in any Middle Eastern conflicts. Beijing intends to get a free ride on Washington’s efforts in the Middle East; if the United States fails to stabilize the region, China will not step in and is not concerned about who would. If China’s energy interests are affected because of instability, China will look elsewhere for oil.83 China cannot supplant the United States in the Middle East as a military power. “Yet, Middle Eastern countries can use a relationship with China to supplement the bilateral relations with the United States and perhaps give those countries the freedom of greater distance from Washington. China is playing the game well. Unlike the Soviet Union, whose frequently heavy-handed reach in the Middle East prompted most countries to flee for the US security umbrella, all Middle Eastern states welcome China.”84 Whether or not China is interested in the region, the United States is concerned about Chinese inroads in the Middle East, principally in terms of seeking access to its oil and gas reserves.85 “It is a fear for energy security—rather than a concern over energy adequacy itself—that could fuel Sino-American tensions in the Middle East.”86 Some US analysts fear that a Chinese military build-up, especially the prospect of blue-water navy and power projection capabilities, could challenge US control of vital sea lanes.87

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China and Iran The GCC countries share concerns over the relationship between China and Iran. The two countries share a special affinity that is too close for the comfort of the GCC countries, given the lack of confidence between them and Iran. The United States, the main powerbroker in the region, is similarly uneasy over the relationship. With two-way trade touching nearly $20 billion in 2007, and expected to increase to about $30 billion in 2008, economic ties between China and Iran are robust.88 China gets about 15 percent of its imported oil from Iran, making the Islamic Republic one of China’s largest suppliers. China’s oil giant Sinopec Group has signed a gas deal worth $100 billion with Iran known as the “deal of the century.” Sinopec is expected to buy 250 million tons of natural gas in thirty years from Iran and will help Iran to develop its giant Yadavaran oil field in exchange for Tehran’s commitment of exporting 150,000 barrels of oil per day to China for twenty-five years at market prices.89 As a result, “Iran has become the engineer of China’s economic growth. It may not be like Saudi Arabia is to the US economy, but it’s close.”90 China’s economic initiatives in Iran extend far beyond the energy realm and include a wide spectrum of areas, ranging from infrastructure construction to trade and tourism. In the face of far-reaching sanctions against Iran by Western governments and enterprises, China has emerged as one of Iran’s largest trading partners. Beijing is helping Tehran build dams, shipyards, and many other projects. More than one hundred Chinese state companies are operating in Iran to develop ports and airports in the major Iranian cities, mine-development projects, and oil and gas infrastructures.91 China also cooperates with Iran’s missile, nuclear, chemical, and advanced conventional weapons programs. Along these lines, China supports Iran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy and has called on all negotiating sides to show flexibility in order to reach a deal. With a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, China holds the power to pass or veto possible new sanctions on Iran. Beijing took the initiative to host the “5+1” talks on the nuclear issue in Shanghai in April 2008. Given the strained nature of American-Iranian ties, Chinese support of Iran on this issue is bound to put the interests of the three parties plus the GCC bloc at loggerheads. Moreover, Beijing is continuously reinforcing its relationship with Tehran in order to deepen its presence in Central Asia with the goal of reaching the

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important energy resources of the Caspian Sea region. In a period in which energy markets highlight the increasing dependence of industrial powers on oil prices, Iran has an important instrument of geopolitical pressure thanks to its status as a major oil producer and its control of the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, the Sino-Russian-promoted Shanghai Cooperation Organization now accommodates Iran as an observer. China and Iran find themselves allied in their view of heavy-handed US foreign policy. According to one observer, neither feels its civilization to be inferior to the West. Both resent the US’ hegemony and have bitter memories of Western imperialism. Both seek a multipolar world. These shared civilizational beliefs lead to the conclusion that the existing world order, created and still dominated by Western powers, is profoundly unjust and must be replaced by a new, more just order.92

India-Iran Ties While India has been under pressure from the United States to distance itself from Iran for some time, some in the GCC have tried to pressure New Delhi to choose between its GCC relationships and its connections with Iran while deciding on Tehran’s nuclear policy and the threat it poses to the region. The degree of clarity of New Delhi’s policy toward Tehran, especially on the nuclear issue, will shape the GCC’s approach toward India. However, it is important for India to reiterate the strategic importance of both Iran and the GCC countries, which extends beyond energy interests. India’s interests in Iran transcend the economic and political. India has been greatly influenced by Persian culture for centuries, and New Delhi views Tehran as part of its security buffer, especially in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan. In particular, Iran offers India alternative geographic access to Afghanistan and Central Asia since Pakistan has refused to allow overland trade and transit. These multifaceted considerations are reflected in India’s involvement in a joint effort to expand the Chabahar port in Iran, in the construction of the Chabahar-Faraj-Bam railway line, and in the implementation of the Zaranj-Delaram Road Project in Afghanistan that will act as a northsouth transport corridor of strategic importance to both India and Iran. Yet

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Sino-Indian relations have not yet been optimally exploited except during the joint political and security efforts to support the Northern Alliance at the time of the Taliban reign in Afghanistan. Iran is a major supplier of energy resources to India, and the rising crude prices drove the total oil trade between the two countries to $13 billion in 2007–8. This figure includes gasoline exports from India to Iran worth more than $1 billion. Non-oil bilateral trade surpassed $2.2 billion in 2006–7, though the actual volume may be higher as considerable trade is channeled through third countries to beat the US sanctions. Iran has also signed a $22 billion agreement in 2005 to sell five million tons of LNG a year to India with a provision that would allow that amount to increase to 7.5 million tons per year.93 The attempt to bring natural gas through an overland 2,775-kilometer IranPakistan-India pipeline, which began in 1995, stalled because of several roadblocks—international certification of Iran’s resources, price, Pakistan’s transit fees, security of the pipeline, and US opposition. India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the private Hinduja Group are negotiating a multibillion dollar deal with Iran to develop phase twelve of the giant South Pars gas field and South Azadegan oil field. In addition, a consortium of Indian public sector oil companies including ONGC Videsh, the Indian Oil Corporation, and Oil India, proposes to invest $3 billion to develop Iran’s Farsi natural gas block, where they have discovered 12.8 trillion cubic feet of gas. Unlike China, India has opposed Iran’s nuclear proliferation and voted against it at the International Atomic Energy Agency twice. Despite tension between India’s long-term geopolitical interest in a strong strategic partnership with Iran, and short-term obstacles to building such a relationship because of internal instability in Iran and sour relations between Tehran and some of India’s key international allies, it is unlikely that India-Iran ties will get derailed.94 US-Iran Ties Some suggest that the trajectory of US-Iran ties will determine whether or not Asia will have a security role in the Persian Gulf. Relations between the United States and Iran could take a turn toward increased or lessened tensions, and either scenario would open the door for India and China to increase their influence in the Persian Gulf. If a “grand bargain” of sorts ever materializes between

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Tehran and Washington, it will encourage the GCC countries to look Eastward to protect their interests. If the tension persists, however, the GCC countries will be naturally inclined to explore alternative external relations with India and China, thus intensifying competition between the two. GCC-Iran Ties In the event of a meaningful rapprochement between the GCC countries and Iran, Washington’s role is likely to change somewhat, though not necessarily lessen, thus creating opportunities for Asian countries to take more proactive roles in the region. Should the opposite occur, the GCC countries would be reluctant to rely solely on the United States to safeguard their strategic interests. Given the Obama administration’s inclination to review Washington’s approach to Tehran, the GCC countries face a dilemma: neither do they want to be seen as encouraging a US-Iran conflict nor do they want to let Iran have free reign with regard to the development of a nuclear program. The GCC countries are also worried about the possibility of a “grand bargain” between Iran and the United States struck with the intension of stabilizing Iraq, raising fears of growing Shi‘ite influence in the region. In an atmosphere of hostility and deep-rooted suspicion, however, there have been an unusually high number of reciprocal political visits by Iranian and GCC leaders in the last few years. The GCC countries have also indicated a willingness for rapprochement with Iran by setting up a committee to look into tapping the economic potential of a free trade agreement proposed by Iran and to investigate ways of advancing political cooperation between them and Iran.95 US Approach Toward India and China While Washington desires “a unipolar world and a multipolar Asia, China would prefer a multipolar world and a China-centric unipolar Asia.” Conversely, India, growing closer to the United States, and which Washington wants to use to counter Beijing—“would like to see a multipolar world and a multipolar Asia,” thereby intensifying Beijing-New Delhi competition.96 It remains to be seen how the United States will reconcile with a new international order that features an emergent India and China—one that is not “anti-US,

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but approaches it as if it were a post-US world.”97 While economic growth enables countries to modify existing structures to protect their interests, too many in the United States appear to be focused on the dangers posed by a rising China and a rising India, rather than the advantages of Indian and Chinese regional dominance. The United States could be overestimating the negative aspects of such a shift in expressing long-term fears about China’s intentions in the Persian Gulf security architecture, and possibly India’s in the future. United States–India versus China It is not yet clear how successful US effort will be in fostering closer ties with India in order to check China’s regional rise. The GCC countries’ perceptions of India’s growing ties with the United States at a time when the international and domestic mood has clearly turned away from the United States and its policies remain obscure. Marked by the recent civilian nuclear deal and enhanced military cooperation, the relationship between India and the United States has undergone radical transformation during the last decade. Nevertheless, it is still unclear if this is a natural alliance or a relationship of convenience. One such example of this divergence relates to Iran. While Washington expects India to be part of the US plan to isolate Iran, New Delhi has affirmed time and again the strategic importance of its alliance with Tehran. This discord over Iran illustrates India’s policy of maintaining an independent foreign policy regardless of its ties with the United States. It remains unclear if New Delhi’s quest for better ties with Washington has taken into account the declining popularity of the United States in the Persian Gulf, and what impact this fact would have in terms of the India-Gulf equation, especially under the new democratic dispensation of Barack Obama. For now, shared US and Indian concerns related to energy security, protection of sea-lanes, maritime policing, counterterrorism, and strategic coordination on these issues are likely to compel the two countries to engage constructively in the Persian Gulf. As India’s desire to play an influential role in the Persian Gulf has yet to translate into reality, the United States is not particularly concerned about Indian domination in the area. At the same time, the United States may be willing to accommodate India more than it would strategically prefer to in order to counter China’s influence in the region.

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Whether or not the US and Indian approaches will lead to mutually acceptable sharing of the strategic and military burden between the two in the Persian Gulf in the long term will depend on “the prospects of the United States shift ing towards the concept of ‘off shore’ balancing in theatres of vital national concern to it.”98 C onc lusion Historic ties between the Persian Gulf countries and Asia have been sustained by current energy, trade, and migration dynamics. The way toward the establishment of a robust bilateral relationship lies in developing the strategic, political, and security dimensions of existing ties. With several factors contributing to the growing importance of the Gulf-Asia relationship, it is time to convert the “opportunity” into a “strategy.” The political and security concerns shared by the countries of the GCC, India, and China translate into efforts for peace and stability on both sides. A Gulf-Asia relationship based purely on buying and selling oil is untenable in the long run. The GCC countries need to take note of the fact that India’s basket of energy suppliers is widening. India may follow the lead of the United States in the coming years, which imports more oil from Africa than from the Middle East (imports of African oil reached 921 million barrels or 18.7 percent of the US total in 2005, compared to 839 million barrels or 17 percent from the Middle East).99 Similarly, China imports more crude supplies from Angola than it does from Saudi Arabia. The Indian and Chinese quest to expand and diversify their sources of energy has even touched the nuclear frontier. With the goal of strengthening and diversifying relations, both parties should acquire fresh dimensions to consolidate their positions in a fast-changing world. Furthermore, while the GCC countries may be uncomfortable with India’s or China’s ties with Israel and Iran, New Delhi and Beijing are unlikely to compromise on their own strategic interests and downgrade their relationship with Tel Aviv and Tehran in order to ameliorate GCC concerns. Instead, the GCC countries could use the India-China-Iran bonhomie to their advantage. Since India and China have maintained generally positive relations with Iran, they could be engaged in the role of an honest broker in mending GCC-Iran relations.

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The challenge is if the Asian security architecture, led by China and India, among others, will able to give rise to new institutions that foster stability, security, cooperation, and growth instead of being mired in suspicion and insecurities that others will take advantage of. Indications so far give rise to optimism. During the visit to India of Chinese president Hu Jintao in November 2006, the two governments seemed willing to cooperate. The goal of Asian architecture figured in the Joint Declaration with both sides agreeing “to expand their coordination within regional organizations and explore a new architecture for closer regional cooperation in Asia.” The two countries said they “positively view each other’s participation in Asian inter-regional, regional, and sub-regional cooperation processes.”100 For the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to be the most influential and effective player in the international affairs of the Persian Gulf region. The fact that both China and India are currently in the throes of converting their phenomenal economic successes into substantive social accomplishments, the urge to transform themselves rapidly into “great powers” would be rather circumspect. Given that both countries are also in the midst of massive military modernization efforts, it is likely that they would focus on building capacity over the next decade or two before beginning to showcase their military strength in the international arena, which could then find favor among those looking beyond the United States as the only security guarantor in the region. But with the economic crisis offering the chance for emerging markets to overtake developed economies faster than predicted earlier, particularly the possibility of China overtaking the United States by 2027 rather than 2050, the “new” great powers could be in dynamic mode sooner rather than later. Until then, the factors that led to the rediscovery of ties among the Persian Gulf countries, China, and India—economic boom, oil demand and supply, and cross-investment opportunities—would not only sustain their interaction, but also clear the decks for strategic engagement in the security realm.

Political Reform and Foreign Policy in Persian Gulf Monarchies K atja N ieth a m m er

In recent years, and before the wave of unrest that occurred in 2011, public as well as to some extent scholarly opinion has increasingly viewed the Gulf Arab monarchies—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—as political reformers.1 This is a striking departure from earlier scholarship, which tended to see these political systems as fundamentally backward and outdated. One of the factors motivating this change of opinion is that all the Gulf monarchies have started to experiment with elections. They have introduced advisory or parliamentary councils and expanded existing representative bodies. No doubt the quality and significance of both elections and representative bodies vary greatly; some elections are indirect, as in the UAE, while others take place only at the municipal level, as in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.2 This chapter addresses the question of whether reforms affect the GCC states’ foreign policies. The simple answer is that they do not. First, by reviewing the quality of the Persian Gulf monarchies’ political reform processes, I argue that direct, immediate effects on their foreign policies are very unlikely to occur. Domestic reforms in these states have maintained the ruling elites’ dominance in core processes of political decision making, including foreign policy. Second, I look at more indirect effects caused by broadened political participation. Here the findings are more ambiguous. In two Gulf monarchies, Bahrain and Kuwait, nonelite actors have emerged and have actively participated in political debates. Referring to the specific example of Islamist political groups in Bahrain, I suggest that these groups’ participation in politics led to a quite unexpected outcome: 234

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instead of challenging the ruling elites’ discourse ideologically, and thus potentially influencing political decision making, Islamist political groups search for external patrons (mainly the United States) and thereby strengthen the ruling elites by aggravating fragmentation within their society. By doing so, they also forgo the limited chances to influence foreign policies. This being said, the recent wave of pro-democracy activism in the Arab world might also affect Bahraini politics quite dramatically and lead to systemic transformations in the kingdom, which would also force the groups discussed here to change their tactics. How far this will be the case remains unpredictable at this point in time. It is obvious that a country’s domestic and foreign policies are linked to one another. However, assessing the exact linkages of domestic decision-making processes and foreign policy strategies and outcomes is still an ongoing debate in the theoretical literature in international relations.3 Without a doubt, one linkage is found in the two-level games—as Putnam termed it—foreign policy actors play.4 In their foreign policies, national governments simultaneously have to take into account domestic pressures and minimize adverse consequences of foreign developments. Domestic pressures are particularly strong in democracies—after all, in many democratic systems, international treaties, for example, have to be ratified by parliaments, and the reelection of an incumbent government depends largely on its domestic performance. However, domestic pressure comes in other shapes as well; strong militias or the regular military could, for example, veto foreign policy decisions in informal ways.5 Viewing the linkages of domestic and foreign policies as a two-level game takes into account actors’ behavior and the structuring of that behavior by the political system. This two-pronged approach is also found in a more recent research trend on very specific foreign policy outcomes, that is, the occurrence (or absence) of violent confl ict. The most prevalent assumption raised in this regard is the democratic peace proposition; it postulates that democracies—while not being generally more peaceful than other political systems—do not fight one another.6 The reasons given for this finding operate on different levels.7 First, structurally, democratic processes put limits on executive power, and the sharing of decision-making responsibilities restricts leaders from committing their states to military action.8 Second, on a normative level, democracies favor nonconfrontational means of conflict resolution domestically. They are believed to transfer the underlying values to their dealings with other democracies.9 Third, it is assumed that leaders of democratic states lack the

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political incentives to attack another democracy.10 It is assumed that in a democracy, citizens who bear the costs of violent conflict are well informed enough—by means of a free press and other mediating institutions—to shun violence as a means of interstate politics. These findings seem to be of limited significance for the Persian Gulf monarchies, as these states are quite obviously not democracies. However, a subcategory of research on the democratic peace proposition seems to be more fitting for those monarchies in the region implementing reforms. Mansfield and Snyder have examined the effects transitions have on the likelihood of the eruption of violent conflict.11 They analyzed four sets of transitions: transitions to complete and incomplete democracies, and transitions to complete and incomplete autocracies.12 Their findings suggest, perhaps not entirely surprising, that while countries undergoing a partial democratic transition are more likely to experience interstate violence, countries transitioning to autocratic regime types are not.13 States transitioning toward complete or incomplete democracies will increase competitiveness in the selection of the chief executive, increase the constraints on the executive, and broaden political participation.14 At the same time, however, during transition processes the rule of law is incomplete, elections are prone to be rigged, and the media works unprofessionally at best.15 In such situations, groups with particularistic interests, among them ethnic groups, threaten to take unilateral action. To preempt such risks, ruling elites in democratizing states often resort to the creation of an overarching ideology in a bid to generate legitimacy that cannot be based on democratic institutions and procedures.16 More often than not, the ideology ruling elites would subscribe to in order to establish a unifying legitimacy is nationalism. Although nationalism works as a state-building ideology in many cases, it excludes certain parts of the populace from gaining political franchise.17 This kind of nationalist ideology, Mansfield and Snyder find, enhances the risks of violent conflicts through a set of interrelated mechanisms: it leads to nationalist outbidding by contenting old and new elites, thus generating an increasingly bellicose atmosphere in which political leaders may find themselves trapped.18 The more partial the democratic transition is, the more likely is the outbreak of violent conflict. Authoritarian transitions, however, are far less likely to produce violent conflict than democratic transitions.19 As authoritarian transitions do not curtail the executive to a significant extent and do not lead to competitiveness in

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the executive’s recruitment, ruling elites are far less tempted to take recourse to nationalist and belligerent ideologies. Although the democratic peace proposition aims at explaining only specific linkages between domestic and foreign policies, and with regard to very specific outcomes, it can still prove useful for the analysis of the more general effects of domestic and foreign policies. In analogy to the findings on the occurrence of violent conflict, one would assume that in order to produce changes in Persian Gulf monarchies’ foreign policy discourses, strategies, and outcomes, the domestic reform projects would have to generate significant changes in three interrelated areas. The first is related to the structure of the executive: have the reforms introduced checks and/or limits on executive powers? Second, have the reforms changed the degree of competitiveness in the selection of the executive, that is, have the reforms enabled new sets of elites to emerge? Have reforms lead to an inclusion of political actors other than the ruling elites into political decision making? Third, has a general broadening of political participation occurred that could lead to increased competition on the normative level? Has the discourse on foreign policies broadened to include substate actors such as NGOs that could potentially challenge the ruling elites’ legitimacy? Are ruling elites in turn forced to bolster their legitimacy by employing nationalist (or religious) ideologies? The question on the emergence of substate actors ties in with a larger debate on the effects of globalization on democratization. There is some consensus on the fact that globalization removes political decision-making powers from national governments in certain policy fields while business corporations, international financial institutions, and, to a lesser degree, civil society actors gain more power. Less consensual is the evaluation of these processes, however. One trend in this body of literature argues that globalization decreases accountability and transparency and hence is detrimental to democratization; the second trend holds that globalization empowers new actors, especially NGOs, to press their governments for more accountability and transparency, and hence globalization is conducive to democratization.20 While the question of globalization is not central here, this chapter should clarify which interpretation seems to be more apt in the case of the Persian Gulf states. This chapter will first assess the quality of the Persian Gulf monarchies’ reform processes, and subsequently, will ask whether the changes arrived at potentially

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generate effects on their foreign policies. Finally, the question of broadened participation will be examined, focusing on one specific example: Islamist political groups in Bahrain. This particular case was selected because Bahrain underwent a comparatively substantial reform and has an active political and civil society. Islamist groups can be assumed to sustain particularistic discourses that potentially challenge the ruling elite. Finally, the example of Bahraini Islamists allows highlighting another question that approaches the linkage between domestic and foreign policies from the reverse, so to speak: do external, transnational linkages substantially influence domestic reform agendas on the level of substate actors? R e for m Pro c e s se s i n Pe r si a n Gu l f Mona rc h i e s To understand the timing and quality of the diverse domestic political reform projects in the Persian Gulf monarchies, a prior look at their motivations might be in order. Not surprisingly, no single cause can be found. These states face a complex mix of domestic and external challenges and stability risks that drive their reform efforts. At first sight, the Gulf monarchies—with the partial exception of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain21—do not seem to be confronted with severe legitimacy problems. Neither do these states’ citizens engage in substantive protest, nor are the small Gulf states targets for terror attacks on a larger scale.22 This political quietism hides the substantial long-term challenges the monarchies face. These concentrate in four entangled areas: first, the Gulf ruling families are, to varying degrees, confronted with legitimacy issues; second, these states face major distribution problems; third, some rulers face intrafamilial competition—clearly a motivation for reform in Bahrain and Qatar; fourth, Persian Gulf monarchies operate in an international context where external players—states or substate actors—try to wield considerable political influence. The main external players are the United States and Iran, but developments in Iraq also affect the Gulf monarchies, particularly those with a highly religiously fragmented citizenry. Quite apart from those external players active today, it remains to be seen how the Gulf monarchies would deal with a potential future politicization of their huge migrant populations. In addition, there have been external drivers for reform; clearly Kuwait (in 1963) and Bahrain (in 1973) were compelled to introduce parliaments to broaden

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their legitimacy in the face of claims to the contrary by the regional hegemonic powers Iraq and Iran. Parliamentarization was a means by which both rulers could prop up their legitimacy in those parts of their populations that—so they feared—where susceptible to instrumentalization by these regional powers. Currently, political reforms are a strategy for the small GCC states to gain more independence from Saudi Arabia, as the United States is seen to reward political reforms with an intensification of direct bilateral relations.23 With the possible exception of Saudi Arabia, the GCC states did not implement political reforms necessarily because of the Bush administration’s efforts at “democracy promotion.” In fact, GCC ruling elites were fully cognizant of the fact that the West preferred stability in the resource-rich region. Quite understandably, the West prefers to have pro-Western incumbent elites responsible for the formulation of core policies rather than subjecting real decision-making power to parliaments that could potentially be filled with anti-Western politicians. Given these limitations of Western democratization agendas, GCC reforms still address Western publics, as the monarchies compete with each other for foreign investment and recognition. This competition shows clearly in the coverage that Western praise of any of these states’ reform policies receive in local government-dominated media. The same holds true for the ranking in international indexes—if a state climbs in Transparency International’s index, for example, the state elaborates at length on these achievements. However, while the GCC countries have participated in some of the activities of the Broader Middle East and North Africa (B-MENA) Initiative, all but Bahrain have refused to register Western NGOs for democracy promotion such as the National Democracy Institute or their European counterparts.24 Dy na st ic Ru l e , R e n t i e r i sm, a n d L e gi t i m ac y Persian Gulf monarchies are political systems sui generis and thus face both very specific challenges to their legitimacy and very specific reform obstacles. GCC states are authoritarian states, but of a unique nature. Monarchs “reign and rule” all six Persian Gulf monarchies, be they emirs (Kuwait, Qatar, UAE), kings (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia) or a sultan (Oman). Although Morocco and Jordan are also ruled by monarchs, the important difference is that Gulf monarchies are not ruled only by their respective rulers, but rather by extended families.25 The ruling

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dynasties dominate politics to an extraordinary degree. In all GCC states, members of the ruling families hold the most important cabinet ministries (defense, foreign affairs, etc.). In Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE roughly half of the cabinet is made up of ruling family members.26 Moreover, the ruling dynasties dominate other areas of their polities; they are overrepresented in the military and the judicial sectors27 and dominate “civil society” organizations,28 and the economy: few successful businesses are without sheikhs as partners. Although no official numbers are published, one can safely assume that each family has members that number in the thousands. The rulers either act as head of state and head of government simultaneously (Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE), or the prime minister is a close relative of the ruler (“cousins” in Kuwait and Qatar, and an uncle in Bahrain). In all cases, however, the cabinet is answerable to the head of state. Decisions are not necessarily taken in the cabinet, however, but rather in a circle of trusted confidants and relatives of the ruler. Hence, ministers are not necessarily decision makers, but often just executives. In none of the Gulf states are parliaments and advisory councils responsible for choosing the government. The Ruling Families’ Legitimacy Two images of the Persian Gulf ruling families are pervasive in the secondary literature: The first is rooted in the debate on democratization and liberalization, which became popular in Middle Eastern studies in the mid-1990s. Several scholars have stressed the comparative advantages monarchs supposedly had over other autocratic rulers where political reforms were concerned.29 They argued that the monarchs’ positions as heads of state were not challenged by reforms and—because monarchs had fewer ideological ties—they enjoyed greater freedom to build alliances with diverse groups within their societies. Therefore, monarchs were able to position themselves as arbiters above the mundane affairs of daily politics. A second image current in writings on Persian Gulf monarchies is rooted in the Gulf rulers’ self-portrayals.30 According to this perspective, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were traditional but protodemocratic states whose rulers governed according to historically established and culturally entrenched notions of consensus finding. Every citizen could access a ruler’s

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majlis. The ruler would come to a consensus after hearing a variety of opinions. Both images, however, do not live up to scrutiny. The rather romantic view of an open majlis is not an accurate one and did not even exist in the past.31 Accessibility to the rulers was very different for the diverse groups within Persian Gulf societies. Besides women being by and large excluded from majlis visits, rulers were selective toward social, ethnic, confessional, and tribal groups. Put simply, sheikhs and princes sought consultation only with three classes of subjects: merchants, tribal notables of allied tribes, and religious authorities. This pattern is still prevalent, although merchants have been supplanted by business elites.32 Parts of the populace outside these groups have never viewed their respective ruler as primus inter pares. These politically marginal groups are no small minority, as many Gulf states are less homogenous—and less tribal—than often assumed. The trading cities of Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman had—and continue to have—an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous population.33 The states have attracted large numbers of migrants, particularly Shi‘ites34 and Sunnis from Iran. Persian-speaking Shi‘ites (‘Ajam) form a substantial group in Kuwait. A relatively diverse community, the Shi‘ites in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar are constituted by ‘Ajam, Iranians, and Arab Shi‘ites originating from Bahrain and the Saudi Eastern province. In Bahrain, Shi‘ites are a majority making up roughly 70 percent of the population. The majority of this population, in turn, is Arab Baharna. Saudi Arabia’s mostly Arab Shi‘ites constitute about 15 percent of the nationals. Historically, only Kuwaiti Shi‘ites were consulted by this emirate’s rulers, while the Shi‘ites of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar were subjected to various forms of discrimination—and are rarely consulted in a sheihkly majlis.35 Thus, the ruling dynasties face historically entrenched legitimacy problems with such groups based on social fragmentation. Recurring demands for representation in legislative councils since the 1920s in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Dubai is clear evidence of this problem.36 Particularly in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, demands for the rule of law and political participation time and again resurfaced and continued well into the 1990s.37 If the “majlis democracy” was not much of a reality for most Persian Gulf Arabs historically or contemporarily, what about the monarchs’ alleged roles as arbiters? This too is largely nonexistent in the Persian Gulf context; the Gulf ruling families do not stand above confessional or tribal groups but are, to the contrary, members of a distinct tribal set. This is a marked difference to the situation

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in Jordan and Morocco. Persian Gulf sheikhs and princes are, rather, seen as parties to the conflicts not moderators. This perception is strengthened in cases of regionalisms, as in Saudi Arabia.38 Within the Persian Gulf’s ruling families, only the Al Saud draw on religious legitimacy for their rule, portraying themselves as defenders of the true Sunni Islam. Th is generates as many problems for the dynasty as it solves. In reality, the claim to religious legitimacy is hard to keep up, as every prince has to live up to a pious ideal. At the same time, the Saudi state is forced to introduce “un-Islamic” innovations—from TV to American troops— that continuously generate religiously motivated dissent.39 Legitimacy and Rentierism The Gulf monarchies, classic examples of rentier states, rely on oil and gas rents for their national budgets.40 This reliance has many consequences: only small percentages of the citizenry participate in generating state budgets while all citizens are recipients of state-financed welfare. Health and education programs are extensive, and, at least in the small Persian Gulf monarchies, illiteracy has ceased to be a problem.41 Thus, oil economies have positive effects on factors that elsewhere correlate with increasing political participation (such as a high level of education and a high GDP).42 However, Persian Gulf monarchies are clearly undemocratic; this empirical finding has led to the conclusion that wealth generated by rents has different consequences than wealth generated otherwise.43 The lack of taxation of Gulf citizens has been identified as a reason for this difference: because citizens are not directly taxed, they would not demand representation—in a reversal of “no taxation without representation.”44 The trade-off between participation and welfare would constitute the “rentier social contract.” Although a convincing argument at first sight, this assumption is quite problematic; it assumes that Persian Gulf citizens agree to their ruling families’ claim on natural resources, which does not seem to be the case.45 Moreover, Gulf citizens are quite aware of the fact that their resources will not last forever; hence they have a vested interest in spending these resources. Finally, it is doubtful whether ruling by mere cooptation and distribution can produce legitimacy, as this strategy also rewards and produces opposition.46 At the same time, undoubtedly, the rentier economy affects the means and strategies that Persian Gulf rulers can employ in order to retain power and govern.

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It provides them with means for cooptation but also for repression. The dynasties have substantially invested in security apparatuses that they have staffed with high numbers of nonnationals.47 Even if there is no pervasive atmosphere of fear in the Gulf monarchies comparable to, for example, Syria, Persian Gulf regimes still leave no doubt as to their readiness to make use of their security forces.48 The unpopularity of the ruling dynasties is further compounded by the regimes’ security dependence on the US.49 After the disastrous performance of the Saudi and Kuwaiti armies in the 1990–91 Gulf war, all GCC states entered into bilateral security arrangements with the US, thus completely delegating their security concerns.50 The US army presence in the Persian Gulf can safely be assumed to be unpopular with vast parts of the Gulf Arab population. D om e st ic R e for m Proj e c t s: Pa r l i a m e n t s a n d De bat i ng C lu b s To deflect criticism from these legitimacy issues, the Persian Gulf monarchies have started various projects of political reform. Considering the reform motivations, it is not surprising that all of these reforms are top-down processes driven by the ruling elites themselves. Political reforms concentrate on the establishment or development of parliaments or institutions resembling parliaments, and on elections to these councils. The GCC states differ markedly, however, when it comes to those reforms that would actually enable a more grass-roots based development of political participation. Policies allowing for political pluralism, civil society activism, and establishing legal guarantees of civil and political rights—like the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association— and strengthening the rule of law are dealt with quite differently in the Persian Gulf monarchies. The same holds true for reforms enhancing the transparency of government action. Broadly, these states can be subdivided in three groups. First are countries that respect civil and political rights only marginally, whose government actions are extremely nontransparent, and whose state budgets are withheld from any supervision. These are Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Second are countries that respect some civil and political rights and enable some limited participation in political decision making and government supervision (to some extent even with regard to the budget). These are Bahrain and Kuwait. Third, Qatar makes up

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a category of its own. According to its constitution (in theory, enforced in 2005), it would have to be subsumed in the second group. As it has not put its constitution into effect and has not established the envisioned parliament, Qatar has to be counted among the first group of states for the time being. The following sections will offer a sketch of the monarchies’ political systems and will highlight the reforms implemented so far. Oman The Sultanate of Oman’s Basic Law (1996) elaborates on the power of the ruler (Qaboos b. Said Al Said, since his 1970 coup d’etat against his father). He is de jure and de facto the head of the executive, legislative, and judicative branches. The basic law provides for a bicameral parliament without specifying its powers. Moreover, the text does not define the exact relation between both parliamentary chambers. The seventy members of the State Council (upper house) are appointed by the sultan and the eighty-four Shura (consultative) Council members (lower house) are elected. The sultan decrees laws and his ministers advise him and can write proposals, which the sultan does not have to promulgate. Ministers of socalled service ministries (electricity, traffic, etc.) can be questioned by the Shura Council. Parliament does not have real legislative powers; the Shura Council can, however, draft proposals. Both chambers discuss government-proposed bills except those pertaining to foreign policies, security, and budget. Reforms in Oman focused mainly on reforming the mode of elections. In 2003, franchise was extended to women. Previously, various forms of indirect elections were experimented with: in 1991, the sultan had appointed male notables who in turn would name two candidates between which the sultan could choose.51 Political parties are illegal. Candidates hence conduct personality campaigns. Civil society organizations are rarely registered, and if they are, they are closely monitored. Until 2006, professional organizations and trade unions were illegal, too, but were allowed in the course of the negotiations with the United States on a Free Trade Agreement. Sultan Qaboos has made symbolic steps that indicate some reform intention. He has increased the number of female cabinet ministers and also deployed a female ambassador to the United States.52 He has, however, not shown any intent to broaden the freedom of the media. The country’s newspapers are among the

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Gulf monarchies’ least critical. State radio and television air government opinions, and the Internet remains censored. The rule of law is deficient; neither has Oman been particularly active in ameliorating labor migrants’ rights nor is due process guaranteed.53 Saudi Arabia The Saudi rulers are subjected to only few institutional limits to their power. The Kingdom has, however, introduced a Basic Law and established a Shura Council in the aftermath of the disastrous performance of its army in the Gulf war of 1990–91. The king—who acts also as prime minister—rules by decree. As in Oman, the Shura Council can offer advice and draft proposals that, however, the king is not bound to follow. All members of the Shura Council—after several expansions now numbering 150 members—are appointed by the king. Work within the Shura Council is no more transparent than the work of the government itself. While there is talk of potential future elections to the Shura Council,54 for the time being only all-male municipal council elections have taken place.55 The powers of the municipal councils remain largely undefined. Like his counterpart in Oman, King Abdullah, too, has not shown a particular interest in providing the legal basis for broadening participation. Political parties, as well as most NGOs, remain illegal, as are trade unions and demonstrations. However, King Abdullah initiated a so-called national dialogue in 2003 that debated topics such as the role of Saudi women and of religious minorities— topics that were not discussed openly before. The national dialogue initiative has lost momentum, though. Reforms in the field of human rights are symbolic rather than substantive: in 2005, a governmental human rights committee was founded.56 The rule of law is notoriously deficient in the Kingdom—and there seem to be no substantive achievements in the area. To the contrary, the “war against terror” has lead to the establishment of special courts.57 In regular courts, too, legal predictability is lacking and political prisoners are held without trial.58 The UAE The UAE’s constitution dates from 1971 and was declared permanent in 1996. The constitution does not detail the distribution of powers between the federation

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and the constitutive emirates. Generally, the emirates’ rulers are rather autonomous when it comes to domestic politics, while foreign and security policies are decided on at the federate level. The federation’s president is the ruler of Abu Dhabi.59 The rulers of all seven emirates constitute the Federal Supreme Council, which forms the UAE’s highest legislative, executive, and constitutional authority. The UAE, too, provide for an advisory council. The Federal National Council can debate laws but not vote on them and has, for the time being, no supervision capacities. The UAE has won some reformist credentials when it staged the first partial elections to this council in December 2006. An electoral college of 6,689 Emiratis (1,189 female; the whole college comprising less than 1 percent of Emirate citizens) elected 20 out of 40 deputies.60 Political parties are illegal in the UAE, and the establishment of NGOs is handled restrictively. Even though the freedom to assemble is handled more liberally than previously,61 the law regulating demonstrations has not been changed. Public gatherings need governmental permits.62 Similarly, while the press enjoys more liberty, a corresponding legal basis is missing. Still, the government-owned TV station Abu Dhabi TV has adapted al-Jazeera standards to a certain extent, and Dubai is home to al-Jazeera’s competitor al-Arabiyya. Generally, however, the UAE concentrates its reform efforts in not the political but the economic field. Qatar Although Qatar works actively on its international image as a reformist state,63 the country does not currently offer more political participation to its citizens than does Saudi Arabia. This situation could change if the constitution were de facto put into effect. This document, which was accepted in a general referendum in 2003 and de jure enacted in 2005, closely resembles the constitution of Kuwait. It provides for a parliament to which two-thirds of the deputies would be elected. Had the parliament been constituted, its members could exercise legislative and supervision powers. For the time being, the thirty-five members of the existent Shura Council have been appointed. However, since 1999 Qatar has held elections to the Municipal Council in Doha. In Qatar, too, political parties are illegal. Trade unions have only been allowed since 2004, and NGOs need executive approval—which has been withheld from a number of women’s and human rights organizations.64

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Qatar owes most of its positive image as a reformist state to its media policy. After his bloodless coup against his father in 1995, the ruler, Sheikh Hamad b. Khalifa Al Thani, officially abolished media censorship and dissolved the Ministry of Information. The following year, the government financed the establishment of al-Jazeera. Both al-Jazeera and the local media are, however, very reluctant when it comes to critical reporting on domestic politics in Qatar. Kuwait The Kuwaiti parliament—the National Assembly—is the oldest such institution in the Arabian Peninsula. The unicameral parliament was established in 1961 following independence. The emir appoints the government and can dissolve parliament—a prerogative Kuwaiti emirs have made use of. Although the ruler would, in such a case, be mandated to call for elections after two months, this constitutional provision has often been neglected (the National Assembly was suspended from 1976 to 1981 and from 1986 to 1992).65 Fift y deputies are elected, and up to sixteen ministers are ex-officio members. The National Assembly has legislative powers; without its approval no law can pass. Decrees the emir issues without parliamentary approval can be declared null and void, which has happened repeatedly, most prominently when the parliament nullified, among other laws, the emiri decree of 1999 extending suff rage to Kuwaiti women. Only in 2005 did the National Assembly consent to giving women active and passive voting rights. This move obviously broadened the potential for political participation significantly. Previously, due to the different classes of Kuwaiti nationality on which the electoral law is based, only 10 percent of Kuwaitis had the right to vote.66 The power of the parliament is subject to continuous negotiation. The National Assembly can question ministers. Attempts in 2006 and 2008 to question the prime minister, however, did not succeed.67 Still, when compared to the neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies, the Kuwaiti parliament is rather strong. Kuwait is the only GCC country where security policies, including defense spending, are subject to some legislative oversight.68 Moreover, even though the National Assembly does not have much power to shape policies, it can act as a spoiler. It blocked numerous foreign investments attempting to gain access to the Kuwaiti economy in the past.69

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Kuwait’s parliament’s spoiler power notwithstanding, political parties remain illegal. However, protoparties are publicly active; some of these have developed from wider social movements and some others from parliamentary blocks. The emirate’s political landscape closely resembles the Bahraini one: there are different Sunni and Shi‘ite groups, liberals and left ists. The lack of legal security for these groups is more pronounced in Kuwait than in Bahrain;70 candidates are forbidden to campaign on a party platform, but in a small country like Kuwait political affiliations will be known to the electorate in any case. Nonetheless, the official prohibition of political parties poses an obstacle to open debate and to these groups’ programmatic development. However, in recent years, some undogmatic activism developed: activists, for example, campaigned successfully for a new electoral law that reduced electoral districts from twenty-five to five.71 Civil society activism is tolerated, but the law regulating NGO activities does not provide them with legal security. The executive maintains control over the limits of civil activism. The press law, however, was liberalized in 2006. New newspapers were licensed, and, for the first time, the constitutional court declared one of the laws previously used to silence opposition activities unconstitutional.72 Bahrain After his ascension to the throne in 1999, the current ruler of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad b. Issa Al Khalifa, initially succeeded in ending a phase of political unrest by means of political reforms. The constitution of 2002, which promoted the emir to a king, provides for a bicameral parliament. Both chambers of the Shura Council and the Deputy Council share equal legislative powers. It is only the deputies, however, who are elected in general elections. Shura Council members are appointed by the king, who thus can execute an indirect veto in legislation. Only the elected deputy chamber has supervision powers and can question ministers. Deputies have to consent to the state budget, which is vague and excludes all security-related expenditure as well as the king’s budget. In general, civil and political rights have been expanded: demonstrations do not need a permit, but only a notification; trade unions can be formed; and a huge number of NGOs are active in diverse fields, including human rights.73

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Since 2000, media freedom has been considerably expanded, too, and an oppositional paper was founded. Still, legal foundations for liberal practice are lacking; civil and political rights remain revocable by the executive by law, as no civil activism may counter “national and Islamic traditions.” However, legal security has been enhanced since the inception of the reform process: in 2001, the notorious state security courts were abolished, and in 2005 a constitutional court was established before which citizens can appeal the constitutionality of laws—at least in theory. However, after these initially promising reforms numerous retrogressions in old practices have also occurred, like, for instance, arbitrary arrests of opposition members. Bahrain is the first Persian Gulf monarchy to reform substantially the status of migrant workers, giving them the right, since 2006, to change their employers.74 What sets Bahrain apart most from the other GCC states, however, is the fact that since 2001, political party activism became legal in the kingdom. While these organizations are called “political societies”—Sunni Islamic groups reject the term “party”—they function exactly like parties: they file candidates for parliamentary and municipal elections, organize campaigns, write party programs, and debate politics in public events. Rather exceptional not only in the Gulf states but also within the wider Arab world is the fact that all political groups that registered were legalized. Hence, Bahrain has a very pluralistic political society in which diverse Sunni and Shi‘ite Islamist groups, liberals, conservatives, and leftists compete for votes. R e for m s a n d De cision-M a k i ng Pro c e s se s The sketches of the six GCC states’ reforms clearly show that none of the monarchies has started a transition toward democracy. The ruling elites initiating the reforms aimed at enhancing their legitimacy, and also at securing their rule against competitors from within their families. They never had in mind the subjection of their rule to a popular vote or the delegation of substantial decision-making power to elected officials. However, the peaceful rotation of power through elections is one of the necessary elements of a system to be termed democratic, regardless of the quite diverse shapes the institutional setup of democratic states can take in other respects.

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There are two key obstacles to a more substantial political reform process in the GCC. First, aside from the fact that authoritarian regimes obviously have no interest in ceding power to other actors in the first place, the ruling elites in the GCC states are wedded even more firmly to their positions of authority than other authoritarian rulers. Their dynastic form of rule creates serious reform blockages, as ruling families rely on their appropriation of state resources—in administrative positions, lands, industrial projects, and, of course, oil and gas rents. While the dominance ruling families exert on the GCC states is in some respect comparable to that of a hegemonic party in a one-party state, it is harder for a ruling family to integrate other societal groups into their structure, that is, into the core political elite. Other than hegemonic parties, GCC ruling families could not hope to win any elections, however closely managed. Paradoxically, the dominance of the ruling families undermines their legitimacy, at the same time providing these states with high regime stability as spaces for autonomous actors are rather marginal in this setting. As political decisions are taken within primordially defined groups, they often take place outside of formal institutions—be it parliaments or cabinets— by a circle of important ruling family members behind closed doors of royal or emiri palaces. This decisively limits the significance of the appointment of new ministers, often including women. First, appointments to ministerial ranks are a continuation of “normal” politics of cooptation and not an effect of reform. Second, a ministerial post does not automatically confer decision-making power. The concentration of power within primordially defined groups, moreover, blocks transfers of power at the interstate level; ruling elites do not provide the GCC with a decision-making authority of its own but continue to conduct their foreign policies in a national framework. A second blockage to reform is posed by the effects of the rentier economies. The rent economy has a number of effects. First, rent income obviously provides the ruling elites with the means for cooptation—they established large bureaucracies in which dissenters were integrated in the past—and also for repression. Second, their guaranteed oil rents insulate the GCC’s ruling elites from international pressure to some degree. Institutions are designed and legislation drafted in a way that perpetuates the dominance of the executive: no separation of power is achieved. Legislation

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pertaining to civil liberties and political rights either outlaws political associations outright or withholds legal certainty from them. Thus, the emergence of organized oppositional or alternative political actors is tightly controlled or even prevented. The mere design of the reforms shows that the Gulf’s ruling elites have devised reform processes that consolidate their authoritarian rule. As parliaments and advisory councils are designed in a way that withholds central decision-making competencies from them, decision making firmly remains in the hands of the ruling elites. Hence, the first and second questions raised in the beginning of the chapter—have the reforms introduced checks and/or limits to executive power? And have the reforms increased the competitiveness of executive recruitment?—can easily be answered in the negative. The third question raised in the beginning of the chapter—have reforms provided the space for broader political discourse, including foreign policies, and have potential challengers of the ruling elites’ near-monopoly on decisionmaking power (such as NGOs) entered in such a discourse?—cannot be quite as easily answered. Obviously, in those states where reforms have been most limited (i.e., Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE)—where campaigning can only take place on a personal level, with little or no possibility to form associations, and the general public has limited access to information—there is not much potential for a broadening of foreign policy discourse. The picture is more ambiguous with regard to Kuwait and Bahrain. Both Bahrain and Kuwait have active and well-organized civil societies. Although legal foundations are deficient, NGO activism is mostly tolerated by the regimes. Bahrain has legalized so-called political societies as de facto parties; apart from receiving basic state funding, those societies campaign for elections on a party platform. Kuwait has no similar legislation but tolerates political party activism. These protoparties can hold public seminars and workshops, and there is a somewhat oppositional local press; in both countries, foreign policies can be publicly debated. It is in these two states that a broader discourse on state policies could emerge—one that might, in the long run, affect policy outcomes, including foreign policies. To assess this potential, the following section examines a specific case.

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T r a nsnat iona l L i n k age s Bet w e e n Isl a m i st Grou ps For the time being, political groups in Kuwait and Bahrain generally concentrate on achieving domestic changes rather than on engaging in foreign policy questions.75 Even so, recalling Mansfield and Snyder’s finding on incomplete transitions, one could ask whether groups with particularistic interests emerged forcing ruling elites to take recourse to a nationalist rhetoric. Islamist political groups prove to be particularly promising when looking for particularistic interests: in both Bahrain and Kuwait, these groups almost by default serve their respective confessional constituencies. Moreover, Islamist groups entertain strong transnational links that could be assumed to contribute ideologically to challenging the ruling elites’ discourse. However, as will be shown using the example of Bahrain, transnational linkages have been utilized in a fragmentary way to serve domestic ends. The wave of pro-democracy activism that occurred in the Arab world in 2011 might change that. Whether such a change could be sustainable is difficult to determine at this stage. Political debates in Bahrain have been dominated by the distribution of conflict between the Shi‘ite majority and the ruling Sunnis.76 Shi‘ites in Bahrain have not been granted a fully equal status as citizens. They are discriminated against under the election law and are given fewer opportunities for employment in civil service, especially in the security sector. Senior posts in the army and the police force are reserved exclusively for Sunnis. Additionally, the state has neglected the development of infrastructure in Shi‘ite villages, and poverty is concentrated in the Shi‘ite community. Shi‘ite discontent emerged as early as the 1920s and kept recurring and, finally, culminated in unrest, locally termed the “Bahraini Intifada,”77 during the early 1990s. The unrest was met with repression from the state, and many activists and clerics were arrested, while hundreds were driven into exile, mainly to Iran, Syria, and England. Most of the exiled opposition members returned after 2001 when the current reform process started. The two main contemporary Shi‘ite parties developed out of this Intifada protest movement. Demands raised by Bahraini Shi‘ites—and occasionally by nontribal Sunnis—have been strikingly consistent in content, if not always in form, for almost a century. In the 1920s, they centered on the rule of law and, later, included participation in decision making. Moreover, Shi‘ites strongly rejected the presence of foreign guards and security forces—at first peninsular tribal Arabs and, later,

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Beluchis. Similarly, from its founding in 2002 onwards, the main Shi‘ite organization, al-Wifaq, demanded the rule of law, a fight against corruption, democratization, and the Bahrainization of the security forces.78 Shi‘ite groups thus have for a long time provided a counterdiscourse to the ruling elites’ claim to legitimacy and their form of government. Although this opposition motivated and impacted domestic reforms, it clearly never put a foreign policy vision center stage. The current reform process resulted in a parliament where Sunni and Shi‘ite Islamists are well represented. In the latest elections of 2006, seventeen out of forty parliamentary seats were secured by the Shi‘ite group al-Wifaq, seven seats by the local Muslim Brotherhood branch al-Minbar al-Islami, and five by the Sunni Salafist al-‘Asala.79 The attitudes of Bahraini Islamists toward political domestic reforms differ significantly according to confessional affi liation. Both Sunni and Shi‘ite Islamists were similarly aware of the limited nature of the reforms. But, as the two Sunni Islamist groups were interested in maintaining the Sunni dominance in Bahraini politics, they endorsed the reforms straightaway and participated in the first parliamentary elections. The two Shi‘ite Islamist groups, on the other hand, initially boycotted the elections in 2002 and campaigned for constitutional reform instead.80 As the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists share the interest of the ruling elite, they not only back government proposals but also work toward restricting the widening of the political sphere. Among other moves, both Sunni groups voted in favor of curtailing the right to demonstrate and supported a restrictive law on political associations. In addition, both Sunni parties initiated a change in parliamentary bylaws that limited the authority of parliament to question cabinet ministers.81 With regard to foreign policy, however, both Sunni parties show astonishing pragmatism. Because of their loyalty to the ruling family, Sunni groups refrained from agitating against the presence of the US naval base on the islands—otherwise, anti-Americanism is a staple of Sunni discourse—until the outbreak of the Gaza war in December 2008. Moreover, both the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood actively participated in NDI programs. Allegedly, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood even tried to have the US ambassador endorse and finance his wife’s election campaign. The only topic on which the Sunni parties oppose the government is the question of Bahrain’s relations to Israel.

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This Israel question is one Shi‘ite and Sunni Islamists can agree on: all Islamist groups are strongly opposed to any form of normalization with Israel. When the Bahraini foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, suggested forming a regional forum that also included Israel, he met with stiff opposition from both Sunni and Shi‘ite parliamentarians, who wanted to “grill” the minister on the move.82 Given the limited nature of the Bahraini political reforms, the ruling elite’s chosen course was not influenced by the almost unanimous protests from the parliament. Following the Gaza War in 2008–9, it is likely, however, that the government will refrain from pressing for the forum any further. Although domestic opposition might play a role, it is surely the Bahraini government’s main objective not to leave the Arab fold on the issue. When dealing with the United States, however, the Shi‘ite Islamists are as pragmatic as their Sunni counterparts: the main Shi‘ite party, al-Wifaq, took extensive counseling from NDI,83 to the point to where their party program mirrored NDI manuals: they demanded changes in the electoral commission, the electoral law, and the law on political parties and called for true democratization and the rule of law. Bahraini Shi‘ites, too, were prepared to refrain from calling for a withdrawal of the US naval base in Bahrain—a demand that had been voiced by the Bahraini Shi‘ite opposition from the first parliamentary period, 1973–75, onward to the intifada in the 1990s. Because the United States is seen as the strongest patron available, both Sunnis and Shi‘ites are willing to neglect their ideological divergence with US foreign policies, as they hope US support will enhance their domestic positions. However, this search for external patrons has ambivalent effects: given the firm grip the ruling elites have on decision-making processes and their societies, US support offers some protection from state repression. On the other hand, by seeking external patrons, domestic actors complicate domestic consensus finding, as they neglect coalition building and dialogue with other political groups outside confessionally defined constituencies. The resulting particularistic discourse has effects that actually differ from Mansfield and Snyder’s assumption. Rather than challenging the ruling elite and hence make it take recourse to nationalist ideology, it strengthens the ruling elite by aggravating fragmentation in all nonelite parts of the society. The close programmatic cooperation of al-Wifaq with NDI questions a general assumption on Islamists’ transnational ideological ties to their alleged sponsors, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

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As for the Bahraini Shi‘ites, contrary to the talk on the “Shi‘ite crescent,”84 Iran’s influence seems to be receding. Numerous Bahrainis reorient their religious allegiance from the Iranian supreme leader ‘Ali Khamenei to as-Sayyid ‘Ali as-Sistani.85 This change ties into a wider development within Shi‘ism: a process of pluralization of religious authority.86 Traditionally, a believer had to follow the teaching of one marja‘ (“source of emulation”)87 in every respect. Today, however, individuals shift from one marja‘ to another. What is even more of an innovation is the “postmodern” attitude believers have started to employ towards the maraji‘. They pick and choose from the teachings of diverse maraji‘ at the same time, combining, for example, Fadlallah’s social teachings with Sistani’s political views. Obviously, this development is helped by the Internet, where the sites of Shi‘ite religious authorities have proliferated.88 Al-Wifaq actually reacted to this proliferation in its election campaign of 2006; it supported its decision to participate in the elections with opinions on elections from Sistani, Khamenei, and Fadlallah. Most election pamphlets featured all three clerics’ recommendation to Shi‘ites to vote, and the Wifaq website had a banner where the three would take turns in recommending elections.89 The use Sunni political groups make of external linkages is similar. Here, too, a rather eclectic approach can be detected: The Salafist organization al‘Asala, whose demands with regard to social mores are a lot more “radical” than the Brotherhood’s,90 are mainly Saudi funded. Interestingly, the head of their party, a religious preacher and Afghan veteran, had sought justification from religious authorities in Saudi Arabia to run in the elections in 2002 and came up with declaring that while elections and participation in parliaments per se were not religious acts, they became mandatory when needed to counter probable harm—the harm being the danger of Shi‘ite domination.91 Although a rather daring interpretation of Salafist beliefs, this position was not challenged by any other Bahraini Salafists. In 2006, when Shi‘ites participated, a fatwa titled “Voting is a sacred duty” circulated.92 It has been mainly the immediate needs of the local political groups that determined to which of their transnational religious authorities’ discourses they referred. It can hardly be argued that Bahraini Islamists of either confessional group are merely influenced by authorities in Iraq or Iran; rather they actively and consciously choose which political lines to follow and which to ignore.93 While this eclectic approach helps both groups’ dealings in daily politics, it actually also

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impedes the formulation of a convincing ideological basis. Participation in autocratic parliaments potentially discredits the very groups that could offer alternative political programs. C onc lusion Domestic reforms in the GCC states have maintained the ruling elites’ dominance in core processes of political decision making—including foreign policy— hence, no substantial changes in these states’ foreign policies can be expected. Particularly in the four more illiberal states—Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—this is even true for policy fields in which the autonomy of ruling elites is, and increasingly will be, curtailed by international treaties like free trade agreements and by international bodies like the WTO: in the virtual absence of an effective and organized civil society in these states, globalization has no empowering effect on substate-actors.94 Only Bahrain and Kuwait have a somewhat active civil society. However, nonelite political actors, even in these two more liberal states, are largely preoccupied with pressing for domestic policy changes, so influencing the GCC states’ foreign policies is rather secondary to them. Moreover, as the case of Bahraini Islamist actors demonstrates, although the scope of the political discourse has potentially broadened, the setting within which authoritarian reforms take place, as well as the “postmodern” approach taken by the nonelite political actors, have not substantially changed the modus operandi of ruling elites This is a rather grim summary. However, one positive conclusion can be drawn from it: the autocratic transitions to be witnessed in the GCC do not increase the likelihood of interstate violence.

Note s Bi bl iogr a ph y I n de x

Notes 1. T h e C h a n g i n g I n t e r n at i o n a l R e l at io n s o f t h e P e r s i a n G u l f 1. A number of recent works analyze the processes of social and economic change underway in the Persian Gulf region, some of the best of which include Christopher Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerabilities of Success (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2008); Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Steven Wright, eds., Reform in the Middle East Monarchies (London: Ithaca Press, 2008); Abdulhadi Khalaf and Giacomo Luciani, eds., Constitutional Reform and Political Participation in the Gulf (Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2006); and Laurence Louer, Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2008). 2. The Emirates Center for Strategic Study and Research (ECSSR) has, however, published a number of works on specific aspects of the Persian Gulf’s international relations, some of which include: The Gulf Oil and Gas Sector (Abu Dhabi: ECSSR, 2006); The Gulf: Challenges of the Future (Abu Dhabi: ECSSR, 2005); and International Interests in the Gulf Region (Abu Dhabi: ECSSR, 2004). Also noteworthy is Eckart Woertz, ed., Gulf Geo-Economics (Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2007). For a survey of some of the literature on the international relations of the Persian Gulf see Fred Lawson, “From Here We Begin: A Survey of Scholarship on the International Relations of the Gulf,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 3 (Dec. 2009): 337–57. 3. Perceptions to the contrary, in 1973 the Arab states did not actually impose an oil boycott on Japan and the West. In fact, during the supposed embargo, Middle Eastern oil production steadily grew, although speculation and fears of an embargo led to a massive rise in oil prices. See Giacomo Luciani “Oil and Political Economy in the International Relations of the Middle East,” in International Relations of the Middle East, ed. Lewis Fawcett (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005), 89. 4. Energy Information Administration, International Data, Natural Gas Reserves, http://www .eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/contents.html, accessed May 12, 2009. Russia’s natural gas reserves are estimated at 1,680 trillion cubic feet, or nearly 27 percent of the total world reserve. 5. Alaa Abujbara, “LNG Supply with Emphasis on Qatar’s Role in Global LNG Market,” paper presented at the 23rd World Gas Conference, Amsterdam, 2006, 3. 6. Jensen Associates, The Outlook for Global Trade in Liquefied Natural Gas Projections to the year 2020 (Weston, MA: Jensen Associates, 2007), 1. 7. “Chokepoints” refer to narrow channels along widely used sea routes.

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8. Energy Information Administration, World Oil Transit Checkpoints, http://www.eia.doe .gov/cabs/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/Full.html, accessed on May 12, 2009. 9. Anthony Cordesman, “The One True U.S. Strategic Interest in the Middle East: Energy,” Middle East Policy 8, no. 1 (Mar. 2001): 117. 10. Data for 2007 accessed through Hasan M. Qabazard, ed., OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2007 (Vienna: Ueberreuter Print und Digimedia, 2008). Data for 2009 collected from Energy Information Administration, International Data, Petroleum (Oil) Reserves, http://www.eia.doe.gov/ emeu/international/contents.html, accessed on May 12, 2009. 11. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “U.S. Foreign Policy, Petroleum, and the Middle East” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2006), 12. 12. Ibid. 13. Cordesman, “One True U.S. Strategic Interest,” 117. 14. The 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States, issued by the White House, is illustrative of the official US perception of Iran at the threat it posed to regional stability, at least during the presidency of George W. Bush from 2000 to 2008: We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. For almost 20 years, the Iranian regime hid many of its key nuclear efforts from the international community. Yet the regime continues to claim that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranian regime’s true intentions are clearly revealed by the regime’s refusal to negotiate in good faith; its refusal to come into compliance with its international obligations by providing the IAEA access to nuclear sites and resolving troubling questions; and the aggressive statements of its President calling for Israel to “be wiped off the face of the earth.” The United States has joined with our EU partners and Russia to pressure Iran to meet its international obligations and provide objective guarantees that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. Th is diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided. As important as are these nuclear issues, the United States has broader concerns regarding Iran. The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism; threatens Israel; seeks to thwart Middle East peace; disrupts democracy in Iraq; and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom. The nuclear issue and our other concerns can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people. Th is is the ultimate goal of U.S. policy. In the interim, we will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse effects of their bad conduct. The problems lie with the illicit behavior and dangerous ambition of the Iranian regime, not the legitimate aspirations and interests of the Iranian people. Our strategy is to block the threats posed by the regime while expanding our engagement and outreach to the people the regime is oppressing. (White House, National Security Strategy of the United States, March 2006 [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2006], 20–21).

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15. Joseph A. Kechichian, “Can Conservative Arab Gulf Monarchies Endure a Fourth War in the Persian Gulf?” Middle East Journal 61, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 306. 16. Ibid., 305–6. 17. Ibid., 298–99. 18. Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman, Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2009), 100. 19. For a discussion of different varieties of political Islam and their roles in the international relations of the Middle East see Mehran Kamrava, “Repression, Fundamentalism, and Terrorism and the Middle East,” in Political Terror and Democratic Development, ed. William Crotty (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 2005), 167–91. 20. Christian Koch, “The Changing International Relations of the Gulf Region,” Orient 4 (2007), 7. 21. Ian Brenner, “The Saudi Paradox,” World Policy Journal 21, no. 3 (Fall 2004), 23. 22. For more on this point, see Nawaf E. Obaid. “In Al-Saud We Trust: How the Regime in Riyadh Avoids the Mistakes of the Shah.” Foreign Policy 128 (Jan.–Feb. 2002), 72–74. 23. Andrew Rathmell, Theodore Karasik, and David Gompert, “A New Persian Gulf Security System,” Rand Issue Paper (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2003), 3. 24. Nadia El-Shazly and Raymond Hinnebusch, “The Challenge of Security in the Post-Gulf War Middle East System,” in The Foreign Policies of Middle East States, ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 73–75. 25. According to the US Department of Defense, as of December 31, 2008, the United States had 178,300 active duty military personnel in Iraq and another 31,400 civilians. That accounted for nearly 43 percent of the 493,300 total US troops stationed outside of the United States. Data compiled from Department of Defense, Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country, Dec. 31, 2008. http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/hst0812.pdf, accessed on May 12, 2009. 26. Writing before the US invasion of Iraq, Rathmell, Karasik, and Gompert saw the three poles of power in the Persian Gulf as Saudi Arabia and the other GCC states, Iran, and Iraq (“New Persian Gulf Security System,” 2). After March 2003, the regional power balance shifted greatly. 27. Tim Niblock, Saudi Arabia: Power, Legitimacy, and Survival (London: Routledge, 2006), 143. 28. Rathmell, Karasik, and Gompert, “New Persian Gulf Security System,” 2. 29. Koch, “Changing International Relations of the Gulf Region,” 4. 30. Ibid. 5. 31. Rathmell, Karasik, and Gompert, “New Persian Gulf Security System,” 10. 32. Glenn H. Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1997), 182–83. 33. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, “Internal and External Security in the Arab Gulf States,” Middle East Policy 16, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 40. 34. Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 108.

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2 . S ov e r e ig n t y a n d B ou n da r i e s i n t h e G u l f S tat e s : S e t t l i n g t h e P e r i p h e r i e s 1. As John Wilkinson asserts, “Not one of the states of the Arabian peninsula recognized by the international community . . . would be able to put up a watertight case at the International Court of Justice at The Hague to retain the territory it actually occupies.” John C. Wilkinson, “Britain’s Role in Boundary Drawing in Arabia: A Synopsis,” in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 94. 2. Th is has been discussed in John C. Wilkinson, “Nomadic Territory as a Factor in Defi ning Arabia’s Boundaries,” in The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the Arab East, ed. Martha Mundy and Basim Musallam (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), 44–62. 3. Wilkinson, “Britain’s Role.” 4. Ancel, Les frontiéres (Paris: Delagrave, 1938), cited in Richard Schofield, “Borders and Territoriality in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula During the Twentieth Century,” in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 3. 5. International Boundaries: A Study of Border Functions and Problems (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1940), as discussed in Schofield, “Borders and Territoriality.” 6. “Suggestions on the Terminology of Political Boundaries,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 26 (1936): 56–57, cited in Schofield, “Borders and Territoriality,” 15, 29, and 31. 7. Useful surveys of maritime boundaries are contained in Rodman R. Bundy, “Maritime Delimitation in the Gulf, “in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 176–86, and Ali A. El-Hakim, The Middle Eastern States and the Law of the Sea (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press; Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1979). 8. Discussion of all or most of the following issues is drawn generally from Husain M. Albaharna, The Arabian Gulf States: Their Legal and Political Status and Their International Problems, 2nd rev. ed. (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1975); Robert Litwak, Security in the Persian Gulf: Sources of Inter-State Conflict (London: Gower, for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981); J. E. Peterson, “The Islands of Arabia: Their Recent History and Strategic Importance,” Arabian Studies 7 (1985): 23–35; Charles Tripp and Shahram Chubin, “Domestic Politics and Territorial Disputes in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula,” Survival 35, no. 4 (Winter 1993–94): 3–27; Schofield, “Borders and Territoriality”; Richard Schofield, “Down to the Usual Suspects: Border and Territorial Disputes in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf at the Millennium,” in Iran, Iraq, and the Arab Gulf States, ed. Joseph A. Kechichian (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 213–36, as well as from a variety of articles in the regional or international press and major wire services. More specific sources are indicated for each issue. 9. For background on these issues, see El-Hakim, Middle Eastern States, 121–22, and Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Creation of Qatar (London: Croom Helm, 1979). A compendium of documents and interpretations assembled by the government of Bahrain to assert its case is contained in Jawad Salim al-Arayed, A Line in the Sea: The Qatar v. Bahrain Dispute in the World Court (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2003).

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10. Britain took the opposite tack when ruling on ownership of Halul Island between Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Because the island was closer to Qatari territory than to Abu Dhabi territory, it was decided that the island belonged to Qatar. Not so coincidently, that meant that an offshore oil discovery by a Qatar concession holder lay entirely within Qatari waters. Schofield, “Borders and Territoriality,” 52. 11. The court’s judgment can be found at http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/fi les/87/7027.pdf. 12. Specific sources on this issue include Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, The Islands of Tunb and Abu Musa: An Iranian Argument in Search of Peace and Co-operation in the Persian Gulf, Occasional Paper No. 15 (London: Univ. of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, 1995); Hooshang Amirahmadi, ed., Small Islands, Big Politics: The Tonbs and Abu Musa in Iranian Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Farhang Mehr, A Colonial Legacy: The Dispute over the Islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tumbs (Lanham, MD: Univ. Press of America, 1997); Mohamed Abdullah Al Roken, “Historical and Legal Dimensions of the United Arab Emirates–Iran Dispute Over Three Islands,” in Perspectives on the United Arab Emirates, ed. Edmund Ghareeb and Ibrahim Al Abed (London: Trident Press, 1997), 139–59; Jalil Roshandel, “On the Persian Gulf Islands: An Iranian Perspective,” in Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles and the Search for Consensus, ed. Lawrence G. Potter, and Gary G. Sick (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 135–53; Hassan al-Alkim, “The Islands Question: An Arabian Perspective,” in ibid., 155–70; Richard Schofield, “Anything But Black and White: A Commentary on the Lower Gulf Islands Dispute,” in ibid., 171–87; Richard A. Mobley, “The Tunbs and Abu Musa Islands: Britain’s Perspective,” Middle East Journal 57, no. 4 (Autumn 2003): 627–45; and Thomas R. Mattair, The Three Occupied UAE Islands: The Tunbs and Abu Musa (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2005). 13. Discussion is also drawn from El-Hakim, Middle Eastern States, 107–10. 14. A more recent view advanced by J. C. Wilkinson is that Britain scuttled the tribunal with the bribery charges and unilaterally declared a boundary because Whitehall knew that its position with regard to the earlier lines was untenable in international law and it feared an unfavorable verdict. Wilkinson, Arabia’s Frontiers: The Story of Britain’s Blue and Violet Lines (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 322. The positions of the two sides were presented in “Arbitration for the Settlement of the Territorial Dispute Between Muscat and Abu Dhabi on One Side and Saudi Arabia on the Other: Memorial” (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, July 31, 1955) and United Kingdom, Foreign Office, The Boundary Between Saudi Arabia and the Shaikhdoms of Qatar and Abu Dhabi and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman: A Summary of the History of the Dispute Together with a Statement of the Evidence in Support of the Claims of Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Muscat, 2 vols. (Bahrain, 1954). J. B. Kelly, who apparently played a role in draft ing the British argument, presented the case in “The Buraimi Oasis Dispute,” International Affairs 32, no. 3 (July 1956): 318–26; in Eastern Arabian Frontiers (London: Faber, 1964); and in “Eastern Arabian Frontiers,” Middle Eastern Studies 1, no. 3 (1965): 307–12. See also Tore Tingvold Petersen, “Anglo-American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Struggle for the Buraimi Oasis, 1952–1957,” International History Review 14, no. 1 (Feb. 1992): 71–91. 15. Richard Schofield, “Mending Gulf Fences,” Middle East Insight (Mar.-Apr. 1996): 40.

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16. An additional source is Schofield, “Borders and Territoriality,” 28. See also the personal recollections of Walker’s experiences in “Practical Problems of Boundary Delimitation in Arabia: The Case of the United Arab Emirates,” in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 109–16. 17. Additional sources include Bundy, “Maritime Delimitation in the Gulf”; Gerald Blake, “Shared Zones as a Solution to Problems of Territorial Sovereignty in the Gulf States,” in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 205–8; and El-Hakim, Middle Eastern States, 86–91. 18. Similar arrangements were made for the Bunduq oilfield between Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Although ownership was evenly divided between the two states, it was decided that an Abu Dhabi concessionaire operate the field, with the proceeds to be split evenly between the states. Schofield, “Borders and Territoriality,” 52. 19. David Pike, “Cross-border Hydrocarbon Reserves,” in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 197. 20. Keith McLachlan, “Hydrocarbons and Iranian Policies Towards the Gulf States,” in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 235–36. 21. In addition to the general sources indicated above, a voluminous literature has developed regarding Iraqi-Kuwaiti border issues. Useful expositions can be found in Richard Schofield, Kuwait and Iraq: Historical Claims and Territorial Disputes, 2nd ed. (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993; orig. pub. Apr. 1991); Maurice Mendelson and Susan C. Hulton, “Iraq’s Claim to Sovereignty Over Kuwait,” in Territorial Foundations of the Gulf States, ed. Richard Schofield (London: Univ. College of London Press, 1994), 117–52 (originally published as “La revendication par l’Irak de la souveraineté,” Annuaire Français de Droit International 36 (1990): 195–227); Richard Schofield, “The Kuwaiti Islands of Warbah and Bubiyan, and Iraqi Access to the Gulf,” in ibid., 153–75; David Finnie, Shifting Lines in the Sand: Kuwait’s Elusive Frontier with Iraq (London: I.B. Tauris, 1992); Ewan W. Anderson and Jasem Karam, “The Kuwait-Iraq Border: A Reappraisal,” RUSI Journal 139 (June 1994): 47–50, 55; Anderson and Karam, “The Iraqi-Kuwaiti Boundary,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 7 (Mar. 1995): 120–21; Habibur Rahman, Making of the Gulf War: Origins of Kuwait’s Long-Standing Territorial Dispute with Iraq (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996); Richard Schofield, “Britain and Kuwait’s Borders, 1902–23,” in Kuwait: The Growth of a Historic Identity, ed. Ben J. Slot (London: Arabian Publishing, 2003), 58–94; and El-Hakim, Middle Eastern States, 118– 20. A summary of Iran-Iraq border issues has been published by Lawrence G. Potter, “The Evolution of the Iran-Iraq Border,” in The Creation of Iraq 1914–1921, ed. Ben J. Slot (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2004), 61–79. 22. The discussion here also relies on El-Hakim, Middle Eastern States, 91–95. 23. Additional material on this issue has been drawn from Renaud Detalle, ed., Tensions in Arabia: The Saudi-Yemeni Faultline (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft , 2000), and Askar H. Al-Enazy, The Long Road from Taif to Jeddah: Resolution of a Saudi-Yemeni Boundary Dispute (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2005).

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24. Additional material has been drawn from J. E. Peterson, Oman’s Insurgencies (London: Saqi, 2007). 25. It might be postulated as well that the unlikelihood of enmity was due to the McDonald’s effect, that is, the assertion that no two countries hosting McDonald’s restaurants have ever gone to war. While this observation might seem trite (and not entirely true), it does have some substance in the underlying recognition that national income and standards of living in each of the GCC states, as well as the close ties between rulers, would seem to render the possibility of hostilities with neighbors remote. 26. The fi nal settlement of the Qatari-Saudi border was eventually agreed upon in March 2001. 3 . S e c u r i t y D i l e m m a s i n t h e C o n t e m p or a ry P e r s i a n G u l f 1. Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2008), 9. For reasons best known to themselves, Booth and Wheeler call this dynamic the “security paradox.” 2. Richard L. Russell, “Persian Gulf Proving Grounds: Testing Offence-Defence Theory,” Contemporary Security Policy 23, no. 3 (Dec. 2002): 207. 3. Jamal S. al-Suwaidi, “The Gulf Security Dilemma: The Arab Gulf States, the United States and Iran,” in Iran and the Gulf: A Search for Stability, ed. Jamal S. al-Suwaidi (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1996), 327. 4. James A. Russell, “Saudi Arabia in the 21st Century: A New Security Dilemma,” Middle East Policy 12, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 67. 5. Gawdat Bahgat, “Security in the Persian Gulf: Perils and Opportunities,” Contemporary Security Policy 29, no. 2 (Aug. 2008): 316. 6. Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 4 (Jan. 1978). 7. Charles L. Glaser, “Political Consequences of Military Strategy: Expanding and Refining the Spiral and Deterrence Models,” World Politics 44, no. 4 (July 1992). 8. Booth and Wheeler, Security Dilemma, 5. 9. Anthony H. Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid, National Security in Saudi Arabia (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2005), chap. 5. 10. The push toward submarines may have been sparked by Iran’s efforts to procure such vessels, or else by the delivery of three modern submarines to Israel to be deployed to the Dahlak islands of Eritrea. See Thomas Stauffer, “Israel’s Mysterious Submarines,” Middle East International, Nov. 7, 2003. 11. Anthony H. Cordesman, “Conventional Armed Forces in the Gulf: An Overview,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2008, 33; Reuters, July 23, 2006. 12. Cordesman, Conventional Armed Forces, 37. 13. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Feb. 11, 2004. 14. Jane’s Defence Weekly, July 12, 2006.

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15. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Oct. 4, 2006. 16. New York Times, Feb. 23, 2007; Washington Post, Aug. 4, 2007. 17. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Nov. 21, 2007, and Feb. 6, 2008. 18. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Oct. 10, 2007. 19. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Aug. 6, 2008. 20. al-Akhbar (Beirut), Aug. 4, 2008; Gulf in the Media, Nov. 11, 2007. 21. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Sept. 20, 2006. 22. At http://www.mehrnews.com, Apr. 4, 2006. 23. Novosti News Agency, Nov. 28, 2007; Jane’s Defence Weekly, Sept. 3, 2008. 24. Telegraph (London), Nov. 17, 2008; Jane’s Defence Weekly, Dec. 3, 2008. 25. Dario Cristiani, “Russia’s New Initiatives in the Persian Gulf,” Power and Interest News Report (PINR), Mar. 1, 2007. 26. Gulf News, Sept. 5, 2008. 27. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Dec. 13, 2008. 28. Al-Ittihad (Abu Dhabi), Dec. 24, 2008. 29. Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma”; Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics 50, no. 1 (Oct. 1997): 185–86. See also Sean M. Lynn-Jones, “Offense-Defense Theory and Its Critics,” Security Studies 4, no. 4 (Summer 1995). 30. Andrew Feickert, “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities,” Congressional Research Service, Aug. 23, 2004. 31. Novosti News Agency, Nov. 27, 2007; al-Jazeera, July 14, 2008, http://english.aljazeera.net/ news/middleeast/2008/07/20087945339826409.html; Reuters, Nov. 11, 2008. 32. Jane’s Defense Systems News, Nov. 14, 2008; http://www.arabicnews.com, Nov. 17, 2008. 33. Reuters, Dec. 3, 2005; Jerusalem Post, Jan. 16, 2007. 34. Guardian (London), Dec. 27, 2007; Telegraph (London), Aug. 13 2008; Jerusalem Post, Feb. 17, 2009. 35. “Gulf States Requesting ABM-Capable Systems,” Defense Industry Daily, Feb. 10, 2009. 36. “Iran: Naval Doctrine Stresses ‘Area Denial,’” Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/ RL), Apr. 6, 2006, http://www.rferl.org; Xinhua News Agency, Nov. 2, 2006. 37. Novosti News Agency, Nov. 28, 2007; Fars News Agency, Dec. 4, 2008. 38. Al-Watan (Riyad), July 4, 2008. 39. Glenn H. Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (July 1984), 467; Snyder, Alliance Politics, 182–83. 40. Snyder, “Security Dilemma,” 467; Snyder, Alliance Politics, 195. 41. See Fred H. Lawson, “Syria’s Relations with Iran: Managing the Dilemmas of Alliance,” Middle East Journal 61, no. 1 (Winter 2007). 42. Ed Blanche, “Iran and Russia: A Burgeoning Relationship,” Middle East International, Feb. 23, 2001. 43. Iran Press Service, May 6, 2001. 44. Tehran Times, July 7, 2001.

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45. Agence France Presse, July 10, 2001. 46. Agence France Presse, July 16, 2002; Daily Star (Beirut), Aug. 22, 2002; Gulf News, Aug. 19, 2002. 47. Agence France Presse, Jan. 26, 2002. 48. Joseph A. Kechichian, “GCC-Iran Rapprochement Is on a Steady Path,” Gulf News, June 14, 2003. 49. Marwan al-Kabalan, “Saudis Poised to Counter Iran,” Gulf News, Dec. 5, 2006; Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, “Saudi-Iran Tension Fuels Wider Confl ict,” Asia Times Online, Dec. 6, 2006; “Tensions Increase between Iran and Saudi Arabia,” PINR, Jan. 19, 2007. 50. The News (Pakistan), Jan. 28, 2007. See also F. Gregory Gause, III, “Saudi Arabia: Iraq, Iran, the Regional Power Balance and the Sectarian Question,” Strategic Insights, 6, no. 2 (Mar. 2007), accessed at http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2007/Mar/gauseMar07.pdf. 51. Tehran Times, June 30, 2007. 52. Gulf News, July 30, 2007. 53. James Gavin, “Reconciliation Benefits All,” Middle East Economic Digest, Oct. 5–11, 2007. 54. Times (London), Nov. 2, 2007. 55. Agence France Presse, Dec. 13, 2007. 56. Gulf News, Dec. 23, 2007. 57. Agence France Presse, Jan. 11, 2008. 58. Agence France Presse, Feb. 18, 2008; Reuters, Feb. 27, 2008. 59. Reuters, Mar. 8, 2008. 60. Gulf News, Aug. 11, 2008. 61. Gulf News, Aug. 14, 2008; Agence France Presse, Aug. 17, 2008. 62. Agence France Presse, Oct. 27, 2008. 63. al-Sharq al-Awsat, Aug. 28, 2008. 64. Reuters, June 11, 2001. 65. http://www.arabicnews.com, June 4, 2001. 66. New York Times, Mar. 29, 2002. 67. Ibid. 68. Associated Press, June 9, 2002. 69. Agence France Presse, July 21, 2002; http://ww.arabicnews.com, July 22, 2002. 70. Michael Jansen, “Gulf States Against?” Middle East International, Oct. 25, 2002. 71. Sana Kamal, “Baghdad Miscalculates,” Middle East International, Dec. 20, 2002. 72. Ibid. 73. Gause, “Saudi Arabia.” 74. Los Angeles Times, Oct. 23, 2008. 75. Clive Jones, “Saudi Arabia After the Gulf War: The Internal-External Security Dilemma,” International Relations 12, no. 6 (Dec. 1995). 76. Mahmud A. Faksh and Ramzi F. Faris, “The Saudi Conundrum: Squaring the SecurityStability Circle,” Third World Quarterly 14, no. 2 (June 1993); Russell, “Saudi Arabia in the 21st

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Century,” 73–76; Toby Craig Jones, “The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State,” Strategic Insights 4, no. 3 (Mar. 2005), accessed at: http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Mar/jonesMar05.asp. 77. Los Angeles Times, Oct. 19, 2002. 78. British Broadcasting Corporation, Jan. 19, 2003. 79. Katja Niethammer, “Voices in Parliament, Debates in Majalis and Banners on the Streets: Avenues of Political Participation in Bahrain,” EUI working paper, Seventh Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, San Domenico di Fiesole, March 2006. 80. Janardhan, “Kuwait’s American Friend . . . and Foe,” Asia Times, Jan. 29, 2003. 81. Shafeeq Ghabra, “Spring Election Crossroads for Kuwait,” Common Ground News Service, Apr. 15, 2008; Khaleej Times, May 15, 2008; Nathan J. Brown, “A Setback for Democratic Islamism?” Kuwait Times, May 30, 2008; New York Times, May 19, 2008. 82. Jamie Etheridge, “Kuwait’s Empowered Islamists Question All Th ings Western,” Christian Science Monitor, June 18, 2008. 83. Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, “Russia’s Grand Bargain over Iran,” Asia Times, Jan. 3, 2007; Jeremy Bransten, “Russia/Iran: Odd Couple in Tehran?” RFE/RL, Oct. 16, 2007. 84. Hossein Aryan, “Russian Military Alliance with Iran Improbable Due to Diverging Interests,” RFE/RL, Sept. 16, 2008. 85. Rasool Nafisi, “Iran’s Majlis Elections: Signals of Change,” http://www.opendemocracy. net, Apr. 11, 2008; Ali Alfoneh, “Ahmadinejad versus the Technocrats,” AEI Middle Eastern Outlook, May 8, 2008; “Ahmadinejad Supporters Said Worried at Decline of Clergy Support,” Kargozaran (Tehran), Oct. 26, 2008. 86. Thomas Hegghammer, “Islamist Violence and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia,” International Affairs 84, no. 4 (July 2008), 712. 87. Michael Knights and Anna Solomon-Schwartz, “The Broader Th reat from Sunni Islamists in the Gulf,” PolicyWatch (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), no. 883 (July 19, 2004). 88. Reuters, Jan. 4, 2005. 89. J. E. Peterson, Defending Arabia (New York: St. Martin’s, 1986); Michael A. Palmer, Guardians of the Gulf (New York: Free Press, 1992). 90. Oles Smolansky, The USSR and Iraq (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1991); Haim Shemesh, Soviet-Iraqi Relations, 1968–1988 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992). See also Jochen Hippler, “Iraq’s Military Power: The German Connection,” Middle East Report 21, no. 168 (Jan.–Feb. 1991). 91. Guardian (London), Mar. 19, 1988. 92. Cordesman and Obaid, National Security in Saudi Arabia, 249. 93. These trends are explored in greater detail in Fred H. Lawson, “Political Economy, Geopolitics and the Expanding US Military Presence in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 13, no. 1 (Spring 2004). 94. Shirley A. Kan, China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2007), 16. 95. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Nov. 14, 2001.

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96. Agence France Presse, July 24, 2001. 97. New York Times, Apr. 20, 2003. 98. Paul Midford, “Japan’s Response to Terror: Dispatching the SDF to the Arabian Sea,” Asian Survey 43, no. 2 (Mar.–Apr. 2003), 336. 99. Agence France Presse, Apr. 21, 2002. 100. Guardian (London), July 26, 2003; New York Times, July 27, 2003; John Gee, “Japan and the Middle East,” Middle East International, Mar. 5, 2004. 101. Jane’s Foreign Report, Jan. 30, 2003; K. Alan Kronstadt and Kenneth Katzman, “India-Iran Relations and U.S. Interests,” Congressional Research Service, Aug. 2, 2006. 102. Agence France Presse, Feb. 12, 2003; C. Christine Fair, “India and Iran: New Delhi’s Balancing Act,” Washington Quarterly 30, no. 3 (Summer 2007), 150. 103. Sanam Vakil, “Iran: Balancing East Against West,” Washington Quarterly 29, no. 4 (Autumn 2006), 59. 104. Ibid., 60. 105. Harsh V. Pant, “Saudi Arabia Looks East: Woos China and India,” Power and Interest News Report (PINR), Feb. 22, 2006; Julian Madsen, “China’s Policy in the Gulf Region: From Neglect to Necessity,” PINR, Oct. 27, 2006. 106. Cristiani, “Russia’s New Initiatives.” 107. Fair, “India and Iran,” 151. 108. Ibid., 152. 109. Mark Katz, “Russian-Iranian Relations in the Ahmadinejad Era,” Middle East Journal 62, no. 2 (Spring 2008), 206. 110. Ibid., 210. 111. Ibid., 211. 112. Ibid., 214. 113. Elaph, Sept. 10, 2008. 114. Al-Khaleej, Feb. 26, 2008. 115. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Oct. 15, 2008. 116. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Nov. 19, 2008. 117. Al-Khaleej, Sept. 9, 2008. 118. Kurt Radtke, “Sino-Indian Relations: Security Dilemma, Ideological Polarization or Cooperation Based on ‘Comprehensive Security’?” in Central Eurasia in Global Politics, 2nd ed., ed. Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 119. Mohan Malik, “India-China Competition Revealed in Ongoing Border Disputes,” PINR, Oct. 9, 2007. 120. Mohan Malik, “China’s Strategy of Containing India,” PINR, Feb. 6, 2006. 121. John W. Garver, Protracted Conflict: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2001), 292; Asia Times, June 17, 2003; Rizwan Zeb, “Gwadar and Chahahar: Competition or Complementarity?” Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst (CACIA), Oct. 22, 2003; Rizwan Zeb, “Gwadar Port Nears Completion, Ahead of Time,” CACIA, Mar. 10, 2004.

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122. Scott Moore, “Peril and Promise: A Survey of India’s Strategic Relationship with Central Asia,” Central Asian Survey 26, no. 2 (June 2007); Stephen Blank, “India: The New Central Asian Player,” http://www.eurasianet.org, June 26, 2006; Stephen Blank, “Russian-Indian Row over Tajik Base Suggests Moscow Caught in Diplomatic Vicious Cycle,” http://www.eurasianet .org, Jan. 11, 2008. 123. Victor Yasmann, “Still No Peace: Russia and Japan 60 Years After World War II,” RFE/ RL, May 6, 2005; Adam Wolfe, “Russia-Japan Island Row Intensifies with Killing of Fisherman,” PINR, Sept. 1, 2006. 124. Emilie Guyonnet, “Japanese Military Ambitions,” Le Monde Diplomatique, Apr. 2006; Richard Tanter, “Japan’s Indian Ocean Naval Deployment: Blue Water Militarization in a ‘Normal Country,’” Japan Focus, May 2006; Will Blathwayt, “Land of the Rising Gun: Japan’s Shift ing Security Identity,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, Sept. 2007. The rapprochement between Japan and China may also be imperiled by Japan’s rising ambitions, Charles K. Smith, “Senkaku/Diaoyu Island Dispute Th reatens Amiability of Sino-Japanese Relations,” PINR, May 3, 2004. 125. Jaba Devdariani, “US and Georgian Officials Move to Next Phase of Military Deployment,” http://www.eurasianet.org, Mar. 4, 2002. 126. Stephen Blank, “US Military in Azerbaijan,” CACIA, Apr. 10, 2002. 127. Igor Zonn and Sergey Zhiltsov, “Russia and the US in Central Asia and the Caucasus: A Search for Regional Stability,” Central Asia and the Caucasus 19, no. 1 (2003), 116. 128. Leszek Buszynski, “Russia’s New Role in Central Asia,” Asian Survey 45, no. 4 (July–Aug. 2005), 547. 129. Ibid., 552. 130. Marcel de Haas, “Current Geostrategy in the South Caucasus,” PINR, Dec. 15, 2006. 131. Russell Ong, “China’s Security Interests in Central Asia,” Central Asian Survey 24, no. 4 (Dec. 2005), 435. See also Chien-peng Chung, “The Shanghai Co-operation Organization: China’s Changing Influence in Central Asia,” China Quarterly 180 (Dec. 2004); Nicklas Norling and Niklas Swanström, “Sino-Russian Relations in Central Asia and the SCO,” CACIA, Oct. 3, 2007. 132. Nicklas Norling and Niklas Swanstroem, “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Trade and the Roles of Iran, India and Pakistan,” Central Asian Survey 26, no. 3 (Sept. 2007); Stephen Blank, “Russia Tries to Expand the SCO’s Membership,” CACIA, Mar. 5, 2008. 133. Marcin Kaczmarski, “Russia Attempts to Limit Chinese Influence by Promoting CSTOSCO Cooperation,” CACIA, Oct. 17, 2007; Nurshat Ababakirov, “The CSTO Plans to Increase Its Military Potential,” CACIA, Sept. 17, 2008. 134. Andrew Katen, “Iran’s Territorial Disputes with Its Caspian Sea Neighbors,” PINR, May 31, 2006. 135. Michael T. Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008), 217. 136. Rovshan Ismayilov, “Azerbaijan Ponders Russian Caspian Defense Initiative,” http:// www.eurasianet.org, Feb. 1, 2006; Haroutiun Khachatrian, “Russia Makes a Bid to Enhance Its Influence in the South Caucasus Using Economic Leverage,” CACIA, July 23, 2008.

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137. Stephen Blank, “Tehran Conference Fails Again to Demarcate the Caspian Sea,” http:// www.eurasiannet.org, June 29, 2007; Richard Weitz, “Second Caspian Summit Fails to Resolve Contentious Issues,” CACIA, Oct. 31, 2007; Benedetta Berti, “Iran Strengthens Its Role in the Caspian Sea and Central Asian Regions,” PINR, Nov. 6, 2007. 4 . F or e ig n P ol ic y i n t h e G C C S tat e s 1. See Raymond A. Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds., The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002). And see also for discussion on this approach Gerd Nonneman, “Analysing the Foreign Policies of the Middle East and North Africa: A Conceptual Framework,” in Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies and the Relationship with Europe, ed. Gerd Nonneman (London: Routledge, 2005), 6–18. 2. See, for example, John Calabrese, “China and the Persian Gulf: Energy and Security.” Middle East Journal 52, no. 3 (Summer 1998); Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iran-Iraq War and Western Security, 1984–87: Strategic Implications and Policy Options (London: Jane’s Publishing, 1987); Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Differentiated Containment,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 3 (1997); Martin Indyk et al. “Symposium on Dual Containment: US Policy Toward Iran and Iraq,” Middle East Policy 3, no. 1 (1994); Kenneth Katzman et al. “The End of Dual Containment: Iraq, Iran and Smart Sanctions.” Middle East Policy 8, no. 3 (2001); Anthony Lake, “Confronting Backlash States,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (1994); Alvin Z. Rubinstein, ed., The Great Game: Rivalry in the Persian and South Asia (London, Praeger, 1983); Gary Sick, “Rethinking Dual Containment,” Survival 40, no. 1 (1998). 3. Richard Hermann and R. William Ayers, “The New Geo-Politics of the Gulf: Forces for Change and Stability,” in The Persian Gulf at the Millennium, Essays in Politics, Economy Security and Religion, ed. Gary Sick and Lawrence Potter (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 31–60. 4. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power,” in American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays, 5th ed., ed. G. John Ikenberry, 60–82 (New York: Georgetown Univ., 2005); and Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2001) 159–238. 5. For greater discussion see J. David Singer, “The Level of Analysis Problem in International Relations,” in International Politics and Foreign Policy, 2nd. ed., ed. James N. Rosenau (New York: Free Press, 1969) 20–29. 6. Hinnebusch and Ehteshami, Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 1–2. 7. Singer, “Level of Analysis Problem in International Relations.” 8. Stephen R. David, “Explaining Th ird World Alignment,” World Politics 43, no. 2 (1991): 233–56. 9. For discussion of ideological forces in Iran that are themselves a reflection of such drivers, see Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr, Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), 80–84. 10. See Hinnebusch and Ehteshami, Foreign Policies of Middle East States. 11. Bahgat Korany, The Foreign Policies of Arab States (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984).

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12. Hinnebusch and Ehteshami, Foreign Policies of Middle East States. For additional discussion and an analysis, which this article supports, see Nonneman, “Analysing the Foreign Policies of the Middle East and North Africa,” 6–18. 13. Ibid. 14. Henry Kissinger, “Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy,” International Politics and Foreign Policy, ed. James N. Rosenau (New York: Free Press, 1969), 261–75. 15. Fred Lawson, Bahrain: The Modernization of Autocracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1989) 125. 16. Niblock, Saudi Arabia, 68–89. 17. Nathan Brown, The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1997) 129–86. 18. Hassan Hamdan al-Alkim, The GCC States in an Unstable World: Foreign-Policy Dilemmas of Small States (London: Saqi Books, 1994) 50. 19. William B. Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s: Foreign Policy, Security, and Oil (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1981), 64–71. 20. J. T. E. Cunha, “The Portuguese Presence in the Gulf,” in The Persian Gulf in History, Lawrence G. Potter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 2009) 224. 21. Ibid. 22. Willem Floor, “Dutch Relations with the Persian Gulf,” in The Persian Gulf in History, ed. Lawrence G. Potter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 2009), 240. 23. For a good discussion of Britain in the Gulf and its role providing a pax-Britannica, see James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth Century Gulf (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007); J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf 1795–1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1967); and Donald Hawley, The Trucial States (New York: Twayne Press, 1971). 24. The Anglo-Qatar Treaty of 1916 was signed on November 3, 1916, but was not ratified by the British until March 23, 1918. 25. James Onley, “The Politics of Protection in the Gulf: The Arab Rulers and the British Resident in the Nineteenth Century,” New Arabian Studies 6 (2004): 30–92. 26. F. Gregory Gause, III, “The Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia,” in The Foreign Policies of Middle East States, ed. Raymond A. Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 202. 27. Abdul-Monem al-Mashat, “Politics of Constructive Engagement: The Foreign Policy of the United Arab Emirates,” in The Foreign Policies of the Arab States: The Challenge of Globalization, ed. Ali Dessouki and Baghat Korany (Cairo: American Univ. of Cairo Press 2008) 457–80. 28. Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Steven Wright, “Politics of Change in the Arab Oil Monarchies: From Liberalization to Enfranchisement,” International Affairs 83, no. 5 (2007): 918–22. 29. F. Gregory Gause, III, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994), 120–21.

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30. Niblock, Saudi Arabia, 110. 31. Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, 80. 32. Graham T. Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” in American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays, 5th ed., ed. G. John Ikenberry (New York: Georgetown Univ., 2005), 402–41; Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” World Politics 24, no. 2 (1972): 40–79. 33. For a critique of Allison’s model, see Steve Smith, “Perspectives on the Foreign Policy System: Bureaucratic Politics Approaches,” in Understanding Foreign Policy: The Foreign Policy Systems Approach, ed. Michael Clarke and Brian White (Aldershot: Elgar, 1989) 109–34, and Jonathan Bendor and Thomas H. Hammond, “Rethinking Allison’s Models,” American Political Science Review 86, no. 2 (1992): 301–22. 34. Stephen D. Krasner, “Are Bureaucracies Important? (or Allison Wonderland),” American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays, 5th ed., ed. G. John Ikenberry (New York: Georgetown Univ., 2005) 447–59. 35. Deborah J. Gerner, “The Evolution of the Study of Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second Generation, ed. Laura Neack, Jeanne A. K. Hey, and Patrick Jude Haney (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1995) 23–24; Deborah J. Gerner, “Foreign Policy Analysis: Exhilarating Eclecticism, Intriguing Enigmas,” International Studies Notes 16, no. 3 (1991): 4–19. 36. Al-Alkim, GCC States in an Unstable World, 157. 37. For an insightful study of such dynamics, see Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: the Ceaseless Quest for Security (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985), and Madawi Al-Rasheed, “Circles of Power: Royals and Saudi Society,” in Saudi Arabia in the Balance, ed. P. Aarts and G. Nonneman (London: Hurst 2005), 185–213. See also Mehran Kamrava, “Royal Factionalism and Political Liberalization in Qatar,” Middle East Journal 63, no. 3 (2009). 38. Yaacov Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decisionmaking (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990) 342–64. 39. Robert Jervis, “Hypotheses on Misperception,” in International Politics and Foreign Policy, ed. James N. Rosenau (New York: The Free Press, 1969), 239–54; see also Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 21–158; Robert S. McNamara et al., Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 373–98; and Vertzberger, World in Their Minds, 342–64. 40. Ibid. 41. Abdullah Baabood, “Dynamics and Determinants of the GCC Foreign Policy, with Special Reference to the EU,” in Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies and the Relationship with Europe, ed. Gerd Nonneman (London: Routledge, 2005), 148. 42. Ibid., 149. 43. Niblock, Saudi Arabia, 90–113. 44. Tim Niblock and Monica Malik, The Political Economy of Saudi Arabia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 95.

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45. Niblock, Saudi Arabia, 90–113. 46. Gerd Nonneman, “The Th ree Environments of Middle East Foreign Policy Making and Relations with Europe,” in Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies and the Relationship with Europe, ed. Gerd Nonneman (London: Routledge, 2005), 20. 47. Gause, Oil Monarchies, 10–41. 48. Ibid. 49. Ehteshami and Wright, “Politics of Change in the Arab Oil Monarchies,” 918–22. 50. Ibid., 921–22. 51. For an excellent contextual discussion on sectarianism in the wider Middle East, see Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (London: W. W. Norton, 2007). 52. See chapter 3 in this volume, Fred Lawson, “Security Dilemmas in the Contemporary Persian Gulf.” 53. Al-Alkim, GCC States in an Unstable World, 59. 54. Lawson, Bahrain, 125. 55. Louay Bahry, “The Socioeconomic Foundations of the Shiite Opposition in Bahrain,” Mediterranean Quarterly 11, no. 3 (2000). See also Falah Al-Mdaires, “Shi‘ism and Political Protest in Bahrain,” Digest of Middle East Studies 11, no. 1 (2002), and Louay Bahry, “The Opposition in Bahrain: A Bellwether for the Gulf?” Middle East Policy 5, no. 2 (1997). 56. Niblock, Saudi Arabia, 82–83; for useful context, see also James Buchan, “Secular and Religious Opposition in Saudi Arabia,” in State, Society and Economy in Saudi Arabia, ed. Tim Niblock (London: St. Martins, 1982), 106–24. 57. Ibid., 50. 58. Ibid. 59. Joseph A. Kechichian, Oman and the World: The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy (Santa Monica: Rand, 1995), 249–58. 60. For a survey of the changing political capacities and liberalization to the existing order, see Ehteshami and Wright, “Politics of Change in the Arab Oil Monarchies.” For an in-depth examination of Bahrain, see Steven Wright, “Fixing the Kingdom: Political Evolution and Socio-Economic Challenges in Bahrain,” Occasional Paper No. 3 (Doha: Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown Univ. School of Foreign Service in Qatar, 2008). 61. Robert R. Copaken, The Arab Oil Weapon of 1973–74 as a Double-Edged Sword: Its Implications for Future Energy Security (Durham: Univ. of Durham, Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2003). 62. Niblock, Saudi Arabia, 66. 63. Gerd Nonneman, “The Gulf States and the Iran-Iraq War, Revisited: Pattern Shift s and Continuities,” in Iran, Iraq and the Legacy of War: Unfinished Business, ed. L. Potter and G. Sick (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 167–92. 64. Gause, “Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia,” 193–94.

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65. Raymond A. Hinnebusch, “Explaining International Politics in the Middle East: The Struggle of Regional Identity and Systemic Structure,” in Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies and the Relationship with Europe, ed. Gerd Nonneman (London: Routledge, 2005), 243. 66. On a regional level, tribal relations can be observed through the role of the GCC and the manner in which Saudi Arabia naturally dominates it given its size and capacity. For an example of how this is applicable to Bahrain, see Wright, “Fixing the Kingdom.” 67. For a good example of how elite-level tribal relations applied to Qatar, see Kamrava, “Royal Factionalism and Political Liberalization in Qatar.” 68. Roger Savory, Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), 76–103. 69. Personal interview, Doha, Mar. 2010. 70. See chapter 1 in this volume, Mehran Kamrava, “The Changing International Relations of the Persian Gulf.” 71. See chapter 8 in this volume, F. Gregory Gause, III, “Saudi Arabia’s Regional Security Strategy.” 72. United States, Department of Defense, United States Security Strategy for the Middle East (Washington, DC: GPO, 1995), 48pp. 73. See chapter 6 in this volume, Mohammed Ayoob, “American Policy Toward the Persian Gulf: Strategies, Effectiveness, and Consequences.” 74. Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), 1262–65. 75. The 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Lebanon led to widespread speculation that Iran was behind the attack. For discussion, see Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (London: Arrow, 2002). 76. Cordesman, Iran-Iraq War and Western Security, 157–63. 77. For discussion, see Indyk et al., “Symposium on Dual Containment.” 78. Steven Wright, The United States and Persian Gulf Security: The Foundations of the War on Terror (Reading: Ithaca, 2007), 55–90. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., 38–49. 5. G C C P e rc e p t io n s o f C ol l e c t i v e S e c u r i t y i n t h e P o s t - S a dda m E r a 1. Author’s note: I would like to extend my warmest thanks to my research assistants, Joshua Goodman and Eli S. Sperling, for their invaluable help writing and preparing this article. 2. Th is concern is discussed by Joseph McMillan in “Saudi Arabia and Iraq,” United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Jan. 2006; See also Jon B. Alterman, “Iraq and the Gulf States: The Balance of Fear,” US Institute of Peace, Aug. 2007. 3. Fathi al-Afi fi, “Al-Istiqtab al-Iqlimi wal-Tahawwulat al-Jiyu-Istratejiyya, al-Khalij al-‘Arabi fi l ‘Am 2006,” al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi, Nov. 2006, 96–128.

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4. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Genealogy (London: Routledge, 2006). 5. Anthony Cordesman, “Saudi Arabia and the Struggle Against Terrorism,” Saudi-US Relations Information Service (SUSRIS), Apr. 11, 2005; See also Anthony Cordesman and Khalid R. alRadhan, “The Gulf Military Forces in an Era of Asymmetric War: Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” working draft, rev. June 28, 2006. 6. Abdullah al-Shayeji, “Gulf Views of US Foreign Policy in the Region,” Middle East Policy 5, no. 3 (1997). 7. F. Gregory Gause, III, “The Illogic of Dual Containment,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (1994): 56–66; See also Joshua Teitelbaum, “The Gulf States and the End of Dual Containment,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 2, no. 3 (1998): 21–26. 8. John Duke Anthony, “The U.S.-GCC Relationship: A Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?” Middle East Policy 5 (1997): 22–42. 9. Martin Sieff, “Sand in Our Eyes: US-Saudi Relations After Iraq,” The National Interest (2004), 95. 10. Qatar decided in early 2003 to host the US headquarters. The transfer took place in August 2003. Damien Whitworth, “Where’s Qatar? We’ll Soon Know,” Times Online, Jan. 2003, 3, accessed at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article853611.ece. 11. Hassan M. Fattah, “An Island Kingdom Feels the Ripples from Iraq and Iran,” New York Times, Apr. 16, 2006. See also “Country Report: Bahrain,” Economist Intelligence Unit, June 2004, 15–17. 12. Toby Craig Jones, “The Iraq Effect in Saudi Arabia,” Middle East Report 237 (2005), 20–25. See also Elie Karmon, “Iran’s Role in the Radicalization of the Sunni-Shi‘i Divide,” Geopolitical Affairs 1 (2007), 273–93. 13. Vali Nasr, “Regional Implications of the Shi‘a Revival in Iraq,” Washington Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2004). 14. Alterman, “Iraq and the Gulf States”; McMillan, “Saudi Arabia and Iraq.” 15. Nawaf Obaid, “Stepping into Iraq: Saudi Arabia Will Protect Sunnis if the US Leaves” Washington Post, Nov. 29, 2006, A23. 16. Simon Henderson, “Unwanted Guest: The Gulf Summit and Iran,” Policy Watch Series, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Dec. 7, 2007. 17. USA Today, Sept. 6, 2006. 18. Robin Wright, “Enemy to Try to Ease Saudi Concerns,” Washington Post, May 11, 2007. 19. F. Gregory Gause, interviews from Saudi Arabia. 20. Henderson, “Unwanted Guest.” 21. “Final Statements of the GCC Summit,” UAE Interact, Dec. 5, 2007, http://www.uaeinteract .com/docs/Final_Statement_of_the_gcc_summit/27836.htm. 22. Iranian News Agency, Jan. 4, available at World News Co. (WNC), Jan. 5, 2005; See also Iranian News Agency, Jan. 17, Dialogue, Jan. 20, 2005.

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23. Th is second characterization is more valid in light of the fact that neither Syria nor Hamas, two regional allies of Iran, are in any way Shi‘i. HM King Abdullah II of Jordan, interview with MSNBC, Dec. 9, 2004. 24. Marten Valbjorn and Andre Bank, “Signs of a New Arab Cold War,” Middle East Report (2007), 7. 25. Secretary of State Robert Gates’s remarks at Manama, Dec. 9, 2007. 26. Martin Indyk, “The Honeymoon’s Over for Bush and the Saudis,” Washington Post, Apr. 29, 2007. 27. Helene Cooper and Jim Rutenberg, “A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Key,” New York Times, Apr. 29, 2007. See also Gulf States Newsletter, Apr. 13, 2007, 2, and Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker 83, no. 2 (Mar. 3, 2007): 54. 28. “Statements of Hamad bin Jasim bin Jabir Al Thani, Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs,” Conclusion of the 28th GCC Supreme Council Summit in Doha, Qatar News Agency, Dec. 4, 2007. See also John Duke Anthony, “An American in Qatar: Observations on the 2007 GCC Summit,” Saudi-US Relationship Information Service (SUSRIS), Dec. 1, 2007, accessed at http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/articles/2007/ioi/071211-anthony-gcc.html. 29. Seymour Hersh, “Last Stand,” New Yorker 82, no. 21 (July 9, 2006): 42. 30. Ian R. Kenyon “The Project for a Gulf Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, Univ. of Southampton UK, 2007. See also Emily B. Landau, “Taking a Stand on Nuclear Iran: Voices from the Persian Gulf,” Tel Aviv Notes, Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, Jan. 1, 2006. 31. Ambassador Turki al-Faisal, speech to the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations, SUSRIS, Feb. 8, 2006, accessed at http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/fact-book/speeches/2006/060207turki-cfr.html. 32. Gulf Cooperation Council, “Closing Statements of the 26th Session of the Supreme Council of the GCC in Abu Dhabi,” Dec. 19, 2005, http://library.gcc-sg.org/English/Books/sessions/ cs026.html. 33. Gulf News.com, http://gulfnews.com/home/index.html, Feb. 10, 2006. 34. Simon Henderson, “The Elephant in the Gulf: Arab States and Iran’s Nuclear Program,” Policy Watch Series, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Dec. 21, 2005. 35. Comments by Abd-al-Aziz Bin-Saqr, head of the Gulf Center for Research, “al-Arabiyya TV Programme Discusses Gulf Cooperation Council Summit,” BBC Monitoring Middle East, Dec. 8, 2007. See also Raghida Dirghan, “The Arab Moderates Locked Between the US and Iran,” (translation), al-Hayat, Jan. 18, 2008. 36. Raid Qusti, “GCC to Develop Civilian Nuclear Energy,” Arab News, Dec. 11, 2006. 37. Abdul-Reda Assiri, Kuwait’s Foreign Policy: City, State, and World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990). 38. Habib Trabelsi, “Iraq Clerics Convene in Mecca in Bid to Halt Bloodshed,” Agence France Presse, Oct. 18, 2006.

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39. Gulf States Newsletter 23, no. 823 (Feb. 18, 2008). 40. “Text of Palestinians’ Mecca Agreement,” Khaleej Times, Feb. 9, 2007. See also Khalid alDakhil, “Buruz al-Dawr al-Sa‘udi fi al Nizam al-‘Arabi al-Rahin” [Prominence of the Saudi role in the current Arab regimes], Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filistiniyya 72 (Fall 2007): 5–15. 41. For more on the Qatari confl ict with Saudi Arabia, see Tariq al-Humayd, “Thank You Qatar,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Jan. 30, 2007. For Saudi policies on these issues, see also Thomas R. Mattair, “Mutual Th reat Perception in the Arab/Persian Gulf: GCC Perceptions,” Middle East Policy 14, no. 2 (2007): 133–39. 42. Interview with Saudi King Abdullah, al-Siyasah [Kuwait], Jan. 27, 2007. 43. Frauke Heard-Bey, “Confl ict Resolution and Regional Co-operation: The Role of the Gulf Cooperation Council 1990–2002,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 2 (2006): 199–222. 44. Deutsche Press Agenture, June 19, 1999, in BBC, June 19, 1999. 45. Agence France Presse, May 1, 2005, in BBC May 2, 2005. 46. Gulf States Newsletter 31, no. 814 (Sept. 28, 2007). See also Agence France Presse, Dec. 17, 2008, in BBC, Dec. 18, 2008. 47. Asia Times Online, Sept. 14, 2007, accessed May 18, 2008, at http://atimes.com/atimes/ Middle_East/1114Ako1.html. 48. Lt. Col. Ronald C. Smith, “Coalition Air Defense in the Persian Gulf,” Airpower Journal 1, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 28–39. 49. Kenneth Katzman, “The US-Gulf Security Dialogue,” Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, Mar. 22, 2007. 50. “US Set to Offer Huge Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia,” International Herald Tribune, July 27, 2007. 51. Worldtribune.com, Sept. 6, 2006, http://worldtribune.com/worldtribune/. 52. Gulf Cooperation Council, “Closing Statements.” 53. Riyadh Kahwaji, “GCC Creates Quick Reaction Force,” Defense News, Feb. 4, 2008 54. Worldtribune.com, Mar. 20, 2004, http://worldtribune.com/worldtribune/. 55. Qusti, “GCC to Develop Civilian Nuclear Energy.” 56. Joseph Kostiner, “Saudi Arabia,” in Middle East Contemporary Survey, vol. 15, ed. Ami Ayalon, (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 1991), 617. 57. Ibid. 630. 58. Joseph Kostiner, “Coping with Regional Challenges: A Case Study of Crown Prince Abdullah’s Peace Initiative,” in Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs, ed. Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman (London: Hearst and Co, 2005), 352–71. 59. Gulf States Newsletter 32, no. 823 (Feb. 18, 2008). 60. “Bin Jibreen Yu‘aqqid ‘an Fatwahu lan Takun ‘an Hizb Allah,” al-Arabiyya, Aug. 8, 2006, http://www.alarabiya.net. 61. USA Today, Dec. 3, 2007. 62. Gause, “Saudi Arabia.” 63. “The Gulf Forum 2008,” Gulf Research Center, Jan. 8–9, 2008.

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6 . A m e r ic a n P ol ic y T owa r d t h e P e r s i a n G u l f : S t r at e g i e s , E f f e c t i v e n e s s , a n d C on s e qu e n c e s 1. For details, see BP, “Statistical Review of World Energy 2008,” accessed at http://www .bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622 on Feb. 11, 2009. 2. Robert Mabro, “The Oil Weapon: Can It Be Used Today?” Harvard International Review 29, no. 3 (2007): 56. 3. Dennis Ross, “Considering Soviet Threats to the Persian Gulf,” International Security 6, no. 2 (1981): 159. 4. Malcolm H. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970 (London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971). 5. For an analysis of the use of Islam as an instrument of Saudi policy in the intra-Arab struggle of the 1960s, see Robert R. Sullivan, “Saudi Arabia in International Politics,” Review of Politics 32, no. 4 (1970): 436–60. 6. Neil MacFarquhar, “Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah,” in New York Times, July 28, 2006, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28arabs .html?_r=1. 7. For details, see “2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll,” accessed at http://sadat.umd.edu/ surveys/index.htm on Feb. 13, 2009. 8. For Iran’s increasing prominence in the region in the wake of the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, see Nasr, Shia Revival; Suzanne Maloney, Iran’s Long Reach: Iran as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008); and Ali M. Ansari, Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2006). 9. David Rohde, “Iran Is Seeking More Influence in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Dec. 27, 2006. 10. For the Truman Doctrine, see Bruce Robellet Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980); for the Eisenhower Doctrine, see Ray Takeyh, The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: the US, Britain, and Nasser’s Egypt, 1953–57 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). 11. Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2008). 12. Ray Takeyh, Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic (New York: Times Book, 2006), 93–94. 13. J. B. Kelly’s Arabia, the Gulf, and the West (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980) remains a good introduction to the complex processes preceding and accompanying the British withdrawal from “east of Suez.” 14. Jeff rey Kimball, “The Nixon Doctrine: A Saga of Misunderstanding,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2006): 59. 15. Steve R. Yetiv, The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972– 2005 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2008), 31.

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16. Ibid., 47. 17. Michael T. Klare, “The Carter Doctrine Goes Global,” The Progressive 68, no. 12 (2004): 18. 18. For an account of the development of American-Iraqi relations resulting from the convergence of their interests vis-à-vis Iran based upon US government documents, see “Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts Toward Iraq, 1980–1984,” in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, ed. Joyce Battle, Feb. 25, 2003, accessed at http://www.gwu .edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/#docs on Feb. 14, 2009. 19. For details of American and Western support to the Saddam regime during the Iraq-Iran War, see Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990–1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993), 23–28. 20. Amitav Acharya, “Regionalism and Regional Security in the Third World: Comparing the Origins of the ASEAN and the GCC,” in The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States, ed. Brian Job (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 143–64. 21. For details of American policy in the Gulf during this period, see Amitav Acharya, U.S. Military Strategy in the Gulf (London: Routledge, 1989). 22. For an account of the run-up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, including America’s role during the developing crisis, see Freedman and Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990–1991, 42–63. 23. For details of this argument, see Mohammed Ayoob, “Squaring the Circle: Collective Security in a System of States,” in Collective Security in a Changing World, ed. Thomas G. Weiss (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 51–55. 24. Barbara Bibbo, “Ahmadinejad Proposes Economic Bloc of Seven Nations,” Gulf News, Dec. 3, 2007, accessed at http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/12/03/10172108.html on Feb. 23, 2009. 25. Nasr, The Shia Revival, 211–26. 26. Toby Craig Jones, “Religious Revivalism and Its Challenge to the Saudi Regime,” in Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia: Wahhabism and the State, ed. Mohammed Ayoob and Hasan Kosebalaban (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009), 109–20. 27. Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005). 28. For a critique of the “war on terror,” see Ian S. Lustick, Trapped in the War on Terror (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 29. Anthony Lake, then National Security Adviser to President Clinton, elucidated the idea in “Confronting Backlash States,” 45–55. For a well-argued critique of “dual containment,” see Gause, “The Illogic of Dual Containment,” 56–66. 30. Takeyh, Hidden Iran, 114. 31. Ansari, Confronting Iran, 186. 32. Ibid., 188. 33. For one discussion, see Mohammed Ayoob, “The War Against Iraq: Normative and Strategic Implications,” Middle East Policy 10, no. 2 (2003): 27–39. 34. For a critique of the Bush doctrine, see Melvin Gurtov, Superpower on Crusade: The Bush Doctrine in US Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006).

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35. Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004). 36. Scott Ritter, Target Iran: The Truth about the White House’s Plans for Regime Change (New York: Nation Books, 2006). 37. For details of CENTCOM bases, see GlobalSecurity.org, “US Central Command Facilities, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/centcom.htm, accessed on Feb. 22, 2009. 38. GlobalSecurity.org, “Iraq Facilities,” http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/iraq -intro.htm, accessed on Feb. 22, 2009. 39. Greg Bruno, “Iraq Endgame: How Will Obama Get U.S. Troops Out?” Newsweek, Dec. 10, 2008, accessed at http://www.newsweek.com/id/173551 on Dec. 12, 2008. 40. Richard A. Oppel, Jr., and Stephen Farrell, “Growing Opposition to Iraq Security Pact,” New York Times, May 31, 2008. 41. Campbell Robertson, “At Trial, Iraqi Calls Shoe-Th rowing Payback,” New York Times, Feb. 20, 2009. 42. Congressional Research Service, “The Persian Gulf States: Issues for U.S. Policy” (2006), 17. 43. Takeyh, Hidden Iran, 145–46. 44. Ibid., 140–46. 45. Kenneth Pollack and Ray Takeyh, “Taking on Tehran,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 2 (2005): 20–34. 46. Shahram Chubin, Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006), 10. 47. Quoted in Gawdat Bahgat, “Security in the Persian Gulf: Two Confl icting Models,” Defense and Security Analysis 24, no. 3 (2008), 241. 48. Ibid., 243. 49. Dalia Dassa Kaye and Frederic M. Wehrey, “A Nuclear Iran: The Reactions of Neighbours,” Survival 49, no. 2 (2007), 119. 50. Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, “Costs of Containing Iran: Washington’s Misguided New Middle East Policy,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 1 (2008): 90. 51. Shibley Telhami, “The Ties That Bind: Americans, Arabs, and Israelis After September 11,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 2 (2004): 8–12. 52. For details, see “2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll,” accessed on the web at http:// sadat.umd.edu/surveys/index.htm on Feb. 13, 2009. Two of the six Arab countries polled, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are located in the Persian Gulf littoral and are members of the GCC. 53. Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004). 54. Mohammed Ayoob, “Challenging Hegemony: Political Islam and the North-South Divide,” International Studies Review 9, no. 4 (2007): 629–43. 55. For the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, see Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The US and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (New York: Viking, 2008). 56. International Crisis Group, “Saudi Arabia Backgrounder: Who Are the Islamists?” Middle East Report, no. 31 (2004).

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57. Yitzhak Nakash, Reaching for Power: The Shi‘a in the Modern Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2006); Nasr, The Shia Revival. 58. Patrick Cockburn, Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008). 59. International Crisis Group, “Iran in Iraq: How Much Influence?” in Middle East Report, no. 38 (2005). 60. Kanan Makiya, “Is Iraq Viable?” in Middle East Brief 30 (Sept. 2008): 7. 61. International Crisis Group, “The Shiite Question in Saudi Arabia,” in Middle East Report, no. 45 (2005); International Crisis Group, “Bahrain’s Sectarian Challenge,” in Middle East Report, no. 40 (2005). 62. The “2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll,” accessed at http://sadat.umd.edu/surveys/ index.htm on Feb. 13, 2009, shows that 88 percent of the sample considers the United States to be a threat to the Arab world, just behind Israel, which ranks fi rst with 95 percent. By contrast, Iran was identified by only 7 percent of the respondents as a major threat to the Arab world. 63. AP, “Obama Tells Arabic Network US Is ‘Not Your Enemy,’” International Herald Tribune (2009). 7. R e giona l C on s e qu e nc e s of I n t e r n a l T u r moi l i n I r aq 1. This essay, which was drafted in 2008, draws heavily on my work on the subject with Kenneth Pollack. See in particular Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2007), and Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, “Iraq’s Long-Term Impact on Jihadist Terrorism,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 618, no. 1 (July 2008): 55–68. See also my work with Steven Simon for my updated view of the Iraq war on counterterrorism. Daniel Byman and Steven Simon, “Counterterrorism and U.S. Policy Toward the Middle East,” in Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, ed. Richard Haas and Martin Indyk (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2008), 187–216. 2. Steven Simon, “The Price of the Surge,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (May/June 2008). 3. See Michael O’Hanlon and Jason Campbell. “Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq,” Brookings Institution, Saban Center for Middle East Policy May 7, 2009, accessed at http://www.brookings.edu/saban/~/media/Files/Centers/Saban/Iraq%20 Index/index.pdf. 4. One large comparative study fi nds that “religious contagion influences the extent of both ethnic protest and rebellion,” but nonreligious contagion’s influence is limited to ethnic protest. Also, violent confl ict influences confl ict in a neighboring state. Jonathan Fox, “Is Ethnoreligious Confl ict a Contagious Disease?” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 27, no. 2 (2004): 89–106. 5. Sabrina Tavernise, “As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle-Class Exodus Begins,” New York Times, May 19, 2006, A1. 6. In the Middle East, problems are compounded because the UNHCR budget has been cut dramatically. See http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56036&SelectRegion=Middle_East.

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7. Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2004). In addition to numerous outside experts, the US intelligence community apparently shares this assessment. See Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate ‘Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States’ dated April 2006,” available online at http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments. pdf#search=’Trends%20in%20Global%20Terrorism%3A%20Implications%20for%20the%20 United%20States’, accessed on Oct. 21, 2006. 8. Peter Bergen and Alec Reynolds, “Blowback Revisited,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 6 (Nov.–Dec. 2005). 9. See Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “The Iraq Effect,” Mother Jones, Mar. 1, 2007, accessed at http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html. 10. International Crisis Group, “In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency,” Middle East Report, no. 50 (2006): 10. 11. Rueven Paz, “Arab Volunteers Killed in Iraq:  An Analysis,” Project for the Research of Islamist Movements Occasional Papers 3, no. 1 (Mar. 2005): 6. 12. International Crisis Group, “In Their Own Words,” 12. 13. For a review, see John McCary, “The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives,” Washington Quarterly 32, no. 1 (Winter 2009), accessed at http://www.twq.com/09winter/docs/09jan _McCary.pdf. 14. See Dan Murphy, “Al Qaeda Reveals Signs of Weakness,” Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 26, 2007, accessed at http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1026/p01s01-wome.html. 15. “Saudi King Warns Summit of Gulf Leaders Spark Could Ignite Arab World,” Associated Press, Dec. 10, 2006. 16. Fattah, “An Island Kingdom Feels the Ripples from Iraq and Iran.” 17. Louis Meixler, “Iraq’s Kurds Face Neighbors’ Anger,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 2006. 18. Ibid., and Yigal Schleifer, “Turkey Sharpens Response to Upsure in Kurd Violence,” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 29, 2006. 19. Megan K. Stack, “Iraqi Strife Seeping into Saudi Kingdom,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 26, 2006. 20. Ibid. 21. Jon E. Hilsenrath and Liam Pleven, “Economic Fears after 9/11 Proved Mostly Unfounded,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9, 2006, A1. 22. Howard Goller, “Israel Seeks Terms for Pulling Out of Lebanon,” Reuters, Mar. 2, 1998; Gal Luft, “Israel’s Security Zone in Lebanon—A Tragedy?” Middle East Quarterly 7, no. 3 (Sept. 2000). 23. Yair Aharoni, The Israeli Economy: Dreams and Reality (New York: Routledge, 1991), 85; Yoram Ben-Porath, ed., The Israeli Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1986), 20–21; Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003), 164–65. 24. For a review, see Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, “Iranian Strategy in Iraq: Politics and ‘Other Means,’” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, USMA, Oct. 13, 2008.

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25. Global Security, “PJAK/PEJAK,” accessed at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ world/para/pjak.htm. 26. Obaid, “Stepping into Iraq,” A23. 27. Meixler, “Iraq’s Kurds Face Neighbors’ Anger”; Schleifer, “Turkey Sharpens Response to Upsurge in Kurd Violence”; Michael Hastings, “Blacksnake’s Lair: From Deep in the Hills, Kurdish Rebels Are Stirring Up Turkey and Iran, and Th reatening the One Calm Part of Iraq,” Newsweek, Oct. 9, 2006, accessed at http://www.newsweek.com/id/44799. 28. See James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (Feb. 2003): 75–90; see also “State Failure Task Force Report: Phase II Findings,” Science Applications International Corporation, McLean, VA, July 31, 1998. 8. S au di A r a bi a’s R e g ion a l S e c u r i t y S t r at e g y 1. The centrality of regime security concerns in the foreign policies of states in the “third world” has been emphasized by a number of authors. See for example, Robert H. Jackson, Quasistates: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990); Mohammed Ayoob, “The Th ird World in the System of States: Acute Schizophrenia or Growing Pains?” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1989); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991); Brian Job, ed., The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992). 2. Yehoshua Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, 1930–1945 (London: Frank Cass, 1986), 20, 27; Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1988), 90, 552, 566. 3. Safran, Saudi Arabia, 77–112. 4. On the Iranian challenge to Saudi Arabia in general, see R. K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988), esp. chaps. 2, 3, 6, and 7. On the response to the revolution among Saudi Shi‘a, see Joseph Kostiner, “Shi‘i Unrest in the Gulf,” in Shi‘ism, Resistance and Revolution, ed. Martin Kramer (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 176–86; David E. Long, “The Impact of the Iranian Revolution on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf States,” in The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact, ed. John L. Esposito (Miami: Florida International Univ. Press, 1990), 100–115; Toby Craig Jones, “Rebellion on the Saudi Periphery: Modernity, Marginalization and the Shia Uprising of 1979,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, no. 2 (2006). 5. On the domestic challenge presented by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, see Hegghammer, “Islamist Violence and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia”; Roel Meijer, “The ‘Cycle of Contention’ and the Limits of Terrorism in Saudi Arabia,” in Saudi Arabia in the Balance, ed. Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman (London: Hurst, 2005), 271–311. On the Islamist ideological challenge to the Saudi regime, from which bin Laden’s critique emerges, see Mamoun Fandy, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (New York: Palgrave, 2001), and Joshua Teitelbaum, Holier Than Thou: Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Opposition (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000).

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6. Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2007), 164–67. 7. Craig S. Smith, “Reluctant Saudi Arabia Prepares Its Quiet Role in the U.S.-Led War on Iraq,” New York Times, Mar. 20, 2003; Christopher Cooper and Greg Jaffe, “US Use of Saudi Airbases Shows Kingdom’s Quiet Commitment,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 12, 2003. 8. Safran, Saudi Arabia, 122. 9. For a full discussion of then crown prince Abdullah’s Arab-Israeli peace plan of 2002, see Joseph Kostiner, “Coping with Regional Challenges.” 10. On the formation of the GCC, see R. K. Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Record and Analysis (Charlottesville, VA: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1988); Emile Nakhleh, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Politics, Problems and Prospects (New York: Praeger, 1986); Erik R. Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988); and Laurie Ann Mylroie, “Regional Security after Empire: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf,” PhD diss., Harvard Univ., 1985. 11. For an account of Saudi policy in Yemen from the 1960s through the 1980s, see F. Gregory Gause, III, Saudi-Yemeni Relations: Domestic Structures and Foreign Influence (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1990). 12. On the 1994 Yemen civil war, see Robert D. Burrowes, “The Republic of Yemen:  The Politics of Unification and Civil War,” in The Middle East Dilemma, ed. Michael C. Hudson (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1999), 187–213, and Mark Katz, “External Powers and the Yemeni Civil War,” in The Yemeni War of 1994: Causes and Consequences, ed. Jamal S. Al-Suwaidi (London: AlSaqi, 1995), 81–93. 13. I develop this argument at greater length in “Balancing What? Th reat Perception and Alliance Choice in the Gulf,” Security Studies 13, no. 2 (Winter 2003–4). 14. King Fahd detailed the Saudi aid to Iraq in a speech on January 16, 1991, responding to Iraqi allegations of Saudi perfidy during the Gulf War. Al-Sharq al-Awsat (London), Jan. 17, 1991, 4. 15. Yahya Sadowski, Scuds or Butter? The Political Economy of Arms Control in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993), 20. 16. James Piscatori, ed., Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis (Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991). 17. For a fuller account of Saudi regional policy in this period, see Gause, “Saudi Arabia.” 18. On Lebanese politics in this period, see Stacey Philbrick Yadav, “Lebanon’s Post-Doha Political Theater,” Middle East Report Online, July 23, 2008, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero072308 .html. 19. Hersh, “The Redirection.” It should be noted that many have questioned Hersh’s assertions about US-Saudi cooperation to support Fatah al-Islam. 20. On Saudis in Iraq, see Ned Parker, “The Confl ict in Iraq: Saudi Role in the Insurgency,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2007. He reports that the US military estimated that 45 percent of all the foreign fighters in Iraq at that time were Saudis. Nearly half of the foreigners imprisoned in Iraq at that time were Saudis. On Saudis in Lebanon, see Mishari al-Dhayadi, “Man ‘irsal shabab al-sa’udiyya?” [Who Sent the Youth of Saudi Arabia?], al-Sharq al-Awsat (London), July 3, 2007. He reports that

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forty-five Saudis were among the fighters in the Nahr al-Barid uprising and that twenty-three of them died in the fighting. 9. I r a n i a n F or e i g n a n d S e c u r i t y P ol ic i e s i n t h e P e r s i a n G u l f 1. Iran-US tensions, or relations for that matter, also largely determine the nature of the relationship—or more accurately the degree and nature of the tensions—between Iran and Israel. For more on the dynamics that characterize the tense relationship between Iran and Israel, see Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2007). 2. For a discussion of Iran’s relations with Venezuela, see Michael Dodson and Manochehr Dorraj, “Populism and Foreign Policy in Venezuela and Iran,” Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 9, no. 1, (Winter/Spring 2008): 71–87. For the role of the Hezbullah in Iran’s national security calculations see Mehran Kamrava, “National Security Debates in Iran: Factionalism and Lost Opportunities,” Middle East Policy 24, no. 2 (Summer 2007), 84–100. 3. Gregory Gause makes a similar point about Saudi foreign policy, whose “fundamental goal” is “to protect the country from foreign domination and/or invasion and to safeguard the domestic stability of the Al Saud regime.” Gause, “Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia,” 193. 4. Kamrava, “National Security Debates in Iran.” 5. Anoushiravan Ehteshami, After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic (London: Routledge, 1995), 48–51. 6. Abbas Maleki, “Farayand-e Tasmimgiri dar Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Iran” [Process of decision making in Iranian foreign policy], Rahbord 27 (Spring 2003): 95. 7. Bijan Izadi, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Jomhuri-ye Islami-ye Iran [The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran] (Qom: Markaz-e Entesharat-e Howzeh Elmiyye, 1377/1998), 122–23. 8. Mahmoud Vaezi and Abbas Maleki, “Vakavi-ye Roykard-ha dar Howzeh-ye Siyasat-e Khareji” [Analysis of approaches to foreign policy], Rahbord 27 (Spring 2003): 12–139. Mohammad Behzadi, “Eslahat dar Kocheh-ye Bonbast” [Reforms in a dead-end alley], Nameh 23, (1382/2003): 3. 10. “Siyasat-e Tanesh-zedaee-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran va Ta’sir-e an bar Ravabet ba Keshvar-haye Mantaqeh-ye Khalij-e Fars” [The Islamic Republic of Iran’s détente policy and its effects on relations with countries of the Persian Gulf region], Negareshi bar Tahavvolat-e Siyasi, nos. 91–92 (1380/2001): 123. For a critical assessment of the “dual containment” policy, see Gause, “The Illogic of Dual Containment,” 56–66. 11. International Crisis Group, “Iran: Ahmadi-Nejad’s Tumultuous Presidency,” Middle East Briefing, no. 21 (Feb. 6, 2007): 19. 12. Izadi, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Jomhuri-ye Islami-ye Iran, 135–46. 13. Asghar Eftekhari, “The Fixed Principles of the Foreign Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Iranian Journal of International Affairs 19, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 33–37. 14. For example, Ayatollah Khamenei’s message on the occasion of the hajj in 2008 included the following passage: “The wounded enemy will resort to all sorts of means and methods [to achieve

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its ends]. We must be alert, wise, and courageous so that the enemies’ efforts bear no fruit. In the last thirty years, the enemy, meaning principally the United States and Zionism, have done all they can [to harm us], but so far they have not been successful. God willing, the future will see more of the same.” Ettela‘at, no. 24357 (Dec. 7, 2008): 1. 15. Mohammad Kazem Sajjadpour, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Iran [Iranian foreign policy] (Tehran: Daftar-e Motale‘at-e Siyasi va Beinolmelal, 1383/2004), 107–9. 16. Amir Mohammad Haji Yosufi, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran dar Partow-e Tahavvolat-e Mantaqeh-i, 1991–2001 [The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of regional changes, 1991–2001] (Tehran: Daftar-e Motale‘at-e Siyasi va Beinolmelal, 1384/2005), 67–69. 17. Ibid., 69. 18. Sajjadpour, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Iran, 9. 19. R. K. Ramazani, “Ideology and Pragmatism in Iran’s Foreign Policy.” Middle East Journal 58, no. 4 (Autumn 2004:) 559. 20. Manochehr Mottaki, “What Is a Just Global Order?” Iranian Journal of International Affairs 19, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 1, 3. 21. The text of Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush can be accessed at http://online.wsj .com/public/resources/documents/wsj-IranianPres_letter.pdf. The Iranian president’s congratulatory message to President-elect Obama is available at http://www.president.ir/en/?ArtID=13116. Both Web sites were available as of Dec. 9, 2008. 22. Mahmood Sariolghalam, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran: Bazbini-ye Nazari va Paradaym-e E‘telaf [The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Theoretical reconsideration and the paradigm of coalition] (Tehran: Center for Strategic Research, 1379/2000), 52. 23. Maleki, “Farayand-e Tasmimgiri dar Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Iran,” 105. 24. Anoushiravan Ehteshami, “Iran’s International Posture after the Fall of Baghdad,” Middle East Journal 58, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 180. 25. Jalil Roshandel and Hossein Seifzadeh, Ta‘arozat-e Sakhtari dar Mantaqeh-ye Khalij-e Fars [Structural contradictions in the Persian Gulf region] (Tehran: Middle East Research Center, 1382/2003): 136–37. 26. Ibid., 137. 27. Emile El-Hokayem and Matteo Legrenzi, “The Arab Gulf States in the Shadow of the Iranian Nuclear Challenge,” Henry Stimson Center working paper, May 26, 2006, 3. See also James Noyes, “Iran’s Nuclear Program: Impact on the Security of the GCC,” in Iran’s Nuclear Program: Realities and Repercussions (Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2006), 63–91. 28. According to Kamal Kharrazi, Iran’s foreign minister from 1997 to 2005, “the widespread presence of foreign military personnel in Iraq, and America’s repeated threats to some of the countries of the region, is inimical to the security and stability of the Persian Gulf. Undoubtedly, threats to Persian Gulf security and stability endanger the interests of those countries that export oil as well as others that have invested in the region.” Kamal Kharrazi, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Ma [Our foreign policy] (Tehran: Daftar-e Motale‘at-e Siyasi va Beinolmelal, 1384/2005), 430.

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29. Tahereh Ebrahimi-far, Olgoha-ye E‘temad-sazi dar Mantaqeh-ye Khalij-e Fars [Patterns of confidence-building measures in the Persian Gulf region] (Tehran: Daftar-e Motale‘at-e Siyasi va Beinolmelal, 1385/2006), 127–28. 30. Asghar Jafari Valdani, Ravabet-e Khareji-ye Iran [Iran’s foreign relations] (Tehran: Avaye Noor, 1382/2004), 59. 31. A concise summary of US-Iran tensions in the aftermath of 9/11 and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, including Washington’s frequent references to “regime change” in Iran, can be found in Mehran Kamrava, “The United States and Iran: A Dangerous but Contained Rivalry,” Middle East Institute Policy Brief 9 (Mar. 2008). 32. Kaveh Afrasiabi and Abbas Maleki, “Iran’s Foreign Policy after 11 September,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 9, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2003): 256. 33. Jafari Valdani, Ravabet-e Khareji-ye Iran, 86. 34. For a full discussion of the national security positions of the different Iranian factions, see Kamrava, “National Security Debates in Iran.” 35. Sariolghalam, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran, 72–73. 36. There is also no shortage of opinion on the American side about the “Iran question,” and American policymakers, like their Iranian counterparts, are often given vastly different policy recommendations by think tanks and policy research institutes on the best approach to adopt toward Iran. For examples of different policy recommendations, see Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, Deterring the Ayatollahs: Complications in Applying Cold War Strategy to Iran (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2007); James Dobbins, Sarah Harting, and Dalia Dassa Kaye, Coping with Iran: Confrontation, Containment, or Engagement? (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp., 2007); and Richard Haas and Martin Indyk, Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008). 37. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, “The Greater Middle East: Opportunities and Challenges,” unpublished manuscript, Tehran, Mar. 1, 2007. 38. Sariolghalam, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran, 85–86. 39. Naturally, US-Iran differences over the Persian Gulf cannot be settled in isolation from other issues dividing the two. As one Iranian observer has commented, “it would seem that no matter how the United States and Iran cooperate on functional issues related to their common interests at the Middle Eastern level and around the neighboring countries of Iran, in the absence of an attitudinal change on the part of Tehran toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there will be no breakthrough in the relations between the two countries.” Mahmood Sariolghalam, “Iran’s Emerging Security Doctrine: Domestic Sources and the Role of International Constraints,” in The Gulf: Challenges of the Future (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2005), 179. 40. Ebrahimi-far, Olgoha-ye E‘temad-sazi dar Mantaqeh-ye Khalij-e Fars, 287. 41. F. Gregory Gause, III, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010), 9. 42. Jafari Valdani. Ravabet-e Khareji-ye Iran, 58.

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43. It would be inaccurate to dismiss completely the importance of religious differences between two neighboring states, one of which considers itself the cradle of orthodox Shi‘ism and the other a bastion of Wahhabism. According to one Iranian diplomatic historian, “undoubtedly, religious differences have been the most important source of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the twentieth century.” Hamid Ahmadi, Ravabet-e Iran va ‘Arabestan dar sadeh-ye Bistom (Dowreh-ye Pahlavi)] [Iran-Saudi relations in the twentieth century (Pahlavi era)] (Tehran: Center for Documents and Diplomatic History, 1386/2007), 241. Nevertheless, as we shall see shortly, and as Ahmadi himself recognizes—pointing to improvements in Iranian-Saudi relations beginning in the 1950s (242)—the pursuit of national interests by both sides began trumping concerns over religious differences, a trend that continues to this day. 44. As Gregory Gause has observed, “In the Persian Gulf, states worry about conventional power threats and neighbors interfering in their domestic politics. Outside analysts tend to concentrate too much on the former kinds of threats and ignore the importance of the latter in regional foreign policies.” F. Gregory Gause, III, “Threats and Th reat Perceptions in the Persian Gulf Region,” Middle East Policy 14, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 122. 45. Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Amniyat va Masayel-e Sarzamini dar Khalij-e Fars [Security and territoriality in the Persian Gulf] (Tehran: Daftar-e Motale‘at-e Siyasi va Beinolmelal, 1386/2007), 93. 46. Ahmadi, Ravabet-e Iran va ‘Arabestan dar sadeh-ye Bistom, 193. 47. Henner Furtig, Iran’s Rivalry with Saudi Arabia Between the Gulf Wars (Reading: Ithaca, 2002), 6. 48. Although the amount of Saudi and Kuwaiti assistance to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war has never been fully disclosed, estimates generally put the figure at around $50 to $55 billion. Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict (London: Routledge, 1990), 250. 49. Amir Sajedi, “Iran’s Relations with Saudi Arabia,” in India, Iran, and the GCC States: Political Strategy and Foreign Policy, ed. A. K. Pasha (New Delhi: Manas, 2000), 115. According to R. K. Ramazani, Kuwait’s decision to invite American forces to protect its tanker was made reluctantly and only after Kuwaiti authorities uncovered a well-organized, armed network of Kuwaiti Shi‘ites who had planned on waging armed struggle against the state. R. K. Ramazani, “The Iran-Iraq War and the Persian Gulf Crisis,” Current History 87, no. 526 (Feb. 1988): 62. 50. Quoted in Sajedi, “Iran’s Relations with Saudi Arabia,” 116. 51. Gwenn Okruhlik, “Saudi Arabian-Iranian Relations: External Rapprochement and International Consolidation,” Middle East Policy 10, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 114. 52. Causing his hosts considerable international embarrassment, Ahmadinejad made the following statement in a media interview while attending a summit of leaders from the Muslim world in Mecca, Saudi Arabia: If the European countries admit to the fact that they killed the Jews in World War II and Hitler was responsible for burning and annihilating the Jews, why then won’t they give a part of Europe to Zionists to set up any government they wish? Europeans believe they

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should support the forces which occupies Qods, since the Jews were victimized in World War II. We, however, don’t accept this. It is one thing for Europe to continue to insist on this point, but why should it try to give part of the Palestinian land to them? Germany and Austria can give two or three of their provinces to the Zionists regime, so it can set a country. Th is would be a real solution to this problem. Why the Europeans insist on supporting a tumour in the Middle East through imposing their will on other powers. Th is will prolong the confl ict and tension. (BBC Monitoring Service, quoting Mehr News Agency, Dec. 8, 2005) 53. Ahmadi, Ravabet-e Iran va ‘Arabestan dar sadeh-ye Bistom, 241. 54. Spencer Swartz, “Saudi Arabia Pushes OPEC for Deep Production Cut,” Globe and Mail, Dec. 17, 2008, B10. 55. Okruhlik, “Saudi Arabian-Iranian Relations,” 121. 56. Joseph A. Kechichian, “Trends in Saudi National Security,” Middle East Journal 53, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 232–53. 57. Kamrava, “United States and Iran,” 8. 58. Kharrazi, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Ma, 430. 59. Kamrava, “National Security Debates in Iran.” 60. In Fred Halliday’s words, “we are witnessing the collision of two aspirations for regional hegemony, and for the shaping of the future of the region—that of the US and its allies, especially Israel, and that of Iran.” Fred Halliday, “Iran’s Regional and Strategic Interests,” in Iranian Challenges, ed. Walter Posch (Brussels: Institute for Security Studies, Chaillot Paper no. 89, 2006), 60. 61. Hiro, The Longest War, 250. 62. Ibid., 251. 63. In addition to Hiro’s Longest War, a small sample of the excellent works available on the Iran-Iraq War can be found in two volumes: Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), and Lawrence Potter and Gary Sick, eds. Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 64. Takeyh rejects this line of argument and instead sees the Iran-Iraq war as one “waged for the triumph of ideas, with Ba‘thist secular pan-Arabism contesting Iran’s Islamic fundamentalism.” Ray Takeyh, “Iran’s New Iraq,” Middle East Journal 62, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 16. It is my contention, however, that the war was less “a spiritual mission seeking moral redemption” and more a product of attempts by both Iraqi and Iranian leaders to manipulate nationalist sentiments for purposes of political legitimacy and consolidation at national and regional levels. 65. Dilip Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends: Iraq and Iran after the Gulf Wars (London: Routledge, 2001), 30–31. The Algiers Accord had demarcated the disputed Shat al-Arab river boundary between the two countries according to the thalweg line. In the lead-up to the invasion of Iran, Saddam had torn a copy of the accord and had declared it null and void. After examining the evidence, however, Shaul Bakhash has concluded that Iran’s initial euphoria over the Iraqi offers was misplaced, and there was no clear giveback on this point. See Shaul Bakhash, “Iran: War Ended, Hostility

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Continued,” in Iraq’s Road to War, ed. Amatzia Baram and Barry Rubin (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 219–31. 66. Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends, 258–59. 67. A statement made by Saadun al-Dulaimi, the Iraqi defense minister at the time, who was on an official visit to Tehran in July 2005, epitomizes the fundamental change in Iranian-Iraq relations. “I have come to Iran,” he said, “to ask for forgiveness for what Saddam Hussein has done.” Quoted in Takeyh, “Iran’s New Iraq,” 22. 68. Kayhan Barzegar, Siyasat-e Khareji-ye Iran dar ‘Araq-e Jadid [Iran’s foreign policy in the new Iraq] (Tehran: Center for Strategic Research, 1386/2007), 61. 69. Ibid., 62–65. 70. Ibid., 61. 71. “Iran’s Green Light in Iraq,” Boston Globe, Nov. 18, 2008, 22. 72. Takeyh, “Iran’s New Iraq,” 27. 73. Ibid., 24. 74. Ibid., 25. 75. Ibid. 76. Kayhan Barzegar, “Iran’s Foreign Policy in Post-Invasion Iraq,” Middle East Policy 15, no. 4 (Winter 2008) 56–57. 77. Gareth Porter, “Evidence Fails to Support U.S. Claims about Iranian Weapons,” Inter Press Service, May 22, 2008. 78. “Iran’s ‘Invisible Man,’” Middle East, no. 392 (Aug./Sept. 2008): 28. 79. Ibid. 80. “Rice Says U.S. Has Forced Iran to Scale Back Actions in Iraq,” Associated Press, Dec. 16, 2008. 81. For Iranian claims of sovereignty over the three islands, see Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Hakemiyyat-e Iran bar Jazayer-e Tunb va Abu Musa [Iran’s sovereignty over the islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, and Abu Musa] (Tehran: Sahat Geographic and Draft ing Institute, 1385/2006), and Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Jazayer-e Tunb va Abu Musa [The Tunb and Abu Musa Islands] (Tehran: Daftar-e Motale‘at-e Siyasi va Beinolmelal, 1383/2004). For a work on the subject that represents the UAE perspective, see Mattair, Three Occupied UAE Islands. Less partisan is Koroush Ahmadi, Islands and International Politics in the Persian Gulf (London: Routledge, 2008). See also the three linked articles in Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles, and the Search for Consensus, edited by Lawrence G. Potter and Gary Sick (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Jalil Roshandel, “On the Persian Gulf Islands: An Iranian Perspective,”135–53; Hassan Al-Alkim, “The Islands Question: An Arabian Perspective,” 155–70; and Richard Schofield, “Anything but Black and White: A Commentary on the Lower Gulf Islands Dispute,” 171–87. 82. Declassified British government documents reveal a concerted effort on the part of Britain to strike a compromise between Iran and the Sheikh of Sharjah over Abu Musa and also between Iran and the Sheikh of Ras Al Khaima over the two Tunbs. The compromise with Sharjah’s Sheikh Khalid bin Muhammad Al Qassimi resulted in the signing of the MOU, while Sheikh

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Saqr bin Muhammad Al Qassimi’s refusal to negotiate prompted Iran’s military takeover of the Tunbs. For British diplomacy surrounding the three islands see Mobley, “The Tunbs and Abu Musa Islands,” 627–45. 83. Koroush Ahmadi, Islands and International Politics in the Persian Gulf, 138–39. 84. Ibid., 141. 85. Ibid., 164. 86. It is important to keep in mind, of course, that there are unique and different issues surrounding each of the three islands, and that it is a generalization to lump all three together. Also, while the federal government of the UAE maintains a single policy toward Iran in relation to the islands, each of the individual emirates historically linked with the islands also have their own preferences and level of urgency—or lack thereof, as in the case of Dubai—insofar as the dispute with Iran is concerned. 87. Sonia Verma, “Iranian Traders in Dubai Find Bush’s Rhetoric Is Bad for Business,” Globe and Mail, Jan. 15, 2008, 12. 88. Sonia Verma, “Bush Rallies Gulf Allies Against Iran,” The Times (London), Jan. 14, 2008, 35. 89. Eric Lipton, “U.S. Alarmed as Some Exports Veer Off Course in the Mideast,” New York Times, Apr. 2, 2008, 1. 90. Verma, “Bush Rallies Gulf Allies Against Iran,” 35. 91. In the 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States, for example, the White House declared that “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.” The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States, March 2006, 20. 92. During a visit to the UAE in January 2008, for example, President Bush remarked: “Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the Gulf, and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it’s too late.” Quoted in Verma, “Bush Rallies Gulf Allies Against Iran,” 35. 93. Mehran Kamrava, “The 2009 Presidential Election and Iran’s Changing Political Landscape,” Orbis, Summer 2010. 10. C h i n a , I n d i a , a n d t h e P e r s i a n G u l f : C on v e rg i n g I n t e r e s t s ? 1. David Smith, The Dragon and the Elephant: China, India and the New World Order (London: Profi le Books, 2007). 2. Saudi crown prince Sultan bin Abd al-‘Aziz’s remark during a visit to Japan in May 2006. 3. Adnan Shihab-Eldin, “GCC-Asia Strategic Relation: Development, Opportunities and Challenges,” background paper for the International Monetary Fund/World Bank program of seminars, Singapore, Sept. 16–18, 2006. In comparison, the GCC oil exports to Europe and the United States are 16 and 13 percent, respectively. 4. India has sought 10 million tons of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from Qatar, in addition to 7.5 million tons of LNG annually for twenty-five years, which was agreed to in 1999, and offered Doha an equity stake in India’s Petronet LNG Ltd. Kuwait News Agency, Oct. 6 2006.

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5. Reuters, Mar. 9, 2009. 6. For more, see N. Janardhan, “What Oils the Wheels of GCC-India Cooperation,” Daily Star, Aug. 12, 2005, and Stein Tonnesson and Ashild Kolas, Energy Security in Asia: China, India, Oil and Peace (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute), 2006. 7. Gulf Daily News (Bahrain), Apr. 24, 2007. Also see Brad W. Setser, “Gulf States Find Oil Wealth a Th in Buffer,” Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, Nov. 14, 2008, and Near East Meets Far East: The Rise of Gulf Investments in Asia, Economic Intelligence Unit, 2007, http://www .arcapita.com/media/pdfs/EIU_WhitePaper-web.pdf. 8. Heather Timmons, “The Middle East Is Buying into Asia,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 2006. 9. Standard Chartered Bank data, cited in Stanley Reed, Dexter Roberts, and Nandini Lakshman, “Trade Is Booming Between Asia and Middle East,” Der Spiegel, July 11, 2008. In comparison, the trade between the entire Middle East and United States amounted to just $250 billion in 2007, according to the data available on the Web site of the Office of the United States Representative. 10. Although not serious, the demand by some countries to grant greater rights to expatriates and to link human rights issues to free-trade deals and incidents of unrest by workers have made the governments view the presence of the large expatriate workforce in the region as a “security” concern. The suggestions made in Richard Bulliet’s novel The Gulf Scenario (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1984; quoted in Daniel Pipes, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 1, 1984, http://www.danielpipes.org/18/thegulf-scenario) about a plot by Indians and Pakistanis to take over the GCC countries still lurk in some people’s minds. According to Bulliet, it is “simply wrong for so incredibly much money to be hogged by those few Arabs while tens of millions of Indians and Pakistanis live in poverty. . . . The Arabs in the Gulf don’t allow foreign workers to become citizens and share the wealth; they’re stingy with gifts; and they flaunt their money everywhere in the world. . . . They deserve what they get.” 11. Statement by Dr. Zeti Akhtar Aziz, governor, Bank Negara Malaysia, Khaleej Times (UAE), Mar. 29, 2007; and Timmons, “The Middle East Is Buying into Asia.” 12. In terms of investment opportunities, India expects that it needs about $320 billion for infrastructure development by 2012. Bloomberg, “AMP Plans Infrastructure Fund Focusing on India,” Feb. 28, 2007, accessed at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a nF5UDK4ciSc&refer=asia. 13. Timmons, “The Middle East Is Buying into Asia”; remarks by David Hodgkinson, Group Chief Operating Officer, HSBC, at the Euromoney/DIFC Annual Conference in Dubai in November 2006. 14. Stephen Glain, “The New Silk Road.” Forbes Magazine, June 2, 2008. 15. Dominic Barton and Kito de Boer, “The Need for Reform Along the New Silk Road,” July 4, 2006, http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/greaterchina/mckonchina/functions/strategy/new _silk_road.aspx. 16. For more details, read N. Janardhan, “GCC-Asia Ties: Economy First; What Next?” Khaleej Times, Feb. 20, 2006. 17. The Th ird Regional Security Summit: Manama Dialogue, organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), in December 2006.

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18. Stephen Glain, “The Modern Silk Road,” Newsweek, May 26, 2008, accessed at http://www .newsweek.com/id/137475. 19. Ibid. 20. Arabian Business (UAE), Sept. 4, 2007. 21. Lee Hudson Teslik, “China-Gulf Economic Relations,” Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, June 4, 2008. 22. For more on Sino-UAE ties, read N. Janardhan, “UAE-Sino Ties: Full of Energy for Synergy,” Arab News (Saudi Arabia), Nov, 12, 2007. 23. Abdulaziz Sager, “Saudi-Chinese Relations: Energy First, but Not Last,” Arab News, Jan. 23, 2006. 24. Gal Luft , “Fueling the Dragon: China’s Race into the Oil Market,” Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, Aug. 2, 2005. According to the International Energy Outlook 2009, China and India together accounted for about 10 percent of the world’s total energy consumption in 1990, but in 2006 their combined share was 19 percent. Their combined energy use is expected to make up 28 percent of world energy consumption in 2030. In comparison, the US share of total world energy consumption is expected to fall from 21 percent in 2006 to about 17 percent in 2030. 25. Ziad Haider, “Oil Fuels Beijing’s New Power Game,” Yale Global, Mar. 11, 2005. 26. “China’s Policy in the Gulf Region: From Neglect to Necessity,” Power and Interest News Report (United States and Italy), Oct. 27, 2006. 27. Teslik, “China-Gulf Economic Relations.” 28. Ibid. 29. Dr. Abdallah E. Dabbagh, president and CEO of Maaden, the Saudi national mining company. 30. Teslik, “China-Gulf Economic Relations.” 31. Press Trust of India, Nov. 6, 2007. 32. For more, read Peter J. Symes, “The Bank Notes of the Qatar and Dubai Currency Board,” http://www.kuwait-stamps.com/currencies.php?articleID=1. 33. Indian ambassador to the UAE Talmiz Ahmad, Xpress (UAE), Sept. 26, 2008. 34. “GCC Relations with India,” Gulf Research Centre (Dubai), http://www.grc.ae/?frm_action =detail&PK_ID=59&set_lang=en&frm_module=researchprograms&sec=Research+Programs& sec_type=d&override=Research+Program+Detail&CAT_ID=2&PHPSESSID=bcd42c5cdc207b9d 41ffa3f614b5e7a5. 35. These statements were part of Pranab Mukherjee’s keynote address at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi during an official visit to the UAE in May 2008. 36. Indo-Asian News Service, June 25, 2008. 37. Pranab Mukherjee’s keynote address at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi, May 2008. 38. Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050, Goldman Sachs, Global Economics Paper No. 99, Oct. 2003.

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39. The Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi estimated in 2006 that about 25 percent of the Indian working population could be categorized as unskilled, 50 percent as semiskilled/skilled, and the remaining as professionals and businessmen. 40. Gulf News (UAE), Oct. 17, 2008. According to the IIF’s revised figures, the combined foreign assets of GCC governments and banking institutions are estimated to have reached $1.47 trillion by the end of 2008, down from the earlier estimate of $2 trillion. Khaleej Times, Jan. 4, 2009. 41. For example, some analysts suggest that the UAE could break even with oil between $35 and $40 a barrel. Reuters, Dec. 19, 2008. 42. Arab News, Nov. 27, 2008. The IIF estimates the break-even oil price that will balance budgets for 2009 as follows: $36 for the UAE, $38 for Qatar, $48 for Kuwait, $51 for Saudi Arabia, $73 for Oman, and $74 for Bahrain. Further, there is also no indication that spending, on infrastructure for example, is about to see a major slowdown. For instance, Saudi Arabia announced plans to spend $400 billion on infrastructure projects in the next five years as the kingdom seeks to benefit from lower construction costs amid the global fi nancial crunch. Bloomberg, “Saudi Arabia to Spend $400 Billion on Infrastructure Projects,” Feb. 1, 2009, accessed at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news ?pid=newsarchive&sid=ahSSvlvJIpmA. Qatar also forecasted its economy to grow by 10 percent in real terms in 2009. The Peninsula (Qatar), Feb. 3, 2009. 43. Christian Koch, “A Role for NATO in the Gulf?” http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/ view/full/13368/, Feb. 22, 2005. 44. Some examples include serious differences between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain over the latter signing the free trade agreement with the United States, which resulted in the Saudi crown prince boycotting the December 2004 GCC Summit in Manama, and the rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar over al-Jazeera’s coverage of political events in the Gulf, which has manifested in several forms, including the US shift ing from the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia to al Udeid in Qatar starting 2002 and unconfirmed Saudi objection to a Qatar-UAE (Dolphin) gas project in 2006. 45. Kuwait News Agency, May 10, 2007. 46. Transcript of the Qatar emir’s address is available at http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/62/ 2007/pdfs/qatar-eng.pdf. 47. See Jonathan Steele, “India’s Revival Means It Can Pick and Choose Its Friends,” Guardian, Feb. 24, 2006. 48. For more on these issues, see Christian Koch, “Gulf Region Makes Strategic Shift in New Global System,” Arab News (Saudi Arabia), Oct. 22, 2006, and “Gulf Needs More, Not Less, External Involvement,” Araa Magazine, Jan. 27, 2006. Accessed at http://www.gulfi nthemedia.com. 49. John Gittings, quoted in Michael A. Weinstein, “China Punches Below Its Weight—For Now,” http://www.asiatimes.com, Jan. 8, 2005. 50. Julian Madsen, “China Makes Friends in the Gulf,” http://www.asiasentinel.com, Oct. 30, 2006. 51. Dan Blumenthal, “Providing Arms: China and the Middle East,” Middle East Quarterly 12, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 11–19.

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52. “China Becomes Increasingly Involved in the Middle East,” PINR, Mar. 10, 2006. 53. Iran Daily, Apr. 16, 2005. 54. John Calabrese, “China and the Persian Gulf: Energy and Security,” Middle East Journal 52, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 352. 55. Washington Post, Mar. 26, 2009. In 2010, the Chinese defense budget further increased to $78 billion. Xinhua, Mar. 4, 2010. 56. Details of the Chinese government’s National Defense Policy White Paper available at http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/194485.htm. 57. Edward Cody, “China Offers Glimpse of Rationale Behind Its Military Policies,” Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2006, A17; for more details of the Chinese navy modernization plan, see Bernard D. Cole, “The PLA Navy’s Developing Strategy,” China Brief, Jamestown Foundation, Washington, DC, Oct. 26, 2006. 58. Ibid. 59. “‘Look West’ Policy to Boost Ties with Gulf,” Financial Express (India), Jul. 29, 2005, accessed at http://www.fi nancialexpress.com/news/look-west-policy-to-boost-ties-with-gulf/1393 50/0; between 2005 and 2007, forty Indian naval ships visited the region, with eleven of them docking in Fujairah, UAE, the largest oil bunkering station in the world (The Hindu [India], Dec. 23, 2007). And on the fi rst-ever visit by an Indian prime minister to Qatar, in November 2008, New Delhi sought surplus funds from that country to sustain the flow of investments at a time of global credit squeeze and signed two agreements relating to defense and law enforcement, which officials said would “lay out a structure for joint maritime security and training as well as exchange of visits.” Another agreement on security and law enforcement would “lay out the framework for sharing of information and database on threats posed by extremists” and seek to check money laundering and transnational crime (The Hindu, Nov. 12, 2008). One Indian government official was quoted as saying, “We will go to the rescue of Qatar if Qatar requires it, in whatever form it takes.” However, he added that “India will not station troops in any foreign country. We don’t want to fight other people’s wars in foreign countries” (Asian Age [India], Nov. 12, 2008). 60. Part of a statement by former Indian defense minister Pranab Mukherjee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, June 27, 2005. 61. Statement made at the second Gulf Security Conference in Manama, Dec. 2–3, 2005. See “Gulf Region Security Vital to India, Says Top Diplomat,” Press Trust of India, Dec. 5, 2005. 62. These views were part of his presentation titled “China and India: The Asian Rising Powers Debate; An Indian Perspective,” at the third Global Strategic Review Conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Geneva, Sept. 18, 2005. 63. India’s defense expenditure has more than doubled, from $11.6 billion in 1998–99 to $26.4 billion for 2008–9. More details on India’s military plans are available in “India’s Place in the US Strategic Order,” Research Unit for Political Economy (Mumbai), Dec. 2005, http://www.rupe-india .org/41/central.html. 64. Ibid.

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65. P. R. Kumaraswamy, “Realism Replacing Rhetoric: Factors Shaping India’s Middle East Policy,” Round Table 97, no. 397 (Aug. 2008): 575–87. 66. Some of these views were expressed by C. Raja Mohan in “India’s Strategic Challenges in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf,” at a workshop, India’s Growing Role in the Gulf—Implications for the Region and the United States, organized by Nixon Center, Washington DC, and Gulf Research Centre, Dubai, Nov. 2008. 67. “India Steps Up Plans to Import Middle East LNG,” Oil & Gas Journal 96, no. 17 (Apr. 27, 1998): 29. Th is article can be accessed at http://www.ogj.com/index/article-display/21426/articles/ oil-gas-journal/volume-96/issue-17/in-this-issue/gas-processing/india-steps-up-plans-to-importmiddle-east-lng.html. 68. Indian Express, Dec. 5, 2006. 69. For more, see David Scott, “India’s Drive for a ‘Blue Water’ Navy,” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 10, no. 2 (Winter 2007–8): 1–42. 70. Research Unit for Political Economy (Mumbai), Dec. 2005, http://www.rupe-india.org/41/ central.html. 71. Stephen Blank, “India’s Grand Strategic Vision Gets Grander,” http://www.atimes.com, Dec. 25, 2003. 72. For more on GCC-India tactical dimensions, see Khadija Arafah Muhammad Amin, “Need for Strategic Cooperation,” GCC-India Research Bulletin, Jan. 2006 (Gulf Research Center, Dubai). 73. “Navy Chief Promises Technologically Fighting Fit Force,” Indo-Asian News Service, Aug. 8, 2006. 74. Alfred Thayer Mahan, quoted by Indian navy chief Arun Prakash, http://www.rediff.com (India), Feb. 28, 2005. 75. The Hindu, Nov. 12, 2008. 76. For more, see “US, China, India Flex Muscle Over Energy-Critical Sea Lanes,” http://free republic.com, June 10, 2006. 77. Bloomberg, “Pirate Victims Finance More Attacks With $100 Million in Ransom,” Nov. 24, 2008, accessed at http://www.shariahfi nancewatch.org/blog/category/bloomberg/page/2/. 78. Indo-Asian News Service (New Delhi), Dec. 13, 2008. 79. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18, 2008. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Jin Liangxiang, “China and the Middle East: Energy First.” Middle East Quarterly 12, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 3–10. 83. Jon Alterman and John Garver, The Vital Triangle: China, the United States, and the Middle East (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008). 84. Ibid. 85. Hongyi Harry Lai, “China’s Oil Diplomacy: Is It a Global Security Th reat?” Third World Quarterly 28, no. 3 (2007): 519–37.

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86. Alterman and Garver, Vital Triangle. 87. Ibid. 88. Iran News Agency, July 15, 2008. 89. Fars News Agency (Iran), July 27, 2008. 90. Robin Wright, “Deepening China-Iran Ties Weaken Bid to Isolate Iran,” Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2008. 91. Manochehr Dorraj and Carrie L. Currier, “Lubricated with Oil: China-Iran Relations in a Changing World,” Middle East Policy 15, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 66–83. 92. For more, read, John W. Garver, China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-Imperial World (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2007). 93. K. S. R. Menon, “India-Iran Relations: Tough Road Ahead,” Gulf-Asia Research Bulletin, Aug. 2008. 94. A global survey conducted by the BBC World Service in 2006 found that Iran topped the list of nations that considered India a positive influence in the world, with an overwhelming 71 percent of respondents from Iran giving a thumbs-up for New Delhi. 95. For more, read Meena Janardhan, “GCC Countries Complicate US’ Iran Plans,” Inter Press Service (Rome), Apr. 16, 2007. 96. “India as a Strategic Factor, in 21st Century Geopolitics,” lecture by Ambassador Ranjit Gupta at the Gulf Research Centre, Dubai, March 2008. 97. Fareed Zakaria, “The Future of American Power: How America Can Survive the Rise of the Rest,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (May/June 2008), accessed at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/63394/fareed-zakaria/the-future-of-american-power. 98. Views were expressed by C. Raja Mohan in “India’s Strategic Challenges in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf.” 99. Rob Crilly, “Oil from Africa Comes with Political Instability,” USA Today, Apr. 30, 2006. 100. Joint Declaration by the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China, Nov. 21, 2006, http://pmindia.nic.in/prelease/content4print.asp?id=523. 11. P ol i t ic a l R e f or m a n d F or e ig n P ol ic y i n Pe r s i a n Gu l f Mona rc h i e s 1. For titles of some recent publications on the Gulf monarchies that allude to that hope, see Gerd Nonneman, Political Reform in the Gulf Monarchies: From Liberalisation to Democratisation? A Comparative Perspective, working paper, Univ. of Durham, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Durham, 2006; Michael Herb, “Democratization in the Arab World? Emirs and Parliaments in the Gulf,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 4 (2002): 41–47; and Laurence Louer, “Démocratisation des régimes dynastiques: la modèle bahreinien en question,” in Monarchies du Golfe. Les micro-États de la péninsule arabique, ed. Rémy Leveau and Fréderic Charillon (Paris: La documentation française, 2005), 111–26. 2. The effects of these reform policies on the Gulf monarchies’ domestic political systems have been (tentatively) evaluated in a number of studies. See Ana Echagüe, “Political Change in the

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Gulf States: Beyond Cosmetic Reform?” Democracy Backgrounder 5 (Nov. 2006); Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success; Fatiha Dazi-Héni, “Introduction,” in Maghreb-Machrek: Monarchies et sociétés en mutation dans le Golfe, 177 (2003): 59–78; Louer, “Démocratisation”; Niethammer, “Voices in Parliament, Debates in Majalis, and Banners on Streets; Nonneman, “Political Reform”; Mary Ann Tétreault, Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2000). 3. See, among others, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Domestic Politics and International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 46, no. 1, (Mar. 2002): 1–9; David H. Clark, “Trading Butter for Guns: Domestic Imperatives for Foreign Policy Substitution,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 5 (Oct. 2001): 636–60; Barbara Farnham, “Impact of the Political Context on Foreign Policy Decision-Making,” in “Prospect Theory,” special issue (part 2), Political Psychology 25, no. 3 (June 2004): 441–63; Nehemia Geva and D. Christopher Hanson, “Cultural Similarity, Foreign Policy Actions, and Regime Perception: An Experimental Study of International Cues and Democratic Peace,” Political Psychology 20, no. 4 (Dec. 1999): 803–27; Ethan B. Kapstein, “Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Sources of International Politics,” in International Organization 49, no. 4 (Autumn 1995): 751–74; Alan C. Lamborn, “Theory and the Politics in World Politics,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June 1997): 187–214; Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” International Security 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 5–38; Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Incomplete Democratization and the Outbreak of Military Disputes,” International Studies Quarterly 46, no. 4 (Dec. 2002): 529–49; Zeev Maoz and Nasrin Abdolali, “Regime Types and International Confl ict, 1816–1976,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 33, no. 1 (Mar. 1989): 3–35; Zeric Kay Smith, “The Impact of Political Liberalisation and Democratisation on Ethnic Conflict in Africa: An Empirical Test of Common Assumptions,” Journal of Modern African Studies 38, no. 1 (Mar. 2000): 21–39. 4. Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 427–60. 5. Ibid., 437. 6. Literature on the democratic peace proposition is far too extensive to cite. “Classics” are Steve Chan, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall .  .  . Are the Freer Countries More Pacific?,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28, no. 4 (Dec. 1984): 617–48; Steve Chan, “In Search of Democratic Peace: Problems and Promise,” Mershon International Studies Review 41, no. 1 (May 1997): 59–91; R. J. Rummel, “Libertarian Propositions on Violence Within and Between Nations: A Test Against Published Research Results,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 29, no. 3 (Sept. 1985): 419–55; Bruce M. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace Principles for a Post–Cold War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993). 7. Geva and Hanson, “Cultural Similarity,” 804; Bueno de Mesquita, “Domestic Politics,” 5. 8. For a detailed structural explanation of democratic peace, see Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace Principles, 38–40. 9. For a cultural/normative explanation of democratic peace, see Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace Principles, 30–35.

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10. The last two explanations presuppose that leaders are actually aware of their adversary’s regime type. Th is is—given the spread of hybrid regimes—not as trivial as it might seem. 11. See Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War”; Mansfield and Snyder, “Incomplete Democratization.” 12. Mansfield and Snyder, “Incomplete Democratization.” 13. Ibid., 530. Th is fi nding includes military disputes short of war. 14. Ibid., 535. 15. Ibid., 531. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Moreover, nationalist coalitions also often include military elites, see Mansfield and Snyder, “Incomplete Democratization,” 532. 19. Ibid., 541ff. 20. For a comprehensive discussion of these trends see Nicola Pratt, “Bringing Politics Back In: Examining the Link Between Globalization and Democratization,” Review of International Political Economy 11, no. 2 (May 2004): 311–36. 21. For Bahrain, see Lawson, Bahrain; Niethammer, “Voices”; and Wright, Fixing the Kingdom; for Saudi Arabia, see Guido Steinberg, Saudi-Arabien: Politik, Geschichte, Religion (Munich: BeckVerlag 2004). 22. US soldiers were attacked in Kuwait in 2002 and 2003, and skirmishes occurred between Kuwaiti police and Islamist militants in 2005; Qatar experienced a bomb attack on a theater frequented mainly by Western expatriates in March 2005. In Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE so far no such incidents have occurred. 23. The FTAs the US has signed with Bahrain and Oman, and negotiates with the UAE, are also seen—and sold to the domestic public—as political rewards for domestic reform policies. 24. B-MENA is an initiative launched by the Group of 7 countries designed to foster cooperation and a means of nexus between civil society and NGOs in the Middle East and the G-7. Bahrain had initially allowed NDI to establish an office on the islands (2002–6) but expelled its representative when NDI got too serious with democracy promotion during the last elections. Personal interviews with NDI representative Fawzi Juleid. Since 2007 NDI has resumed some programs, though on a much smaller scale. Personal interview with Leslie Campbell, director of NDI’s Middle Eastern department. 25. On the concept of dynastic monarchies, see Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999). 26. At the time of writing (2008), 15 out of 27 ministers are sheikhs in Bahrain, 11 out of 21 in Qatar, and 12 out of 24 in the UAE. Fewer ruling family members are found in the cabinets of Kuwait (8/24), Saudi Arabia (7/29), and Oman (6/35). 27. The dominance of the executive over the judiciary also compromises the rule of law and legal predictability, as high-ranking positions in the judiciary are often held by ruling family members. Moreover, many legal areas are not well defined. Particularly the four youngest states—Kuwait gained its independence in 1961, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE theirs only in 1971—had to rush into

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nation building, which included constituting a judiciary that before was rather informal. Owing to the lack of time and of national expertise, the four younger states copied and adopted a range of Egyptian laws. Thus many rather repressive Egyptian laws from the 1970s have been adopted in the Gulf monarchies. Moreover, especially in the initial years after independence, Egyptian lawyers and public prosecutors were employed. See Brown, Rule of Law in the Arab World. 28. Many so-called NGOs are in fact governmental, like, for example, the Qatari Arab Democracy Foundation. See http://www.arabdemocracyfoundation.org. 29. See Lisa Anderson, “Dynasts and Nationalists: Why Monarchies Survive,” in Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity, ed. Joseph Kostiner (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000): 53–69; Daniel Brumberg, “Liberalization versus Democracy: Understanding Arab Political Reform,” Working Papers Middle East Series, Democracy and Rule of Law Project, 37 (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003); Dazi-Héni, “Introduction”; Rémy Leveau and Abdellah Hammoudi, eds., Monarchies arabes: Transitions et dérives dynastiques (Paris: La documentation française 2002); Oliver Schlumberger, “Transition in the Arab World: Guidelines for Comparison,” EUI Working Paper RSC no. 2002/22, San Domenico, 2002. 30. The ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the UAE explained during a talk in Berlin that the emirates had originally been democracies. He “proved” this assessment by his recollections of the UAE’s founding president and his father’s discussions on national spending (talk at the Free University of Berlin, Feb. 7, 2008). Similar assessments were given to the author in numerous interviews. The Bahraini deputy secretary of state, Sheikh Abdalaziz b. Mubarak Al Khalifa claimed: “We had an excellent democratic institution with the ruler’s majlis; today we just have to modernize it” (May 22, 2005). 31. For a historical description of the sheikhs of the diverse emirates, see Peter Lienhardt, Shaikhdoms of Eastern Arabia (Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). 32. Particularly in Saudi Arabia, tribal notables became new business elites. Trading monopolies were successively reduced from the mid-1990s onward. See Fred H. Lawson, “Economic Liberalization and the Reconfiguration of Authoritarianism in the Arab Gulf States,” Orient 46, no. 1 (2005): 22, 37. 33. With regard to religion, Oman is a special case; the ruling family, the Al Bu Sa‘id, and supposedly roughly half of the population adhere to the Ibadhiyya, a variant of Islam only prevalent in Oman. See John Duke Anthony, Arab States of the Lower Gulf: People, Politics, Petroleum (Washington DC: Middle East Institute, 1975), 10ff. Some speculate the sultan is not too popular with the Sunni part of the Omani population. See Mark N. Katz, “Assessing the Political Stability of Oman,” MERIA 8, no. 3 (Sept. 2004): 5–7. 34. The overwhelming majority of Gulf Arab Shi‘ites are Twelver Shi‘ites. They adhere to different religious authorities (“models of emulation,” maraji‘ at-taqlid). Besides there is a small minority of Saudi Ismaelites and Zaidite Yemenis; the latter rarely hold a GCC state citizenship, however. 35. See Anthony, Arab States of the Lower Gulf. In Qatar and Saudi Arabia, anti-Shi‘ite attitudes are bolstered by the prevalent Wahhabi teaching, which does not acknowledge Shi‘ism as a valid form of Islam.

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Notes to Pages 241–42

36. Peaks were reached in 1938 and 1956. See Tétreault, Stories of Democracy; Lawson, Bahrain; Fuad I. Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain: The Transformation of Social and Political Authority in an Arab State (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press 1980). 37. Activists in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia wrote a number of petitions to the rulers during the 1990s demanding democratization in Bahrain and Kuwait and reform in the Saudi Kingdom. See Werner Ende, “Teilhaber an dem einen Vaterland. Die Petition saudischer Schiiten vom 30. April 2003,” in Iran und iranisch geprägte Kulturen. Studien zum 65. Geburtstag von Bert G. Fragner, ed. Markus Ritter, Ralph Kauz, and Birgitt Hoff mann (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2008): 336–44. A revolution lead by the Marxist National Democratic Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Persian Gulf (NDFLOAG) took place in Oman’s Dhofar region from 1965 to 1975, which hundreds of Gulf Arabs joined. See Fred Halliday, Arabia Without Sultans (London: Penguin 1974). Even Saudi Arabia saw some stirrings during the 1960s when the Egyptian-sponsored “Free Princes” demanded an elected legislative council. The very small and elitist movement around Prince Talal b. ‘Abdulaziz Al Saud also presented a constitution. 38. See Steinberg, Saudi-Arabien. 39. See Gudrun Krämer, “Good Counsel to the King: The Islamist Opposition in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco,” in Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity, ed. Joseph Kostiner (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 257–87; Florian Peil, “Die Besetzung der großen Moschee von Mekka 1979,” Orient 47, no. 3 (2006): 387–408. 40. In 2006, percentages were estimated as follows: 78.53 Bahrain, 94.37 Kuwait, 64.17 Oman, 66.75 Qatar, 80.47 UAE, 90.38 Saudi Arabia. Sources: Central Bank of Bahrain; Ministry of Finance, Kuwait; Central Bank of Oman; Qatar Ministry of Finance; Central Bank of the UAE; Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency; Ministry of Finance, UAE. 41. Differences in literacy between women and men are comparable to Hungary, Malta, or Portugal, even in arguably the most conservative states, such as Oman and Saudi Arabia. See http:// hdrstats.undp.org. Moreover, the small Gulf States rank among the highly developed countries in the Human Development Index (HDI). 42. Compare with the argument Lipset formulated in the late 1950s, Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53 (Mar. 1959): 69–105. For a discussion of the role of education for reform with regard to the Gulf monarchies, see Nonneman, “Political Reform,” 15ff. 43. Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Univ. of California Press, 1997). 44. For the classic book on rentierism see Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani, eds., The Rentier State (London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1987). 45. See Herb, All in the Family. The author’s field work in Bahrain brought similar results. It was a most common assertion that the ruling family had stolen the oil from the people and its claim to dishing out generosities were ludicrous because it gave something back it had never rightfully owned.

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46. Okruhlik assessed this for Saudi Arabia. See Gwenn Okruhlik, “Rentier Wealth, Unruly Law, and the Rise of Opposition: The Political Economic of Rentier States,” Comparative Politics 31 (Apr. 1999): 295–315. 47. Compare Cordesman’s analysis of the Gulf States armed forces. Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf Military Forces in an Era of Asymmetric War (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies 2006), http://www.csis.org. Also see Byman and Green, “Enigma of Political Stability.” In Kuwait the stateless allegedly constitute 80 percent of the army; see IOM, World Migration Report 2005, 53. 48. In Western media, only imprisonments of Saudi opposition activists figure prominently. Opposition activists in Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE, however, are subjected to various forms of harassment as well. For details, see Amnesty International’s country reports at http://www .amnesty.org. 49. Because of their small populations, the Gulf monarchies cannot counter the conventional Iranian army, even given that the GCC states invested in better technologies. Iran’s army is estimated at 545,000, whereas Saudi Arabia has only 124,500 soldiers. See Cordesman and al-Rodhan, “Gulf Military Forces,” 7. In addition, Saudi Arabia has paramilitary forces like the national guards numbering another 100,000; ibid., 19. 50. Saudi Arabia has no comprehensive agreement with the United States but has a series of memoranda and informal agreements. 51. See Nonneman, “Political Reform,” 11. 52. See UNDP, Programme on Governance in the Arab Region, Oman, http://www.pogar .org. 53. In January 2005, a hundred persons were detained and accused of planning an Islamist revolution; some of the detainees were university professors who previously had demanded political reforms. Some were convicted to long prison terms but pardoned later. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/, June 9, 2005. 54. Nonneman, “Political Reform,” 10, cites Mohammad al-Muhanna, “The Saudi Majlis ashShura: Domestic Functions and International Role,” PhD diss., Durham Univ., 2005; also see CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov. 55. In 2005 half of the almost 12,000 municipal seats were elected. On the historical precedents of these, see Nonnemann, “Political Reform,” 10. 56. See UNDP, Programme on Governance in the Arab Region, Saudi Arabia, http://www .pogar.org. Reportedly it took more than a year until the board was approved. No woman is on the board, and a representative of the Ismaelite minority stepped down. See Human Rights Watch, “Saudi Arabia: Despite Restrictions, Visit Uncovers Abuses,” Feb. 17, 2007, http://www.hrw.org. Applications to set up nongovernmental human rights organizations have so far not been approved. 57. See Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2007. Saudi Arabia, http://www .amnesty.org. 58. See the detailed reports by Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org.

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Notes to Pages 246–52

59. As Abu Dhabi is the federation’s richest emirate, this unwritten law might hold true in the future. The ruler of Dubai is the prime minister and vice president. The UAE’s current president, Sheikh Khalifa b. Zayed Al Nuhayyan, is only the UAE’s second. 60. See BBC News online, Dec. 15, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk. 61. In 2007 Dubai witnessed a series of demonstrations by migrant laborers. 62. See Freedom House, United Arab Emirates, http://www.freedomhouse.org. 63. See J. E. Peterson, “Qatar and the World: Branding for a Micro-State,” Middle East Journal, 60, no. 4 (Autumn 2006): 732–48. 64. Echagüe, “Political Change in the Gulf States,” 10. 65. The emir also dissolved the assembly repeatedly but duly called new elections (in 1999, in 2006, and in 2008). 66. The electoral law is a constant topic of debate. Franchise was continuously expanded. Previously only persons who could prove their ancestors’ residence in Kuwait city could vote; since 2005 Kuwaitis who hold citizenship for more than twenty years and do not work in the armed forces are included, and since 2005, so are women. The stateless (bidun) however, still cannot vote. 67. Leading either to the chamber’s dissolution or to the resignation of government in 2008. Parliamentary participation at the abdication of the crown prince after the emir’s death in spring 2006 seems to have been of rather symbolic nature. See Echagüe, “Political Change in the Gulf States,” 5. 68. See Amy Buenning Sturm, “Edging Towards Reform: Kuwait’s Security Sector,” Henry L. Stimson Center, June 7, 2006, accessed at http://www.stimson.org/summaries/edging-towardsreform-kuwaits-security-sector/. 69. Lately the intended creation of a joint venture of Dow Chemicals and a Kuwaiti fi rm collapsed, not least due to anticipated parliamentary opposition. See Kuwait Times, Jan. 28, 2009; International Herald Tribune, Dec. 28, 2008. 70. In 2005 a political group tried to obtain a license as a political party—and was not successful. Some of the representatives of the Umma party were temporarily exempted from leaving Kuwait. See Freedom House, Country Report 2007, Kuwait, http://www.freedomhouse.org. 71. Nonnemann, “Political Reform,” 34. These modifications were passes in the electoral law of 2006. 72. The constitutional court ruled that a mandatory notification of the security forces prior to any public event was not in accordance with the constitution. See UNDP, Programme on Governance in the Arab Region, Kuwait, http://www.pogar.org. 73. Bahraini authorities withdrew the license of one of the independent Bahraini human rights organizations, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, in 2004. The public prosecutor constructed an incitement to murder from the very critical remarks of the NGO’s president about the prime minister, the king’s uncle. Niethammer, “Voices,” 23. 74. So far this constitutes the most substantial contribution to alleviating the worst abuses of the migrant workforce in the GCC. 75. Recognizing the limited nature of their potential political participation, it is quite obvious that political groups should fi rst try to achieve a greater say in domestic decision making. For

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Kuwait see Tétreault, Stories of Democracy. For Bahrain, see Niethammer, Political Reform in Bahrain (London: Routledge, forthcoming). Exceptions relate to the question of dealing with Israel. 76. Protest was not always a Shi‘ite phenomenon. Sometimes Shi‘ites and urban Sunnis united, but only when they had common interests and ideological incentives to unite. That was the case in the embryonic workers’ movement and during the heyday of Arab nationalism and socialism. 77. The most extensive scholarly work on the Intifada so far is Ute Devika Meinel, Die Intifada im Ölscheichtum Bahrain Hintergründe des Aufbegehrens von 1994–98 (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2002). 78. See Niethammer, “Voices.” 79. For election results, see F. Gregory Gause, III, “Bahrain Parliamentary Election Results: 25 November and 2 December 2006,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2007): 170–71. 80. Niethammer, “Voices.” 81. Katja Niethammer, “The Paradox of Bahrain: Authoritarian Islamists Th rough Participation, Pro-Democratic Islamists Th rough Exclusion?” In Moderate Islamists as Reform Actors: Conditions and Programmatic Change, ed. Muriel Asseburg, SWP Research Paper 4, Apr. 2007, Berlin, 45–54. 82. Gulf News, Oct. 3, 2008; Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, Oct. 5, 2008. Prior to that, the foreign minister was severely criticized for shaking hands with his Israeli counterpart at a UN meeting in 2008. 83. The president of al-Wifaq explained his organization’s new approach in an interview: “To achieve democracy we need two kinds of pressure. Inside Bahrain through demonstrations and party work, and outside pressure from the US and Europe. Only then will our government change. And the US is behind us . . . we had workshops with American experts [he referred to NDI consultancies]—and they will show us how we can develop into a Western style political party. That will make our work more efficient.” Personal interview with ‘Ali Salman, May 9, 2005. 84. A term coined by King ‘Abdallah of Jordan in 2004. 85. Personal interview with ‘Ali Salman, May 9, 2005. The presence of competing maraji‘ is obvious: during ‘ashura, posters of Sistani, Khamenei, sometimes Khomeini, and Fadlallah are displayed. 86. Stephan Rosiny, “The Twelver Shia Online: Challenges for Its Religious Authorities,” in The Other Shiites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia, ed. Alessandro Monsutti, Silvia Naef, and Farian Sabahi (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007): 245–62; Nakash, Reaching for Power. 87. A marja‘ derives authority from the ascription of his followers—it does not accrue to him by virtue of an office. Hence contemporary maraji‘ concentrate their activities on establishing networks of intermediaries and followers. They need representatives and numerous students to spread their opinions and to collect religious taxes, which are then redistributed. Thus the marji‘ intensifies his patronage networks by, for example, building mosques and charitable establishments. The major maraji‘ have global networks of representatives from Europe to India, and obviously in the Gulf states as well. Currently Sistani, Khamenei, and the Shiraziyun have local representatives in Bahrain. 88. The Web sites might also in the long run erode the role of the intermediaries and representatives of the maraji‘, as believers can directly address the highest authorities with their questions.

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Notes to Pages 255–56

89. It seems, however, that only Fadlallah was specifically asked to comment on Bahraini elections. Moreover, many rank-and-fi le party members claimed when interviewed that they followed Sistani or Khamenei in politics, but in matters related to their private life they would emulate Fadlallah. 90. The Salafists have repeatedly called for an introduction of Islamic corporal punishments into Bahraini penal law, for example. See Niethammer, “Paradox of Bahrain.” 91. Cited in Gulf News, Nov. 21, 2006. 92. Sunni sheikh Abdallatif Mahmud was cited in Gulf News, Nov. 25, 2006. As noted earlier, in 2002 ‘Adil al-Mu‘awada had produced a fatwa of Saudi authorities to the same effect 93. Of course, there might be much more elusive “influences,” too; many Shi‘ite Gulf clerics have studied in Qom and have established personal networks in the seminaries. Hence there is intense traveling of clerics between Qom and Bahrain. Although it would be most interesting to know about possible money transfers these travels entail, it is impossible to gauge. No hard facts prove any current official Iranian involvement in the GCC countries‘ domestic affairs. That is also evident from the rather petty reproaches the Bahraini government directed at Iran: in 2005, the government called the Iranian ambassador and chided him for allegedly supplying Khamenei posters to Bahrainis for ‘ashura. The ambassador denied any such involvement, but in any case posters obviously do not pose an imminent threat to the Bahraini regime. It was different in the early 1980s when Iran was still actively exporting its revolution; in 1981, the Bahraini government allegedly foiled a coup attempt that was, so the officials claim, directed from Tehran. The Islamic Republic, so the official version goes, had five hovercraft s with soldiers ready in Bushire to assist the revolution. Th roughout the 1980s the Bahraini government claimed to have discovered other coup attempts, but these in all likelihood were largely fabricated by the regime itself, as the short sentences alleged coup attempters received imply. 94. According to Pratt, “Bringing Politics Back In” (324ff.), that is even the case in Egypt, which has a much more deeply ingrained tradition of civil activism. There, too, NGOs cannot capitalize on a congruence of interests between their own agenda and international and/or Western agendas, because they are (a) too weak structurally, and (b) easily delegitimized by their government precisely at points where such a congruence occurs.

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Index Note: Page numbers in italic refer to tables. Abadhy sect, 85, 104

34, 35–36, 47; UAE’s reassertion of claim

abandonment, 56–57

to, 59

Abbas, Mahmoud, 181

Abu Sa‘fah offshore oil field agreement,

Abbas I (shah of Iran), 88

39–40

Abdullah (king of Saudi Arabia). See Al

activism: in Bahrain, 249; Iranian foment-

Sa‘ud, ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-Aziz (king of

ing of, 58; in Kuwait, 248; opposition to

Saudi Arabia)

US military in Gulf, 61; penalty for in

Abdallah (prince of Transjordan), 171

GCC states, 303n48; upsurge following

Abu Dhabi: boundary disputes with Saudi

cold war, 82. See also demonstrations; dis-

Arabia, 26; al-Buraymi oasis dispute, 21,

sident movements

37–38, 39, 48, 263n14; control of Halul

Afghanistan: Al-Qaeda’s operations in, 8–9,

Island and, 263n10; dispute between Iran/

152; attraction to political Islam, 137;

Sharjah over, 26; dispute over Khawr Al

bonds with other West Asian states, 17,

‘Udayd region, 27, 33–34, 38, 49; economy

121–22, 136, 137; civil war in, 147, 159,

of, 304n59; heterogeneous population of,

160–61; effects of US invasion of, 120;

241; Indian workers in, 295n39; relations

fluidity of foreign policy of, 12; formation

with Bahrain, 48; relations with Qatar,

of Taliban, 147; India’s security buffer

27, 34, 264n18; relations with Russia, 67;

against, 228; influence on US policy in

ruler of as federation president, 246; US

Persian Gulf, 17; jihadist movement in,

military presence in, 60

155; Northern Alliance’s fight against

Abu Dhabi TV, 246

Taliban, 229; as part of pro-US security

Abu Musa: British role in settlement of

belt around Iran, 191; as part of West

dispute, 291n82; dispute between

Asia, 17, 120; reemergence of Taliban,

Iran/Sharjah over, 22, 35–36, 49, 89,

123, 138; refugees from, 146, 147; relations

185, 186, 203; effect on Saudi claims to

with Iran, 2, 11, 12, 19, 122–23, 184–85;

al-Buraymi oasis, 38; Iranian manifest

Russian withdrawal from, 98; Saudi aid

destiny and, 48; Iranian seizure of, 94,

to political groups in, 178; Soviet invasion

104, 109, 203–4; strategic significance of,

of, 17, 121, 126–27, 152; Soviet withdrawal

339

340

|

Index

Afghanistan (cont.)

organization of by returning mujahideen,

from, 95, 98, 101, 129; training of Tajiki-

12–13, 95, 98, 101, 129; as outgrowth of

stani fighters in, 147; US invasion of, 6, 10,

political Islam, 137; in Pakistan, 8; prob-

120, 122, 130, 131, 134, 191; US response

lems arising from Iraq confl ict, 155–56;

to Soviet invasion of, 17, 121

propaganda concerning US involvement

AFPAK. See Afghanistan; Pakistan

in Iraq, 154–55; response to Saudi-US

Africa, 86, 126, 210, 212, 232

relations, 98–99; role of political Islam in,

Ahmad bin ‘Ali (emir of Qatar), 27

8–9; in Saudi Arabia, 153; September 11

Ahmadinejad, Mahmud: aid to Hizbullah/

attacks on US, 17, 65, 68, 92–93, 129–30,

Hamas, 136; comments concerning Israel,

131–33, 179, 211–12; spread of, 12–13; as

136, 289n52; criticism of, 62; diplomatic

threat to GCC states, 10–11. See also Bin

style of, 197; invitation to GCC summit,

Laden, Usama; Salafi Islamists

106, 129; al-Maliki’s meeting with, 103;

American Regional Headquarters, 100

meeting with Abdullah, 105, 163, 180,

anarchic environment: appropriate form

197; meeting with Putin, 67; populist

for analysis of foreign policies of, 72–76;

rhetoric of, 184, 198–99, 205; pragmatic

choice between strategic partnerships/

approach to foreign policy, 190; proposal

regional insularity, 14, 51, 63–71; manage-

for Gulf security, 118, 119, 129; relations

ment of relations with allies/adversaries,

with EU/US, 205; relations with Khame-

51, 56–61, 70, 71, 218–19; security dilem-

nei, 188; Saudi invitation to pilgrimage,

mas in, 50–51; security-producing pro-

58; tension between Bush and, 12; visits to

grams, 51–56; trade-off between reliance

Gulf states, 129

on outside powers/maintaining domestic

air defense, 53–55, 64–65, 66, 98, 113, 221 air routes, 25, 28

stability, 51, 61–63, 70, 71, 82–83, 97–108, 218, 243, 254

Alawite regime, 157

Ancel, Jacques, 28

Albania, 147, 156

Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 123

Algeria, 151, 197

Anglo-Ottoman convention (1913), 28

Algiers Accord (1975), 43, 200, 290n65

Anglo-Qatar Treaty (1916), 77

al-Alkim, Hassan Hamdan, 76, 80–81, 84

Anglo-Saudi agreement (1927), 28–29, 78

alliance dilemma, 14, 51, 56–61, 70, 71,

Angola, 160

218–19 alliances, 10–12, 78–81, 112–16. See also

Annapolis peace talks, 116 antecedent boundaries, 29

free-trade agreements; Gulf Cooperation

anthropogeographic boundaries, 28, 29

Council (GCC); security agreements;

anti-Americanism: Al-Qaeda’s propaganda,

specific state in alliance

152; Bahrain’s vulnerability to, 165; as

Allison, Graham, 80

core of Islamist revolutionary ideology,

Al-Qaeda: in Afghanistan, 8, 147; challenge to

171; effect on Saudi security policies, 179;

Al Saud regime, 101, 171–72, 176, 182; as

in Iran, 91; as result of US occupation of

challenge to Persian Gulf security, 12–13;

Iraq, 122, 133, 281n52; of Sunni’s, 180,

in Iraq, 8, 144, 150–51, 154–56, 180–81;

253; terrorism and, 151–52; US support

Index

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341

of Israel and, 137; in West Asia, 137, 141,

population of, 207, 209; reliance on OPEC

281n52

oil, 6; renewed relations with Persian

AQI. See Al-Qaeda, in Iraq Arab cold war (1950s/1960s), 121–22 Arab conservative monarchies, 121–22. See also Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)

Gulf, 19, 207–12, 219. See also China; India; West Asia ‘Asir, 44–46, 48, 201 al-‘Attiyah, Abd al-Rahman, 112

Arabian Oil Company, 44

Australia, 68

Arabism, 17, 121–22, 136, 170

autocracy, 236–37. See also monarchies

Arab-Israeli confl ict (1956), 145, 157

autonomy: effect of bandwagoning on, 88;

Arab-Israeli confl ict (1967), 141, 145, 157, 173

of GCC states, 121; Qatari mediation of

Arab-Israeli confl ict (1973), 3

political crisis expressing, 110–11; rentier-

Al-‘Arabiyah Island, 43–44

ism and, 16; of rulers of emirates, 16, 246;

al-Arabiyya TV, 246

Saudi hegemony and, 88, 89, 90; security

Arab League, 25–26, 36, 173, 204

vs., 87–90; US attitude toward Iranian

Arab League summit, 59

nuclear program and, 135. See also sover-

Arab nationalism: impact on GCC’s percep-

eignty of states of Persian Gulf

tion of US, 121; Nasser’s mobilization

Awakening movement, 154, 155, 181

against Israel, 171; political Islam as

Ayoob, Mohammed, xiii, 17, 120–43

antidote to, 76, 137; political Islam as

Azerbaijan, 68, 69–70, 145, 191

reincarnation of, 138; Saudi effort to balance against, 176, 178 Arab oil embargo (1973), 3, 17, 121, 125, 172, 259n3

Baabood, Abdullah, 81 Baghdad. See Iraq

Arab Peninsula, 173–75

Baghdad Pact, 123, 172

Arab world: Arab-Israeli confl ict (1956), 145,

Bahgat, Gawdat, 51

157; Arab-Israeli confl ict (1967), 141, 145,

Bahrain: Abu Sa‘fah offshore oil field agree-

157, 173; Arab-Israeli confl ict (1973), 3;

ment, 39–40; boundary disputes with

cross-border affi nity in, 156; pro-democ-

Qatar, 22, 27, 30–32; causeway between

racy activism in, 235, 252; view of Iranian

Qatar and, 32; concerns about Shi‘i

nuclear program, 136; view of US in, 141,

government in Iraq, 95, 139–40, 180,

281n52, 282n62; view of US invasion

200–201; constitution of, 248; decision-

of Iraq, 133. See also Gulf Cooperation

making process in, 79; defense agreement

Council (GCC); Middle East; West Asia

with US, 98; defense system, 53, 55–56;

Armenia, 69, 145

demand for democracy in, 302n37;

arms race, 52–56, 119, 222

economy of, 164–65; effect of Shi‘i Iraqi

al-Asad, Bashar, 116

leaders on, 140; establishment of GCC

al-Asad, Hafi z, 157, 159–60

and, 14; fears concerning Iran’s inten-

al-‘Asala, 255

tions, 54; free-trade agreement with US,

Asia: Middle Eastern investments in, 211;

63, 295n44; heterogeneous population

Muslims in, 209; oil consumption, 210;

of, 241; interfamilial competition in, 238;

342

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Bahrain (cont.)

Afghanistan on, 120; Iran-Saudi relations

internal economic situation, 86; internal

and, 195; Iran’s security strategy as, 184;

fissures in/state capacity of, 16; internal

Saudi security strategy as, 170, 176–77,

response to reliance on US troops, 61–62,

180–83; twin pillar strategy as, 9–10, 17,

218; international power of, 72; Iranian

91, 124–28, 195–96; US rejection of fol-

support of Shi‘i sect in, 76, 85, 89, 101,

lowing 9/11, 10, 92

190; Iranian-US relations and, 7–8;

Balkans, 152, 160

Iran’s claim to, 34, 48; Islamist groups

bandwagoning, 14–15, 74, 84, 87, 88

in, 252–56; Israeli question in, 253–54;

Basic Law (Saudi Arabia), 245

judicial system in, 300n27; monarchy

Ba‘thist regime, 41, 94. See also Husayn, Sad-

of, 30–31, 239, 240–41; NDI office in,

dam; Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988)

300n24; as part of pro-US security belt

Bause, F. Gregory, xiii

around Iran, 192; percentage of budget

Begin government, 161

from oil rents, 302n40; political debates

Beijing. See China

in, 252–56; political reform in, 19–20, 83,

Beirut summit, 59

234, 238–39, 243, 248–49, 251; popular

Belarus, 69

view of rentierism in, 302n41; potential

Bergen, Peter, 151

for spillover from Iraq in, 157, 158; pres-

Bin Laden, Usama: anti-Soviet struggle, 152;

sure on Al Khalifa regime in, 183; price of

challenge to Al Saud regime, 171; invita-

oil required to meet budget, 295n40; rela-

tion to Afghanistan, 147; organization

tions with Abu Dhabi, 48; relations with

of Al-Qaeda, 98; recruiting tactics, 152;

Iran, 58, 89, 116, 185, 205, 255; relations

Saudi desire for Taliban to break with,

with Iraq, 60–61; relations with Saudi

179; US occupation of Iraq and, 151; as

Arabia, 39–40, 63, 174; revolutionary movement in, 142; role in security system in Persian Gulf, 12; Shi‘i community in,

voice of Salafi Muslim movement, 178 Bin Sultan, Bandar (prince of Saudi Arabia), 105–6

95, 101, 157, 158, 165; source of domestic

Blue Line, 28, 45

challenges in, 76; trade with India, 217;

blue-water navy, 224–27

treatment of opposition to regime, 249,

B-MENA, 239, 300n24

303n48; US military presence in, 6, 8, 61,

Boggs, Stephen Whittemore, 28, 29

65, 126, 132

Bolivia, 186

Bahrain Center for Human Rights, 304n73

Bonn conference, 131

Bahraini Intifada, 252

Bosnia, 145, 146, 152, 160

Bahrain-Iran economic commission, 58

boundary lines of states of Persian Gulf:

Bahrain security conference, 135

Abu Musa/Tunbs Islands dispute, 22,

Bakhash, Shaul, 290n65

34–36, 38, 47, 48, 49, 59, 89, 94, 104, 109,

balance-of-power strategy: dual contain-

185, 186, 203–4, 291n82, 292n86; Abu

ment policy as, 9–10, 17, 91–92, 94, 99,

Sa‘fah offshore oil field agreement, 39–40;

130–33, 188; effects of First Gulf War on,

Al-‘Arabiyah/Farsi Islands agreement,

128–30; effects of US invasions of Iraq/

43–44; as aspect of state formation, 13, 21,

Index

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343

22–26, 29, 47; as assertions of historical

with ruling families in Persian Gulf, 2, 3,

rights, 13, 22–26, 28, 29, 30–31, 34–39,

9, 24–25, 77–78; terrorist attacks on, 151;

44–46, 47; Bahraini-Qatari disputes,

withdrawal from Gulf, 3, 9, 26–27, 33, 35,

30–32, 111; British role in development

46, 78, 91, 124

of, 24–25; al-Buraymi oasis dispute, 21,

British East India Company, 77

37–38, 48, 263n14; as claims to natural

British Political Resident (PRPG), 31, 77

resources, 13, 21–22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,

Broader Middle East and North Africa Initia-

35–36, 37, 39–47; classifications of, 28–29,

tive (B-MENA), 239, 300n24

47; development of concept of, 21–22;

Brookings Institute, 80

disputes between Iran/Saudi Arabia, 195;

Bulliet, Richard, 293n10

disputes over ‘Asir/Najran/Jizan, 44–46;

Bunduq oil field, 264n18

establishment of GCC and, 26; evolu-

al-Buraymi oasis dispute, 21, 37–38, 48,

tion of perceptions of/requirements for,

263n14

22–27; Hawar Islands dispute, 30–34; as

bureaucratic framework, 80–81

imperial remnants, 13, 29–30, 41–43, 45,

Al Bu Said, Qaboos bin Sa‘id (sultan of

47; Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute, 41–43; Khawr

Oman), 85, 244

Al‘Udayd region dispute, 22, 27, 33–34,

Al Bu Sa‘id family, 301n33

38, 47, 48, 49; legitimacy of claims to, 22,

Bush, George H. W., 91

262n1; as manifest destiny, 13, 26, 30,

Bush, George W.: Ahmadinejad’s letter to,

33–34, 48; as matter of personal prestige,

190; characterization of Iran, 131, 139,

27; as national security issue, 27; neutral

191, 292n92; doctrine of preventive war,

zones, 36, 38, 44; North Field gas field

132; perception of Iranian threat, 260n14;

agreement, 40–41, 89, 229; Oman-Yemen

shoe-throwing incident, 133; tension

border, 46–47; process of delineation of, 28–30; Qaru/Umm al-Maradim dispute,

between Ahmadinejad and, 12 Bush administration: concern about Iran’s

36–37; as strategic requirements, 27, 30,

nuclear threat, 205–6; counterterrorist

33–38, 42–43, 47; UAE-Omani boundary

strategy, 92; democratization efforts, 239;

disputes, 38–39, 111

policies on nuclear proliferation, 135;

Britain: abdication of role in West Asia, 17;

Saudi council on invasion of Iraq, 173

control of Abu Musa/Tunbs Islands, 203;

Bush Doctrine, 92, 100, 132

determination of national boundaries in

Byman, Daniel L., xiii, 8, 17–18, 144–68

Gulf, 21, 26–27, 28, 29, 31, 35, 37, 38–39, 41–42, 44, 263n10, 263n14; development of sovereign states in Persian Gulf, 24–25,

Cairo Accords, 149

26, 77; installation of Hashemite rulers

Camp David agreement, 172

in Iraq/Transjordan, 170; involvement in

Carter, Jimmy, 126

island control disputes, 291n82; Iranian

Carter Doctrine, 126–27

nationalization of Anglo-Iranian Oil

Caspian Sea, 62, 68, 69–70, 227–28

Company, 123; political influence in Per-

CENTCOM. See US Central Command

sian Gulf, 124; protectorate agreements

(CENTCOM)

344

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Center for Strategic and International Studies, 7 CENTO, 123

in following cold war, 82. See also NGOs (non-government organizations) civil war: in Afghanistan, 147, 159, 160–61; in

Chabahar-Faraj-Bam railway, 228

Bosnia, 145, 146, 152, 160; in Congo, 145,

Chabahar pot, 228

149, 160; history of spillover of, 145–49,

Chechnya, 145, 152

157; in Iraq, 144, 145, 146 (See also Second

Cheney, Dick, 102

Gulf War (US invasion of Iraq 2003)); in

China: contest between India and, 68;

Lebanon, 145, 149–50, 152, 157, 159–60,

energy consumption, 213, 294n24; fac-

161; neighborly interventions in, 159–64;

tors conditioning its role in Persian Gulf,

in Northern Ireland, 151; potential for

226–27; fight against piracy, 225–26;

spillover into neighboring states, 18,

goals for SCO, 69; Middle Eastern invest-

144–45; radicalization of neighboring

ments in, 211; military modernization

states, 156–58; refugees from, 146–50; in

efforts, 221–22, 233; opposition to US

Rwanda, 145, 148–49, 160; in Syria, 145,

invasion of Iraq, 205; rapprochement

157; in Tajikistan, 146, 147, 159; terrorism

between Japan and, 270n124; relations

linked to, 150–56; in Yemen, 175. See also

with India, 19, 223, 229, 233; relations with Iran, 64–66, 208, 215, 222, 227–28;

Iranian Revolution (1978–1979) classic security dilemma, 14, 51–56, 70, 71.

relations with Iraq, 65; relations with

See also nuclear program of Iran

Israel, 232; relations with Kuwait, 214;

Clinton administration, 10, 92, 130–31

relations with Pakistan, 221, 222; rela-

cold war, 90, 123

tions with Russia, 69; relations with

collective security approach (GCC): attempts

Saudi Arabia, 64, 66, 208–9, 214–15;

to forge, 1–2, 16; basis of, 96; benefits/

relations with UAE, 67, 214; relations

limitations of reliance on US for defense,

with US, 19, 205–6, 226, 230–32; role in

14–15, 95–108; challenges to GCC requir-

security system in Persian Gulf, 64, 208,

ing, 94–96; effectiveness of GCC, 14–15,

219–22, 232–33; strengthening of secu-

116–19; fencing off of borders as, 49; goals

rity of energy supply, 210–11, 214, 232;

for, 96; Iranian proposal, 129; modes of

strength of, 207; ties with Persian Gulf,

alliances, 112–16; preference for diplo-

19, 207–15; trade of, 212, 213, 213, 227;

macy over military confrontation, 108–12

view of US military presence in Middle East, 65, 228

Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), 69

chokepoints, 5, 30, 126, 259n7

commerce. See trade

citizenship, 25, 39, 252

communism, 76–77, 90–91, 123–25, 126–27

civil rights, 248

complex boundaries, 28

civil society: in Bahrain, 256; B-MENA

conciliation, 111–12, 129

initiative, 300n24; dynastic monopoly in,

confl ict resolution, 108–11, 235–36

240; effect of globalization without, 256;

Congo, 145, 146, 148–49, 160

in Egypt/Jordan, 306n94; in Kuwait, 248,

constructivism, 74–75

256; in Oman, 244; upsurge of activism

counterterrorism. See war on terror

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Cox, Sir Percy, 44

strategy, 92; effect of globalization on,

Croatia, 145, 160

237; GCC states’ concerns about, 100; of

Croatian Army, 160

Middle East, 143; NDI’s role in, 300n24

Cruickshank, Paul, 151

demographics, 84, 149–50, 156–58

Cuban Missile Crisis, 80

demonstrations: legality of in GCC states, 245, 246, 248, 304n72, 304n61; by migrant workers, 84, 304n61; opposition

al-Dafra air base, 60

to US military in Gulf, 61–62

Daharan air base, 100

Deputy Council (Bahrain), 248

Damascus Declaration, 115

Desert Storm. See First Gulf War (Iraqi inva-

Darfur, 159

sion of Kuwait 1990–1991)

David, Stephen, 74

Dessouki, Ali E. Hillal, 75

D‘awa, 201

al-Dhafra air base, 67

Dayton Accords, 160

Dhufar War, 46, 174

debating clubs, 20, 243–49

Dibba, 39

decision-making process: in autocracies,

Diego Garcia base, 126

236–37; Bahrain Shi‘a’s demand for role in,

diplomacy, 96, 108–12, 117, 188–90

252; in democracies, 235–36; effect of glo-

dirahs, 23, 29

balization on, 237; elite-level alliances and,

dissident movements, 62–63, 70, 75, 82–83,

15–16, 78–81, 240; in GCC monarchies, 243–44; impact of tribalism/Islam on,

252–56. See also activism; Al-Qaeda; Islamists

81–85; likelihood of change in Gulf states,

distribution problems, 238

93; political reforms and, 234, 249–51;

Doha. See Qatar

transition to democracy and, 234–35, 236,

dollar diplomacy, 86–87, 115

237; two-pronged approach to, 235

Dolphin gas pipeline, 34

defense. See alliances; external defense;

domestic policy-making, 19–20, 235, 254

security agreements; security dilemmas;

domestic political forces, 15–16, 75, 254

security system in Persian Gulf; weapons

domestic terrorism: challenge for GCC, 15;

procurement Delhi Declaration, 66 democracy: confl ict resolution and, 236,

in Iraq, 17–18, 144; return of Sunnis from Iraq, 95; rise of following fall of Ba‘thist regime, 94. See also Al-Qaeda

300n10; decision-making process and,

dual containment policy: Gulf regimes criti-

235–36; demand for in GCC states, 254,

cism of, 94, 99; Gulf states counter to,

302n37; likelihood of violence in transi-

188; Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and, 91–92,

tion to, 236; in UAE, 301n30

130–31; as replacement to twin pillars

democratic peace proposition, 235–37 democratization: 2011 pro-democracy activism in Arab world and, 235, 252; area of

strategy, 9–10; result of failure of, 10, 17, 131–33 Dubai: boundary dispute with Sharjah, 38;

change needed for, 237; Bush administra-

democracy in, 301n30; demonstrations

tion’s efforts, 239; as counterterrorism

in, 304n61; as entrepôt for region, 2, 204;

346

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Dubai (cont.)

Egypt: 1967 War agreements, 173; CENT-

feud with Abu Dhabi, 27, 38; foreign pol-

COM protection of, 126; civil society in,

icy decision-making in, 80; heterogeneous

306n94; concern about political Islam,

population of, 241; Indian companies

140; concerns over Shi‘i government in

in, 216; relations with Qatar, 48; ruler as

Iraq, 102; economy of, 175; Eisenhower

prime minister/president of UAE, 304n59

Doctrine and, 123; fall of Mubarak, 183;

Dubai International Financial Center, 213

GCC states’ relations with, 115; influence

al-Dulaimi, Saadun, 291n67

in judicial systems in GCC states, 300n27;

dynamic entrapment, 14, 56–57, 59–61, 70

Iraqi refugees in, 146; Israeli defeat of in

dynastic rule, 24, 79, 88, 239–43. See also

1967, 122, 141, 145, 173; military forces

monarchies

in Yemen, 173–74; as part of West Asia, 17, 120; peace treaty with Israel, 172, 173, 176, 179; population of, 175; relations with

East-East opportunity, 211

Saudi Arabia, 115, 116, 176; role in Arab

economic aid: to countries in civil war, 160;

cold war, 121–22; Saudi economic aid to,

to Egypt from Saudi Arabia, 173, 178;

173, 178; toppling of pro-Western regime

from GCC states, 86–87, 115; from Iran

in, 142; US alignment with Nasser, 172;

to Hizbullah/Hamas, 136; from Iran to

US weapons in, 98

Iraqi Shi‘a, 161; to Iraq, 87, 127, 163, 176, 178, 179, 289n48; as means of balancing

Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty (1979), 172, 173, 176, 179

powers in Arab region, 178; from Saudi

Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, 72, 75

Arabia to Afghani political groups, 178;

Eisenhower Doctrine (1957), 123–24

to Turkey, 165; from US to Iraq’s neigh-

elections: Al-Qaeda’s rejection of, 155; Aya-

bors, 164, 166 economy: of Abu Dhabi, 304n59; of Bahrain,

tollah’s recommendations, 255, 305n88, 306n89; call for in Bahrain, 83, 254;

39–40, 164–65; of Egypt, 175; GCC Look

effect on foreign policy in democracies,

East policy, 208–12; GCC ties with China,

235; in GCC states, 19–20, 83, 234, 243;

19, 207–8, 212–13; GCC ties with India,

in Kuwait, 83, 247, 304n71, 304n65; in

19, 207–8, 215–16, 217; impact of Iraqi

Oman, 83, 244; in Qatar, 83, 234, 246; in

invasion of Kuwait, 82; impact on foreign

Saudi Arabia, 234, 303n56; during transi-

policy, 85–87; of India, 224; of Iran, 107,

tion to democracy, 236; in UAE, 234, 246

175; Iranian ties with China, 227; Iranian

elite-level alliance networks, 79–80

ties with India, 229; of Iraq, 18, 144, 175;

elites. See ruling elites

of Jordan, 165; of Qatar, 295n40; of Saudi

Ethiopia, 160

Arabia, 87, 178; significance of oil in, 5; of

ethnic protest, 282n4

Syria, 175; ties between Iran/UAE, 204;

Europe, 6, 210, 219. See also specific nation

ties between Middle East/US, 214

European Union (EU): control of refugees

Ecuador, 186

in Yugoslav War, 159; involvement in

education, 1, 209, 215–16, 242, 302n41

Persian Gulf security, 2, 167; relations

Index

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347

with Iran, 188, 205; Turkey’s bid for mem-

effect on military strength in GCC states,

bership in, 166

52–53; effect on sociopolitical context

executive office: in autocracies, 236–37; com-

of GCC states, 82; end of twin pillars

petitiveness in selection of, 236; dynastic

strategy, 9–10, 17; as evidence of failure of

monopoly in, 240; effect of dominance of

economic aid to Iraq, 179; factors leading

over judiciary, 300n27; in GCC monar-

to, 22, 42, 128; GCC defense during, 14;

chies, 239–40; of Iran, 187; limitations on

GCC states’ involvement in, 48–49, 114,

in democracies, 235; reform requirements

243, 245; as indicator of volatility/signifi-

for, 20, 237, 251

cance of Persian Gulf, 3; introduction of

expatriate community: Asians in Persian

US troops throughout Persian Gulf, 97,

Gulf, 207, 211, 214; effect on foreign

128, 130; regional insulation during, 64;

policy, 84; Indians in Persian Gulf, 217,

Saudi compensation for regional support,

295n39; potential politicalization of, 238;

178; Saudi engineering of anti-Iraq coali-

as security concern, 293n10; Westerners

tion, 115; UN authorization of military

in Qatar, 300n22

intervention, 128; US troops in Saudi

external defense: internal stability and, 14, 51,

Arabia during, 61, 63, 97

61–63, 70, 71, 82–83, 95, 97, 98–108, 129,

fishing rights, 27, 29, 31, 33, 43

218, 243, 254; Iranian security proposal

“5-1” talks, 227

and, 111–12; necessity of, 97–99; politi-

foreign policy of Gulf Cooperative Council

cal reform pressures and, 238; regional

states: alliances (See alliance dilemma;

stability and, 103–8

alliances; free-trade agreements; security

ExxonMobil, 214

agreements; specific state in alliance); bureaucratic approach to, 80–81; of China, 218–22; constructivist approach

Fadlallah, Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein,

to, 74–75; effect of globalization on,

255, 306n89

237; effect of political reforms on, 20,

al-Faisal, Turki, 107

234, 237, 251, 256; elite-level alliances/

Farsi Islands, 43–44

decision-making process, 15–16, 78–81;

Farsi natural gas block, 229

forces accounting for diversity of, 15–16;

Fasht al-Dibal, 31

future of in GCC, 93; GCC ties with Asia,

Fatah, 109–10, 151, 181–82

207–12; geopolitical context of, 15, 87–90;

Al-Faysal, Prince Turki, 7

goals of, 88, 90; history and, 76–78;

Federal National Council (UAE), 246

internal stability and (See activism;

Federal Supreme Council (UAE), 246

dissident movements; internal stability;

fi nance, 2, 10, 57, 213, 217

Islamists; regime security; Sunni-Shi‘i

First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

sectarianism; terrorism); link to domestic

1990–1991): consequences of, 61–63, 128,

decision-making, 235; Look East policy,

129–30; effect on Iran-Iraq relations,

208–12; multilevel/multicausal analytical

200; effect on Iran-Saudi relations, 196;

framework, 72, 74, 75–76, 93; neo-realist

348

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foreign policy of Gulf Cooperative Council

generational outlook, 79, 81

states (cont.)

genocide, 145, 148–49

approach to, 73–74; realist perspective of,

geometric boundaries, 28

73, 74; rentier capacity and, 85–87; secu-

geopolitical context, 15, 87–90

rity as driving force of, 77; sociopolitical

Georgia, 54, 68, 69, 145

context, 15, 81–85; state capacity of GCC

Germany, 64, 205–6

states and, 16. See also Saudi security

Getty Oil, 44

strategy

Ghaffar, Mohammad Abdul, 218

foreign policy of India, 222–26

Ghalibaf, Mohammad Bagher, 193

foreign policy of Iran. See Iranian foreign/

Gharekhan, Chinmaya, 222

security policies foreign powers: alliances with GCC states

Gittings, John, 220 global disputes, 63, 68–70

(See alliances; free-trade agreements;

global economy, 5, 217

outside patronage vs. regional insularity;

globalization, 1, 237

security agreements); GCC foreign policy

Global War on Terror. See war on terror

as preventative of domination by, 88;

Goldman Sachs study, 216

impact on character/interstate challenges

Government of India, 24

in Gulf, 77, 82–83; security forces of GCC

Greece, 123

states, 303n47. See also Britain; China;

Green Movement, 206

European Union (EU); external defense;

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): alliance

India; outside patronage vs. regional

with US, 10–12; approach to Iran, 112,

insularity; Russia; United States

118–19; B-MENA initiative, 300n24;

France, 52–53, 67, 127, 151, 205–6

bonds with other West Asian states,

free-trade agreements: effect on monarchies

17, 121–22, 136; building of alternative

of GCC, 256; between GCC/Asian states,

security ties, 219; combined foreign

211; GCC’s plans for, 60–61, 63; Iranian

assets of, 295n 40; concept of territo-

proposal, 230; negotiations between

rial boundaries for, 21; concerns about

UAE/US, 60, 300n22; between Oman/US,

India-Iran ties, 228, 232; concerns about

244, 300n22; between US/Bahrain, 60–61,

Iran’s intentions, 54, 59, 88–89, 94,

63, 295n44, 300n22

95–96, 103–8; concerns about Iran-US

frigates, 53

relations, 7–8, 106–8, 132; concerns

Future Movement, 181

about sectarian violence, 94–95, 101–3; concerns about Shi‘i government in Iraq, 95, 102–3, 139–40, 180, 200–201;

Gandhi, Rajiv, 151

concerns about Sino-Iran ties, 227–28;

Gates, Robert, 104–5, 118, 135–36

concerns about US’s intentions, 95,

Gause, Gregory, xiii, 18, 169–83, 194, 286n3,

99–100, 122; confl ict management among

289n44

states of, 111–12; decision-making ability,

Gaza War (2008–2009), 254

250; democratization of, 92, 100, 143 (See

GCC. See Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)

also political reform); difficulties with

Index

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349

security architecture, 16–17, 112–19,

115, 117; renewed relations with Asia,

218 (See also alliances; external defense;

207–12; role in foreign policy formation

security dilemmas); domestic terrorism

of region/states, 90; role in Middle East,

and, 15, 116; effect of events in other

86–87; role in OPEC, 86; role in security

West Asian regions on, 17, 120–23; effect

system in Persian Gulf, 10–12, 14–15;

of global economy crisis on, 217; effect of

role of US in security of (See security

settlement of border disputes on internal

system in Persian Gulf); Saudi leader-

relations, 48; effects of US war on terror-

ship of, 174; security agreements with

ism, 122; establishment of, 14, 26, 89, 96,

US, 96, 98, 303n50; security dynamics,

127–28; expenditures on infrastructure,

218–19; Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism and, 15;

295n40; factors influencing perception of

ties with China, 19, 207–15, 226–27; ties

United States, 121; free-trade agreements

with India, 19, 207–8, 215–18, 296n59;

with Asian countries, 211; goals of, 14, 88,

understanding with Turkey, 67–68; view

96; heterogeneous populations of, 84–85;

of Iran’s nuclear program, 106–8, 135–36;

identity crisis of, 15; integration of states

view of US policies in Iraq, 99–103. See

of, 75; internal security apparatus of,

also boundary lines of states of Persian

243, 303n47; international power of, 72;

Gulf; foreign policy of Gulf Cooperative

invasion of Kuwait and, 9; Iran as threat

Council states; monarchies; Persian Gulf;

to, 10–11, 14, 15, 95–96, 116, 118, 190–91;

security dilemmas; security system in

Iranian proposal for security, 111–12,

Persian Gulf; specific state

118, 119, 129, 191; Iran’s perception of

Gulf of Aden, 225–26

threat of, 192; Iraq as threat to, 14, 15;

Gulf Research Institute, 80

Iraqi refugees in, 146; Look East policy,

Gulf Scenario, The (Bulliet), 293n10

208–12; military strength of, 303n49;

Gulf Security Dialogue, 104–5

modes of alliances, 112–16; non-oil trade

Gulf War. See First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion

with India, 216; oil reserves of, 3, 4–5;

of Kuwait 1990–1991); Iran-Iraq War

opposition to US attitudes toward Iran,

(1980–1988); Second Gulf War (US inva-

103–8; percentage of world petroleum provided by, 5; plans for free-trade area,

sion of Iraq 2003) Gwadar, 220

60–61, 63; political reform in, 243–51, 256; potential for spillover of confl ict in Iraq, 18, 101, 144, 145–46, 150, 153–56,

Halliday, Fred, 290n60

157–58, 161–63; preference for diplomacy

Hamas: attacks on Israel, 182; Iranian sup-

over military confrontation, 108–12,

port of, 104, 136–37, 277n23; leadership in

117, 118–19; public view of US presence

Palestinian territories, 181–82; relations

in Gulf, 95; relations with Iran, 57–58,

with Al-Qaeda, 155; Saudi intervention in

103–8, 117, 118, 129, 135–36, 194, 205,

confl ict, 109–10, 180, 181–82

230, 232; relations with Iraq, 102–3;

al-Hariri, Rafi k, 115

relations with non-GCC states, 48–49;

al-Hariri, Saad, 181

reliance on external defense, 84, 97–108,

Hartshorne, Richard, 29

350

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Hashemites, 170–71, 177

Ibadhi sect, 104

Hawar Islands, 31–32

Ibn Sa‘ud, 30

Hinduja Group, 229

Idiris emirs, 45

Hinnebusch, Raymond A., 72, 74, 75

IDP. See internally displaced people (IDP)

historical rights: Bahraini-Qatar bound-

imperialism, 2, 9–13, 17, 95, 124, 130–33,

ary disputes and, 31; al-Buraymi oasis

137–39. See also Britain

dispute, 37–38; control of Abu Dhabi

Incirlik air base, 132

and, 26; control of Khwar Al ‘Udayd

independence, 25, 26–27, 41

and, 33–34; establishment of boundary

India: defense expenditures, 296n63;

lines and, 13, 28, 29, 47; Iranian claim to

economic ties with Persian Gulf, 207–8,

Bahrain and, 34; Qaru/Umm al-Maradim

215–18, 296n59; energy consumption

dispute over, 36–37

of, 294n24; fight against piracy, 225;

Hizbullah: bid for power in Lebanon, 110–11,

free-trade agreement with GCC states,

115, 181; creation of, 152; fighters in Iraq,

211; inclusion in SCO, 69; link to GCC,

101; Iranian support of, 91, 104, 106, 136,

19; Middle Eastern investments in, 211;

186; Israeli-Hizbullah War, 109, 115,

military modernization efforts, 223–25,

122, 141; Saudi intervention in confl ict,

233; need for investments, 293n12;

109–10, 180, 181–82; siege in Beirut,

opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, 229;

115–16; Syrian support of, 115

Persian Gulf as fi rst line of defense for, 77;

Holland, 77

relations with China, 68, 223, 229, 233;

hostage crisis in Iran, 91, 126

relations with Iran, 66–67, 208, 228–29,

Hu Jintao, 233

231; relations with Iraq, 65; relations

humanitarianism, 159

with Israel, 232; relations with Saudi

human rights, 245, 303n53, 303n56

Arabia, 66, 208–9; relations with US, 19,

Husayn (king of Jordan), 179

230–32; role in security system in Persian

Husayn, Saddam: aid from Jordan/Syria/

Gulf, 208, 219, 222–25, 232–33, 296n59;

Kuwait, 163, 289n48; aid from Saudi

strategic significance of Persian Gulf to,

Arabia, 127, 163, 176, 178, 179, 289n48;

3; strengthening of security of energy

apology to Kuwait/Qatar, 60; claim to

supply, 210–11, 232; strength of, 207; trade

Kuwait, 42; concessions to Iran during

partners of, 215, 229; trade with GCC

invasion of Kuwait, 200; dispute over

states, 216, 217

Abu Musa/Tunbs Islands and, 36; effects

Indian External Affairs Minister, 215–16

of overthrow of, 11, 60, 94–95, 129, 130,

Indian Ocean, 65, 125, 220, 223–25

134, 162, 180, 200; invasion of Iran, 127,

Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), 225

177, 199; invasion of Kuwait, 82, 97,

Indian Oil Corporation, 229

176, 179; response to Algiers Accord,

Indonesia, 65, 210

290n65; as security threat in Gulf, 94; US

Indyk, Martin, 105

invasion of Iraq and, 132; US support of,

information technology, 209

127, 128

infrastructure: construction in Bahrain’s

Hutus, 148–49

Shi‘i communities, 252; construction in

Index Iran, 227, 228; development in Persian Gulf states, 1, 295n40; India’s need of investments for, 293n12; refugees’ strain on, 150; Saudi expenditures on, 295n40 Institute of International Finance (IIF), 295n40

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351

invasion of Iraq. See Second Gulf War (US invasion of Iraq 2003) invasion of Kuwait. See First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 1990–1991) investments: of China in oil, 214; of GCC

intellectuals, 80

states, 86–87, 211, 217, 295n40; of India

intelligence systems, 113–14

in Persian Gulf, 214, 215–16; India’s need,

inter-Arab summit (2007), 105

293n12; Kuwaiti National Assembly’s

interdynastic power struggles, 79–80

control of, 247; of UAE in India, 215

Internally displaced people (IDP), 146

Iran: Al-‘Arabiyah/Farsi Islands agreement,

internal stability: economic aid to strengthen,

43–44; assertion of Arab leadership, 178;

165; effect of political reforms on, 234–35;

attack on US embassy/hostage taking, 91,

foreign policy in Persian Gulf states and,

126; boundary dispute with Saudi Arabia,

289n44; in Iraq, 18, 144; of Pakistan,

195; boycott of hajj, 196; Bush’s perception

160–61; potential spillover of confl ict

of threat of, 260n14; challenge to Al Saud

from Iraq, 18, 101, 144, 145–46, 150,

regime, 171, 173, 176; claim to Bahrain,

153–56, 157–58, 161–63; refugees’ effect

34, 48; concerns about US intentions,

on, 145–50; regime stability and, 170;

134–35; constitution of, 186–87; criticism

reliance on external defense and, 14, 51,

of Gulf states’ support of US occupation

61–63, 70–71, 84, 95, 98–108, 117, 129,

of Iraq, 95; dispute over Abu Musa/Tunbs

254; Saudi-American relations and, 129,

Islands, 22, 34–36, 41, 48, 49, 59, 89, 94,

171–72; security forces with GCC states

104, 109, 185, 186, 203–4, 291n82, 292n86;

for, 48, 243; US in Iraq and, 163; US poli-

economy of, 107, 175; executive office of,

cies affecting, 95, 137–41, 243; welfare

187; expected response to US attack on, 7,

systems’ effect on, 86. See also civil war;

106, 107; GCC-Asia connection and, 209;

regime security; Sunni-Shi‘i sectarian-

GCC’s opposition to US attitudes toward,

ism; terrorism

103–8; GCC states’ fears concerning, 54,

International Atomic Energy Agency, 229

59, 88–89, 95–96, 106–8; Green Move-

international community membership, 25

ment, 206; influence in Lebanon, 91, 104,

International Court of Justice (ICJ), 32, 104,

105, 109, 186; internal response to reliance

204

on Russia, 62; Iraqi refugees in, 146, 150,

International Energy Agency, 5, 213

162; in Islamic Conference Organization,

International Energy Outlook, 210, 294n24

176; Islamic revolution in, 3, 9, 82, 89,

International Maritime Bureau, 225

91, 124, 125–28; as leader among Arab

international relations within Persian Gulf. See

states, 134, 136, 143, 190; location/global

boundary lines of states of Persian Gulf

positioning of, 6; migrant workers from in

Internet, 245, 255

GCC states, 241; military strength of, 134;

invasion of Afghanistan: by Soviet Union,

need for change in US policy toward, 142;

121, 126–27; by US, 6, 10, 120, 122,

North Field gas field agreement, 40–41,

129–30, 131, 134, 191

89, 229; oil/natural gas reserves, 3, 4, 107;

352

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Iran (cont.)

view of in Arab world, 282n62; view of US

as pole in security system in Persian Gulf,

in, 124, 228. See also Iranian foreign/secu-

10; political influence in Persian Gulf,

rity policies; Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988);

238–39; position on OPEC production/

nuclear program in Iran

prices, 197; potential for spillover from

Iranian foreign/security policies: in Africa/

Iraq in, 157, 200; problems in, 182; rela-

Latin America, 186; agreements with

tions with Afghanistan, 11, 12, 185, 186;

India, 66; alliance with Syria, 180; assis-

relations with Bahrain, 89; relations with

tance to Oman in Dhufar rebellion, 174;

Dutch, 77; relations with GCC states, 117,

attempt to contain Iraqi Ba‘thist regime,

118, 135, 185, 194, 205, 230, 232; relations

195; avoidance of reliance on outside

with Iraq, 11, 12, 19, 103, 139, 180, 186,

defense, 62; China/India’s approach to

194, 291n67; relations with Oman, 104,

GCC and, 19; cultivation of Islamist

105; relations with Qatar, 40, 41, 89,

militant opposition, 76, 85, 89, 101, 109,

103–4, 105; relations with Saudi Arabia,

190, 196; defense system, 18, 54, 55–56,

57, 58, 59, 105, 163, 177, 194, 195–99, 208;

113, 175, 198–99, 220, 303n49; delib-

relations with UAE, 58, 59, 89, 104, 109,

erations concerning crisis in Lebanon,

116, 185, 186, 194, 203–4; relations with

59; discouraging intervention in Iraq,

US, 2, 3, 6–7, 12, 91, 123–24, 131, 132, 188,

166–67; effect of Arab-Israeli confl ict on,

190, 193–94, 205, 227, 229–30, 286n1;

288n39; effects of alliances with outside

response to Algiers Accord, 290n65; role

patrons, 69–70; factors affecting, 185–90;

in invasion of Afghanistan, 131; role of

fall of Saddam Husayn and, 11, 60, 129,

political Islam in, 8; sanctions imposed

130, 134–35, 162, 180, 200–201; influence

by US, 91–92, 107, 131, 204, 227; Saudi

in Bahrain, 58, 85, 89, 101, 190, 255; influ-

efforts to balance power of, 180–83; sup-

ence in Iraq/Afghanistan, 2, 122–23, 133,

port of Hamas, 104, 109, 136–37, 277n23;

180; influence on Hizbullah/Hamas, 104,

support of Hizbullah, 60, 91, 104, 106,

136, 186; influence on Syria, 104, 277n23;

136, 186; threat perceptions in, 191–92; as

intervention in Iraq, 161–63; involvement

threat to GCC states, 10–11, 14, 15, 88–89,

in Afghani civil war, 131, 159, 160, 191;

95–96, 103–8, 116, 118, 190–91; as threat

involvement in Iraq, 163; mobilization of

to Israel, 91, 92, 109, 173, 190; trade of,

Shi‘i discontent, 58, 85, 89, 101, 174, 190;

227, 229; unrest in Kurdistan, 157, 158; US

neither East nor West influences in, 64;

dual containment policy, 9–10, 17, 91–92,

normative/idealistic approach, 8, 188,

94, 99, 130–33, 188; US elimination of

189, 192; opposition to Soviet presence

enemies of, 11, 60, 129, 130, 134, 162, 180,

in Persian Gulf, 195; as pole in security

200; US overthrow of Mossadegh govern-

system in Persian Gulf, 10, 185, 186;

ment, 123; US reliance on for security

pragmatic approach, 8, 11, 18–19, 188–89,

in Persian Gulf, 9, 17, 91, 94, 99, 124–26,

192, 197–98, 201–2, 205; proposal for Per-

130–31, 188, 195–96; US view of, 91–92,

sian Gulf security, 111–12, 118, 119, 191;

131, 139, 191, 292nn91–92; view of exter-

regional military/diplomatic position, 18,

nal powers in Persian Gulf, 191–93, 198;

184, 190–94; relations with China, 64–66,

Index

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353

208, 215, 222, 227–28; relations with

during, 194; Kuwaiti aid to Iraq during,

GCC states, 41, 57, 89–90, 186; relations

127; rationale for, 290n64; Saudi aid to

with India, 17, 65, 66–67, 208, 228–29,

Iraq during, 127, 163, 176, 177, 178, 179,

231; relations with Israel, 2, 6–8, 286n1;

196, 289n48; Saudi position on, 79; threat

relations with neighbors, 194–95, 205–6;

to oil supply routes, 90; US involvement

relations with Pakistan, 12; relations with

in, 61, 91, 97, 127, 196, 289n49

Russia, 62, 66, 67; relations with Turkey,

Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, 229

163; role in US invasion of Afghanistan,

Iraq: Al-Qaeda in, 8–9, 144, 150–51, 154–56;

131; the Saudi factor, 19, 184–85, 195–99;

anti-Americanism in, 133; Arab nation-

Saudi security strategy vs., 6; security

alist mobilization in, 171; assistance

agreements with GCC states, 57–59; soft

from Russia, 64; challenge to Al Saud

approach to GCC states, 128–29; toward

regime, 176; claim to Kuwait, 22, 41–43;

Iraq, 199–202; toward UAE, 202; US effect

consequences of civil war, 145; democ-

on, 19, 184–85, 191–93, 287n28, 290n60;

ratization of, 100; dispute over Abu

view of US’s role in, 7. See also nuclear

Musa/Tunbs Islands and, 36; domestic

program of Iran

terrorism in, 144; economy of, 18, 144,

Iranian Revolution (1978–1979): challenge

175; ethnic purging in cities, 146; fences

to Al Saud regime, 171; effect on Gulf

along borders of, 49; fluidity of foreign

security arrangements, 91, 174; effect

policy of, 12; GCC view of US policies

on Iran-Saudi relations, 85, 196; effect

in, 99–103; Hashemite rulers of, 170–71;

on Iran-US relations, 9, 196; effect on

internal divisions, 18; internally displaced

sociopolitical context of GCC states, 82;

people in, 146; Iran/Saudi Arabia’s

effect on US policies in Persian Gulf, 91,

attempt to contain Ba‘thist regime, 195;

125–28; establishment of GCC and, 89;

Islamic extremists in, 109, 139; Japanese

as indicator of volatility/significance of

troops in, 65; Kurds in, 163; middle/upper

Persian Gulf, 3; precipitation of Iran-Iraq

classes of, 18, 144, 147; military strength

War, 199; as product of US intervention

of, 175, 220; neighborly intervention in,

in Iran, 124; role of Islam in, 76

18; neutral zone with Saudi Arabia, 44;

Iranian Revolutionary Guard, 101

oil/natural gas reserves, 3, 4; as part of

Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), 163; causes/pro-

pro-US security belt around Iran, 191;

cess/outcome of, 199–200; Chinese arms

political impact in Persian Gulf, 238–39;

sales, 220; costs of, 199; economic aid

position on OPEC production/prices, 197;

from GCC states during, 87; economic aid

potential for spillover of confl ict in, 18,

from Jordan/Syria/Kuwait during, 163;

101, 144, 145–46, 150, 153–56, 157–58,

effect on Gulf security arrangements, 90,

161–63; refugees from, 18, 146, 150; rela-

174; effect on US policies in Persian Gulf,

tions with Asian states, 65; relations with

91, 97, 196, 289n46; establishment of GCC

GCC states, 59–61, 102–3; relations with

and, 14; impact on Iranian image, 190;

Iran, 2, 11, 12, 19, 103, 104, 105, 122, 139,

as indicator of volatility/significance of

161–63, 180, 184–85, 186, 194, 199–202,

Persian Gulf, 3; Iranian regional policies

291n67; role of political Islam in, 8; rule

354

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Index

Iraq (cont.) of law in, 18, 144; Saudi-Iranian contest

Islamists; Shi‘i sect; Sunni sect; SunniShi‘i sectarianism; Wahhabism

in, 180; Saudi relations with, 177; Shi‘i

Islamic Armed Group (GIA), 151

community in, 161–62; Shi‘i government

Islamic Conference Organization, 176, 178

in, 95, 102–3, 144, 180, 200–201; state-

Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, 54, 152

building process in, 8; Sunni community

Islamist political groups: anti-Americanism

in, 163; Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism in, 101, 102, 109, 133, 144, 154, 157, 163; terrorism in, 17–18, 144, 153, 158, 167–68; terrorist

of, 137–38; in Bahrain, 234–35, 237; Saudi support of in Afghanistan, 178, 179 Islamists: anti-Americanism of, 138, 151–52;

activities of Sunnis from, 153; as threat to

bandwagoning as defense against, 87, 88;

GCC states, 14, 15, 94; as threat to Israel,

challenge to Al Saud regime, 171; clash

92; UN sanctions imposed against, 91,

with police in Kuwait, 300n22; migra-

94, 115, 131; US dual containment policy,

tion to Iraq/return to GCC states, 95; in

9–10, 17, 91–92, 94, 99, 130–33, 188; US

Pakistan, 147; response to US troops in

twin pillars strategy, 9–10, 17, 91, 127–30;

Gulf states, 62, 63, 82, 97, 98–99, 129; in

US withdrawal from, 133, 154–55, 201;

Saudi Arabia, 138, 153; terrorist activities

warlordism in, 18, 144. See also First Gulf

of, 151–52; as threat to US military instal-

War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 1990–

lations in Persian Gulf, 97; transnational

1991); Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988); Second

linkages between groups, 252–56, 306n93;

Gulf War (US invasion of Iraq 2003)

as voice of Pashtun nationalism, 138.

Iraqi-Saudi Neutral Zone, 44

See also political Islam; Salafi Islamists;

Iraqi Study Group (US), 102

Taliban

Iraq-Kuwaiti War. See First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 1990–1991) Iraq-US War. See Second Gulf War (US invasion of Iraq 2003)

isolationism, 85. See also regional insularity Israel: Abdullah’s peace initiative, 109–10, 115; Ahmadinejad’s comments concerning, 136, 289n49; Annapolis peace talks,

Irish Republican Army, 151, 156

116; Arab-Israeli confl ict (1956), 145, 157;

Islam: as bond between states of West Asia,

Arab-Israeli confl ict (1967), 141, 145, 157,

17, 121–22, 136, 137–39, 170; effect on

173; Arab-Israeli confl ict (1973), 3; Arab

GCC foreign policy, 15, 81–84; Iranian

nationalist mobilization against, 171;

promotion of solidarity, 186–87, 188;

China/India’s approach to GCC and, 19;

Iranian Revolution and, 3, 9, 82, 89, 91,

defeat of Egypt/Syria in 1967, 122, 141,

124, 125–28; Iranian-Saudi relations and,

145, 173; effect of occupation of Palestine

195, 289n43; in Oman, 85, 104, 301n33;

on Arab states, 137; impact on GCC’s

regime legitimacy and, 83; Saudi Arabia’s

view of US policy, 92–93, 106–7; interven-

significance for, 8–9, 87; Saudi promotion

tion in Lebanese civil war, 159, 160, 161;

of, 178; Sunni-Shi‘i division, 76; as unify-

Iranian threat to, 91, 92; Iran’s perspec-

ing/divisive force among GCC states, 15,

tive on threat of, 192; Israeli-Hizbullah

76–77; US policies and, 137–39. See also

War, 109, 115, 122; lobbying for invasion

Islamists; Kurds; political Islam; Salafi

of Iraq, 132; military strength of, 175;

Index

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355

nuclear stockpiling in, 106–7, 118, 135,

mobilization in, 171; oil reserves, 4; poli-

136; oil reserves, 4; Palestinian refugees’

cies discouraging intervention in Iraq,

attacks on, 145, 148, 149, 151, 152, 182;

166; potential for spillover from Iraq in,

peace with Egypt, 179; perceptions of US

157–58; refugees from, 145, 149–50; refu-

invasion/occupation of Iraq and, 133;

gees in, 18, 146, 150, 165; relations with

relations with Bahrain, 253–54; relations

US, 163; Sunni fighters in Iraq from, 101.

with China/India, 232; Saudi oil embargo

See also Transjordan

against US support of, 172; Saudi security

judiciary, 240, 245, 249, 300n27

strategy toward, 173; Saudi support of

Juleid, Fawzi, 300n24

Arab states in confl ict with, 178; tensions between Iran and, 2, 6–8, 286n1; US support of against Hizbullah, 141; US

Kabila, Laurent, 149

weapons in, 98

Kamrava, Mehran, xiv, 1–20, 184–206, 218

Israeli-Hizbullah War (2006), 109, 115, 122, 141, 181

Karzai government, 123, 131, 138 Kashmir, 152

Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 145, 157

Kazakhstan, 68, 69, 126

Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative (2002),

Kechichian, Joseph, 85

109–10, 115

Al Khalifa, Abdalaziz bin Mubarak, 301n30 al Khalifa, Hamad bin ‘Isa (king of Bahrain), 7, 27, 48, 58, 79, 248

Janardhan, N., xiii–xiv, 19, 207–33

al Khalifah, Khalid bin Ahmad, 254

Japan: free-trade agreement with GCC states,

Al Khalifah family, 27, 31, 183

211; involvement in First Gulf War, 64;

Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali: involvement in

involvement in Second Gulf War, 65,

foreign policy, 187–88; meeting with

66; rapprochement between China and,

al-Maliki, 103; meeting with Russian

270n124; relations with Russia, 68; rela-

envoys, 67; normative/idealist foreign

tions with Saudi Arabia, 209

policy rhetoric, 286n14; political follow-

Jaysh al-Mahdi, 154 al-Jazeera television, 111, 246–47, 295n44

ers, 306n89; reorientation of allegiance to, 255; representatives in Bahrain, 305n87

Jervis, Robert, 51

Kharrazi, Kamal, 287n28

Jiang Zemin, 65

Khatami, Muhammad, 65, 131, 188, 190,

jihadist terrorism. See Al-Qaeda; terrorism Jizan, 44–46, 48

196–97 Khawr Al‘Udayd region dispute: Abu Dhabi’s

Joint Declaration, 233

dissatisfaction with resolution of, 49;

Jones, Clive, 61

basis of claims to, 47, 48; dispute over

Jordan: civil war in, 145; concern about

control of, 22, 33–34, 38; strategic signifi-

political Islam, 140; concerns over Shi‘i

cance of, 27

government in Iraq, 102; economy of, 165;

Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 152, 196

intervention in Iraq, 162–63; monarchy

Khuja, Abd al-Aziz, 110

of, 239, 241–42; Nasser’s Arab nationalist

kingships, 3

356

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Index

Klare, Michael, 126

19–20, 83, 234–35, 238–39, 243, 247–48,

knowledge-based economies, 209, 216

251; position on OPEC production/prices,

Koch, Christian, 11

197; potential for spillover from Iraq in,

Korany, Bahgat, 75

157; price of oil required to meet budget,

Kosovo, 145, 146, 147, 156

295n40; Qaru/Umm al-Maradim dispute,

Kosovo Liberation Army, 156

36–37; refugees in, 165; relations with

Kostiner, Joseph, xiv, 11, 14, 16, 94–119

Iran, 57–58, 185, 205; relations with Iraq,

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 162, 163

59, 60, 116, 127; relations with Saudi Ara-

Kurds, 157, 158, 162, 163, 201

bia, 36–37, 174; role in Iran-Iraq War, 127,

Kuwait: aid donations/investments of, 86–87,

163, 289n48; role in security system in

127, 289n48; approach to regional con-

Persian Gulf, 12; Shi‘i community in, 95,

fl icts, 108, 111; Al-‘Arabiyah/Farsi Islands

157, 165; sovereignty of tribal leaders in,

agreement, 43–44; attacks on US soldiers

23; support for US invasion/occupation of

in, 300n22; boundary dispute with Saudi

Iraq, 100; support of Husayn, 127; trade

Arabia, 26; concerns about Shi‘i govern-

ties to China, 214; trade with India, 217;

ment in Iraq, 95, 139–40, 180, 200–201;

US military presence in, 6, 60, 65, 132

constitution of, 247; defense agree-

Kuwaiti-Saudi Neutral Zone, 44

ment with US, 64, 98; defense system,

Kuwait Oil Company, 43, 44

53, 55, 98, 112; demand for democracy

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, 214

in, 302n37; effect of Iraqi refugees in,

Kyrgyzstan, 68, 69

150; effect of Shi‘i Iraqi leaders on, 140; establishment of GCC and, 14; fears concerning Iran’s intentions, 54; fortifica-

labor force, 84

tion of Iraqi border, 49; heterogeneous

labor migration, 211. See also expatriate com-

population of, 241; internal fissures in/

munity; migrant workers

state capacity of, 16; internal response

Lawson, Fred H., xiv, 10, 13–14, 50–71

to reliance on US troops, 62; internal

leap-frog pattern of relations, 27, 33, 48

security apparatus of, 303n47; internal

Lebanon: bombing of US embassy in, 275n75;

stability, 142; international power of, 72;

civil war in, 145, 149–50, 152, 157,

intervention in Iraq, 162–63; invitation

159–60, 161; creation of Hizbullah in,

to US for protection of oil tankers, 196,

152; Doha-brokered agreement between

289n49; Iranian support of Shi‘i sect in,

parties in, 87; effect of refugees in, 149;

190; Iraq’s claim to, 22, 41–43; Islamist

Hizbullah’s bid for power in, 110–11, 115,

groups in, 252; measures to minimize

181; Iranian influence in, 91, 104, 105, 109,

radicalization, 165; monarchy of, 239,

186; Israeli-Hizbullah War, 109, 115, 122;

240–41; neutral zone with Saudi Arabia,

Israeli intervention in civil war of, 160;

36, 44; oil reserves, 4; as part of pro-US

killing of al-Hariri, 115; leadership of,

security belt around Iran, 191; Peninsula

181; Nasser’s Arab nationalist mobiliza-

Shield in, 114; percentage of budget from

tion in, 171; Palestinian refugees in, 145,

oil rents, 302n40; political reform in,

148; Qatari mediation of political crisis

Index

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in, 110–11; refugees from, 146; rise of

marja‘, 255, 305n87, 305n88

Fatah in, 182; Saudi-Iranian contest in,

market forces, 86–87

109–10, 117, 180, 181; terrorism in, 152

Maronite government, 149–50, 157

legitimacy of regimes: access to majlis and, 240–42; in Bahrain, 238–39, 253; based

357

Marxist National Democratic Front. (NDFLOAG), 302n37

on tribalism/Islam, 83; British protector-

McDonald’s effect, 265n25

ate agreements and, 3; GCC protection of,

McKinsey, 213

96; in GCC states, 238; Iranian challenge

Mecca, 87, 190, 196

to, 76, 174, 176; Islamic identity and, 76,

Mecca accords, 109–12, 117

98; of Kuwait, 238–39; political reforms

media: in Bahrain, 248; criticism of GCC,

enhancing, 249; relations between GCC/

115; effectiveness during transition to

Egypt/Syria and, 115; rentierism and,

democracy, 236; freedom of in Oman,

242–43; of Saudi Arabia, 95, 98–99,

244–45; Iranian/Iraqi propaganda

171–72, 173, 176, 179, 238; Saudi balance-

against Gulf states, 97–108, 115; al-Jazeera

of-power policy protecting, 176–77; Saudi

television coverage, 111, 246–47, 295n44;

reliance on US for defense and, 61, 98–99

in Kuwait, 248; Obama interview, 142; in

Legrenzi, Matteo, 113

Qatar, 247; in UAE, 246

liberals, 82

mediation initiatives, 109–11, 117

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 151

MEH. See Middle East Heartland (MEH)

Libya, 197

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU),

liquid natural gas (LNG). See oil/natural gas Look East policy, 208

67–68, 203, 291n82 Middle East: GCC attempts to develop strategic balances in, 115–16; influence on US policy in Persian Gulf, 17; investments of,

Macedonia, 145

211–12; oil consumption, 210; oil reserves,

Maghreb, 142

4–5; role of oil monarchies in, 86–87;

Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 224–25

Saudi security strategy for, 175–77; trade

Mahbubani, Kishore, 17

with US, 293n9

Mahdi Army, 202

Middle East Heartland (MEH), 17, 120, 137

majlis, 240–41

migrant workers, 8, 84, 245, 249, 304n61

Malaysia, 65, 66, 208–9, 210

militia groups, 147–48

al-Maliki, Nuri, 95, 103, 181

Milosevic, Slobodan, 160

Manama. See Bahrain

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Iran), 187

Manama Dialogue conference, 212

monarchies: advantages for political reform,

manifest destiny, 13, 26, 30, 33–34

240; of Bahrain, 239–40, 248–49; in

Mansfield, Edward D., 236–37, 252, 254

GCC states, 249–50; interdynastic

March 14 coalition, 109–10

power struggles, 79; Iranian challenge

maritime boundaries, 22, 29, 39–40, 43–44

to, 76, 174, 176; of Jordan/Morocco, 239,

Maritime Doctrine (India), 224

241–42; of Kuwait, 239–40, 247–48; of

Maritime Treaties, 77

Oman, 239–40, 244–45; of Qatar, 239–40,

358

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Index

monarchies (cont.) 246–47; rentierism and, 75, 242–43; rise

as threat to Israel, 173; US alignment with, 172

of in Persian Gulf, 3; of Saudi Arabia,

Nasserists, 171

239–40, 245; of UAE, 239–40, 245–46.

National Assembly (Kuwait), 247,

See also legitimacy of regimes; regime security Morocco, 239, 241–42

304nn65–67 National Democracy Institute (NDI), 239, 253, 254, 300n24

Mossadegh government, 123

national dialogue, 245

Mottaki, Manuchehr, 58, 189

nationalism, 236, 237, 252–56, 300n18

Mubarak, Husni (Sheikh), 41, 183

National Petroleum Company of Iran, 57

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (shah of Iran), 91,

national prestige, 27

123–24, 125, 199 Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), 200 mujahideen: anti-Soviet struggle, 152; movements in Pakistan, 147; organization of Al-Qaeda, 12–13, 95, 98, 101, 129, 152 Musandam, 39, 47

national security: collective approach of GCC, 49; as factor in boundary disputes, 27, 30; Saudi strategy for, 169–73. See also internal stability; security dilemmas; security system in Persian Gulf natural gas reserves. See oil/natural gas natural resources: Abu Sa‘fah offshore oil

Muscat, 39

field agreement, 39–40; Al-‘Arabiyah/

Muslim Brotherhood: organization of civil

Farsi Islands agreement and, 43–44; dis-

war in Syria, 155, 157, 178, 253, 255; Saudi

putes over ‘Asir/Najran/Jizan and, 45–46;

support of, 178; seats in Bahrain parlia-

disputes over boundary lines and, 13, 21,

ment, 253

27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 37–38, 47; Iraqi-Kuwaiti

Muslims, 8–9, 87, 152–53, 209. See also Hash-

border disputes and, 42–43; in neutral

emites; Islam; Islamists; Kurds; political

zones, 44; North Field gas field agree-

Islam; Salafi Islamists; Shi‘i sect; Sunni

ment, 40–41. See also fishing rights; oil/

sect; Wahhabism Muslim World League, 178

natural gas; pearling rights/pearling navy: of China, 68, 221; of GCC states, 55–56;

Mutual Defense Assistance Pact, 123

of India, 66–67, 224–27; of Iran, 64,

Myanmar, 68

66–67 NDI, 239, 253, 254, 300n24 neighborly intervention, 18, 144, 156, 159–64,

Nagorno-Karabakh confl ict, 145

166–67

Najran, 44–46, 48

neo-Wahhabism, 129

Narayanan, M. K., 223

Neutral Zones, 36, 38, 44

al-Nasser, Gamal Abd: Arab nationalism

NGOs (non-government organizations): in

espoused by, 76, 171; challenge to Al

Bahrain, 248, 251, 304n73; B-MENA

Saud regime, 171, 173, 176, 178; counter-

initiative, 300n24; democracy promotion

imperialism of, 104; nationalization of

in GCC states and, 239; in Egypt, 306n94;

Suez Canal, 123; Saudi alliance with, 177;

empowerment through globalization, 237;

Index

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359

influence on foreign policy, 80; in Kuwait,

Office of the Leader (Iran), 187

248, 251, 304n72; nature of in GCC states,

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (India), 229

301n28; in Oman, 244; in Qatar, 246; in

Oil India, 229

Saudi Arabia, 245; in UAE, 246

oil/natural gas: 1973 embargo on, 3, 17, 121,

Niblock, Tim, 79

125, 172, 259n3; Abu Sa‘fah offshore oil

Niethammer, Katja, xiv, 13, 19–20, 234–56

field agreement, 39–40; American explo-

Nixon, Richard, 91, 124–25

ration in Saudi Arabia, 123; Al-‘Arabiyah/

Nixon Doctrine (1969), 124. See also twin

Farsi Islands agreement, 43–44; Asia

pillar strategy non-government organizations (NGOs). See NGOs (non-government organizations) Nonneman, Gerd, 72

reserves of, 210–11; British control of in Persian Gulf, 25; al-Buraymi oasis dispute, 37–38; Chinese consumption of, 213; Chinese role in Gulf security and,

nonreligious contagion, 282n4

219–22, 226, 227; consumption of, 210,

Northern Alliance, 229

294n24; disputes over ‘Asir/Najran/Jizan

Northern Ireland, 151, 156

and, 45–46; effect on GCC foreign policy,

North Field/South Pars natural gas field,

86–87; effect on trade ties in Persian Gulf,

40–41, 89, 229

207, 210–16; establishment of boundar-

NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), 135

ies and, 22, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33–36, 37,

nuclear program in Iran: Bahrain’s view

47; Indian role in Gulf security and, 222,

of, 58; China’s support of, 227; effect on

223, 229, 296n59; Iraqi-Kuwaiti border

Saudi-US relations, 104, 182; GCC diplo-

disputes and, 42–43; in neutral zones,

macy and, 118–19; GCC’s view of, 106–8;

44; North Field gas field agreement,

GCC ties with India/China and, 209,

40–41; percentage of world reserves in

228; India’s opposition to, 229; Iranian

Persian Gulf, 121; price required to meet

consensus on right to develop, 134–35;

GCC budgets, 295n40; sales to Asia, 208,

Russian assistance, 62; as security issue

209; as source of monarchial revenues,

for GCC, 15, 41, 190–91; talk of Israeli

242–43, 302n40; strategic significance of

surgical strikes on, 7; tension between

Persian Gulf, 2, 3, 5–6, 90–93; US-GCC

US/Iran over, 2, 95–96, 104–8, 118,

alliance’s protection of, 11, 90–93; US

205–6; US military presence in Gulf as

protection of tankers during Iran-Iraq

incentive for, 135–36

War, 97, 196; US role in Gulf security

Al Nuhayyan, Khalifah bin Zayid (president of UAE), 67, 304n59 Al Nuhayyan, Zayid ibn Sultan (president of UAE), 27, 34, 38

and, 226; as weapon, 121, 125, 158; world demand for, 3, 5; world reserves in 2007/2009, 4–5 Oman: al-Buraymi oasis dispute, 21, 37–38, 48, 263n14; counter to Soviet influence in, 125; defense system, 53, 56; establishment

Obaid, Nawaf, 107, 163

of boundaries of, 26–27, 28, 38, 39; estab-

Obama, Barack, 142, 231

lishment of GCC and, 14; free-trade agree-

Obama administration, 92, 142, 190, 230

ment with US, 300n22; heterogeneous

360

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Oman (cont.)

states, 211; inclusion in SCO, 69; India’s

population of, 241; independence from

security buffer against, 228; influence on

Saudi hegemony, 174; international power

US policy in Persian Gulf, 17; inter-

of, 72; Islam in, 85, 104, 301n33; Marxist

nal stability of, 8, 161; involvement in

led revolution in, 302n37; monarchy

Afghani civil war, 159, 160–61; in Islamic

of, 239, 240–41; oil reserves, 4; opposi-

Conference Organization, 176; as Islamic

tion to expansion of Peninsula Shield,

superpower, 219; Islamist groups in, 138;

114; percentage of budget from oil rents,

jihadist movement in, 155; as part of West

302n40; political reform in, 19–20,

Asia, 17, 120; refugees from Afghanistan

83, 234, 243, 244–45, 251; position on

in, 147; relations with China, 221, 222;

OPEC production/prices, 197; price of

relations with India, 228; relations with

oil required to meet budget, 295n40;

Iran, 12; relations with Saudi Arabia,

relations with Iran, 58–59, 104, 105, 116,

66, 208–9; relations with UAE, 84; US

205; relations with Iraq, 59–60; relations

involvement in, 123, 124

with Ra’s al-Khaymah, 48; relations with Yemen, 46–47; Saudi confrontation of

Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 149–50

Iranian forces in, 173–74; Saudi raids

Palestinian national unity government, 110–11

into, 26; sectarian character of, 85; trade

Palestinians: pan-Arab concern for cause

with India, 217; treatment of opposition

of, 156; Saudi security strategy toward,

to regime, 303n48, 303n53; US military

173; terrorists, 151; violence of refugees,

presence in, 6 Oman-Yemen border, 46–47 omnibalancing model, 74

145, 148, 149–50, 157, 165, 182. See also Hamas; Hizbullah Palestinian territories: Abdullah’s peace ini-

Ong, Russell, 69

tiative, 109–10, 115, 117; birth of Fatah in,

ONGC Videsh, 229

151; effect of occupation of on Arab states,

opportunism, 159–60

137; Iranian influence in, 104, 105, 109,

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Coun-

136–37, 277n23; Saudi-Iranian contest in,

tries (OPEC), 4–5, 6, 84, 86, 197–98

109–10, 117, 180, 181–82

Ottoman Empire, 41

Panama Canal, 5

outside patronage vs. regional insularity, 14,

pan-Arabism, 88

51, 63–71, 86–87. See also trade

parliaments: in Bahrain, 248–49, 253; decision-making and, 249–51; in GCC states, 20, 238–39, 243–44; in Kuwait, 247–48,

Pakistan: Al-Qaeda’s operations in, 8–9; attraction to political Islam, 137; bonds

304nn65–67; in Oman, 244; in Qatar, 83, 246–47; in Saudi Arabia, 245

with other West Asian states, 17, 121–22,

Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), 162

136, 137; CENTCOM protection of, 126;

Pashtun nationalism, 138

China’s relations with, 68; creation of

Pax Britannica, 78

Taliban, 160; fluidity of foreign policy

Paz, Reuven, 153

of, 12; free-trade agreement with GCC

pearling rights/pearling, 23, 27, 29, 43

Index Peninsula Shield, 96, 100, 114

personal prestige, 27

People’s Liberation Army, 221

Peterson, J. E., xiv–xv, 13, 21–49

People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N), 68

petroleum. See oil/natural gas

perpetual treaty of maritime peace, 24

Philippines, 68

Persian Gulf: Asian expatriates in, 211; as

physiographic boundaries, 28, 29

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361

British preserve, 124; classic security

pioneer boundaries, 29

dilemma in, 52–56; commonalities/

piracy, 24, 225–26

points of synergy with Asia, 19; concern

PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), 162, 163

for internal stability in, 289n44; dual

political Islam: as antidote to Arab national-

containment policy in, 9–10, 17, 91–92,

ism/communism, 122, 137; as counter to

94, 99, 130–33, 188; factors conditioning

US hegemony, 137–39; impact on GCC’s

India-China role in, 226–32; history of

perception of US, 121, 138–39; Jordan/

US involvement in, 124–34; impact of

Egypt’s view of, 140; role of rapid eco-

US invasion of Iraq in, 131–33; imperial

nomic development in rise of, 75; spread

hegemonic tendencies in, 2, 9–13, 17, 95,

of Saudi influence through, 122; strategic

124, 130–33, 137–39; independence/state

significance of Persian Gulf and, 8–9; war

formation of states within, 13; Iranian military/diplomatic position on, 184,

on terror and, 82 political participation: in Bahrain, 249,

190–94; leap-frog pattern of relations, 27,

304n75; in GCC monarchies, 83–84,

33, 48; as national security interest of US,

243–44; as goal of reforms, 237; in

90; political reform process in, 234–56;

Kuwait, 247; in Oman, 244; in Qatar, 246;

potential for spillover of confl ict in Iraq,

reform effectiveness and, 20, 251; in Saudi

18, 101, 144, 145–46, 150, 154–58, 161–63; securitization of, 186; security challenges

Arabia, 245 political parties, legality of: in Bahrain, 249,

in, 90; strategic significance of, 2, 3, 6–9,

251; in GCC states, 83; in Kuwait, 248,

20, 77, 90; as subregion of West Asia,

251, 304n70; in Oman, 244; in Qatar, 246;

120–23; tanker war in, 97, 196, 289n46; ties with China, 207–15, 219–22, 226–28,

in Saudi Arabia, 245; in UAE, 246 political reform: in Bahrain, 234–35, 238,

232–33; ties with India, 207–12, 215–18,

248–49, 251, 252–56; changes needed to

219, 222–26, 228–29, 232–33; trade ties

effect foreign policy, 20, 237; decision-

with US/Europe, 207; twin pillar strategy

making processes and, 249–51; democra-

in, 9–10, 17, 91, 124–28, 195–96; US

tization of Middle East and, 92, 100, 130,

military presence in, 9–10, 17 (See also

143; effect of globalization on, 237; effect

First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

on foreign policy of GCC, 19–20, 209–10;

1990–1991); Second Gulf War (US inva-

GCC-Asian relations and, 209–10; in

sion of Iraq 2003)); view of US support

GCC states, 256; in Kuwait, 234, 247–48,

of Iraq in, 127; views of Iran’s nuclear

251; likelihood of violent confl ict during,

program, 190–91. See also Gulf Coopera-

235–36; motivations for in Persian Gulf

tion Council (GCC); security system in

monarchies, 238–39; in Oman, 244–45,

Persian Gulf; specific state

251; parliaments/debating clubs, 243–49;

362

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political reform (cont.)

108, 110–11; autonomy of, 16; boundary

in Qatar, 234, 246–47, 251; road blocks to,

disputes with Bahrain, 22, 27, 30–32;

249–50; in Saudi Arabia, 234, 245, 251;

boundary dispute with Saudi Arabia,

transnational linkages between Islamist

265n26; causeway between Bahrain and,

groups and, 252–56, 306n93; in UAE, 234,

32; CENTCOM headquarters in, 6, 65,

245–46, 251

192, 295n44; constitution of, 246; control

populations: boundary disputes involving

of Halul Island, 263n10; decision-making

control of, 27; effect of size/heterogeneity

process in, 79, 80; defense agreement with

on foreign policy, 84–85; expatriates in,

US, 64, 98; defense system, 53, 56; dispute

84; radicalization of, 156–58, 159, 164–65;

over Khawr Al‘Udayd region, 22, 27,

of Saudi Arabia relative to other Arab

33–34, 38, 47, 48, 49; economic ties with

states, 87; sectarian nature of, 84–85

India, 296n59; as entrepôt for region, 2;

Portugal, 77

establishment of boundaries of, 28, 29;

Prakash, Arun, 224

establishment of GCC and, 14; feud with

Pratt, Nicola, 306n94

Abu Dhabi, 27; forecast for economy of,

pre-emptive realignment, 14, 56, 57–59, 70

295n40; gas project with UAE, 295n44;

Prince Sultan air base, 65, 132, 295n44

heterogeneous population of, 241;

pro-democracy activism, 235, 252

independence from Saudi hegemony, 174;

professional organizations, 244

interfamilial competition in, 238; internal

propaganda: Bin Laden’s use of, 152, 154–55;

response to reliance on US troops, 218;

explosion of jihadists’ use of, 156; Ira-

international power of, 72; Iranian threat

nian/Iraqi propaganda against Gulf

to, 116–17; Iranian-US relations and, 7–8;

states, 97, 115, 117; Khomeini’s use of,

judicial system in, 300n27; military pact

286n14; Nasser’s use of, 171, 176

with US, 60; monarchy of, 239, 240–41;

protests. See activism; demonstrations

natural gas reserves, 3, 41; North Field

proxies, 160

gas field agreement, 40–41, 89, 229; oil

Putin, Vladimir, 66, 67, 69

reserves, 4; percentage of budget from

Putnam, Robert D., 235

oil rents, 302n40; political reform in, 19–20, 83, 244, 246–47, 251; position on OPEC production/prices, 197; price

Qaeda, Al-. See Al-Qaeda

of oil required to meet budget, 295n40;

Qaru, 36–37

protectorate treaty with Britain, 77–78;

Qasimi family, 35

relations with Abu Dhabi, 34; relations

Qasim revolutionary movement, 41

with Dubai, 48; relations with Iran, 7,

Al Qassimi, Khalid bin Muhammad, 291n82

40, 41, 58–59, 89, 103–4, 105, 135, 205;

Al Qassimi, Saqr bin Muhammad, 291n82

relations with Iraq, 59–60; relations with

Qatar: agreement on Bunduq oil field,

Russia, 66; relations with Saudi Arabia,

264n18; aid donations/investments of,

48, 58, 104, 111, 174; relations with Syria,

86–87; anti-Shi‘i attitude of Wahhabism

116; role in confl ict resolution, 87; role in

in, 301n35; approach to regional confl icts,

security system in Persian Gulf, 10, 12,

Index

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363

192; sovereign control of, 30–31; as target

in rentier economies, 86; in Saudi Arabia,

of terrorism, 192; trade with India, 217,

8–9, 12–13, 18, 98, 169–73, 176–77; Saudi

292n4; US military presence in, 6, 7, 8, 60,

hegemony as threat to, 88; through

65, 100, 106, 132, 276n10; violence against

effective police/intelligence, 165. See also

US expatriates in, 300n22 Qatar Arab Democracy Foundation, 301n28

internal stability; legitimacy of regimes regional confl icts: Arab-Israeli confl ict

al-Qawasim, 23–24

(1956), 145, 157; Arab-Israeli confl ict

Qit‘at al-Jaradah, 31

(1967), 122, 141, 145, 157, 173; Arab-

Qutb, Syed, 129

Israeli confl ict (1973), 3; GCC’s approach to, 108–12, 117; Israeli-Hizbullah War, 109, 115, 122, 141, 181; Israeli-Palestinian

radicalization of populations, 156–58, 159, 164–66

confl ict, 145, 157; potential spillover from Iraq, 18, 144–46, 157–58; US

Rafsanjani, Hashemi, 187, 196

occupation of Iraq and, 100–103. See also

Ramazani, R. K., 289n49

civil war; First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion

RAND Cooperation offices, 80

of Kuwait 1990–1991); Iran-Iraq War

Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, 126

(1980–1988); Second Gulf War (US inva-

Ra’s al-Khaymah, 35, 38, 39, 48, 291n82. See

sion of Iraq 2003)

also Tunbs Islands

regional insularity, 14, 51, 63–71, 86–87

reactionary forces. See dissident movements

regional mediation, 109–11

Reagan, Ronald, 91

Reliance India Limited, 216

real estate, 213, 217

relict boundaries, 29

realism, 73–74

religion. See Abadhy sect; Islam; Kurds;

rebellion, 282n4 Red Line, 28–29

Salafi Islamists; Shi‘i sect; Sunni sect; Wahhabism

re-flagging operation, 97, 196, 289n46

religious contagion, 282n4

refugees: from Afghanistan, 146, 147; from

rentierism: autonomy and, 16; as blockage to

civil wars, 146; intervention in civil war

political reform, 250–51; effect on foreign

to stop flow of, 159; from Iraq, 18, 144,

policy, 85–87; legitimacy of regimes and,

146, 150, 162; in Jordan, 18, 146, 150, 165;

242–43; peoples view of, 302n41; role in

from Kosovo, 146, 147; Palestinians, 145, 148, 149–50, 157; problems caused by, 147–50, 165; from Rwanda, 148–49; US aid to, 165–66 regime security: as driving force in foreign

inspiring reactionary forces, 75 representative bodies, 234. See also parliaments Rice, Condoleeza, 103, 104–5, 116, 202 Riyadh. See Saudi Arabia

policy, 11, 18; establishment of GCC to

Riyadh Line, 28–29

insure, 14; of GCC monarchies, 238,

Ross, Dennis, 121

249–50; GCC-US alliance and, 11,

Ruhani, Hasan, 111–12

98–100; as goal of foreign policy, 88–90;

rule of law: dominance of executive over

Iranian foreign/security policies and, 194;

judiciary and, 300n27; in Iraq, 18, 144;

364

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rule of law (cont.)

in Bahrain, 306n90; challenge to Al Saud

in Oman, 245, 303n53; Shi‘i demand for

regime, 171–72, 179, 182; in Iraq, 180–81;

in Bahrain, 252–53, 254; during transi-

jihadist movement, 152, 153–54, 163, 168,

tion to democracy, 236

171–72; response to US troops in Gulf

ruling elites: alliances in foreign policy decision-making by, 15, 234–35; in Bahrain, 237; effect on foreign policy throughout

states, 62; use of civil war zones, 152; use of external linkages for domestic change, 255–56

GCC, 15–16; in GCC states, 239–40;

Salih, Ali Abdallah, 175, 179

impact of domestic political institutions,

Saqr bin Muhammad (Sheikh), 27

16; in Kuwait, 304n66; political reforms

Sariolghalam, Mahmood, 288n39

and, 20, 237, 243; role of alliances in

Al Saud. See Saudi Arabia; Al Sa‘ud regime

decision-making, 78–81; during transi-

Al Saud, Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman,

tion to democracy, 236 Rumaylah oil field, 42–43

170–71 Al Sa‘ud, ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-Aziz (king of

Rumsfeld, Donald, 60

Saudi Arabia), 58; 2002 Israeli-Palestinian

Russell, James, 51

peace initiative, 109–10, 115; Ahma-

Russell, Richard, 50

dinejad’s meeting with, 105, 163, 180,

Russia: assistance to Iraq, 64; involvement

197; Cheney’s visit, 102; declaration of

in Afghani civil war, 160; opposition to

illegality of US occupation of Iraq, 105–6;

US invasion of Iraq, 205; relations with

efforts to balance Iranian power, 180–83;

China, 69; relations with Iran, 62, 66, 67;

foreign policy of, 79, 80–81; mediation

relations with Japan, 68; relations with

between Sunni/Shi‘i clerics, 109; political

Qatar, 66; relations with Saudi Arabia,

reforms of, 245; proposal for expansion

66; relations with UAE, 67; rivalry over

of Peninsula Shield, 114; rapprochement

control of Caspian Sea, 69–70; rivalry

with Iran, 196–97; trip to China/India/

with US over influence in Eurasia, 68–69;

Malaysia/Pakistan, 66, 208

sales of arms to Saudi Arabia, 53–54; US relations with, 205–6; withdrawal from Afghanistan, 98. See also Soviet Union Ru’us al-Jibal, 39

Al Sa‘ud, Fahd bin Abdul Aziz (king of Saudi Arabia), 79, 81, 196 Al Saud, Faysal Ibn Abdul Aziz (king of Saudi Arabia), 173

Rwanda, 145, 148–49, 160

Al Sa’ud, Nayif bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 57

Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), 148–49

Al Sa‘ud, Sultan bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (crown prince of Saudi Arabia), 208, 295n44 Al Saud, Talal bin ‘Abdulaziz, 302n37

Sadat, Anwar, 179 Sadat Chair for Peace and Development (University of Maryland), 122

Saudi Arabia: 1967 War agreements, 173; Abu Sa‘fah offshore oil field agreement, 39–40; aid to Iraq during Iran-Iraq War,

al-Sadr, Muqtada, 139, 202

127, 163, 176, 178, 179, 196, 289n48;

Salafi Islamists: in Bahrain, 253; Bin Laden

Al-Qaeda’s operations in, 101; anti-

as voice of, 178; call for Islamic penal law

Shi‘i attitude of Wahhabism in, 301n35;

Index

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365

Al-‘Arabiyah/Farsi Islands agreement,

to Asia, 209; opposition to Maliki, 181;

43–44; boundary dispute with Iran, 195;

opposition to secular communism, 77;

boundary dispute with Qatar, 48, 265n26;

opposition to Soviet presence in Persian

al-Buraymi oasis dispute, 21, 37–38, 48,

Gulf, 195; organization of Al-Qaeda in,

263n14; challenges to, 170–72; collabora-

95, 98, 101, 129; percentage of budget

tion with Asian states, 209; concerns

from oil rents, 302n40; political reform

about Shi‘i government in Iraq, 95, 102–3,

in, 19–20, 234, 243, 245, 251, 302n37;

139–40, 180, 200–201; confl ict with UAE

population of, 87; position on OPEC

over policy toward Iran, 111; decision-

production/prices, 197; potential for

making by elite-level alliance networks,

spillover from Iraq in, 153, 157, 158; price

79; dispute over Khawr Al ‘Udayd region,

of oil required to meet budget, 295n40;

22, 27, 33–34, 38, 47, 48, 49; disputes over

provision of enriched uranium to GCC

‘Asir/Najran/Jizan, 44–46, 48; dissemina-

states, 107–8; public view of US, 281n52;

tion of Wahhabism, 178; economic aid/

Qaru/Umm al-Maradim dispute, 36–37;

investments of, 86–87, 115, 127, 178,

relations with Bahrain, 39–40, 63; rela-

289n44; economic/social hegemony

tions with China, 64, 66, 208–9; relations

of, 87–88, 275n66; economy of, 87, 178;

with Egypt, 115, 176, 177; relations with

establishment of GCC and, 14; expan-

India, 66, 208–9; relations with Iran, 57,

sionist policies of, 26, 46; expenditures

58, 59, 85, 101, 105, 107, 163, 194, 195–99,

on infrastructure, 295n40; foreign policy

289n43; relations with Iraq, 59–60, 116,

following First Gulf War, 61; funding of

289n48; relations with Kuwait, 36–37;

al-‘Asala in Bahrain, 255; hegemonic role

relations with Malaysia/Pakistan, 66,

in GCC, 87–88, 89, 91, 113, 116; internal

208; relations with other GCC states,

stability, 97, 129, 142, 153; international

89, 174; relations with Qatar, 48, 104,

power of, 72; intervention in Iraq, 162–63;

111; relations with Russia, 66; relations

Iranian nuclear development program

with Syria/Egypt, 115–16; relations with

and, 104; Iraqi refugees in, 150, 165;

UAE, 38; relations with US, 163, 176, 179,

Islamic extremists in, 139; Islamists/Al-

303n50; relations with Yemen, 46, 173–75,

Qaeda’s response to US troops in, 98–99;

195; response to Bahrain-US free-trade

legitimacy of regime, 61, 95, 171–72, 173,

agreement, 295n44; response to Iranian

176–77, 179, 238; location/global position-

Revolution, 76; response to US military

ing of, 6; manifest destiny of, 30; means

presence, 82, 97; riots in Mecca, 190, 196;

of influence in regional policy, 177–79;

role in Arab cold war, 121–22; role in

measures to minimize radicalization,

security system in Persian Gulf, 6, 10, 89,

165; military threats to, 18; monarchy of,

91; role of political Islam in, 8–9; sectar-

239, 240–41; negotiations with China, 64;

ian character of, 85; Shi‘i community in,

neutral zones with Iraq/Kuwait, 36, 38,

95, 101, 153, 157, 165, 171; significance to

44; objection to Qatar-UAE gas project,

Islam, 8–9, 87, 98–99, 129; Sunni-Shi‘i

295n44; oil embargo on US, 3, 17, 121,

sectarian militancy in, 158; territorial

125, 172, 259n3; oil reserves, 4; oil sales

expansion of, 22, 26, 30, 33; territory

366

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Saudi Arabia (cont.) gained from Yemen, 22; threatened

US invasion/occupation of Iraq, 100, 102, 116. See also Saudi Arabia

support of Sunni groups, 118; threats to

Saudi-Yemeni border talks, 45

regime in, 18; as threat to smaller Gulf

Al Sa‘ud regime: Bin Laden’s challenge to

states, 78, 117; trade with China, 213,

legitimacy of, 171–72, 179, 180–81; dif-

214–15; trade with India, 217; treatment

ficulty in maintaining legitimacy, 242;

of opposition to regime, 303n48, 303n53;

expansionist tendencies of, 26; Hashemite

tribal notables/trading monopolies in,

threat to, 170–71, 177; Iranian chal-

301n31; US military presence in, 6, 63, 82,

lenge to, 174, 176; Iraqi challenge to, 176;

97, 126, 132; US oil exploration in, 123;

Nasser’s challenge to, 171, 173, 176

US reliance on for security in Persian

Scheuer, Michael, 151

Gulf, 9, 17, 91, 99, 124–28, 130–31, 188,

Schofield, Richard, 28, 29

195–96; view of US support of Iraq, 127.

Second Gulf War (US invasion of Iraq

See also Saudi security strategy Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation, 57

2003): Bush’s justification for, 92, 132; consequences of, 10, 17–18, 130–33, 134, 151, 154–55; as culmination of US trend

Saudi Aramco, 209, 214

toward hegemony in Gulf, 17, 130; effect

Saudi Ismaelites, 301n34

on GCC states’ sociopolitical realm, 63,

Saudi-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone, 36, 44

65, 94–95; effect on Iranian security strat-

Saudi National Guard, 85

egies, 200–201; effect on Saudi security

Saudi security strategy: approach to regional

policies, 179–83; effect on sociopolitical

confl icts, 108, 109–10; for Arab Penin-

context of GCC states, 82–83; end of dual

sula, 173–75; attempt to contain Iraqi

containment policy, 10; exacerbation of

Ba‘thist regime, 195; brokering of anti-

Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism, 101–3, 116, 133,

Iraq coalition, 115; Chinese arms sales

139; expansion US military presence in

to, 220; defense system, 52–53, 55–56, 64,

Persian Gulf, 65; factors precipitating,

87, 98, 112–13, 116, 134, 175, 177, 265n10,

129–30, 131–32; GCC states’ view of, 95,

303n49; effect on Iranian security strat-

99; impact on Persian Gulf, 120, 131–33;

egy, 19, 184–85, 289n43; efforts to curtail

impact on West Africa, 122; as indica-

security ties to US, 63, 64; fortification of

tor of volatility/significance of Persian

Iraqi border, 49; goals of, 286n3; influence

Gulf, 3; Iran’s perception of, 191; Islamist

on Iranian foreign policy/security, 18–19;

response to, 98; Peninsula Shield’s

Iranian vision vs., 6, 198–99; for larger

deployment in Kuwait during, 114; poten-

Middle East, 175–77; national/regime

tial for spillover of confl ict, 18, 101, 144,

security, 18, 169–73; policies discourag-

145–46, 150, 154–58, 160–61; radicaliza-

ing intervention in Iraq, 166; regional

tion of neighboring populations, 150–51,

strategy since 2003, 179–83; reliance on

157–58; refugees from, 18, 144, 146, 150,

US protection, 61, 97–108, 196; security

162; Saudi position on, 173; as threat to

agreement with Iran, 57, 58, 59; strategy

security in Persian Gulf, 73; US policies in

for regional security, 169–83; support for

Iraq, 100–103

Index sectarianism, 84–85, 101. See also Kurds; Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism; Wahhabism securitization of Persian Gulf, 1–2. See also security system in Persian Gulf

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367

of alliances, 112–16; regime security as driving force of, 11, 18; relative autonomy and, 87–90; Saudi strategy, 6, 18, 169–83, 198–99; sociopolitical context, 20, 81–85;

security agreements: between France/UAE,

strategy for internal security, 243, 303n47;

67; between Iran/GCC states, 57–59;

three poles of power, 10, 261n26, 290n60;

between US/GCC states, 64, 96, 98,

two schools of thought, 218–19; US’s

303n50

role in, 2, 6–13, 17, 20, 64, 90–93, 94, 96,

security dilemmas: alliance dilemma, 14, 51,

97–108, 112–13, 116, 120–43, 198, 218–19,

56–61, 70, 71, 218–19; classic dilemma,

226, 229–30, 233, 243, 254, 290n60,

14, 51–56, 70, 71; concept of, 50; external

303n50 (See also dual containment policy;

defense vs. internal stability, 14, 51, 61–63,

First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

70–71, 84, 97–108, 117; as natural product

1990–1991); Second Gulf War (US inva-

of international relations, 73; outside

sion of Iraq 2003); twin pillar strategy).

patronage vs. regional insularity, 14, 51,

See also Britain; Iranian foreign/security

63–70; use of term, 50–51 security-producing programs, 14, 51–56, 62–63, 70, 71, 112–16. See also nuclear program of Iran; weapons procurement security system in Persian Gulf: British role

policies; Saudi security strategy Seko, Mobutu Sese, 148 September 11 terrorist attacks on US: effect on Middle Eastern investors, 211–12; effect on Saudi security policies, 179; fac-

in, 2, 3, 9, 77–78; challenges to, 12–13, 15,

tors precipitating, 129; US military activ-

94–96; China’s role in, 1–2, 19, 219–22,

ity in Persian Gulf following, 65, 92–93,

226, 229–30, 232–33; collective approach

131–33; US military in Eurasia following,

of GCC, 16, 49, 94–119; complex/

68; US response to, 17, 129–30, 131–32

intertwining nature of, 12; diplomatic

Serbia, 160

approach, 96, 108–12; dynamics of, 1,

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO),

9–13, 218–19; effect of rentier capac-

69, 228

ity on, 86–87; expansion of security

Shari‘a, 76

partnerships, 219; factors conditioning

Sharjah, 35, 38, 203–4, 291n82. See also Abu

India-China role, 226–32; failed states and, 12–13; GCC and, 16–17, 84, 218;

Musa Shi‘i sect: in Afghanistan, 123; in Bahrain,

GCC as means of ameliorating dilemmas,

95, 101, 157, 158, 165, 252–56; creation of

14; GCC intelligence, 113–14; GCC’s role

Hizbullah, 152; discrimination against in

in, 10–12, 14–15; imperial hegemonic

GCC states, 241, 252; fear of violence by

tendencies in, 2, 9–13, 17, 95 (See also

in GCC state, 94–95, 101; fighters in Iraq

Britain; United States, role in security

from other Arab states, 101, 102, 158;

system in Persian Gulf); India’s role in,

government in Iraq, 95, 102–3, 144, 180,

19, 219, 222–25, 228–30, 232–33, 296n59;

200–201; impact on US policy, 139–41;

Iranian proposal, 111–12, 118, 119, 129;

in Iran, 163; Iranian intervention in

Iranian strategy, 6–7, 18, 184–206; modes

Bahrain and, 58, 85, 89, 101, 190; Iranian

368

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Index

Shi‘i sect (cont.) propagation of, 59, 95, 230; Iranian-Saudi

sovereignty of states of Persian Gulf, 13, 22–25. See also autonomy

relations and, 289n43; Iranian support

Soviet-Iraqi Defense Agreement (1972), 125

of in Iraq, 161–62; in Iraq, 161–62; in

Soviet Union: control of South Yemen, 174,

Kuwait, 95, 150, 157, 165; Mecca accords,

175, 195; invasion of Afghanistan, 17, 121,

109–11, 117; migrants in GCC states, 241;

126–27, 152; political Islam as weapon

new Iraqi government, 95, 139–40, 180,

against, 137; sale of arms to Iraq, 127; US

200–201; opposition to permanent US

containment policies, 91, 123 (See also twin

military presence, 133; pluralization of

pillar strategy); withdrawal from Afghani-

religious authority, 255, 305n88, 306n89;

stan, 95, 98, 101, 129, 147. See also Russia

response to US troops in Gulf states, 62;

spillover: containment policy options,

in Saudi Arabia, 85, 95, 101, 150, 153, 157,

144, 164–68; effect on Iranian security

165, 171; terrorist operations in Lebanon,

strategies, 186, 200; history of, 145–49;

152; Twelvers, 301n34; use of external

neighborly intervention and, 144, 159–64,

linkages for domestic change, 255; view

166–67; potential for from Iraq, 18,

of US support of Israel, 141; Wahhabi

101, 144, 145, 146, 150, 153–56, 161–63;

exclusion of, 170. See also Hizbullah;

radicalization of populations, 156–58,

Iran; Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism

164–66; refugees as agent of, 145–50; of

Shura Councils, 244, 245, 246, 248

terrorism, 144, 150–56, 167–68

Singapore, 209

Sri Lanka, 151

Singer, J. David, 74

state capacity, 16. See also rentierism

Singh, Jaswant, 223

State Council (Oman), 244

Singh, Madhvendra, 224

state formation, 13, 29, 47

Singh, Manmohan, 222

Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), 201

Siniora, Fouad, 181

Strait of Bab al Mandeb, 126

Sinopec Group, 214, 227

Strait of Hormuz: attacks on shipping

Sistani, Ayatollah Ali, 201, 255, 305n87, 306n89

through during Iran-Iraq War, 97; CENTCOM protection of, 126; Chinese oil

slave trade, 24

transportation and, 220; Iranian control

Snyder, Glenn H., 14, 51, 56

of, 228; Iranian-Indian naval maneuvers

Snyder, Jack, 236–37, 252, 254

in, 66; oil passing through, 5; as Omani

sociopolitical context, 20, 81–85. See also

territory, 47; strategic position of, 104; US

Islam; populations; radicalization of

policy toward Iran as threat to, 106. See

populations; Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism;

also Abu Musa; Tunbs Islands

tribalism; Wahhabism Somalia, 146, 160, 225–26 South Azadegan oil field, 229 South Korea, 209, 210, 211 South Pars field. See North Field/South Pars natural gas field

Straits of Malacca, 5, 220 Strategic Oil Cooperation Agreement (1990s), 214 strategic requirements, establishment of boundaries, 30, 33–34, 35–36, 37–38, 42–43, 47

Index strategic significance of Persian Gulf: changes magnifying, 20; location/global positioning of states, 6, 77; oil/natural

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369

occupation of Iraq, 101–3, 116, 139–41; in Saudi Arabia, 158; violence following fall of Saddam, 94–95

gas reserves, 2, 3, 4–5, 90; as passageway

superimposed boundaries, 29

to India, 3; political Islam and, 8–9;

Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in

relations between actors within/without region, 3, 6–7 subsequent boundaries, 29

Iraq (SCIRI), 200 Supreme National Security Council (Iran), 187

Sudan, 87

al-Suwaidi, Jamal, 50

Suez Canal, 5, 123, 126

al-Suwaydi, Ahmad Khalifah, 34

Suleimani, Qassem, 202

Syria: 1967 War agreements, 173; alli-

Sultanate of Oman’s Basic Law (1996), 244

ance with Iran, 180; Arab nationalist

Sunni sect: in Afghanistan, 159; anti-Amer-

mobilization in, 171; civil war in, 145,

ican activities of, 180; Awakening move-

157; criticism of Gulf states support of

ment, 154, 155; in Bahrain, 158, 252–56;

US occupation of Iraq, 95; delibera-

civil war in Lebanon and, 149–50; con-

tions concerning crisis in Lebanon, 59;

cern about Shi‘i government in Iraq,

economy of, 175; GCC states’ relations

102–3; in Egypt/Jordan, 140; fighters in

with, 115–6; intervention in Lebanese

Iraq from other Arab states, 95, 101, 102,

civil war, 159–60; Iranian influence in,

109, 153, 158; in Iran, 162; in Iraq, 163,

104, 277n23; Iraqi refugees in, 18, 146,

180–81; in Kuwait, 150; Mecca accords,

150; Israeli defeat of in 1967, 122, 141,

109–11, 117; migrants in GCC states, 241;

145, 173; killing of al-Hariri, 115; Kurd-

Muslim Brotherhood, 155, 157, 178, 253,

ish community in, 157; oil reserves, 4;

255; in Oman, 85; opposition to perma-

policies discouraging intervention in

nent US military presence, 133; opposi-

Iraq, 166; population of, 175; potential for

tion to US in Iraq, 139, 153; Salafi jihadist

spillover from Iraq in, 157; relations with

movement, 152, 153–54, 163, 168, 171–72;

Saudi Arabia, 115–16; Saudi economic aid

in Saudi Arabia, 153; US battle with in

to, 173, 178; Sunni fighters in Iraq from,

Fallujah, 158; use of external linkages

101; support of Hizbullah, 115

for domestic change, 255–56; view of US support of Israel, 141; Wahhabi exclusion of, 170. See also Al-Qaeda; Kurds; Salafi

al-Ta’if, Treaty of, 45

Islamists

Tajikistan, 68, 69, 146, 147, 159

Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism: in Bahrain, 16; effect on GCC foreign policy, 84–85; as

Takeyh, Ray, 201, 290n64 Taliban: as creation of Pakistan, 160; effects

example of divisiveness of Islam, 76; fear

of elimination of on Iran, 11, 129, 134;

of in GCC states, 15, 85, 118; Iran-Saudi

Iranian involvement in fight against, 131,

relations and, 195; in Iraq, 101, 102, 109,

191; neighborly intervention against, 159,

133, 154, 157, 163; potential for spillover

160; reemergence of, 123, 138; refugees as

from Iraq, 150, 157–58; as result of US

core of, 147; refusal of Saudi request, 179;

370

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Index

Taliban (cont.)

tribalism: access to ruler’s majlis and, 241;

Sino-Indian support of Northern Alli-

boundary disputes involving, 27, 28,

ance against, 229

38–39; concept of sovereignty/boundaries

tanker war, 97, 196, 289n46

and, 22–24; decision-making and, 78–81;

technocrats, 80

dynastic security and, 88; effect on GCC

Tehran. See Iran

foreign policy, 15, 83, 117, 275n66; in Iraq,

terrorism: bombing of US embassy in Leba-

133; regime legitimacy and, 83; territori-

non, 275n75; epicenter of, 138; India’s

ality and, 22–23, 27; tribal aid to coalition

fight against, 222, 231; from Iran against

in Iraq, 154; tribal response to US troops

US/Israel, 91; in Iraq, 17–18, 144, 153–56,

in Persian Gulf, 99; as unifying force

167–68; killing of al-Hariri, 115; need for intelligence sharing against, 113–14; potential for spillover of, 150–56; prob-

among GCC states, 15 Trucial Coast states, 26, 28, 38–39. See also United Arab Emirates (UAE)

lems arising from Iraq confl ict, 155–56;

Trucial Oman Scouts, 21, 37

as response to US troops in Persian Gulf,

Truman Doctrine (1947), 123

97, 98–99, 101–2; rise of during civil

Tudjman, Franjo, 160

wars, 150–53, 159; rise of following fall of

Tunbs Islands: British role in settlement

Ba‘thist regime, 94–95; in Saudi Arabia,

of dispute, 291n82; effect on Saudi

101, 116; as threat to security in Persian

claims to al-Buraymi oasis, 38; Iranian

Gulf, 94. See also Al-Qaeda; September

control of, 104, 109; tensions over

11 terrorist attacks on US; war on terror

control of, 22, 34–36, 47, 48, 49, 59, 89,

Thailand, 210 Al Thani, Hamad bin Jassem (sheikh of Qatar), 135–36 Al Thani, Hamad bin Khalifah (emir of Qatar), 31, 79, 87, 111, 218–19, 247 Al Thani, Khalifah bin Hamad (emir of Qatar), 27, 34

185, 186, 203 Turkey: benefit of economic aid to, 165; fight against Kurds, 163; intervention in Iraq, 162–63; involvement in central Eurasia, 69; in Islamic Conference Organization, 176; Kurdish community in, 157; Memorandum of Understanding with GCC,

Al Thani family, 31

67–68; as part of pro-US security belt

tourism, 32, 40, 212–13, 217, 227

around Iran, 191; as part of West Asia, 17,

trade: between China/GCC, 212–13;

120; policies discouraging intervention

between China/Iran, 227; between GCC/

in Iraq, 166; potential for spillover from

India, 215–16, 217; between India/Iran,

Iraq in, 157, 158; strength of, 175; Truman

229; between Iran/UAE, 204; between

Doctrine and, 123; US military presence

Middle East/US, 214; Persian Gulf as hub

in, 132

of, 2; strategic significance of Persian

Turkmenistan, 69

Gulf for, 77

Tutsis, 148–49

trade unions, 244, 245, 246 Transjordan, 170–71. See also Jordan

twin pillar strategy, 9–10, 17, 91, 124–28, 195–96

Index

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371

UAE. See United Arab Emirates (UAE)

67; relations with Iran, 58, 59, 89, 104,

Al ‘Udayd air base, 6, 60, 65, 192, 295n44

109, 116, 185, 194, 203–4; relations with

Uganda, 148

Pakistan, 84; relations with Russia, 67;

Ulrichsen, Coates, 14

relations with Saudi Arabia, 38, 174; role

Umm al-Maradim, 36–37

in security system in Persian Gulf, 10;

Umma Party, 304n70

security agreement with France, 67; trade

Umm Qasr, 41–42

with China, 213, 213; trade with India,

UNHCR budget, 282n6

217; treatment of opposition to regime,

United Arab Emirates (UAE): Abu Musa/

303n48; US military presence in, 6, 65.

Tunbs Islands dispute, 22, 34–36, 47, 48, 49, 59, 89, 94, 104, 109, 185, 186, 203,

See also specific emirate United Nations: Arab states’ membership in,

291n82, 292n86; aid donations/invest-

25–26; authorization for First Gulf War,

ments of, 86–87; boundary with Oman,

128; dispute over Abu Musa and, 36, 204;

38–39; al-Buraymi oasis dispute, 21,

economic sanctions on Iran, 107; sanc-

37–38, 48, 263n14; confl ict with Saudi Arabia over policy toward Iran, 111; con-

tions imposed on Iraq, 91, 94, 115 United States: 9/11 attacks on, 17, 65, 68,

stitution of, 245; decision-making process

92–93, 129, 131–33, 179, 211–12; antiwar

in, 79, 80; defense agreement with US, 64;

sentiments in, 102; approach toward

defense system, 53, 55, 98, 113; democracy

China/India, 19; Arab anti-Americanism,

in, 301n30; economic ties with India, 215,

122, 137, 141, 253, 281n52, 282n62; Arab

296n59; effect of nonnational expatriates

oil embargo against, 3, 17, 121, 125, 172,

on foreign policy, 84; establishment of

259n3; Asian view of war on terror, 210;

boundaries of, 26–27, 28; establishment

attempts to isolate Hamas, 110; concerns

of GCC and, 14; expatriates in, 84, 214;

about India-Iran ties, 228; concerns about

fears concerning Iran’s intentions, 54;

Sino-Iran ties, 19, 227; Cuban Missile

fortification of borders, 49; free-trade

Crisis, 80; declining popularity in Persian

negotiations with US, 60, 300n22; gas

Gulf, 122, 171–72, 176, 231, 281n52;

project with Qatar, 295n44; internal

defense agreements with Gulf states,

boundary disputes in, 22, 38–39; inter-

64; democratization efforts in Middle

national power of, 72; judicial system in,

East, 239; dispute over Abu Musa/Tunbs

300n27; Khawr Al ‘Udayd land dispute,

Islands and, 36; dual containment policy,

22, 27, 33–34, 38, 47, 48, 49; leaders of,

17, 91–92, 94, 99, 130–31, 188, 195–96,

246, 304n59; monarchy of, 239, 240–41;

204; effect on Chinese role in Persian

oil reserves, 4; percentage of budget from

Gulf, 220–21; effect on internal stability of

oil rents, 302n40; political reform in,

GCC states, 95, 137–41, 243; effect on Ira-

19–20, 234, 243, 245–46, 251; position on

nian foreign/security policies, 19, 184–85,

OPEC production/prices, 197; price of oil

186, 188–89, 191–93, 202, 205–6, 286n1,

required to meet budget, 295n40; public

287n28; effect on OPEC oil production/

view of US, 281n52; relations with China,

prices, 197; effects of supporting Israel, 137;

372

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Index

United States (cont.) energy consumption, 294n24; foreign

91–92, 103–8, 131, 134–35, 204, 288n36, 288n39 (See also dual containment policy;

policy toward West Asia, 17, 123–24;

twin pillar strategy); political influ-

free-trade agreements with GCC states,

ence in Persian Gulf, 238; as Al-Qaeda

60–61, 63, 244, 295n44, 300n22; GCC

target, 129; relationship with Bahrain,

concerns about imperialist intentions

254; relations with China, 230–32; rela-

of, 95, 99–100; GCC investments in, 217;

tions with India, 230–32; relations with

GCC’s difficulties with security architec-

Iran, 2, 3, 6–7, 12, 91–92, 123–24, 131,

ture and, 16–17, 99–108; global strategic

132, 188, 190, 193–94, 205, 227, 229–30,

considerations of foreign policy of, 90–91;

286n1 (See also dual containment policy;

hegemony in Persian Gulf, 64; history

twin pillar strategy); relations with Iraq,

of involvement in West Africa, 123–24,

91–92 (See also dual containment policy;

126; impact of Sunni-Shi‘i dimension,

First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

139–41; impact on Saudi regime stability,

1990–1991); Second Gulf War (US inva-

171–72, 176; India’s relations with, 68;

sion of Iraq 2003); twin pillar strategy);

internal opposition to presence in Gulf

relations with Jordan, 163; relations with

in GCC states (See internal stability);

Saudi Arabia, 163, 176, 179; reliance on

invasion of Afghanistan, 6, 10, 120, 122,

OPEC oil, 5–6, 90; response to Iranian

130, 131, 134, 191; invitation to protect

Revolution, 125–28; response to Iraqi

oil tankers, 97, 196, 289n46; involvement

invasion of Kuwait (See First Gulf War

in Iran-Iraq War, 17, 61, 97, 127, 196;

(Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 1990–1991));

involvement in Pakistan, 123; Iranian

rivalry over control of Caspian Sea and,

hostage situation, 91, 126; Iranian view

69–70; rivalry with Russia over influence

of US military in Persian Gulf, 198–99;

in Eurasia, 68–69; role in Iran-Iraq War,

Iraqi-Kuwaiti border disputes and, 42;

289n49; role in security system in Persian

liberation of Kuwait (See First Gulf War

Gulf, 2, 3, 6–8, 9–15, 17, 20, 64, 90–93,

(Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 1990–1991));

94, 96–108, 112–13, 116, 120–43, 198,

Middle Eastern investments in, 211;

218, 226, 229–30, 233, 243, 254, 290n60,

military presence in Persian Gulf, 6,

303n50 (See also dual containment policy;

60, 61–62, 82 (See also First Gulf War

First Gulf War (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

(Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 1990–1991);

1990–1991); Second Gulf War (US inva-

Second Gulf War (US invasion of Iraq

sion of Iraq 2003); twin pillar strategy);

2003)); nurturing of political Islam, 137;

sale of arms to GCC states, 52, 53, 98,

oil exploration in Saudi Arabia, 123;

112–13; sale of arms to Iran, 125; security

outcome of policies toward Persian Gulf,

agreements with GCC states, 96, 98;

141–43; overthrow of Mossadegh govern-

strategic significance of oil, 126; tensions

ment in Iran, 123; perception of Persian

over Iranian nuclear program, 2, 94–96,

Gulf, 120–23; policies in Iraq, 100–103;

104–8, 118–19, 134–36, 182, 190–91, 197,

policy option for containing spillover

205–6; terrorist attacks against, 17, 152

from Iraq, 164–68; policy toward Iran,

(See also September 11 terrorist attacks

Index

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373

on US); ties with China, 226; trade ties

perception of, 191–92; rejection of balance

with Persian Gulf, 207; trade with Middle

of power approach, 92; scope of, 129–30

East, 293n9; twin pillar strategy, 9–10,

Washington. See United States

17, 91, 124–28; view of Iran, 103–8, 131,

weapons procurement: by China, 221; China

134–35, 139, 191, 292nn91–92; war on

as source for, 64–65; classic security

terror, 82, 122, 129–30 (See also invasion

dilemma and, 14, 51–56, 70, 71; by

of Afghanistan, by US; Second Gulf War

India, 66, 224–25; in Iraq, 127, 161; from

(US invasion of Iraq 2003)); withdrawal

neighbors during civil wars, 156, 160; US

from Iraq, 102, 133, 154–55, 201. See also

as source of for GCC states, 52, 53, 97–98,

anti-Americanism

112, 134; US sales to Iran, 125

UNSC Resolution 598 (1988), 200

welfare system, 86, 242

UN Security Council, 205–6, 227

Wendt, Alexander, 74

‘Uqayr conference, 26, 44

West Asia, 17, 120–24, 126, 133, 136–39

US Central Command (CENTCOM), 6, 17,

Western research institutes, 80

60, 64, 126–27, 132 US Fift h Fleet, 6, 126, 132, 165, 192

al-Wifaq Party (Bahrain), 253, 254, 255, 305n83

US National Intelligence Estimate (2007), 106

Wilkinson, John, 262n1, 263n14

US War College study, 224

women: access to majlis, 241; education of,

Uzbekistan, 68, 191

302n40; right to vote, 244, 246, 247, 304n66 workforce: Asian expatriates in GCC states as, 211; Chinese workers in GCC states,

Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 222

214; expatriates as security concern in,

Velayati, ‘Ali, 67

293n10; Indian workers in GCC states,

Venezuela, 186, 197

217, 295n39. See also expatriate commu-

Vietnam, 68

nity; migrant workers

Violet Line, 28, 45

World Assembly of Muslim Youth, 178 World Trade Organization (WTO), 256 World War I, 77–78

Wadi Hatta, 38–39

Wright, Steven, xv, 15–16, 72–93

Wahhabi clerics, 99 Wahhabism, 129, 138, 170, 172, 289n43, 301n35

Yadavaran oil field, 227

Walker, Julian, 38

al-Yawwar, Ghazi, 60

Waltz, Kenneth, 73

Yemen: Arab nationalist mobilization in,

warlords, 18, 138, 144. See also tribalism

171; CENTCOM protection of, 126; civil

war on terror: Asian view of, 210; effect on

war in, 47, 175; Nasser’s Arab nationalist

GCC foreign policy/agenda setting, 82;

mobilization in, 173–74, 176; oil reserves,

effect on linkages between West Asia

4; population of, 87; relations with Oman,

states, 122; establishment of Saudi special

46–47; relations with Saudi Arabia, 46;

courts, 245; India’s role in, 222, 231; Iran’s

Saudi desire for dominance in, 173–75;

374

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Index

Yemen (cont.)

Zaidite Yemenis, 301n34

Saudi-supported insurrection in, 121–22;

Zaranj-Delaram Road Project, 228

Soviet control of South Yemen, 174, 175,

al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab, 153

195; territories lost to Saudi Arabia, 22,

al-Zawahiri, ‘Ayman, 152

44–46, 48; terrorists operating in, 129;

Zaydi imam, 45

unification of, 174, 175

Zogby International poll, 122

Yugoslav war (1990s), 159

Zubarah, 31, 32