Turkish Forum

Category: Middle East & Africa

  • Sanctions: A Substitute For Serious Foreign Policy

    Sanctions: A Substitute For Serious Foreign Policy

    From: Pulat Tacar

    by Robert E. Hunter1 day ago
    un us
    U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley at U.N. Security Council meeting

    In recent times, the United States has increasingly resorted to economic and other sanctions to try getting countries, with governments often referred to as “rogue regimes,” to change their behavior. Today, Iran, Russia, and North Korea have been notable targets. But are sanctions genuinely a useful tool of policy—that is, do they work? And, if that proposition is at best debatable, why does the United States deploy them so often?

    Some of us who have been both outside observers and US government practitioners of sanctions have long been skeptical that they are—at least very often—a ready tool to serve US foreign-policy interests, except as a means of threading the needle between doing nothing and going to war. They are certainly useful in US domestic politics as a feel-good device on Capitol Hill, among various interest groups, and for editorial writers.

    For sanctions to work, generally six conditions need to be in play.

    The Six Conditions

    1. All the countries that supply critical commodities (including cash) to sanctioned country X must agree to and abide by the sanctions, while making sure that those under its sway follow suit. The second requirement is generally more difficult to achieve than the first. When a sanctioned country has ready cash, there is almost always someone in the outside world prepared to sell just about anything and to find a means of delivery. In virtually all countries, public and private sectors do not operate according to the same norms. A decade after sanctions were imposed on Northern Rhodesia for its 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence, this author visited Salisbury and could find in shops there just about anything that could be bought in Europe or America.
    2. The targeted behavior must not be something that the leadership of the sanctioned country believes to be of major importance, especially for national security. In such cases, as one Pakistani leader said about the need to get nuclear weapons to balance those of India, the people of the sanctioned country would “eat grass” if need be—or at least their leaders would require them to do so.
    3. Just sanctioning leaders or the wealthy isn’t much good when in monetary terms they can just pass on the costs to the less powerful in their societies or forgo visits to Paris and London. In like manner, Western countries sometimes restrict foreign aid to developing countries to non-military purchases. Since money is fungible, these countries often just shift domestic funds to arms purchases, while using the money from abroad to pay for development.
    4. The capacity for domestic substitution of critical goods in the sanctioned country must be so limited that sanctions will erode the capacity of the political leadership to keep control of its population through various means, like invoking national security or a foreign bully. Countries employing sanctions all too often underestimate the ability of sanctioned countries to develop substitutes from their own domestic sources. The history of Cold War embargoes (sanctions) on the Soviet Union and East European Communist countries should be a sufficient lesson. Today, in the case of North Korea, its leadership can plausibly argue to its people that the United States is bent upon regime change. Kim Jong-un and company extend that argument to include US threats to the North Korean people, themselves. Unfortunately for US efforts to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, this argument seems validated by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about “totally destroying” North Korea, which has no practical effect other than to shore up the North Korean leadership.
    5. The sanctioning countries must avoid a situation in which leaders of the sanctioned country can argue that it is being “picked on” by a bully (a role the United States, and especially the Congress, have in recent years too often been willing to play). Both Russia and North Korea have successfully used this stratagem. By the same token, Iran’s leadership has long argued that the US is at fault for the Iranian people’s economic suffering. However, in this case sanctions helped lead to successful negotiations to scotch the Iranian nuclear weapons program, although the role sanctions played can’t be quantified. A key factor was clearly that the sanctions had broad international backing. Sanctions did ensure that Iran missed out on major elements of economic modernization. Something similar was true in South Africa in the long-running efforts to get its white leadership to abandon Apartheid policies and practices.
    6. There must be coherence in sanctions policies toward a particular country and expectations about behavior changes that make sense. For example, the United States has imposed (with others) sanctions against Russia because of its aggression in Ukraine and threats against other European countries, but Washington also talks about the desirability of working with Russia on issues elsewhere. This kind of issue differentiation by the sanctioning country, however, looks peculiar to the sanctioned country and has little if any chance of working. Unless there is a proposal for a trade-off—for example, the US will stop sanctioning Russia over Ukraine if Moscow will help the United States in the Middle East—this is magical thinking.

    Another example is the U.S. promise of sanctions relief against Iran after the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But the chances for improved relations with Iran dissipated when the United States dragged its feet on promised sanctions relief and then either retained or even augmented sanctions targeting other Iranian behavior. This included misrepresenting UN Security Council Resolution 2231 as requiring Iran to stop work on ballistic missiles when in fact the resolution merely expressed a wish that Teheran would follow that course.

    President Obama can be credited for resisting domestic political pressures in concluding the landmark JCPOA. But members of Obama’s own administration, particularly the Treasury Department, opposed potentially positive developments with Iran flowing from the JCPOA because they did not want to see any relaxation of sanctions beyond the absolute minimum and were able to thwart the president’s will. Of course, President Trump’s rhetoric against Iran and the JCPOA, in part at the behest of US regional partners Saudi Arabia and Israel, has closed the door, at least for now, on the chance of changed relations with Iran. Furthermore, the US “nickel and diming” of sanctions relief provided for under the JCPOA sends a message to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un that any prospective agreement with the United States on his nuclear program would need to be much more tightly crafted.

    A Weak Reed

    To be sure, sometimes the US will decide to make a political or moral statement by imposing sanctions on another country, especially when human rights are concerned, even if the US calculates that sanctions will not change behavior. Or the issue in question in the sanctioned country may not rise to the level of national security, and thus domestic opposition might grow to the leadership’s behavior that brought about sanctions in the first place.

    In general, however, experience shows that sanctions are a weak reed. Too often, they become a substitute for serious diplomacy practiced by serious diplomats as part of a serious diplomatic structure. Alas, this is an area where the United States is increasingly deficient, especially as national leadership significantly reduces the ranks of able diplomats and the resources to help them be effective.

    Of course, it is often useful to back diplomacy with a threat of force. Then sanctions can credibly be represented as a last chance before the use of force. This is provided that the interests of the sanctioning country are sufficiently important, that the threat of force is kept proportionate, and that there are other elements such as a UN Security Council Resolution and the lack of an offsetting threat from another powerful country. Thus, effective diplomacy over the Bosnia War only became possible when NATO was able to employ force. Then the war came to an end in 18 days, with the Dayton Accords afterwards tidying up what had already been achieved with force.

    No doubt, the United States will continue to employ sanctions against other countries, if only out of habit and the perceived value of feeling good. But they are no substitute for intelligent, coherent, well-crafted diplomacy and other non-coercive instruments. Yet the prospects are poor for reviving these capacities, which have been permitted to erode throughout most of the post-Cold War period. Unless they are revived and given the pride of place that they traditionally held for most of US history, Washington will rely to an even greater degree on cruder instruments: both sanctions, which rarely achieve their stated goals, and military force, which generally is successful, at least initially, but can impose high costs down the road, as has been the case in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

    The search for alternatives to war should not lead to sanctions, which almost always are a dead end. Rather, the United States should invest more in serious diplomacy and the tools to make it effective.

    Cover photo: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley at U.N. Security Council meeting

    Via LobeLog

  • Russia’s Syria Congress is over: what’s next?

    Russia’s Syria Congress is over: what’s next?

    Syria CongressThe Syrian National Dialogue Congress held in Russia’s Sochi on January 28-29 was aimed to boost the process for building a peaceful future for Syrian people in a war-devastated country and to define the country’s political compass for the next years. The Congress, sponsored by Russia, Iran and Turkey, gathered over 1,500 participants from various groups of Syrian society, including representatives from political parties, opposition groups and ethnic and confessional communities.

    While the Congress itself did not aim to achieve the immediate political reconciliation over Syria, its main focus was to revive Geneva talks. According to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the forum was expected to “create conditions for staging fruitful Geneva process”.

    Besides, the Congress was some kind of alert to boycotting countries and their procrastination to reinforce the 2254 UN Security Council Resolution for Peace Process in Syria, adopted in 2015. According to the resolution, the future of Syria should be determined by its people. However, the country has experienced forced intervention and external interference that prevented it from paving ways for a peaceful future ever since.

    Ironically it may seem, the so-called peace process for Syria that has been joined by many countries pursuing different strategies including diametrically opposite approaches of Russia and the United States, became a fruitful soil for radically oriented groups that eroded the country’s sovereignty. The delay in reinforcing the 2254 UN Security Resolution by international community can lead to further monetization of Syria’s natural resources by terrorist organizations and cause major security threats for the entire international community.

    1185811Perhaps, the most important result of the Sochi Congress has been an agreement of all participants to consolidate their efforts in stabilizing the Syria’s future and to secure the territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic. The concerns of the Syrian opposition claiming the Sochi Congress would, on the contrary, hazard the international peace process could not be more baseless since the Congress was supported by the UN, the main sponsor of the Geneva talks.

  • Central Asia Faces New Future: between Turkey, Iran, China and Russia

    Central Asia Faces New Future: between Turkey, Iran, China and Russia

    Central Asian leaders are known for their absolute power and life-long immunity from prosecution. The tradition that was started by the late Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov who held the title Turkmenbashi (The Leader of All Turkmen) until his death in 2006, later followed by his successor, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, 77 and finally the Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, 64, has been well enjoyed by its followers for over 20 years by now.

    However, the leaders are getting old and the region just might be on the threshold of the new era. The recent death of the Uzbek President Islam Karimov has marked the beginning of inevitable changes and has made the issue a public debate. The Central Asia is of great interest of its strong neighbors: Turkey, Iran, Russia and, finally, China. Each of the country is eagerly waiting to gain its own geopolitical goals and ambitions there. It’s only a matter of time now. In the long-term scenario, as seen by political analysts, China will most likely strengthen its political and economic development, while Turkey will likely become more stable economically. Finally, Iran might recover its power due to its nuclear program agreement.

    The key factor might be played by migrant workers. Though China is the huge labor pool that offers low-cost migrant workers it still cannot compete with Russia when it comes to the Central Asia: most of the people’s income in this region is coming from Russia as there are more jobs to Central Asian migrant workers than in any other country. Nevertheless, the competition between Turkey and Iran will most likely continue to grow. Considering the fact that some Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are highly vulnerable due to terrorism threats and geographic proximity with Afghanistan, Turkey, if it keeps its stable economic growth, has all chances to confront terrorism by taking the leading control in the region in the long run.

    Meanwhile, the current Central Asian leaders keeping in mind all the dangers coming to them struggle to extend their authoritarian leadership as longer as possible by empowering their children and by filling all the important government positions with their family members. One of the brightest examples of such practice may be found in Tajikistan. Earlier last year Emomali Rahmon’s daughter, Ozoda Rahmon has been appointed as his chief of staff while her husband, Jamoliddin Nuraliev, the First Deputy Chairman of the National Bank of Tajikistan is one of the strongest candidates for the President elections in 2020 along with the President’s son, Rustam Rahmon. But due to the recent scandal that put Jamoliddin Nuraliev in the spotlight as he has been regularly seen in public together with Takhmina Bagirova in Austria (where Bagirova lives) and other countries during the holiday season, Nuraliev might soon be off the game leaving Rustam Rahmon the only real candidate for the President.  But whether the current leaders’ successors be able to be as powerful as their fathers or their presidency will mark the end of the authoritarian power in the region the Central Asia’s new wave of development is inevitable. As the pro-Moscow leaders will go, the region this will most likely be the platform of disputes between Iran, Turkey and China.

  • The Gulf crisis: Royal ambitions and shaky alliances

    The Gulf crisis: Royal ambitions and shaky alliances

    Galip Dalay

    The scale, scope and causes of the Gulf crisis have been perplexing even for keen observers of the region’s political scene. The architects of the blockade against Qatar are conducting a large-scale campaign of public diplomacy, tailoring different messages to different audiences in order to legitimise their moves and frame as acceptable what is really absurd.

    While charges of Qatar having purported links with radical Islamist movements are meant to appeal to Western audiences, the accusations that Qatar has secret and intricate links with Iran is aimed at appealing to the Sunni Arab audience given its growing dislike of Iran thanks to the role it plays in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Then, after Iran and Turkey offered their support for Qatar, it appears that this time the same bloc has aimed at stirring up Arab nationalist sentiment against Qatar. The UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar bin Mohammad Gargash has accusedQatar of seeking the backing of two non-Arab states in the region. Fearmongering has been on full display during this recent campaign.

    But in order to understand what is really going on in the Gulf right now, one has to look beyond official statements, posturing and threats.

    Royal ambitions and fears

    Certainly, the main protagonists of this move, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, have sought personal aggrandisement and benefit from this crisis. Mohammed bin Salman tried to make up for his youthfulness, erratic behaviour, bad-temper and inexperience by adopting an image of a man who is a committed foe to both Iran and political Islam. In this way, he seeks to endear himself to the Western, and particularly American, political establishment and gain advantage over his more statesman-like cousin and rival, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Al Saud, on the question of succession.

    And in this relationship, it seems that Mohammed bin Salman represents the brawn, while Mohammed bin Zayed represents the brains. For Mohammed bin Zayed, this move aims at getting rid of moderate political Islam as an alternative political project and killing the Arab Spring phenomenon with its initial promises of democratisation and progress, which have shaken the region’s authoritarian status quo to its foundations.

    Although the recent crisis has its roots in the Arab Spring era, it is only the latest iteration of a region-wide struggle to shape the post-Arab Spring regional order. In fact, the composition of the anti-Qatari bloc reflects the post-Arab Spring reality and political realignment in the region. At its core, this move aims at setting up a new regional order, mostly along the lines of the post-Cold War authoritarian status quo protected by the US security umbrella.

    The trouble with this camp is that they fail to advance a coherent vision for a regional order and a more benign form of state-society relations enjoying legitimacy and sustainability. Its elitist authoritarian regional order was rejected by the forces of the Arab Spring and the political psychology that this process unleashed. The Arab uprisings also rejected the personalisation of power and the way succession was handled within this regional order: either by transfer of power from aging autocrat to his son or by a military coup.

    Pursuing this line of reactionary politics, Saudi Arabia and the UAE went as far as accusing other countries of supporting terrorism. The main accusation against Qatar is that it supports the Muslim Brotherhood, a mainstream political Islamist organisation which isn’t on any Western terror list. In fact, it was not even on the terror list of the UAE or Saudi Arabia until 2014 and is still part of the legal political establishment in Kuwait. 

    The fact that neither Saudi Arabia nor UAE realised that the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928, was a terrorist organisation until the aftermath of the Egyptian coup speaks for the real motives behind this move. They have waged a war on the Muslim Brotherhood because it became a real political factor and alternative to the decaying monarchical and autocratic regimes, despite all the group’s shortcomings, short-sightedness and blunders.

    In short, for the likes of Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, the revolutionary spirit of the Arab uprisings and political Islam represent an existential threat because they could challenge their personal power projects.

    The UAE-Saudi alliance is shaky

    On top of this, once the common denominator of resisting change is taken out, the interests of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not easily reconcilable. In fact, authoritarian collusion is not a sustainable form of alliance structure that can re-establish a broken regional order.

    The positions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the Yemeni crisis, for example, are diametrically opposed to each other. They support different factions and different solutions for the Yemeni crisis. While the UAE is a staunch supporter of the former governor of Aden Aidarous al-Zubaidi and police commissioner of Aden Shallal Shaye and envisions the partition of Yemen, the Saudi regime has thrown its support behind Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government and is opposed to the idea of the partition of Yemen.

    Even the much-hyped Iranian factor is not the significant unifying factor that the protagonists of this latest blockade would like to portray. The emphasis on Iran is primarily designed to serve as a legitimacy-enhancing factor for this move.

    Its protagonists believe this will also go down well with the Trump administration, which is gradually transitioning from an ISIL-first to an Iran-first strategy in the region. If Iran were the real reason, one would then anticipate that Saudi Arabia would first make a similar move against Oman, a country that has such extensive, deep and open ties with Iran. Or one might even expect Saudi Arabia to ask its close ally the UAE to block Iran’s attempt to evade Western sanctions by using Dubai as one of its major hubs for trade.

    According to The Financial Tribune, Iran’s main English-language economic newspaper, during the last financial year ending March 20, 2017, the UAE was Iran’s second-largestexport destination after China, accounting for 17 percent of Iranian exports – a significant increase from the year before.

    It remains to be seen how long the UAE-Saudi alliance can survive for, but one thing is for sure: The escalation and blockade they plotted will not resolve their legitimacy issues.

    This article was first published by Al Jazeera in June 15, 2017

  • The blockade of Qatar is a move against the values of the Arab spring

    The blockade of Qatar is a move against the values of the Arab spring

    Melania Trump, Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia King
    Melania and Donald Trump on their visit to Saudi Arabia

    Wadah Khanfar

    The move of Saudi Arabia,the UAE and Bahrain against Qatar was swift. It was launched on the back of a fake news report placed by hackers on the website of Qatar’s official news agency. That allowed the three Gulf states to launch a media campaign led by Saudi- and UAE-controlled TV channels.

    Qatar was simultaneously accused of hosting Hamas; supporting the Muslim Brotherhood; backing Hezbollah; having close ties with Iran; sowing the seeds of sedition inside Saudi Arabia, and all the while maintaining intimate relations with Israel. If you can do all those things at the same time, you are indeed a magician.

    The incoherence of these claims did not matter. The Saudis and Emiratis were addressing two audiences: the western one, which sees conflict in the Middle East through the exclusive prism of fighting terrorism; and the Gulf audience, which sees red when any of its leaders talk to Iran or Israel.

    On Monday, a set of measures were announced that are unprecedented in peacetime: cutting diplomatic relations; closing all the borders, sea lanes and airspace; banning citizens of all participating states from travelling to Qatar, and banning all Qataris and residents of Qatar from travelling to those countries. These are measures not even used in a warzone. They violate all the norms of international aviation.

    The pretext offered for all this was the desire to cut the funding of terrorist groups and radical Islamist ideology. And yet the most significant demand had nothing to do with this: it was to close down the al-Jazeera media network. This has been eagerly sought by many Arab states, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, ever since the original news channel launched in 1996.

    Al-Jazeera transformed the Arab media from a natural extension of the intelligence and security agencies to an independent sector whose values were transparency, accountability and democracy. This is exactly what so many Arab regimes fear.

    Al-Jazeera is very familiar with the charges Qatar now faces, because they were made against it: al-Jazeera was accused of aligning itself with Hezbollah, supporting Islamist groups and having intimate ties with Israel.

    The most important event al-Jazeera covered was the Arab spring in 2011. This was a political earthquake, driven by the dreams and aspirations of a new generation, born under dictatorship but raised in the age of the internet. Young people sought to turn those dreams into reality, taking to the streets, using the power of networking and learning from the experiences of other youth groups from around the world. The dynamic was neither partisan, sectarian nor ideological.

    Toppling regimes proved to be the easiest step. For these were ageing regimes whose structures had been infested with rampant corruption. Establishing consensus and rebuilding the state on democratic foundations was much harder. Young people alone were not up to the task. Counter-revolutionary forces, funded by the entire wealth of the Gulf, regained control.

    The dividing line was wealth. Revolutions erupted in the poorer nations such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, while the rich countries stood behind the counter-revolution. The three countries that have imposed a siege on Qatar funded the 2013 military coup in Egypt and have propped up the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. They have also funded and armed General Khalifa Haftar in Libya and waged an open war on the forces of the Arab spring.

    Qatar distanced itself from these policies. Qatar is not a democracy. Yet it was not hostile to the Arab spring.

    This was the reason behind the first Gulf escalation against Qatar in 2014, when the same three countries withdrew their ambassadors from Doha and threatened to close their borders. They demanded Qatar support the Sisi regime, fight the Muslim Brotherhood and curb al-Jazeera’s independence.

    The crisis did not escalate, as Barack Obama’s administration was not enthusiastic about such conflicts. By contrast, the current situation is being seized upon by Qatar’s foes. In his tweets, Donald Trump claimed ownership, saying the moves to isolate Qatar were the fruits of his address to more than 40 leaders of Muslim nations last month.

    The current dispute has nothing to do with funding terrorism or radical ideology and even less to do with any official Qatari leaning toward Iran. This is a resumption of an old fight: drying all the fountains of independent conscience in preparation for a restoration of the old order in the Middle East. This time, however, the old order has tough new security powers, created by the war on terror and the support of a president who has jettisoned all the US’s values.

    But are we going to fight terror with more persecution, or learn lessons from history? The fact is that dictatorial and corrupt regimes were the incubators of extremism in the region. Decades of suppressing liberties and violating human rights provided the oxygen for jihadi groups. While these regimes flouted the rule of law, they still enjoyed US support. As a result, the Middle East continues to be engulfed by conflicts and instability.

    We should not rebuild the Middle East on the foundations that generated terrorism. We should align ourselves with a future of youthful dreams. These may often be utopian or unrealistic. But at least we would be walking forward, rather than stumbling backwards.

    This article was first published by The Guardian

  • Implications of the Qatar Crisis for Regional Security in the Gulf

    Implications of the Qatar Crisis for Regional Security in the Gulf

     The involvement of countries such as Turkey, and potentially Russia and Iran, is likely to widen existing fractures within the GCC and weaken the web of partnerships with Western states that have formed the cornerstone of the post-1991 Gulf security architecture.

    Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

    Abstract: The standoff in the Gulf that commenced in May 23 between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) presents the greatest challenge to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the Gulf War in January–February 1991. The demands made of Qatar by the trio of fellow GCC states have laid bare the tensions in the GCC that have for years complicated moves toward any meaningful form of collective defense cooperation. In addition, the fallout from the spat threatens to split the GCC along multiple lines and open inroads for new participants in regional security structures. The involvement of countries such as Turkey, and potentially Russia and Iran, is likely to widen existing fractures within the GCC and weaken the web of partnerships with Western states that have formed the cornerstone of the post-1991 Gulf security architecture.

    Two threads run through regional security structures in the Gulf and connect the past to the present. The first is the presence of external forces with their own interests in maritime and regime stability, while the second is the imbalance of power and difference in threat perception between the three larger states—Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia—and the five smaller states—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE. While the exact nature of this imbalance has fluctuated considerably over time, ithas contributed to a marked preference for bilateralism over multilateralism in most matters of national security, and created trajectories that may widen further with the Qatar crisis.

     

    The Politics of Protection

    The United Kingdom was the paramount external power in the Gulf from 1820, when Britain signed a General Treaty of Peace with local rulers on the coastline of the Arabian Peninsula, to 1971, when the British government withdrew its military from all positions east of Suez under financial duress. Britain concluded individual treaties with the rulers of the Trucial States (since 1971 the UAE) in 1835, Bahrain in 1861, Kuwait in 1899 and again in 1914, and Qatar in 1916.[1] These agreements consolidated the internal legitimacy and power of the individual ruling families by bestowing diplomatic recognition and a measure of external protection for their survival.[2] This protection additionally gave ruling elites in the Gulf States—whether members of ruling families or British officials—a considerable stake in maintaining the conservative status-quo. Consequently, when Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced Britain’s impending withdrawal from the Gulf by the end of 1971, the rulers of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar offered to assume the costs of maintaining the garrisons.[3]

    The loss of British-protected status in 1971 rendered the newly-independent states of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE vulnerable to their larger and more powerful neighbors. Iraq massed troops on its border with Kuwait immediately upon Kuwaiti independence in 1961, a move that necessitated the return of British forces to Kuwait just six days after they had left

    For the smaller Gulf States, a dangerous decade separated Britain’s military withdrawal in November 1971 and the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council at a summit in Abu Dhabi in May 1981. The loss of British-protected status in 1971 rendered the newly-independent states of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE vulnerable to their larger and more powerful neighbors. Iraq massed troops on its border with Kuwait immediately upon Kuwaiti independence in 1961, a move that necessitated the return of British forces to Kuwait just six days after they had left. In Bahrain, the Shah revived Iran’s longstanding territorial claim on the archipelago in 1968 in a move that was ultimately settled through a UN mission that visited Bahrain and determined that its citizens wished to become an independent Arab state. More worrying for local officials was Iran’s seizure of the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the emirates of Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah respectively on the day before Britain’s withdrawal in November 1971.[4] The young Gulf States’ sense of vulnerability was further heightened by Ba’athist Iraqi involvement in a coup against the ruler of Sharjah in 1973,[5] and in Baghdad’s support for, and hosting of, revolutionary cells of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman until 1975.[6]

    The GCC and the US

    The creation of the GCC in May 1981 was an immediate ad hoc reaction to the situation of profound uncertainty occasioned by the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq war in 1980.[7] It emerged from several competing visions of regional cooperation that extended back to a meeting of the foreign ministers of all eight Gulf States in Muscat in 1976. The Shah’s replacement by a clerical regime in Iran initially committed to exporting its (Shia) revolutionary fervor seen as an imminent threat to regional security in Gulf capitals. Consequently, Iraq and Iran were excluded from the regional organization that was launched in Abu Dhabi on May 25, 1981. This reflected the fact that the GCC was primarily the defensive response of six relatively like-minded political entities intended to shield their member states and societies from the transnational threat of spill-over from the warring parties of two revolutionary regimes (Iraq and Iran) with hegemonic designs.[8] Neither a political nor a military alliance, the GCC lacked an integrated supranational decision-making institution for the sharing of sovereignty and had no explicit treaty-based foreign policy-making power.[9]

    From the beginning, the six GCC member states struggled to find a consensus on the key regional foreign and security policy challenges.[10] This was immediately evident during the Iran-Iraq War, when the two camps rapidly emerged. Their geographical position in the northern Gulf and the greater intermixing of Sunni and Shia communities exposed Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to a range of material and ideological threats to their security. All three countries experienced acts of political violence and terrorism, including an Iranian-backed coup attempt in Bahrain in 1981, a wave of bombings in Kuwait, an attempt to assassinate the Kuwaiti Emir in 1985, and the emergence of Hezbollah Al-Hijaz in Saudi Arabia in 1987.[11] However, in the South there was less immediate Iranian threat compared to the northern states in the Gulf. Policymakers in Qatar, the UAE and Oman sought to balance limited financial and declaratory (through GCC communiqués) support to Iraq with continuing commercial relations with Iran. This balancing act reached extreme proportions in the UAE, where Dubai, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain favored Iran while the other four emirates of Abu Dhabi, Ras al-Khaimah, Ajman and Fujairah sided with Iraq[12]

    Decisions taken near the end of the Iran-Iraq war greatly expanded the U.S. military and security footprint in the Gulf as developments between 1986 and 1988 brought a sizeable external naval force into the region for the first time since Britain’s departure in 1971. This occurred as the United States (along with the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France and Italy) sent warships to conduct convoy operations for re-flagged and chartered vessels. Iranian attacks on re-flagged merchant shipping now invited external retaliation, as when the U.S. Navy destroyed Iranian offshore oil platforms in response to attacks on U.S.-flagged ships in October 1987 and April 1988.[13]

    The intervention of the United States as a regional security participant had its roots in longstanding U.S. security arrangements with Saudi Arabia and the presence of a naval detachment in Bahrain (the U.S. Middle East Force), both of which dated back to the 1940s, as well as the Carter Doctrine of January 1980, which stated that the U.S. would use military force, if necessary, to protect its national interests in the Gulf. Successive presidential administrations under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the 1990s designed a ‘Dual Containment’ policy that excluded Iraq and Iran from regional security structures and deepened bilateral security relations with GCC states.[14] This was achieved through an existing access-to-facilities agreement with Oman and separate defense cooperation agreements with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE (with the first two also being accorded Major Non-NATO Ally status in 2002 and 2004). The GCC states developed into major logistical and command-and-control hubs for the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Manama in 1995, and the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Doha in 2002, while substantial stocks of military equipment were position at airbases and ports in the UAE, and Kuwait became the administrative and logistical lifeline for multinational forces in Iraq after 2003.[15]

    The Illusion of Collective Action

    Collective GCC policymaking, particularly in defense matters, has remained a chimera as each of the GCC states has been integrated into the American security umbrella on a bilateral basis, and sporadic efforts to formulate a collective approach to security have foundered. In part, this reflects an underlying wariness among four of the smaller five GCC states (Bahrain being the exception) about the potential for Saudi hegemony within a closer-knit GCC.[16] Attempts to create a unified internal security mechanism within the GCC failed in 1982 and again in 1994, on both occasions due to Kuwaiti resistance, and were only pushed through in 2012 in the wake of the region-wide political upheaval triggered by the Arab Spring.[17] Border skirmishes between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in 1992 and 1993 and a brief clash between Saudi and Emirati vessels in disputed waters in 2010 also heightened concerns about the power imbalance between the Kingdom and its much smaller neighbors.[18]Even the intervention in Bahrain in 2011, packaged as the deployment of the GCC’s Peninsula Shield Force to assist the Bahraini government restore order, was, in reality, more of a Saudi and Emirati initiative, and a group of Kuwaiti medics was denied entry to Bahrain.[19]

    More recently, Saudi attempts to transform the GCC into a more politically integrated Gulf Union both failed to make headway in the face of stiff opposition from other member states. King Abdullah announced his vision for a closer ‘Gulf Union’ at the GCC Summit in Riyadh in December 2011, reportedly taking his fellow rulers largely by surprise with the unilateral announcement. Despite then-Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal Al Saud expanding the proposals for an integrated military and regional security policy, neither a mid-year GCC Consultative Summit in Riyadh in May 2012 nor subsequent annual Summits in Bahrain (December 2012) or Kuwait (December 2013) reached a consensus on the move towards a closer political union. Yusuf bin Ali, Oman’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, rejected the Saudi initiative in an unprecedentedly open and direct manner, telling the attendees in a security conference in Bahrain that ‘We are against a union. We will not prevent a union, but if it happens we will not be part of it.’[20]

    Divergent Paths Ahead

    The standoff between Qatar and its neighbors has its roots in their diverging policy responses to the Arab Spring. Qatari policymakers—and the Qatar-based Al Jazeera media group—supported the uprisings in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen—though not Bahrain—and assisted a range of Islamist groups in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, in the political transitions that followed. Qatar’s sympathetic stance toward the Brotherhood was diametrically opposed to the view in Abu Dhabi that the Brotherhood—and Islamist movements more generally—posed a grave threat to the regional political order.[21] The assistance provided from 2011 to 2013 by Qatar to regional Islamist groups was countered by the formulation of more assertive regional policies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that accelerated after the reassertion of military control in Egypt in 2013, an event that signified the end of the initial phase of the Arab Spring.[22]

    Post-2011 Egypt (and Libya) have furthered revealed the differences between Qatari and Emirati approaches to regional affairs, while the war in Yemen since 2015 has illustrated the practical challenges of aligning quite distinct national security objectives (in Saudi Arabia and the UAE) under a nominally multilateral umbrella. In each instance, greater assertiveness from GCC states in terms of power projection occurred largely through national channels, with only a loose coordinating mechanism for collective action. This was also the case for a previous iteration of the Saudi – Emirati – Bahraini diplomatic spat with Qatar, when the three countries withdrew their ambassadors from Doha for 8 months in 2014. On that occasion, as in the current standoff, neither Kuwait nor Oman joined their counterparts in acting against Qatar, and the GCC Secretariat was notable more by its policymaking absence than by any attempt to resolve the issue.[23]

    This dispute differs significantly from that of 2014 in several respects. The first difference is the Saudi and Emirati conviction that the Qatari leadership has not altered course since the previous confrontation and is therefore unlikely to do so unless greater pressure is applied this time. This likely explains the addition of economic sanctions on Qatar and restrictions on the flow of trade and people to and from Qatar, as well as the attempt to mobilize other regional states such as Egypt against Doha. However, it also means that passions on both sides of the divide are far higher than they were in 2014 and have widened fissures that will be rather more difficult to repair. These cracks in the always-fragile notion of ‘Gulf unity’ open up opportunities for new entrants to insert themselves into regional security dialogues in ways that may increase tensions further and reinforce the divergent trajectories noted above. One example is the Saudi-led coalition’s demand that Qatar shut the Turkish military base that became operational in 2016; further strains may occur if bilateral relations between Qatar and Iran proliferate in response to the standoff.[24]

    Finally, the crisis has implications for the United States and other international partners with a stake in the regional security architecture. At best, the standoff is an unnecessary crisis that is a distraction from the more serious challenges of defeating Islamic State forces in Mosul and Raqqa, finding a diplomatic solution to the Syrian catastrophe, and preventing total state collapse in Yemen and Libya. Yet, Bahrain’s decision to kick out Qatari military personnel serving with the U.S.-led Bahrain-headquartered counter-Islamic State coalition leave the country illustrates how the crisis has already impacted international responses to regional conflicts.[25] Moreover, the spat has come at a time when the new U.S. government is distracted by domestic affairs and has struggled to coordinate policies between the White House and government departments, resulting in a series of mixed messages that have called into question the consistency of U.S. leadership in the Gulf. Putting an end to the centrifugal forces driving apart the Gulf and finding ways to rebuild trust and confidence will test the capacity of an inexperienced president and the institutional durability of the network of partnerships that have formed the cornerstone of regional security structures for a generation.

    Endnotes:

    [1] James Onley and Suleyman Khalaf, ‘Shaikly Authority in the Pre-oil Gulf: An Historical-Anthropological Study,’ History and Anthropology, 17(3), 2006, p.193.

    [2] Lisa Anderson, ‘Absolutism and the Resilience of Monarchy in the Middle East,’ Political Science Quarterly, 106(1), 1991, p.9.

    [3]Shohei Sato, “Britain’s Decision to Withdraw from the Persian Gulf, 1964-68: A Pattern and a Puzzle,” Journal of Imperial and CommonwealthHistory, 37(1), 2009, p.108.

    [4] William Roger Louis, ‘The British Withdrawal from the Gulf, 1967-71,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31(1), (2003), p.102.

    [5] Christopher Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (London: Hurst and Co., 2008), p.251.

    [6] Marc Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State (London: Hurst and Co., 2009), p.60.

    [7]Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, ‘The Gulf Cooperation Council: Nature, Origin and Process,’ in Michael Hudson (ed.), Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p.154.

    [8] Author interview with Abdullah Bishara (Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, 1981-93), 2009.

    [9] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘Is the GCC Worth Belonging To?’ Chatham House Expert Comment, 20 June 2017.

    [10] Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

    [11] Hasan Tariq Alhassan, ‘The Role of Iran in the Failed Coup of 1981: The IFLB in Bahrain,’ Middle East Journal, 65(4), 2011, p.603; Toby Matthiesen, ‘Hizbullah al-Hijaz: A History of the Most Radical Saudi Shi’a Opposition Group,’ Middle East Journal, 64(2), 2010, p.179.

    [12] Christopher Davidson, The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival (London: Lynne Rienner, 2006), p.206.

    [13] Abdul-Reda Assiri, Kuwait’s Foreign Policy: City-State in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), pp.107-8.

    [14] Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.201.

    [15] F. Gregory Gause III, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.127.

    [16] Anthony Cordesman, quoted in Ibrahim Suleiman al-Duraiby, Saudi Arabia, GCC and the EU: Limitations and Possibilities for an Unequal Triangular Relationship (Dubai: Gulf Research Centre, 2009), p.89.

    [17] Joseph Kechichian, ‘The Gulf Security Pact: Another GCC Dilemma,’ Al Jazeera Online, 24 February 2014.

    [18] ‘Saudi-Qatar Flare-up,’ Gulf States Newsletter, Volume 19, Issue 501, 12 December 1994, p.5; ‘Naval Battle Between UAE and Saudi Arabia Raises Fears for Gulf Security,’ The Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2010.

    [19] ‘Kuwait Medical Team Hopes for Bahrain Clearance,’ Associated Press, 23 March 2011.

    [20] ‘GCC Unity Questioned as Summit Begins,’ Gulf States Newsletter, Volume 37, Issue 960, 12 December 2013, p.7.

    [21] David Roberts, ‘Qatar, the Ikhwan, and Transnational Relations in the Gulf,’ Project on Middle East Political Science, 9 March 2014.

    [22] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘The Gulf States and the Rebalancing of Regional and Global Power,’ Rice University’sBaker Institute for Public Policy, 8 January 2014.

    [23] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘Is the GCC Worth Belonging To?’ Chatham House Expert Comment, 20 June 2017.

    [24] Martin Chulov, ‘Erdoğan Rejects Saudi Demand to Pull Turkish Troops Out of Qatar,’ The Guardian, 25 June 2017; ‘Iran: Hassan Rouhani Condemns ‘Siege of Qatar’,’ Al Jazeera Online, 25 June 2017.

    [25] Naser Al Wasmi and Taimur Khan, ‘Deadline for Qataris to Leave UAE Has Passed,’ The National, 18 June 2017.