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Abstract
Ontological security speaks to a kind of identitarian security and argues that actors need to have a surety and certainty in who and what they are in order to enjoy settled peaceable lives. As a furrow of international relations theory, it argues that states must attend to ontological security needs just as they are concerned about physical security needs. Applied to the Gulf context, analysis of ontological security concerns provides a set of coherent rationales explaining why ontological security pressures play in an exaggerated way on the United Arab Emirates and why, in this context, Qatar is a uniquely problematic Other. As such, uncovering these deeper, abstract security drivers provides a compelling explanation to explain the bitterness and animosity inherent to the UAE’s surprising decision to lead the 2017 blockade against Qatar.
Notes
1 Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State (2008), p. 3.
2 Ibid., pp. 3‒4.
3 Worth, “Mohammed Bin Zayed’s Dark Vision of the Middle East’s Future”, The New York Times, 2 January 2020; Kirkpatrick, “The Most Powerful Arab Ruler Isn’t M.B.S. It’s M.B.Z.”, The New York Times, 2 June 2019.
4 Roberts, “Bucking the Trend: The UAE and the Development of Military Capabilities in the Arab World”, Security Studies 29.2 (2020), pp. 301–34.
5 Hokayem and Roberts, “The War in Yemen”, Survival 58.6 (2016), pp. 159‒80.
6 Roberts, “Qatar and the UAE: Exploring Divergent Responses to the Arab Spring”, The Middle East Journal 71.4 (2017), pp. 544–62.
7 Almezaini, The UAE and Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid, Identities and Interests (2012), pp. 21‒51.
8 Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (2010), p. 39.
9 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (1991).
10 See Kinnvall and Mitzen, “Anxiety, Fear, and Ontological Security in World Politics: Thinking with and Beyond Giddens”, International Theory 12.2 (2020), pp. 240–56.
11 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 1‒5, 145‒60.
12 Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma”, European Journal of International Relations 12.3 (2006), p. 346.
13 Ibid., p. 345.
14 Ibid., pp. 351‒53; Rumelili, “Ontological (In)security and Peace Anxieties”, Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security, ed. Rumelili (2015), pp.17‒18.
15 Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”, p. 352.
16 Zarakol, “States and Ontological Security: A Historical Rethinking”, Cooperation and Conflict 52.1 (2017), pp. 49‒51.
17 Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations, pp. 2‒3; Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”, p. 342.
18 Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”, pp. 360‒61.
19 Ibid., p. 363.
20 Kinnvall, “Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security”, Political Psychology 25.5 (2004), pp. 741‒42.
21 Ibid., pp. 755‒62.
22 Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations, p. 6.
23 Browning and Joenniemi, “Ontological Security, Self-Articulation and the Securitization of Identity”, Cooperation and Conflict 52.1 (2017), p. 35.
24 Browning and Joenniemi, “From Fratricide to Security Community: Re-Theorising Difference in the Constitution of Nordic Peace”, Journal of International Relations and Development 16.4 (2013), p. 496.
25 Kinnvall, Globalization and Religious Nationalism in India: The Search for Ontological Security (2007); Browning and Joenniemi, “From Fratricide to Security Community”, p. 496.
26 Sick, “The Siege of Doha”, LobeLog, 16 June 2017.
27 Roberts, “A Dustup in the Gulf”, Foreign Affairs, 13 June 2017.
28 Kinninmont, “The Gulf Divided: The Impact of the Qatar Crisis”, Chatham House Research Paper (May 2019), pp. 21‒2.
29 Ulrichsen, Qatar and the Gulf Crisis: A Study of Resilience (2020), pp. 43–67.
30 Kinninmont, “The Gulf Divided”, pp. 15–18.
31 For a range of assessments see Krieg (ed.), Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis (2019).
32 Krieg, “Introduction”, Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis, ed. Krieg (2019), pp. 2‒10.
33 See, for example, Kettner, “Making Sense of Europe’s Response to the Gulf Crisis”, Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis, ed. Krieg (2019), pp. 251‒65.
34 Coates Ulrichsen, Qatar and the Gulf Crisis, pp. 177–237.
35 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 15‒16.
36 Ibid., p. 16.
37 For more on the changes wrought by state bodies homogenizing traditional practices and the negative effects therein see Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (2000), Chapters 1 and 2.
38 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 17.
39 Kinnvall and Mitzen, “Anxiety, Fear, and Ontological Security in World Politics”, pp. 242–45.
40 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 17‒23.
41 Ibid., p. 20.
42 See also Kinnvall and Mitzen, “Anxiety, Fear, and Ontological Security in World Politics”, pp. 242–45; Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 23‒7.
43 The profound changes afflicting the monarchies has been a trope long in in evidence Osborne, The Gulf States and Oman (2017); Alsharekh and Springborg (eds), Popular Culture and Political Identity in the Arab Gulf States (2008); Cooke, Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf (2014).
44 Nassar, Blackburn, and Whyatt, “Developing the Desert: The Pace and Process of Urban Growth in Dubai”, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 45 (2014), pp. 50–62.
45 Wilkinson, “Traditional Concepts of Territory in South East Arabia”, The Geographical Journal 149.3 (1983), pp. 301–15; Holes, “Language and Identity in the Arabian Gulf”, Journal of Arabian Studies 1.2 (2011), pp. 129–45; Al-Nakib, Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (2016); Bishara et al., “The Traditional Economy of the Gulf”, The Emergence of the Gulf States: Studies in Modern History, ed. Peterson (2016), pp. 187–222.
46 Roberts, “Bucking the Trend”, pp. 327–28.
47 Browning and Joenniemi, “Ontological Security”, p. 41.
48 Cerny, “Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization”, Government and Opposition 32.2 (1997), p. 252.
49 Cerny, “The Competition State Today: From Raison d’État to Raison du Monde”, Policy Studies 31.1 (2010), p. 1.
50 Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations, pp. 71‒75; Kinnvall, “Globalization and Religious Nationalism”, pp. 748‒50; Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”, pp. 342‒45; Barnett, “Culture, Strategy and Foreign Policy Change: Israel’s Road to Oslo ”, European Journal of International Relations 5.1 (1999), p. 9.
51 Browning and Joenniemi, “From Fratricide to Security Community”, pp. 486‒88; Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (1957); Adler and Barnett (eds), Security Communities (1998).
52 Browning and Joenniemi, “From Fratricide to Security Community”, p. 491.
53 Ibid., p. 491.
54 Al-Hashemi, “Bitter Brethren: Freud’s Narcicism of Minor Differences and the Gulf Divide”, Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis, ed. Krieg (2019), pp. 58‒9.
55 Rumelili, “Ontological (In)security and Peace Anxieties”, p. 15. See also Joenniemi, “Ontological (In)security after Peace”, Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security: Peace Anxieties, ed. Rumelili (2015), pp. 138‒41.
56 Browning and Joenniemi, “From Fratricide to Security Community”, p. 491.
57 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 61.
58 Darwich, “The Ontological (in) Security of Similarity: Wahhabism Versus Islamism in Saudi Foreign Policy”, GIGA Working Paper 263 (2014), pp. 8‒9.
59 Ibid., pp. 9‒11.
60 Roberts, “Qatar and the UAE”.
61 In the words of Eric Hobsbawm, all states “invent their own traditions.” Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (2010), pp. 1–15.
62 Roberts, “News from Qatar Protest”, The Gulf Blog, 16 March 2011.
63 Roberts, “Qatar and the UAE”.
64 Roberts, “Reflecting on Qatar’s ‘Islamist’ Soft Power”, Brookings (April 2019).
65 Kinnvall, “Globalization and Religious Nationalism”, p. 742.
66 Freer, Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies (2018), pp. 96‒105
67 Ibid., pp. 129‒37.
68 Roberts, “Mosque and State: The United Arab Emirates’ Secular Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs, 18 March 2016.
69 Baskan and Wright, “Seeds of Change: Comparing State-Religion Relations in Qatar and Saudi Arabia”, Arab Studies Quarterly 33.2 (2011), pp. 96–111.
70 Kamrava, Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (2013), pp.79‒80, 134.
71 Gräf and Skovgaard-Petersen, “Introduction”, Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yūsuf Al-Qaraḍāwī, ed. Gräf and Skovgaard-Petersen (2009), p. 1.
72 Roberts, Qatar: Securing the Global Ambitions of a City State (2017), pp. 123‒49; Roberts, “Reflecting on Qatar’s ‘Islamist’ Soft Power”.
73 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 131‒33.
74 Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (1998), pp. 53‒90.
75 Solomon, “The $1bn Hostage Deal that Enraged Qatar’s Gulf Rivals”, The Financial Times, 5 June 2017.
76 Cafiero, “The Saudi-Emirati Alliance in a Polarized Middle East”, The Gulf Crisis: Reshaping Alliances in the Middle East, ed. Al Jaber and Neubauer (2018), pp. 34‒5.
77 Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (2019).
78 Kirkpatrick, “The Most Powerful Arab Ruler”.
79 Kabalan, “The Gulf Crisis: The US Factor”, Insight Turkey 20.2 (2018), pp. 33–50.
80 Roy, “From Intersubjectivity to International Relations”, Emotions in International Politics: Beyond Mainstream International Relations, ed. Arffin, Coicaud, and Popovski (2016), pp. 82–5.
81 Roberts, “Qatar and the UAE”, pp. 549–50; Willoughby, “Segmented Feminization and the Decline of Neopatriarchy in GCC Countries of the Persian Gulf”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28.1 (2008), p. 184.
82 Coicaud, “The Question of Emotions and Passions in Mainstream International Relations, and Beyond”, Emotions and Passions in the Discipline of International Relations, ed. Coicaud, Ariffin, and Popovski (2014), pp. 31‒42.
83 In this regard, it is perhaps worth noting the seeming eagerness with which the UAE began to adopt signifiers of the traumas induced by their military campaigns in Yemen, beginning in 2015, with Martyr’s Day, TV shows, and monuments memorializing the valour of Emirati soldiers lost in combat.
84 Quoted in Browning and Joenniemi, “From Fratricide to Security Community”, p. 497.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David B. Roberts
David B. Roberts is Associate Professor, King’s College London, Defence Studies Department, UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham, SN6 8LA, UK.