Dynamics and Determinants of the GCC States' Foreign Policy, with Special Reference to the EU

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

See, for example, Nazar Alaolmolki, ‘The Struggle for Dominance in the Persian Gulf, Past, Present and Future Prospects’ in Bruce Kuniholm, The Persian Gulf and United States Policy: A Guide to Issues and References (Claremont, California: Regina Books. 1984, New York: Peter Lang, 1991); Robert Litwak, Security in the Persian Gulf, Sources of Inter-State Conflict, Vol. 2, Security in the Persian Gulf (London: IISS, Gower, 1981); Alvin Z. Rubinstein (ed.), The Great Game, Rivalry in the Persian and South Asia, Praeger, 1983); Herman Eilts, ‘The Persian Gulf Crisis: Perspectives and Prospects’, Middle East Journal, 45, (1), 1991, (Winter), pp. 7–22; Graham Fuller and Ian Lesser, ‘Persian Gulf Myths’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, (no. 3), (May/June), 1997, pp. 42–52; Zalmay Khalilzad, ‘The United States and the Persian Gulf: Preventing Regional Hegemony’, Survival, 37, (2), 1995, pp. 95–120; Ralph Magnus, ‘The GCC and Security: The Enemy Without and Enemy Within’, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. XX, (no. 3), (Spring), 1997, pp. 72–94.

See Richard Hermann and R. William Ayers, ‘The New Geo-Politics of the Gulf: Forces for Change and Stability’, in Gary Sick and Lawrence Potter (eds.), The Persian Gulf at the Millennium, Essays in Politics, Economy Security and Religion (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 31–60.

The question of pooling or ceding sovereignty would conceivably create a problem under the constitutions of some Gulf States, e.g. Kuwait, Article 1; Qatar, Article 2; UAE, Article 4; Bahrain, Article 1(A).

For discussions on the internal–external debate see Ronald Rogoswski ‘Internal vs. External Factors in Political Development: An Evaluation of Recent Historical Research’ PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 18, no. 4 (Fall) 1985; Bruce Russet, ‘International Interactions and Processes: The Internal External Debate Revisited’, in Ada Finifter (ed.), Political Science: The States of the Discipline, (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1983).

Edward Morse argues that the process of modernization has altered the character of foreign policy in three ways. It has effectively broken down the classical distinction between foreign and domestic policy; it has changed the balance between ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics in favor of the latter; and it has significantly reduced the level of control that any state can exercise in the domestic or the international arena. Edward Morse, ‘The Transformation of Foreign Policies: Modernization, Interdependence and Externalities’, in Richard Little and Michael Smith, (eds.) Perspectives on World Politics, Second Edition (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 169–81.

Furthermore, he adds, ‘Border guards may check passports and custom officials may impose duties, but to conceive of the foreign–domestic distinction in this simple way is to mislead, to mistake surface appearances for underlying patterns’. James Rosenau, Along the Domestic–Foreign Frontier, Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 4.

The Arab League (officially, the League of Arab States) was formed in 1945. The founder members were the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan (then Transjordan), Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The purpose of the League was to foster Arab cooperation and unity. Since its formation, another 14 Arab states have joined the League.

Mohammed Saud Al-Sayari, ‘The GCC as a Regional Organisation and its Relations with the UN and the Arab League (in Arabic)’, At-Ta'awun, (3), (July 1986), pp. 121–35; Joseph Kechichian, Security Efforts in the Arab World: A Brief Examination of Four Regional Organizations, (Santa Monica: Rand, 1992).

John Esposito, Islam and Civil Society (Badia Fiesolana: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute), Working Paper, RSC No. 2000/57, 2000; Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam (London: Routledge, 1991).

John E Peterson, ‘Succession in the States of the Gulf Cooperation Council’, Washington Quarterly 24, no. 4 (Autumn, 2001): 173–86.

Ibid.

See for example, Gregory Gause, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994); Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1998).

See for example, Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf; Gause, Oil Monarchies.

The rentier state is one where government relies for the lion's share of its revenues (certainly over 50 percent, in the GCC cases usually over 75 percent) on direct transfers from the international economy, in the form of oil revenues, investment income, foreign aid, or other kinds of direct payments.

Oil was discovered on a commercial basis first in Bahrain in 1932 and then in the rest of the region. Significant production did not take off until after World War II.

For good discussions on this subject see the various contributions in Abbas Abdelkarim (ed.), Change and Development in the Gulf (St Martins Press, 1999); Jill Crystal, ‘Social Transformation, Changing Expectations and the Gulf Security’, in David Long and Christian Koch (eds.), Gulf Security in the Twenty-First Century (Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, 1997), pp. 208–25. For a recent assessment see Gerd Nonneman, Governance, Human Rights, and the Case for Political Adaptation in the Gulf (RSC Policy Paper 01/3) (Badia Fiesolana: European University Institute, 2001).

Middle East Economic Digest, ‘MEED Special Report: Oil and Gas’, Vol. 39, no. 14, 7 (April 1995), p. 24.

In Oman and Saudi Arabia, in particular, the youth population is large. In these two countries the percentage of the population under 14 in 1997 was over 40. CIA Fact Book 1997. < http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/country-frame.html > Accessed on Oct. 19, 1998.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 1995: Armaments, Disagreements and International Security, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 21.

SIPRI has estimated the Saudi cost of assisting Iraq at $25bn and that of the Gulf War at $55bn. The cost to Kuwait was even higher.

Its costs in military operations, operations reimbursements, and regional aid commitments are estimated at $64 billion; in an economy whose 1991 GDP was just over $100 billion. See , C.A. Woodson, Saudi Arabian Force Structure Development in a Post Gulf War World (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, June 1998).

Vahan Zanoyan, ‘After the Oil Boom: The Holiday Ends in the Gulf’, Foreign Affairs, (Nov./Dec. 1995), pp. 2–7.

Roger Hardy, Arabia After the Storm: Internal Stability of the Gulf Arab States (London, RIIA, 1992).

Anoushiravan Ehteshami, ‘Reform from Above’, International Affairs, 79, 1, (2003), pp. 53–75.

While Kuwait is often presented as a model for development in the Gulf-region, democracy in Kuwait faces many obstacles and rests on a precarious balance between inclusion and exclusion. See Democracy in the Arab world: the case of Kuwait, < http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1097.jsp > ; and ‘WE DON'T WANT TO BOX ISLAM IN’ Kuwait's Islamists, officially unofficial’, < http://mondediplo.com/ 2002/06/04kuwait > , both sites accessed April 13, 2003.

For a discussion of the topic see Chris Brown, Understanding International Relations, Second Edition (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), especially ‘The State and Foreign Policy’, Chapter 4.

As Hinnebusch puts it: ‘The Middle East is one of the regional subsystems where this anarchy appears most in evidence: it holds two of the world's most durable and intense conflict centers, the Arab–Israeli and the Gulf arenas; its states are still contesting borders and rank among themselves; and there is not a single one that does not feel threatened by one or more of its neighbours'. Raymond Hinnebusch, ‘Introduction: The Analytical Framework’ in Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami (eds.), Foreign Policies Middle East States (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), pp. 1–27.

See for example, Abbas Alnasrawi, Arab Nationalism, Oil and the Political Economy of Dependency (New York and London: Greenwood Press, 1991); Samir Amin, The Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggle (London: Zed Press, 1978); Simon Bromley, Rethinking Middle East Politics, (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990); Simon Bromley, American Hegemony and the World Oil: The Industry, the State System and the World Economy, (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990); L. Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 3–5; Barry Buzan, ‘New Patterns of Global Security in the Twenty-First Century’, International Affairs 67, no. 3, (July) 1991, pp. 246–47.

In Kuwait's case, defense procurement has come under fire from the elected parliament.

John Peterson, Saudi Arabia and the Illusion of Security, Adelphi Paper 348, IISS, 2002.

Andrew Rathmell, The Changing Military Balance in the Gulf, London: RUSI, 1996.

Of the six GCC states, the four smaller Gulf States – Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE – have small populations and cannot hope to build up large armies. Saudi Arabia has a larger population but its army has always been small and deployed on the periphery of its vast territory. The separate National Guard, traditionally recruited from tribes close to the ruling family, is used for internal security and is in effect a counterweight to the formal military. Oman lacks the funds for keeping a large force. Only in Kuwait is there obligatory service, and before the Iraqi invasion such service was easily avoidable.

See GCC Muscat Summit, Final Communiqué, 31 Dec., 2001.

Rosemary Hollis, ‘Whatever Happened to the Damascus Declaration?’ in M. Jane Davis, (ed.) Politics and International Relations in the Middle East (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995).

For a report on the summit's resolutions, see al-Hayat, Dec. 27, 1991, pp. 1, 3, and 4.

Qatar, Oman and the UAE, for example, sometimes follow policies designed solely to thwart Saudi power. It is no exaggeration to say that both Bahrain and Qatar are also always looking over their shoulder at their big brother, Saudi Arabia, next door. For regional disputes see, for example, Richard Schofield, ‘Down to the Usual Suspects’, in Joseph Kechichian (ed.), Iran, Iraq and the Arab Gulf States, (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 213–36.

The Estimate, Volume XI, no. 6, 12 April 1999. < http://www.theestimate.com/ public/031299a.html > .

Rosemary Hollis, ‘Gulf Security: No Consensus’. Whitehall Paper Series, (London: Royal United Services Institute, 1993).

See Gerd Nonneman, ‘Constants and Variations in Gulf–British Relations’, in J. Kechichian (ed.), Iran, Iraq and the Arab Gulf States (London/New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 315–50.

Gause, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States, pp. 120–1.

Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, for example, have as their ambassadors in Washington – their most important foreign relationship – members of their ruling families. In 2003, Saudi Arabia's ambassadorship in the UK pass to the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faysal (the son of the former King Faysal, and brother of the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faysal).

Hassan Hamdan Al-Alkim, The GCC States in an Unstable World, Foreign Policy Dilemma of Small States, (London: Saqi Books, 1994), pp. 154–5.

For a discussion of the role of business in foreign policy see Jeffrey Garton, ‘Business and Foreign Policy’, Foreign Policy, 76, 3, (May/June 1997), pp. 67–79

Hinnebusch, ‘Introduction: The Analytical Framework’, p. 17.

Tariq Y. Ismael, International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East: A Study in World Politics (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 35–37

See for instance, Bahgat Korany, ‘Defending the Faith Amid Change: The Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia’, in Bahgat Korany and Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, The Foreign Policy of Arab States: The Challenges of Change, Second edition, (Westview Press, 1994), pp. 310–53; Gause, ‘The Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia’, in Hinnebusch and Ehteshami, Foreign Policies Middle East States, pp. 193–211.

Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security, Boston: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985; David Long, ‘Saudi Arabia and its Neighbors: Preoccupied Paternalism’, in Crosscurrents in the Gulf, (eds.) Richard Sindelar and John E. Peterson, New York: Routledge, 1988, p. 190

For example, though in the 1960s and 1970s, the Gulf States funded Palestinian groups and ‘front-line’ states – Syria, Egypt, and Jordan – in their fight against Israel in order to insulate themselves from criticism, they did little to advance the Arab nation's cause. They also initiated the oil embargoes of 1967 and 1973 to offset criticism that they were not on the side of Arab nationalism. Kuwait, in the 1970s, bought Soviet arms in an effort to appease Iraq, and all the Gulf leaders have at times made token gestures related to Iran's importance in regional security, even as they have carefully avoided any substantial Iranian role. Similarly, when political Islam rose, the Gulf States aided some radical Islamist groups and burnished their international Islamic credentials to pre-empt any criticism. Saudi Arabia founded the Islamic Conference in the mid-1960s and has kept it strong as a way of demonstrating its commitment to international Islamic causes. In response to the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Islamic radicals in 1979, Riyadh tried to become the champion of Islamic opposition to the Soviet Union, which had just invaded Afghanistan. In the 1990s, the Gulf regimes publicly pressed the West on the peace process, Bosnia and resolution of other conflicts in the Islamic world to demonstrate their Islamic solidarity.

Nonneman, ‘Analyzing the Foreign Policies of the Middle East and North Africa’, in this volume, p. 127.

The evidence from the Saudi case is laid out in Gerd Nonneman, ‘Saudi–European Relations 1902–2001: a pragmatic quest for relative autonomy’, International Affairs, Vol. 77, no. 3 (July 2001), pp. 631–61; for the GCC states more generally, see id., ‘Constants and Variations in British–Gulf Relations’.

Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Gerd Nonneman, War and Peace in the Gulf: Domestic Politics and Regional Relations into the 1990s (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1991), pp. 45–8.

Oman is not a member of either body, while Bahrain is only a member of OAPEC.

Al-Alkim, The GCC States in an Unstable World, pp. 75–100.

Hassan Hamdan al-Alkim, The Foreign Policy of the United Arab Emirates (London: Al-Saqi Books, 1989), p.175.

The al-Khobar bombing in 1996 and the September 11 attack on the US cannot be far removed from these undercurrents of resentment and the sense of helplessness of some of these radical groups.

Hassan Hamdan al-Alkim ‘The Gulf Subregion in the Twenty-First Century: US Involvement and Sources of Instability’, American Studies International, XXXVIII, 172, (Feb. 2000).

For example, at an Arab League meeting on October 22, 2000, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia took the lead in creating a $1 billion fund: $800 million to help preserve the ‘Arab and Islamic identity of Jerusalem’ and $200 million to help the families of Palestinians killed in the unrest. Saudi Arabia pledged a total of $250 million to these two funds, providing an additional $30 million to the Palestinian Authority as a separate donation. At an informal international donors' conference in Stockholm in April 2001, Saudi Arabia pledged $225 million in direct monetary support to the Palestinian Authority over a six-month period to cover emergency expenses.

Philip Robins, ‘Always the Bridesmaid: Europe and the Middle East Peace Process’. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 10. no. 2, Winter/Spring 1997, pp. 69–83.

For example, at their Supreme Council Meeting in Muscat in December 2001, the GCC heads of state accused the Israeli government of causing a serious deterioration in the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, called on the international community to help resolve the impasse and welcomed the statement by President George W. Bush at the United Nations, in which he defined the US vision of a viable Palestinian state and of ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

Even in Kuwait, where the US military remains most welcome at the popular level, questions are being raised about the long-term consequences of the US role in the country.

Kuwait, which used to oppose any form of foreign military bases in the region, was the first GCC country to sign to sign an official defense pact with the US, on September 18, 1991, and followed it up by pacts with Britain and France. Kuwait and Qatar agreed to pre-position US equipment to support one brigade each, and the UAE may follow suit, giving the US enough equipment on the ground to support a division. For a commentary from a GCC analyst, see Mohammad Al Rumaihi, ‘The Gulf Monarchies, Testing Time’, Middle East Quarterly, (Dec. 1996), pp. 45–61.

See Al-Alkim, The GCC States in an Unstable World, pp. 75–100

There remains a perception that a lack of stamina to see things through makes the US an unreliable and dangerous ally. People are very quick to point out that the Taliban itself is a type of ‘unfinished’ American business – as is Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and the Peace Process. These are all operations in which the US has been heavily involved, and some that it started, but none of which were properly finished.

Announcement by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in Riyadh on April 29. See Oliver Burkeman, ‘America signals withdrawal of troops from Saudi Arabia’, The Guardian, 30 April 2003 (also via http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,946237,00.html).

See Martin Ortega, ‘Euro-American Relations and the Gulf Region’. In: Christian Hanelt, Felix Neugart and Matthias Peitz, (eds.) Future Perspectives for European Gulf Relations, (Munich: Bertelsmann Group for Policy Research, 2000), pp. 41–53; see also the individual contributions of Phebe Marr and Rosemary Hollis in Sven Behrendt and Christian Hanelt (eds.), Bound to Cooperate – Europe and the Middle East (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 2000), pp. 263–86.

The European petrochemicals lobby has argued that since the FTA, in its final stage, would eliminate tariff barriers, the import of low-cost GCC petrochemical products into Europe could decimate the European domestic industries in this sector, which has already suffered from overcapacity. European petrochemicals producers have fiercely lobbied against the FTA with the GCC to protect their industry; the petrochemicals issue became a stumbling block in EU–GCC negotiations towards further economic integration.

To make matters worse, the EU, in response to global environmental concerns proposed in the early 1990s the introduction of a global carbon tax (CO₂) in addition to the taxes already levied nationally. The objective of the Community carbon tax proposal was to stabilize CO₂ emissions by year 2000 by reducing carbon dioxide emission. Although the idea was eventually moved to the backburner, it remains ‘live’.

Out of the 11 Mediterranean partners that have entered the Barcelona process, eight are Arab: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority.

Commission of the European Communities, ‘Improving Relations Between the European Union and the Countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’, CEC, Com (95) 541 final, Brussels, Nov. 1995.

‘The GCC–EU Dialogue’, Gulf Report, no. 69, March 1997, pp. 3–7.

European Parliament, ‘The Gulf Cooperation Council and its Relations with the European Union’, Directorate-General for Research, European parliament, Luxembourg, Nov. 1995, p. 31.

Commission of the European Communities, ‘Improving Relations Between the European Union and the Countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’.

See the account by the Leader of the EU's group of experts for the project: Gerd Nonneman, ‘An Experiment in Decentralised Cooperation: the EU–GCC Project in Regional Studies’, in Giacomo Luciani et al., EU–GCC Cooperation in the Field of Education (Badia Fiesolana: Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, 2002) ( = RSC Policy Paper 02/1).

Hisham M. Nazer, ‘The Role of Saudi Arabian Oil Industry in the National Economy and Worldwide’, Paper presented as The Inaugural Euro-Arab Lecture, at The Arab British Chamber of Commerce, London, Oct. 1,1993.

Peter Bild, ‘How Much Influence will the US and Its Allies have on Oil Policy?’ Paper presented at RIIA Conference on The Gulf in the 1990s, at Chatham House, London, May 9 and 10, 1991.

For some specific recommendations on how the EU could help the GCC states in the areas of governance, human rights and political adaptation, see a recent policy paper prepared for an informal task force of European officials and academics on this subject: Nonneman, Governance, Human Rights and the Case for Political Adaptation in the Gulf: Issues in the EU–GCC Political Dialogue (Badia Fiesolana: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Nov. 2001) Policy Paper RSC No. 01/3.

Statement by GCC customs officials, Agence France Press dispatch March 5, 2003.

The phenomenon was noted for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Frederick Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Nonneman traces the long-term foreign policy patterns confirming this for the case of Saudi Arabia in ‘Saudi–European Relations 1902–2001’, and for the GCC states more generally in ‘Constants and Variations in British–Gulf Relations’.