The Dynamics of Security Challenges:
A Gulf Perspective
Thank you, Professor Heisbourg. Your Highness, Sheikh Mohammed, colleagues, John, ladies and gentlemen.
Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of God.
Well, I am extremely honoured and privileged to be here this evening and to be invited for such a distinguished and well-recognised conference, and it is truly a Manama tradition now, the Manama Dialogue, and I hope that it will continue for many years to come. It has served multiple purposes, not only as a dialogue between people from the Gulf and those who are outside of the Gulf, but also, it has created an environment in which we as GCC members can argue amongst ourselves about our issues and we can hear and reflect on others’ opinions about us.
I am extremely delighted to be invited here and to those organisers who have arranged the schedule of this speech of my remarks. I thank you very much for making it before dinner, for two reasons. First of all, I have a captive audience: whether you like it or not, you are going to hear my speech if you want to eat! Secondly, I will have peace of mind; I can have my dinner at ease without being concerned about last‑minute developments of my speech. So, thank you very much, and let me start my remarks. I have prepared my remarks in Arabic, in the tradition of the Manama Dialogue, and I will be happy to respond to any questions that you will have later on. The title of my paper is, ‘The Dynamics of Security Challenges: A Gulf Perspective’.
At the commencement, I should like to express the greatest of thanks and appreciation to our brothers of the Kingdom of Bahrain for the kind hospitality and concern which they have shown to the activities of the Sixth Manama Dialogue. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. John Chipman, the Director-General of the International Institute for Strategic Studies for honouring me by giving the speech to open the conference.
Honoured attendees.
Speaking about dynamics means speaking about different time-scales relating to a variable concept, for there is a clear and present challenge and a necessary and immediate response to it. There is also a medium- and a long-term challenge requiring calm and exact handling and vigilance. Thus we can say that the concept of security in the Gulf involves three time-scales, the immediate, the medium-term and the long-term, and takes the form of challenges relating to security, politics, economics and demographics. Let us speak about the first challenge, the one relating to security and politics. If we examine the map of the region surrounding this beloved peninsula, we would doubtless reject events which displease us and do not contribute to the stability of our region, beginning with the war in Afghanistan and next door in Pakistan, then Iran's confrontation with international law, then the situation in Palestine and what the Palestinian people suffer in the way of oppression and denial of their right to an independent state, and moving on to the African continent and the Yemen crisis and the threat it poses to the security of the Co-operation Council. In this context, we as Council member-states have no alternative but to unite our efforts in order to check these clear and present dangers to our national security. As states of the Co-operation Council, we all, even before the establishment of the Council, took a path of preventive diplomacy characterised by transparency and vigour, and this causes us to deal with areas of tension in a manner which we inherited some time ago and which has its own efficacy and its own unique Gulf characteristics which are as follows:
Firstly, the intentions of Gulf diplomacy are sincere, for we are not greedy for land and we pursue no goals which would damage the rights of others. It is clear and transparent, and its goals are mutual understanding, coexistence, good relations with our neighbours and the establishment of strong relations based on the principles of reciprocal advantage and the realisation of the good of all. Gulf diplomacy is a system which holds fast to the fundamentals of good behaviour and the acknowledgement of the rights of others, and its essence is the resolution of issues by means of mutual understanding and the overcoming of tensions by means of open dialogue and intensified contact without resentment or despair.
Secondly, Gulf diplomacy recognises the dangers of the use of ideologies in inter-state relations, and it believes that the exploitation of diplomacy to realise regional ambitions and territorial gains at the expense of others will upset the balance of regional understanding, will introduce mistrust between neighbours and will create anxiety and fear of dispossession. If the diplomacy of expansion is destructive, then the diplomacy of fomentation of neighbouring peoples is no less destructive, especially if it is combined with a call to rise against established orders and to challenge governments or to overthrow the status quo. The states of the Co-operation Council have continued their dialogues with their neighbours and with others with the aim of establishing a common regional diplomacy free of anything that might cause tension and free of ideologies which might be detrimental, and with the aim of achieving common formulae in harmony with international law and with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and with the rules of international conduct.
Thirdly, Gulf diplomacy recognises the significance of the strategic position occupied by the Gulf states in the community of international relations. This position has been strengthened with the stabilisation of ties between the Council member-states and the world community and is based upon a conscious understanding of the role of the region in the world economic structure and in the successful development of different communities. From this perspective, the responsibilities of the Council member-states have grown in relation to the securing of regional stability, the protection of shipping lanes and pursuing constructive, responsible in oil policies, not least as regards maintaining an equilibrium between production and prices, taking into account both the rights of the producer and the needs of the consumer. The most important aim of our activities within the framework of oil diplomacy is to consolidate world trust in our credibility and in our commitment to perform our duty in view of the energy requirements of the international community. Without doubt, Gulf diplomacy, as I have indicated, has achieved much, the most important of its fruits being the state of security and stability in which the states of the Co-operation Council live in spite of the stormy conditions surrounding them. This diplomacy has also secured a prominent place for the Council member-states on the ladder of relations between members of the international community. I speak of Gulf diplomacy, and amongst us is Sheikh Mohammed bin Mubarak, one of those who laid the foundations of this Gulf diplomacy of which we are all proud.
As regards the medium-term security challenge, the main concerns are the economic challenges under the following main headings: The almost absolute dependency on one non-sustainable economic resource - oil, the instability of the world economic climate, the collapse of the international capital markets, the chaos on food markets, the severe and drastic fluctuations in the price of oil. These world economic crises represent a major strategic challenge to the states of the Co-operation Council in the medium term. Their efforts must be combined to confront these challenges and to work to reinforce and protect their economies from these economic phenomena. To confront such challenges, the Council member-states must hasten to establish a Gulf market united on two fronts - customs union and currency union - with the aim of guaranteeing the creation of an economic environment in the Gulf which can absorb external crises with less damage and less expense and can offer investment opportunities for Gulf capital to enable it to build up economic alliances and structures to secure jobs for the nationals of the Council member-states. The forthcoming Gulf summit in Kuwait has been convened as an emergency measure to concentrate on this aspect and on the approval of further short- and medium-term plans to implement this strategy.
As for the long-term challenge, it is a demographic challenge. If the convulsions caused by political conflicts represent one of the main obstacles to the implementation of the development programme, other economic and social aspects are of no less significance and influence with regard to plans for development in the states of the Co-operation Council. If we were to examine the demographic status quo of the states of the Co-operative Council, we would realise the scale of the challenge which this represents in the medium and long term. The profound disorder which characterises the demographic structure of all the Council member-states is an indicator of the scale of the political, cultural, social and economic dangers which we are experiencing. Moreover, the fact that we as politicians and decision-makers have been distracted from this major issue has led to its spread and exacerbation.
Unfortunately, our Gulf states have not yet made appropriate and effective plans to deal with these problems at the immediate or the long-term level. In this context, I wish to draw your attention to several indicators which point to the scale of the demographic challenge which faces us.
Firstly, it is to be expected that the Co-operation Council will see the fastest rate of population growth in the world. According to a recent journalistic study by The Economist, the number of inhabitants will increase by 30% of the present figure by the beginning of 2020 to reach 53 million, the majority under the age of 25 years. Whilst the age structure of the population of America and Europe is tending towards old age, we find that the age structure of the population of the Co-operation Council is tending towards youth, whereby those under 15 years of age form 24% of the total population, which is the highest proportion in comparison with any place in the world with the exception of Africa. This rapid growth coupled with the relative youth of the population without doubt represents a real challenge to the ability of the Council member-states to provide jobs for these young people.
Secondly, according to a report undertaken by the Emirates Industrial Bank on the turmoil on the Gulf labour market, the proportion of national workers is declining compared to foreign workers, so that the proportion of the migrant workers joining the work forces is (I shall just give you figures): 90% in the Emirates, 62% in Bahrain, 65% in Saudi Arabia, 65% in Oman, 86% in Qatar and 83% in Kuwait. This study has shown that the value of foreign transfers also rose in 2008 by 31% to reach a total of 40 billion dollars compared with thirty million in 2007. To gain a more comprehensive view of the magnitude of this phenomenon, we could point to the fact that the states of the Co-operation Council occupy the second place worldwide after the United States as regards the volume of foreign transfers, transfers undertaken by foreign migrant workers. In the latter case, i.e. the US, they reached a total of 47 billion dollars in 2008 as compared with 40 billion dollars from the states of the Co-operation Council.
Thirdly, the Council member-states suffer from the appearance of the phenomenon of the second generation of migrant workers. By this we mean the resident who has had children, has created a social life and whose children, i.e. the second generation, have joined the labour market. This generation, which does not know another homeland apart from the Council states in which they have lived and worked, create a great dilemma as to the manner in which they are integrated into the social and cultural norms of the societies of the states of the Co-operation Council. If the security challenge is an immediate, clear and present challenge facing us, like the issue of the Iranian nuclear programme or the wars and political conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen as well as the problems of extremism and terrorism, or if the economic challenges are known and identifiable as they are immediate, present problems or short- or medium-term problems, this demographic challenge is a strategic challenge facing the Council member-states, and facing it and dealing with it calls for wisdom, deliberation, foresight and a long series of quiet and gradual measures involving creative impulses, solutions and projects. The issue of preserving the Gulf identity, the indigenous population, social cohesion and Gulf cultural identity is very important in our aspirations to resolve this demographic problem.
Sirs, the challenges facing the states of the Co-operation Council are numerous and varied, and it would require a long time and many meetings to sum up and detail all aspects of them. I am confident that this conference, through the break-out groups and dialogues which will take place during the next two days, will take up these topics in more detail and will study them in more depth. For this reason, I have tried in this introduction to concentrate only on those matters which I considered more urgent and more influential, and perhaps I have succeeded in my aim. Thank you for your openness and your attention. Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of God.
