Strategic change in the Persian Gulf - Volume 9, Issue 9 - November 2003

 

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, all the states of the Persian Gulf had much to fear. Among the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the prospect of a prolonged conflict carried the risks of diminished US credibility, a resurgence in the popularity of Saddam Hussein and social unrest. Many of the GCC states had staked their security on bilateral defence relationships with Washington, the value of which would drop sharply if Iraq successfully impeded American and British military operations. Fears that coalition forces would be bogged down in urban warfare, and that Iraqi cities would be demolished in full view of al-Jazeera cameras, contributed to this anxiety. The image on the 'Arab street' of Saddam-as-Saladin, which had been on the wane since its efflorescence prior to 1991's Operation Desert Storm, would likely have a more powerfully corrosive effect on the legitimacy of local rulers in an era of greater demands for political participation and renewed anti-colonial sentiment.

 

On the other side of the Gulf, Iranian fears were stoked by intemperate talk among American neo-conservative commentators about extending regime change to Tehran; new American basing and access arrangements with countries in Central Asia; and a large US troop presence in neighbouring Afghanistan. Yet Iran also sensed opportunity, for its Shi'ite allies in southern Iraq stood to gain a more prominent, even dominant position in post-Saddam Iraq.

 

These tensions were reflected in the hysterical eruptions that marked the February 2003 meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Doha, Qatar. Al-Jazeera broadcast images of then-Iraqi vice-president Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri screaming at a Kuwaiti 'shut up, you lackey, you agent, you monkey!', while Qatari and Saudi representatives traded insults that were scarcely less bitter. But the crowning irony of the meeting lay in Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Jassim ibn Jabar al-Thani's struggle to make himself heard over the din of an American military cargo plane heading for Qatar's al-Udeid airbase as he read the conference communique rejecting an attack on Iraq, defending its 'security and territorial integrity', and discouraging Arab state cooperation with the invaders.

 

With the ending of the most intensive phase of combat operations, the results of the war have, with a few notable exceptions, left the states on the Arab side of the Gulf winners. Prior to the war, the Saudi leadership – and public – had mirrored the eagerness of their counterparts in Washington for the withdrawal of US forces from the Kingdom and a more overt expression of the distance that had crept into the defence relationship in the late 1990s. For decision-makers in Riyadh, there was not enough leverage over US forces deployed in the Kingdom to restrict their potential use for purposes that might run counter to Saudi interests; for the Americans, there was too much Saudi leverage. Indeed, Saudi manipulation of intelligence regarding Tehran's involvement in the 1996 bombing of the US Air Force Khobar Towers complex in Dhahran – intended to stave off US military retaliation against Iran – and Riyadh's veto of US plans to launch air attacks against Iraq in 1998, appeared to Washington as ample evidence of Saudi leverage. That Riyadh's ability to block the Bush administration's 2003 war plans diplomatically was quite limited did not matter, since Riyadh's incentives in this case at least ran in the opposite direction: Saudi rulers understood well enough that the road leading US forces out of the Kingdom passed through Baghdad. Connected to Saudi concerns regarding a lack of control over American forces was their worry that renegades like Osama bin Laden were exploiting popular resentment of the foreign presence to tarnish the government's credibility.

 

The smaller states of the northern and central Gulf have seen their strategic situations improve. These states share a vital interest in the friendship of a powerful outsider (in the form of the US) having no territorial objectives. In this respect, their positions have changed little since their sheikhly predecessors, the trucial states, surrendered a degree of autonomy in return for British protection. By throwing their lot in with the United States in important material ways, such as hosting American military forces, they have purchased an extended American deterrent not only against regional behemoths such as Iran, but also against other peninsular states.

 

Qatar's decision to host the bulk of US air forces withdrawn from Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan Air Base empowers Doha to thumb its nose at Riyadh, whose domination it has long opposed. The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) offer of extensive port facilities and acquisition of American tactical aircraft serve the same purpose. On the other hand, Bahrain's continued hosting of the US Fifth Fleet headquarters, when combined with the long-standing support it has received from Riyadh, provides a major boost to Manama in the context of its ongoing rivalry with Doha. Just as these small countries have replicated previous policies which had been directed at an imperial Britain anxious to protect its commercial and military interests, the US is now repeating Britain's 19th century posture of minimising its interests in the interior of the peninsula and is instead concentrating its attention on the peninsular coast. The convergence of Gulf state and US interests in this post-war juncture is striking.