1The Manama Dialogue was held on December 7, 2012 in the capital of Bahrain. This annual conference, held for the purpose of addressing strategic problems that shape the agendas of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, [2] was reconvened following a year of intermission due to the country’s social and political turbulences. Bahrain, the base of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is a monarchy whose ruling family is Sunni but whose majority Shi’ite population is largely excluded from the political process. Demonstrations in Bahrain beginning in 2011 raised concern in Washington, but the Obama administration decided on restraint on the grounds that Bahrain’s disputes were not within the purview of the United States. This ambivalent position led to a range of reactions: for some it was a silence that endorsed the regime’s oppressive actions, while for others it was Washington’s failure to support a key ally in the region.

2In any event, when Prince Salman, heir to the Bahraini monarchy and usually presented as the country’s potential reformer, took to the podium to inaugurate the Manama Dialogue on December 7, 2012, he took care to thank the United Kingdom and other countries for their support during the troubles Bahrain had experienced. But there was no word of thanks for the United States, represented at the meeting by Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns. The embarrassment and unease of the US delegation were clear to all in the auditorium. Even though the intentions attributed to Prince Salman were denied the next day by the Bahraini foreign ministry, the incident revealed the crisis point reached in the United States’ relationship with the Gulf States. [3]

3The first four years of Barack Obama’s presidency were marked by a number of diplomatic crises that tested confidence in the partnership between Washington and the Gulf kingdoms. Barack Obama’s “dropping” of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak in spring 2011, the US military withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, and especially the failure to halt the Iranian nuclear program, were all sources of irritation to GCC members, for whom they represented risks, if not existential threats, to the stability of their political systems.

4Did the high moral – or even moralistic – tone adopted by Barack Obama cause a rift between Washington and the GCC members? The terms of the US partnership with the regimes of the Arabian Peninsula are more complex. This relationship, based not on common values but on shared security and economic interests, has been for several decades now, and more so since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, one of Washington’s most important partnerships. A detailed assessment of all its facets, particularly that of military cooperation, takes us beyond the idea of a major rift and shows that despite Obama’s public restraint, he has in fact been pursuing – and is likely in his second term to continue doing so – a close strategic cooperation with the Gulf monarchies.

5In support of this assertion, I shall show how the “security complex” in the Arabian Peninsula is structured, a system that the United States was largely responsible for setting up. [4] I shall then analyze how, in just ten years, the political aspect of this partnership was strained by a worsening of diplomatic relations between the parties, in particular the United States and Saudi Arabia. The third and final part of the article qualifies the image of a deteriorating relationship by revealing recent initiatives from Washington relating to security in the peninsula, initiatives showing that through it all, the United States is likely to remain the dominant power in the region.

Origins of the US Presence in the Persian Gulf

6The beginnings of a US strategy in the Persian Gulf are often traced to a meeting held in 1945 between President Roosevelt and the king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, on board the USS Quincy. This encounter, held in secret during the last months of World War II, revealed the new role of the United States in a region until then controlled by the United Kingdom. But the choice of this date as the beginning of a US presence is debatable. Certainly, 1945 marks the establishment of US ascendency over the old British Empire, and the moment when engineers first realized the full extent of Saudi Arabia’s incomparable oil riches. Even so, it was not until some years later – until the end of the 1960s, in fact – that the transfer in influence from London to Washington materialized.

7In 1968, Harold Wilson, then prime minister of the United Kingdom, faced major domestic financial problems, combined with a strong rise in anti-colonialist feeling in the Gulf. This challenged the British presence in the region. Consequently the British government decided to begin withdrawal of almost all its forces stationed “east of Suez.” The departure of the British army left small states like Kuwait and Bahrain undefended and coveted by more powerful neighbors. Representatives of the royal courts in turn made discreet visits to Washington to press the White House to make a long-term commitment to stability in the Gulf (Macris 2010, 139).

8From then on, the United States took up the baton from the United Kingdom, but did not aspire to play the same role as the British. Washington had no desire to create a new colonial empire. A number of bold State Department diplomats conceived the notion of a Gulf NATO resting on the relationship between the United States and Iran. At that time Iran under the shah was a firm ally that benefited from extensive military cooperation with the Americans. Moreover, this kind of regional security structure would not involve over-committing US forces. However the shah took the side of prudence and expressed hostility to possible renewed foreign interference after the British withdrawal (Macris 2010, 177). For the same reason, in 1968 Iran refused to host a regional US Navy base. Faced with this decision, the Pentagon turned to Bahrain, which responded positively.

9The US desire not to deploy a major military force in the Gulf resulted in a vacuum remaining in the wake of the British withdrawal. As soon as they left, a regional competition began between Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. All these countries became more confident in their capabilities and were prepared to pursue their claims much more aggressively. In 1971 the shah seized three small islands, Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs, to which the United Arab Emirates still lay claim today. Then in 1979, the shah fled Iran following a revolution by the people: this event took experts in Washington by surprise. The new regime brought into question the strategic relationship between Iran and the United States, and went as far as to approve the hostage taking of US embassy personnel by Iranian students. In March of that year, renewed conflict between North and South Yemen exacerbated Washington’s concerns over the region’s stability.

10The decade of the 1980s was marked by the Iran-Iraq War, which broke out in September 1980 and lasted until 1988. When the conflict began, the United States wished to remain neutral. However, over the following months the Pentagon began to deploy air and sea forces in the Gulf, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz, to reassure the Gulf monarchies and ensure the safety of maritime fleets. Then in 1986, the “tanker wars” saw Iran targeting Kuwaiti and Saudi ships (both countries supported Saddam Hussein’s war effort). Kuwait and Saudi Arabia turned immediately to the United States, which, almost against its will, entered the conflict. In fact, open archives show that Ronald Reagan’s decision to provide direct protection to Gulf kingdoms’ vessels was a reaction to a Kuwaiti request for aid from the Soviet Union. In other words, it was due to Soviet-US competition that Washington finally agreed to become the protector of the Gulf monarchies. [5] GCC members remained ambivalent, however, as shown by their haste to oppose any land-based presence of US forces. Regional anti-Western feeling remained strong, both in decision-making circles and among the people. In any case, as soon as the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988, the Americans reduced their naval presence and intended to maintain a certain distance with regard to the Persian Gulf.

11But Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, completely changed the situation. In the space of a few months, the Gulf royal courts overcame their former reticence and came to see the United States as the only power able to resolve the crisis provoked by Saddam Hussein. To protect the Saudi kingdom from Iraqi invasion, starting in the winter of 1990 as many as 200,000 US troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield. At the end of the war, the United States decided for the first time to maintain a permanent presence in the region. The naval base in Bahrain was enlarged, and in 1995 was renamed the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. A defense and security agreement was signed with Qatar in 1992 and, with the construction of several camps, the emirate became the base for US Central Command’s forward headquarters.

12Thus the origins of the US role in the region remind us of factors often ignored in current debates. This military presence is relatively recent compared to that in Europe and Asia. Washington did not automatically or immediately take up the United Kingdom’s previous role of offshore balancer. [6] It was only gradually, as a reaction to the crises and wars affecting the region that the Pentagon decided to put in place a military structure in the Gulf. Nevertheless, as of 1991 a basic contradiction emerged in the relationship between the United States and the Gulf monarchies. Although all parties appeared to agree on the need for a US presence following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, this cooperation led to controversy and challenge that gradually eroded political relationships.

Gradual Deterioration of Political Relations between Washington and the Gulf Kingdoms

13The corrosion of political relations between the United States and GCC members during Barack Obama’s first term in office is neither sudden nor recent. It follows a series of episodes since the end of the Cold War. In fact, the more the United States has strengthened its military cooperation with the Gulf States, the more the justification for this has been questioned. This has been particularly noticeable in the case of the relationship between the United States and the dominant regional power, Saudi Arabia.

14Throughout the 1990s, the Clinton administration pursued an active policy of arms sales to the Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia. The ending of the Cold War saw a reduction in the US military budget, leading to a defense-industry contraction. Following a reorganization of the US defense industrial base, the Pentagon encouraged the major US arms companies to seek out foreign markets. During the 1990s, the Arabian Peninsula was the region most active in the arms race. The invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq impelled the GCC kingdoms to begin a buying spree of Western armaments. US arms sales to the Saudi regime, one of the most authoritarian in the world, did not fail to provoke an uproar in public opinion and among nongovernmental organizations. Ultimately, Clinton managed to continue these sales by invoking US strategic interests in the region.

15But Saudi Arabia’s closeness to the United States also gave rise to waves of protest within the kingdom itself. At the beginning of the 1990s, many prominent clerics openly denounced the policy of playing host to US army bases on Saudi territory, the home of the two most holy places of Islam, Mecca and Medina. The radicalization of this protest led to a number of attacks on US bases, including the June 1996 explosion of the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Dhahran, killing nineteen US servicemen. In the same year, Osama bin Laden declared:

16

Today it has been seven years since their arrival and the [Saudi] regime is unable to move them out of the country. The regime has made no confession of its ineffectiveness and carries on lying to the people, claiming that the Americans will leave (. . .). . . the occupying American enemy is the principle and main cause of the situation. Therefore, efforts should be concentrated on destroying, fighting, and killing the enemy until, by the grace of God, it is completely defeated.

17This rise of extremism was a foretaste of the shock that the George W. Bush administration had to confront some years later. The attacks of September 11, 2001, were carried out by nineteen Al Qaeda terrorists, among them fifteen Saudis. The White House could not avoid a serious debate over its relationship with Riyadh. This was a fierce controversy, with some experts going so far as to urge the US Department of Defense to launch a military offensive against the Saudi Kingdom. [7] While this idea was hard to take seriously, calls for a substantial reduction in US energy dependency on the Persian Gulf were heard. In particular, the US government decided to maintain a certain distance from Saudi resources. In May 2003, the United States imported 71,461 barrels a month of Saudi oil. Six years later, in August 2009, the monthly total had fallen to 22,585 barrels. [8] In the meantime, the United States had begun investing in alternative sources, increasing imports from the Gulf of Guinea, off West Africa, and boosting domestic oil production.

18But during these years the focus of regional US policy was Iraq. The Gulf monarchies greeted cautiously the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein certainly removed one of the major threats that had inspired the creation of the GCC. However, the Bush administration’s failure to make plans for the situation post-Saddam soon led to concern among the neighboring countries of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The creation of a new regime in Baghdad not only progressively weakened the Sunni community to the advantage of the Shi’ites, it also tended to favor the interests of Iran, whom the GCC monarchies accused of infiltrating all sections of the new Iraqi state. In interviews with Gulf diplomats and officials, it is not uncommon to hear Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki described as “Tehran’s man.” [9] The December 2011 withdrawal of US forces from Iraq thus gave credence to the idea that today the GCC countries would be the first to suffer the consequences of strategic errors made by the United States.

19Barack Obama’s arrival did nothing to stem the worsening of relations. Elected on a reformist manifesto, Obama wanted his presidency to have a moral orientation, reducing tensions between the United States and the Muslim world, encouraging nuclear disarmament, and recommending unconditional discussions with the Iranian regime. [10] Decision makers in the Gulf region soon viewed Obama’s ideas as naive. As early as his 2008 presidential campaign, he had expressed the willingness to engage without preconditions in diplomatic dialogue with countries considered “rogue states,” namely North Korea, Syria, and Iran. In summer 2008, Ivo Daalder and Philip Gordon, then Obama’s campaign advisers (later US NATO representative and assistant secretary of state respectively), argued in a Washington Post article that “direct talks with Iran are the best option for the United States” (Daalder and Gordon, 2008).

20When Obama became president, this philosophy placed several of his allies and partners in a quandary. Whereas the Europeans had taken a hard line on the Iranian nuclear program since 2006, Obama promised to renew diplomatic relations with Iran with no preconditions. This US about-face did not take into account the conditions laid down by the EU3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) for talks with Iranian representatives. Obama’s “commitment” contradicted the European position that any negotiation should be dependent on the prior suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment and reprocessing program. However, a few months later the White House abandoned this position. For the GCC monarchies, and Saudi Arabia particularly, this was an affront and suggested a dangerous, naive optimism on the part of the US president. From then on, some of the Gulf regimes took an extremely offensive position on Iran vis-à-vis Washington: included in this hawkish camp were Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (particularly Abu Dhabi), and Bahrain. [11]

21Subsequently, the US president’s historic March 2011 abandonment of his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, in the face of continued protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square aroused not skepticism but fear and anger: if Obama could let Mubarak go so readily, did that not demonstrate that the GCC regimes, themselves coming under strong social pressure, could no longer rely on the United States?

22After this it was hardly surprising that conspiracy theories began circulating in the Gulf Arab press suggesting that the invisible hand of the United States was behind the famous Arab Spring. A perfect example of this distrust was the January 2012 declaration by Dubai’s chief of police, Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, at a public conference. In front of the cameras, he announced unequivocally “the security policy of the United States is the prime threat for the Gulf States” (Issa 2012). These words naturally gave rise to controversy within the United Arab Emirates, a federation that maintains strong military cooperation with Washington.

23The final factor, one not devoid of irony, is that both the United States and the Gulf States are seeing a shift in their policies toward Asia. For Washington this is an ongoing project, though one that has been on the back burner during the ten-year fight against terrorism. China’s increasing power, India’s global ambitions, the failure to resolve disputes between North and South Korea, and the need to reassure historic strategic allies such as Japan and Australia, all these have been factors encouraging Washington’s shift toward the Pacific since 2011. [12] For GCC members, this announcement of Washington’s intentions was one more indicator of the irreversible weakening of their links with US power. Based on the principle that geopolitics is a zero-sum game, the Arab monarchs saw Obama’s “pivot” to Asia as a factor that would affect the resources Washington allocates to maintain stability in the Arabian Peninsula. This is why, seeking a degree of strategic autonomy, these countries are themselves beginning to diversify their partnerships and develop an Asian policy. Saudi Arabia in particular has strengthened not only economic but strategic ties with China and India, by signing memoranda and bilateral agreements whose ultimate aim is to put in place a new geostrategic framework for Riyadh (Davidson 2010).

24It is, therefore, easier to see why Prince Salman of Bahrain’s “omission” at the opening of the latest Manama Dialogue is not so much an anecdote as a sign of the worsening relations between Washington and the countries of this region. However, while political and even personal relationships between Obama and the Gulf rulers are characterized by mutual suspicion, a close study of the military aspects of their cooperation leads to some nuancing of the notion of a partnership in decline. As illustrated by developments over the past few years, in terms of the regional military presence, the United States is not in the process of withdrawing strategically from the peninsula: far from it.

Map 1

Us Military Bases in the Persian Gulf

Us Military Bases in the Persian Gulf

The Continuation of US Military Leadership in the Gulf

25The worsening political climate notwithstanding, certain invariant factors in US Gulf policy should be kept in mind, starting with the maintenance of military bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar (Central Command’s regional base). Despite the financial crisis and pressure on the Pentagon to remedy its budget, there is no debate between the executive and Congress on the possibility of at least partial withdrawal of troops from the Gulf, unlike US facilities in Europe. On the contrary, the figures seem to show a reverse trend.

26In 2012, the US Navy doubled the number of ships patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. [13] This renewal of US Navy patrols was intended as a warning, in response to threats from Ayatollah Khamenei to close the strait as a riposte to new economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and European Union in the winter of 2012. Similarly, the US base in Kuwait, reinforced by troops withdrawn from Iraq, will now retain the equivalent of another brigade: on a regional scale, this is less a retreat than a redeployment. In other words, the withdrawal from Iraq has resulted in a direct increase of US troops on the ground in the Gulf. This is a strong sign of reassurance to regional allies, which overrides any personal antagonism that might exist between the Gulf monarchs and the president of the United States.

27In terms of the arms trade, relations between the United States and the Gulf States have seen little perturbation; indeed, the reverse is true. In 2011 the Saudi authorities placed an order with the United States for, among other items, 84 F-15 combat aircraft and a dozen Apache and Black Hawk helicopters. This contract alone was worth $33.4 billion, a record for arms sales. The Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates have also expressed keen interest in the purchase of US fighter aircraft. Overall, the United States remains the biggest supplier of arms to the GCC countries, ahead of the United Kingdom and France, having won a third of all orders recorded since 2004. These sales come under the heading of Foreign Military Sales and are subject to close political monitoring: the Department of Defense passes the order on to manufacturers or uses the existing military inventory. There is, thus, no contractual relationship between the manufacturer and the foreign client. The US government directly guarantees the contract, and in addition to the equipment purchased, the client receives the logistical support of US military forces. In this way, foreign military sales constitute a powerful political tool: the negotiations are handled by the Pentagon rather than the manufacturers, thus forming an integral part of the strategic dialogue between the United States and the Gulf States. [14]

28Also in the area of armaments, the sale of US antimissile defense systems to the Gulf States is an important aspect of military cooperation, often neglected but becoming increasingly central, with implications that go beyond the strictly operational arena. Underlying the GCC kingdoms’ obvious interest in antimissile defense is their fear of Iran’s progress with ballistic and cruise missiles, which might bring their territories within range (International Institute for Strategic Studies 2010). In the fall of 2012, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates expressed their intention to acquire THAAD (terminal high-altitude area defense) systems. Leaders in Doha, Qatar, also expressed the wish to purchase Patriot missile batteries.

29These purchasing intentions follow previous regional waves of acquisition by countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, all of which already have Patriot missiles. In operational terms, the THAAD completes the Patriot system by extending the defense capability of the countries that have it.

30Together, these systems form the nucleus of a regional missile-defense architecture. In similar fashion to systems now being deployed in Europe (interceptors, radar, antimissile systems, etc.), those acquired by the Gulf States strengthen their links with Washington, given that only the US Department of Defense has the technical expertise to ensure command and control functionalities. The major difference compared with missile defense-deployment within NATO is that in the GCC, purchases are made through a bilateral agreement between each individual Arab kingdom and the United States. In other words, strictly speaking there is no GCC missile-defense architecture, but rather a US mechanism made available to GCC members. Despite a number of abortive attempts, GCC members have demonstrated an inability to come together and coordinate their efforts. This means the Gulf armies’ operational dependence on the United States, in particular its Central Command, has a tendency to increase rather than decrease. Hence the case of missile-defense systems is a concrete example of the strengthening bonds between the Pentagon and its Gulf partners. This technological issue conceals a political reality: The Gulf States are increasingly reliant on US capabilities to ensure their security in the face of a possible Iranian threat.

31In fact, the idea of Obama’s supposed naivety with regard to Iran is simplistic, as was shown by revelations that emerged in 2012 about the “hidden war” the US president has been waging against Iran. Indeed, in June 2012 the journalist David Sanger revealed in the pages of the New York Times that the computer worm Stuxnet that in the fall of 2010 had infected the centrifuges of the Iranian Natanz uranium-enrichment plant was actually only the visible tip of a whole iceberg: in reality, Stuxnet was shorthand for multiple operations carried out clandestinely by the United States as part of a program known as Olympic Games, set up during the administration of George W. Bush. [15] Not only did Obama not dismantle this Bush administration initiative, he broadened its scope. Thus President Barack Obama, elected on a platform of entering into a no-preconditions dialogue with Iran, approved the National Security Agency expansion of Olympic Games. Sanger’s revelations suggest a new reading of Obama as far more pragmatic, if not cynical, in putting in place a strategy that combined diplomatic messages of goodwill – the famous engagement – with the continued expansion of Olympic Games. In fact Olympic Games was an experimental tool for the Obama administration, which considered that the diplomatic process was destined to fail due to the duplicity of the Tehran regime and that military strikes would cause conflagration in the region. In other words, the cyber-attacks that had been carried out by the United States since 2008 enabled it to find a third way, one hitherto unexplored, of exercising a coercive diplomacy. [16] Certainly, the Olympic Games program was not intended as a direct response to expectations in the Gulf, but rather to those of Israel. Similarly, it is difficult to know to what extent the US allies in the Gulf were kept informed of developments related to this program.

32The final element that contradicts the idea that there has been a worsening of relations is the handling of the situation in Yemen. While the United States was embarrassed by Bahrain’s protest against the repression carried out by Peninsula Shield – the GCC rapid military response force – under Saudi command, this was not the case in Yemen, where Washington and Riyadh have a common interest in the struggle against Al Qaeda and maintain close cooperation for this reason.

Conclusion

33Following this examination of US policy toward the Arabian Peninsula, it seems that despite the somewhat tense diplomatic atmosphere between the United States and the Gulf monarchies, the parties maintain a pragmatic cooperation over security that they see as beneficial to both. With this in view, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remained heavily involved in continuing a strategic dialogue between the United States and the GCC to broaden this cooperation on a regional basis. [17].

34One possible explanation for this pragmatism, or realpolitik, is that, as the Gulf monarchies admit, only the United States is both able and willing to assume this responsibility within the region. While the GCC’s Look-East Policy toward India and China may consolidate certain aspects of economic and military cooperation, it can certainly not replace the US presence in the region. Therefore the tensions that marked relationships between the US president and the Gulf monarchs during Obama’s first term of office do not fundamentally call into question the basic premise: Washington remains the ultimate offshore balancer in the Arabian Peninsula, and it appears this will continue to be the case.