AngloArabia

Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain

David Wearing

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781509532049, 9781509532032
• eBook ISBN: 9781509532063
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

UK ties with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies are under the spotlight as never before. Huge controversy surrounds Britain's alliances with these deeply repressive regimes, and the UK's key supporting role in the disastrous Saudi-led intervention in Yemen has lent added urgency to the debate. What lies behind the British government's decision to place politics before principles in the Gulf? Why have Anglo-Arabian relations grown even closer in recent years, despite ongoing, egregious human rights violations? In this ground-breaking analysis, David Wearing argues that the Gulf Arab monarchies constitute the UK's most important and lucrative alliances in the global south. They are central both to the British government's ambitions to retain its status in the world system, and to its post-Brexit economic strategy. Exploring the complex and intertwined structures of UK-Gulf relations in trade and investment, arms sales and military cooperation, and energy, Wearing shines a light on the shocking lengths to which the British state has gone in order to support these regimes. As these issues continue to make the headlines, this book lifts the lid on 'AngloArabia' and what's at stake for both sides.

1
Empire’s Legacy

For over a hundred years British imperial power dominated the Gulf, overseeing the creation of the regional state system that we see today and the emergence of Gulf oil as perhaps the greatest strategic and material prize in the world. Britain’s current relationship with the Gulf Arab monarchies is best understood, in the first instance, as the product of historical processes unfolding through this period and into the decades immediately after the end of its formal empire. Global capitalism, and the nature and place of British capitalism within it, changed significantly over this time. Britain’s power in the international system declined in both relative and absolute terms. And the landscape of alliances and rivalries within which British power operated shifted from one historical epoch to the next. This chapter will outline the evolution of the UK’s position in the Gulf from the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the end of the Cold War in the context of these wider changes.

Throughout the period under discussion, London worked to advance the interests of British capital, to maintain and extend the scope of the wider international capitalist system, and to maintain, enhance or at least defend the global prestige and power of the British state. As this applies to policy with respect to the Gulf, set in the context of the wider Middle East, we can identify a few key themes. These include the strategic importance of the region’s geopolitical location; the value of oil as a source of power, wealth and energy; London’s view of local nationalisms and even democracy as a threat to its relationships with the Gulf elites; and the importance of the means of violence and physical coercion in maintaining these relationships, in terms of internal repression, military intervention and arms exports. These themes have broadly persisted into the post-Cold War period.

The history of Britain’s relationship with the Gulf Arab monarchies can be divided into three distinct phases. First, between the end of the eighteenth century and the conclusion of the Second World War, Britain established itself as an imperial hegemon and power-broker in the Gulf, bringing the local elites under its protection and securing a major stake in the region’s newly discovered oil reserves. Second, from the start of the Cold War until 1971, London was forced to come to terms with and manage imperial decline in the face of its diminished economic strength, the rise of the United States, and the emergence of local nationalist movements. Third, in the period up until the present day, Britain adjusted to its new status, working to ensure that its financial and industrial sectors (particularly arms exporters) benefited from the increased wealth of the Gulf monarchies and, to that end, providing those monarchies with the arms and protection necessary to ensure their survival.

In each of these periods, the Gulf region has been of vital strategic interest. As the leading expert on UK foreign policy in the Middle East, Rosemary Hollis, puts it, ‘the energy resources of Iran and later of various Arab states maintained British naval power in the early twentieth century and fuelled the British economy thereafter. Following nationalisation, the oil wealth of the Arab Gulf states has also sustained the British defence industry, buttressed the financial sector and provided a lucrative market for other corporate interests.’¹ These benefits accrued from Anglo-Arabian relationships that were born and developed in the context of empire.

Britain’s Arabian empire takes shape

The French invasion of Egypt in July 1798 lent the Gulf region its first genuine significance for the British Empire, with a hostile European power now emerging on India’s western horizon.² Britain’s first Arabian treaty – with the Sultan of Muscat in 1798 – was designed to close the Gulf to French naval forces, and the British authorities in India now tasked themselves with securing the region.³

The historian Peter Sluglett describes how, ‘between 1800 and 1914, in addition to the annexation of Aden [in what is now Yemen] and the arrangements with the rulers of the smaller Persian Gulf sheikhdoms – the Trucial States – and Muscat and Oman … Britain established unequal treaties with the rulers of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran and Kuwait (and rather later with Qatar).’⁴ The overall strategic aim in establishing these relationships was to create a cordon sanitaire around the Indian jewel in the British imperial crown.⁵

The construction of this system in the Gulf began with an initial, time-bound truce signed with a few of the coastal sheikhs in 1835, with Britain set up in the role of naval policeman and adjudicator in the case of any disputes, marking the commencement in earnest of its role as imperial power-broker. These temporary arrangements were subsequently upgraded to a ten-year truce, signed with what had become known as the Trucial Sheikhs in 1842. In 1853, the truce was made permanent.⁶

In 1880, Bahrain signed an agreement with Britain which barred the ruler and his successors from establishing relations with any other state without Britain’s consent, thus becoming effectively a British dependency. Similar exclusive agreements were signed with the Trucial Sheikhs in 1887 and 1892 and with the dominions of Muscat and Oman in 1891, in the latter case to block a French attempt to set up a coal depot there and so gain a strategic foothold in the Gulf. In 1899, an exclusive agreement was signed with the Emir of Kuwait in response to plans for the construction of a railway from Asia Minor to the Gulf, a project attracting interest from Russia and Germany. A similar agreement was signed with Qatar in 1916. A 1906 treaty with Russia dividing Persia up into spheres of influence explicitly recognised British supremacy in the Gulf.⁷

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Gulf was firmly under British control, with the British resident (London’s chief regional diplomat) able to call in naval support from the Royal Indian Marine, under the overall command of the Bombay government, or from the Royal Navy itself.⁸ The principle was now established in British policy that no rival power’s presence would be tolerated in the Gulf.⁹ British interests in the broader Middle East were also expanding, with Cyprus occupied, Egypt and Sudan brought under imperial control, and Whitehall purchasing nearly half the shares in the Suez Canal Company.¹⁰

In 1914 the British government bought a 51 per cent stake in the Anglo Persian Oil Company (APOC – the firm which later became British Petroleum, or BP), an early indication of the growing strategic importance of oil. In anticipation of a coming war with Germany, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, decided on grounds of efficiency to switch the Royal Navy’s fuel source from coal to oil. The Admiralty bought its stake in APOC on terms that guaranteed it a secure supply at a predictable and affordable price.¹¹

The commencement of the First World War prompted an immediate tightening of British control, established through further treaties of loyalty and cooperation with the local sheikhs. Churchill dispatched three ships to protect the APOC oil refinery at Abadan, and a costly three-year military campaign was fought (by troops from Britain’s Indian army) to secure control over Mesopotamia, which was deemed essential to protect Britain’s position in the Gulf. By the end of the war, that position was even more secure. Germany was defeated, the Ottoman Empire was no more, and the Soviet Union, as the successor state to the Russian Empire, was entirely pre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Empire’s Legacy
• 2 Oil and Gas: The Strategic and Commercial Prize
• 3 British Neoliberalism and Gulf Capitalism: A Perfect Fit
• 4 How Important is Gulf Wealth to British Capitalism?
• 5 Arming Authoritarianism
• 6 The Arab Uprisings and the War in Yemen
• Conclusion
• Index
• End User License Agreement