Troubled Waters

Insecurity in the Persian Gulf

Mehran Kamrava

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781501720376
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Troubled Waters looks at four dynamics in the Persian Gulf that have contributed to making the region one of the most volatile and tension-filled spots in the world. Mehran Kamrava identifies the four dynamics as: the neglect of human dimensions of security, the inherent instability involved in reliance on the United States and the exclusion of Iraq and Iran, the international and security policies pursued by inside and outside actors, and a suite of overlapping security dilemmas. These four factors combine and interact to generate long-term volatility and ongoing tensions within the Persian Gulf.

Through insights from Kamrava's interviews with Gulf elites into policy decisions, the consequences of security dilemmas, the priorities of local players, and the neglect of identity and religion, Troubled Waters examines the root causes of conflicts and crises that are currently unfolding in the region. As Kamrava demonstrates, each state in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Qatar, has embarked on vigorous security-producing efforts as part of foreign policy, flooding the area with more munitions—thereby increasing insecurity and causing more mistrust in a part of the world that needs no more tension.

1 THE TROUBLE WITH THE PERSIAN GULF

The Persian Gulf has emerged as one of the most heavily armed, securitized, and highly volatile regions of the world. For more than a half century, the shallow waterway has been of critical strategic importance because of the rich oil deposits spread among its littoral states, as well as, more recently, the enormous natural gas fields beneath its seabed. For the global great powers, especially at first the United Kingdom and then the United States, this was a region of tremendous strategic significance, a real estate of considerable worth and value, a place to dominate and govern either directly through colonial means or indirectly via pliant local rulers. Throughout the twentieth century, in one form or another, the West viewed the Persian Gulf through proprietary lenses. In the words of U.S. president Jimmy Carter, as he enunciated what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine, “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”1

The Soviets, and once they collapsed whoever else threatened Western interests, were to be kept out of the region or kept weak so as not to challenge a status quo that favored the West’s dominance of the Persian Gulf. Volatility across the region or in the constituent states was tolerated as long as it did not threaten access to oil and its flow out of the region—the wounds of the Iran-Iraq War, for example, festered for eight years, from 1980 to 1988, until the two sides had exhausted each other and themselves. When international tensions threatened friendly suppliers with ample oil resources, as happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the threat was resolutely countered and put down by the United States.

The end of a globally menacing Cold War and the arrival of a new millennium did little to calm the Persian Gulf’s turbulent waters and its even more chaotic shores. If anything, the September 2001 terrorist attacks on American soil and the ensuing global War on Terror ushered in a new era of turmoil across the Middle East and specifically in the Persian Gulf region. It soon emerged that both the mastermind and the foot soldiers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks hailed from the countries of the Persian Gulf—of the nineteen who took part in the attacks, fifteen were from Saudi Arabia and two from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

What larger environmental factors would prompt some of the richest countries in the world to breed such fanatically dedicated mass killers? Reason had little chance of addressing such existential questions in the hurried rush for vengeance. A new order descended upon the region, engulfing not just the Arabian Peninsula but also much of the Levant and North Africa. Securitization assumed new dimensions. Stability, enforced through gun barrels if necessary, became an all-consuming search. Meanwhile, wars of varying intensities were prosecuted by the Western powers against those belonging to an “Axis of Evil,” two members of which, Iran and Iraq, were located in the Gulf region.2

Just as the world was getting accustomed to a new security consciousness in the post-9/11 era, a new malady descended upon the Persian Gulf and the larger Middle East region. What began as a hopeful Spring in late 2010 soon spiraled into a nightmare of religious extremism, civil wars, repressive despotism, and bloody sectarianism. And, in almost every form and in every dimension, the Persian Gulf was once again at the center of regional and global crosscurrents, affecting not just security but also politics, society, and life in general in places near and far. If there is a new order emerging out of the ashes of what began as the Arab Spring, nearly a decade on, it is yet another era of chaos and insecurity.

It is the study of the root causes of this insecurity to which this book is devoted. The puzzle I have set for myself is to decipher the underlying causes of the chronic insecurity of the Persian Gulf region. While my specific focus is the post–Arab Spring period, it is obvious that many of the underlying dynamics have deeper and older roots, spanning specific developments and arbitrary dates. Thus while my attention is primarily drawn to the contemporary era, at times a longer historical horizon is necessary.

The broad outlines of the argument I make here are as follows. I argue that the Persian Gulf’s chronic insecurity is rooted in four interrelated, reinforcing sets of factors. First, the prevailing security architecture in the Persian Gulf contains a dual characteristic that makes it inherently insecure. This dual characteristic includes a flawed or at best incomplete conception of security, on the one hand, and, on the other, an equally untenable evolution of security arrangements as they have come to prevail across the region on the other. Security in the Persian Gulf has come to be understood in exclusively military and territorial terms. Later on in this chapter I will make the case—building on what is by now a well-established strand of security studies—that there are dimensions of security that go beyond balance-of-power equations and issues related to military affairs and instead revolve around the core human sense of security. These “critical” dimensions of human security, particularly germane in a region where matters of identity and belonging have assumed a central importance to individuals and communities, have long been neglected and, in fact, have often been suppressed.

Second, for decades this dogged neglect of human security issues has been built on an externally engineered and sustained regional security architecture that was, and remains, fundamentally unstable and unsustainable. This instability and unsustainability derived from the security architecture’s main premises of overt reliance on an external balancer, the United States, and the exclusion of two major regional actors, Iran and Iraq. Near the end of its tenure, the administration of President Barack Obama developed somewhat of a businesslike relationship with Iran that was no longer premised on the containment and isolation of the Islamic Republic. But mistrust and tensions remained, and were in fact heightened with the coming to office of Donald Trump’s administration in January 2017. President Trump and his foreign and security policy team were initially slow to articulate clear goals and objectives in relation to the Persian Gulf, or the larger Middle East for that matter. But soon they reverted to pre-Obama policies designed to isolate and marginalize Iran from regional and global affairs. Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, even went as far as to admit to his country’s willingness to affect regime change in Iran.3

A third reason for chronic insecurity in the Persian Gulf is the policies and priorities of the region’s policymakers. These policymakers, I argue, pursue security-producing programs that ultimately perpetuate their own insecurity. Moreover, they are often adventurous and expansionist. Their motivations are guided by a combination of agency and structure. In terms of agency, they are often motivated by a desire to project power and influence abroad in order to maintain regime security at home. As far as structural dynamics are concerned, since their countries are actually secondary global powers or see themselves as such, they have aspirations of regional dominance and hegemony. Whatever the cause, local actors often act as belligerents. Mistrust marks their interactions even in good times, and cooperation is rare and fleeting when it happens. This is a region with far too many local states aspiring to dominate it in one form or another, some on their own but most with outside help. These clashing aspirations are yet another cause of regional insecurity.

The fourth and final cause of insecurity in the region revolves around the vicious cycle of security-insecurity that is commonly referred to in the discipline as a security dilemma. Because of pervasive insecurity, each of the states in the region has embarked on vigorous security-producing efforts of one form or another. All have engaged in massive arms purchases save for Iran, which instead has long compensated for the international sanctions it faces on weapons imports by building a robust domestic military industry of its own, especially in the form of a ballistic missile program. In turn, the flood of arms, be they domestically manufactured or imported, increases the insecurity of neighbors, which then acquire more arms, only to prompt others to do the same thing. And the cycle continues. The essence of the security dilemma traces back to mistrust, of which there is plenty all around the Persian Gulf. As the following chapters argue, alliances are all too often marred by an innate transience that reigns as soon as a uniting security threat recedes. Interstate politics in the Persian Gulf remains largely a zero-sum game and, as such, perpetuates a security dilemma from which it is all but impossible to escape.

I will elaborate on these arguments in the chapters that follow. For now, in the remainder of this chapter I will lay the groundwork for that discussion more fully by covering two additional, related topics. First, I will examine some of the more consequential developments in the international relations of the Middle East, and more specifically the Persian Gulf, and the security predicaments of its constituent actors. The countries of the region have been subject to many of the broader dynamics under way in or affecting the Middle East, from state building to war making, arms races, power projection, revolutions, civil wars, and multiple other catalytic events. The security architecture of the Persian Gulf as it has evolved over the past several decades and the current priorities and objectives of regional leaders and state actors—their fears and threat perceptions, and their efforts to carve out for themselves spheres of influence near and far—all have been invariably shaped and influenced by broader region-wide developments, including those in the Levant and North Africa.

Once the general landscape of the international relations of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf has been painted, I will turn to an examination of the concept of security. Building on a well-established strand within security studies, I argue that one-dimensional conceptions of security that focus exclusively on its physical and territorial facets are at best incomplete and at worst oblivious to deeper and more salient and consequential dynamics. Conventional understandings of security need to be broadened to include social and political anxieties with potential for unease and instability. Not all threats and challenges come from the barrel of a gun or from tilts and imbalances in power equations. Some are harder to discern at first, and may emanate from phenomena as nebulous as identity and sense of belonging. But they may be no less threatening to political order and stability, no less compelling as motivators for foreign policy behavior, and no less pernicious as a security challenge. Security, in short, is multidimensional, far more complex and complicated than reducible to military and defense matters only, and is an issue not just of power and influence but also of popular perceptions, collective anxieties, and a sense of unease.

The Landscape

Three broad themes or developments characterize the overall background within which Persian Gulf security is currently unfolding. The first has to do with the weight and continuing consequences of historical developments. History is far from static, and the ramifications of events that constitute it often cascade onto subsequent eras and periods. For the larger Middle East and the Persian Gulf in particular, processes of state formation and critical historical junctures continue to unfold and shape major developments. This relates to a second development, namely, the longstanding nexus between domestic politics and foreign policy. Across the Middle East and especially in the Persian Gulf, as elsewhere, foreign policy behavior is all too often influenced by considerations revolving around domestic politics. In the Gulf region, foreign policy is often directly tied to issues of regime security.

A third and final development has to do with the steady shift of power and focus within the Middle East, away from the Levant and North Africa and in the direction of the Arabian Peninsula. Over the past two decades or so, actors once considered insignificant and at best marginal in regional affairs have now taken center stage. These include the likes of Qatar and the UAE, which now house aspiring global cities, host mega-events and showcase projects geared to audiences throughout the world, and have emerged as global hubs for commerce and transport. Both Qatar and the UAE have ambitions of influence and power projection that are wholly incommensurate with their brief history as independent states and with their small size. Even Saudi Arabia, which has long been a key player in regional affairs, is now far more assertive than perhaps at any other point in its history, seeking to complement its hegemonic ambitions within the Arabian Peninsula with leadership roles in the larger Middle East and beyond.

Let us delve a little deeper into each of these developments, beginning with the unfolding ramifications of major historical events and processes of state formation in the region. Raymond Hinnebusch has distinguished five phases of state formation in the contemporary Middle East: the period of oligarchy (1945–1955), the era of populist revolutions (1956–1970), authoritarian state consolidation (1970–1990), post-populist authoritarianism (1990–2011), and the age of Arab Spring (2011– ).4 Each of these eras left its own indelible mark on the Middle East, building on and adding to layers before and after, and setting into motion developments with domestic and regional consequences. The oligarchs’ control by foreign masters, mostly British and French, gave way in the early 1950s to populists who assumed that strength rested in numbers and that power and progress could be had through uniting under the banner of a common Arab nation. But by the early to the mid-1970s the pan-Arabists’ compelling slogans had failed to put food on the table or to accomplish any victories on the battlefield, and for the following four decades or so the region descended into an abyss of authoritarianism and stale, despotic rule. The Arab Spring was the hopeful answer, but only briefly. It soon turned into a nightmare of religious extremism, sectarianism, civil wars, and weak and collapsing states.

Each of these eras saw its own tenor and rhythm of foreign policy and internat...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Trouble with the Persian Gulf
• 2. The Persian Gulf Security Architecture
• 3. The Belligerents
• 4. The Intractable Security Dilemma
• 5. Insecurity in the Persian Gulf
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index