The Foreign Policy Of Smaller Gulf States

This book studies how smaller Gulf states managed to increase their influence in the Middle East, oftentimes capitalising on their smallness as a foreign policy tool. By establishing a novel theoretical framework (the complex model of size), this study identifies specific ways in which material and perceptual smallness affect power, identity, regime stability, and leverage in international politics. The small states of the Gulf (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) managed to build up considerable influence in regional politics over the last decade, although their size is still considered an essential, irresolvable weakness, which makes them secondary actors to great powers such as Saudi Arabia or Iran. Breaking down explicit and implicit biases towards largeness, the book examines specific case studies related to foreign and security policy behaviour, including the Gulf wars, the Arab Uprisings, the Gulf rift, and the Abraham Accords. Analysing the often-neglected small Gulf states, the volume is an important contribution to international relations theory, making it a key resource for students and academics interested in Small State Studies, Gulf studies, and the political science of the Middle East.

Small states are often believed to have been resigned to the margins of international politics. However, the recent increase in the number of small states has increased their influence and forced the international community to incorporate some of them into the global governance system. This is particularly evident in the Middle East where small Gulf states have played an important role in the changing dynamics of the region in the last decade. The Small Gulf States analyses the evolution of these states’ foreign and security policies since the Arab Spring. With particular focus on Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, it explores how these states have been successful in not only guaranteeing their survival, but also in increasing their influence in the region. It then discusses the security dilemmas small states face, and suggests a multitude of foreign and security policy options, ranging from autonomy to influence, in order to deal with this. The book also looks at the influence of regional and international actors on the policies of these countries. It concludes with a discussion of the peculiarities and contributions of the Gulf states for the study of small states’ foreign and security policies in general. Providing a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the unique foreign and security policies of the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) before and after the Arab Spring, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Middle East studies, foreign policy and international relations.

This book examines the foreign policies of the GCC countries six years after the Arab uprisings, in terms of drivers, narratives, actions and outcomes, paying particular attention to Middle Eastern countries, Iran and Western international powers. The assessment focuses on current affairs, but also contributes to establishing a productive link between empirical studies and the existing theoretical frameworks that help explain the increasing foreign policy activism of the GCC countries. All in all, the articles collected in this book shed light on and provide a more solid and fine-grained understanding of how regional powers like Saudi Arabia, as well as the other smaller GCC countries, act and pursue their interests in an environment full of uncertainty, in the context of changing regional and global dynamics and power distribution. The book brings together the articles published in a Special Issue of the International Spectator.

A major result of the Second World War was the emergence of small states which vastly increased the membership of the international system. While a number of small states existed before the war many of these had made no effort to participate actively in the system; since then, the doctrine of equality of states has been established, in theory at least, through their admission to the UN. This book, first published in 1984, deals with the factors which have contributed to the emergence of such a large number of small states, the difficulties which they have experienced in achieving statehood, and their struggle to gain political integration. A precise analysis of the foreign policy and economic factors governing the activity of small states, particularly that of Kuwait and the other Gulf states, is presented here.

Middle East politics have been proverbial for their changeability. The 1970s ushered in petro-politics, for instance, but OPEC's international status declined markedly in the following decade. Similarly, the Arab world's ostracism of Egypt in the 1970s following its separate peace with Israel was turned around in the 1980s; the late 1980s also brought PLO acceptance of the State of Israel. Interstate relations were not the only arena to experience significant alterations; state-society relations also underwent dramatic changes, such as the acceleration of privatization in erstwhile socialist regimes. Then the 1990s opened with a political earthquake: the Gulf Crisis. The second edition of this highly acclaimed text offers a penetrating analysis of trends in Arab foreign policies since the book was originally published in 1984, including an early analysis of the effects of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent coalition victory over Iraq. In addition, the authors have included new chapters on Jordan—at the heart of the Arab world—and on the Sudan—the region's link to sub-Saharan Africa. Their inclusion allows a fuller understanding of the foreign policies of states that occupy crucial geopolitical positions but wield little tangible power. Moreover, in many of its chapters the book raises the crucial question of how the foreign policies of these countries can cope with the prevalence of political change.

Foreign Policy has been crucial to the UAE, ever since its birth in 1971 following Britain's decision to withdraw from the Gulf. How is the federation's foreign policy formulated? What are the internal and external pressures which shape it? How can a small Gulf state survive in the modern world? Dr Hassan Hamdan al-Alkim, himself a UAE national, has not only studied the Emirates' policy-making process in depth. He has also interviewed some of those closely involved in it. His detailed and fully documented study outlines the origins of the UAE and describes the evolution of its policies towards its neighbours, the wider Arab world, and the big powers. Three illuminating case-studies examine relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the UAE's attitude towards the Palestine question.

Gregory Gause's masterful book is the first to offer a comprehensive account of the international politics in the Persian Gulf across nearly four decades. The story begins in 1971 when Great Britain ended its protectorate relations with the smaller states of the lower Gulf. It traces developments in the region from the oil 'revolution' of 1973–4 through the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf war of 1990–1 to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, bringing the story of Gulf regional politics up to 2008. The book highlights transnational identity issues, regime security and the politics of the world oil market, and charts the changing mix of interests and ambitions driving American policy. The author brings his experience as a scholar and commentator on the Gulf to this riveting account of one of the most politically volatile regions on earth.

This paper examines the foreign policy production of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through the ‘Dynamic Process Model’ (DPM), a conceptual framework combining elements of international relations (IR) theory and foreign policy analysis. With a focus on the process of identity construction, the motives and values that drive foreign policy production can be better contextualized. This paper utilizes many of these existing theoretical models in a novel form to create a framework that is more useful to studying the IR and foreign policy production of small states. This framework is presented as the DPM and will be used to analyze the identity construction of the UAE, a process central to understanding foreign policy production. There were three reasons to choose the UAE as a case-study: firstly, the desire to study a possible shift in the underlying dynamics behind the country’s ‘identity’ construction as a nation-state following the death of its founding father and first president, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. Secondly, the UAE is an interesting example of a re-examination of changing international relations dynamics; specifically, the growing self-awareness and assertiveness of small states, especially Arabian Gulf States (AGS), regarding their growing political and economic influence, both regionally and globally. Thirdly, there is a weakness when it comes to the integration between IR theory and foreign policy analysis. This gap is most apparent in the study of small state foreign policy like the UAE. This paper uses the DPM to inform a structural analysis of UAE foreign policy (FP) production that will reveal a shift in ‘identity’ construction and domestic socio-political structures from the Zayed (1971–2004) to the post-Zayed era. It asks how the ‘identity’ of the DMA is constructed dynamically as it interacts with external and internal structures, through the process of articulating ‘national identity’ as ‘national interest.’ As Richard Devetak notes, “it is important to recognize that political identities do not exist prior to the differentiation of self and other.” The DPM sees FP production as a form of identity construction by combining this functional understanding of sovereign nation-states, systems theory FP5 literature, and IR theory.