On April 3, I wrote about my assessment that:
The events of the past five weeks have largely borne out that judgment. And now, over the past ten days, we have seen these key developments:
I included that last item because I want to assess all the above news in light of the longer-term diplomatic project I have identified China and Pakistan as pursuing, which has been to “reel in” members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (and other states), into the pro-peace camp and out of the U.S.-Israeli Axis of Aggression. Back in early April, I was still somewhat hopeful that Beijing could bring the UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia and the other four GCC members, into— or at least, somewhat closer to— the pro-peace camp. On April 13, the “Crown Prince” of the UAE’s main constituent statelet, Abu Dhabi, was in Beijing. There were reports of some friction with his hosts there, but the two sides ended up signing some sizeable agreements on economic cooperation. So I was pretty hopeful about the prospects of bringing them in. That optimism was unwarranted. Later, I surmised that quite likely the ruler of Abu Dhabi— and the UAE— Prince Muhammad Bin Zayed (MBZ) had already, some weeks the Crown Prince’s visit to Beijing, concluded the deal with Tel Aviv to bring into Abu Dhabi those Israeli weapons and military personnel… However. If the Chinese-Pakistani attempt to reel the UAE into the pro-peace camp proved to be a failure, the push to bring Saudi Arabia— and Kuwait— into it seems to have been much more successful. (See item #4 above.) Pledge your support What difference does any of this make?Clearly, the (broadly reported) refusal of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to give the U.S. military access, overflight, or basing access to their lands and facilities made a crucial difference to Pres. Trump’s widely touted plan to open the Hormuz Strait by force. But beyond that, if Saudi Arabia and Kuwait maintain their posture of apparent neutrality in the confrontation between the U.S.-Israeli axis and Iran, then that will have broad ramifications both throughout and far beyond West Asia. Recall, if you will, that these two monarchies have long been two of Washington’s longest-standing and closest allies in the region. The Kuwait royal family owes its entire resurrection as an independent state in 1991 to the military intervention and leadership of the U.S. in Operation Desert Storm. (And in return for that, it gave the U.S. military wide access to number of valuable military bases in its small landmass.) As for Saudi Arabia, back in the 1930s, when most of the Gulf’s southern (Arab) shore still functioned as a “British coastline”, ruled from and by the nearby British Raj in India, and most of the Mashreq/Levant, including Iraq, had been divided by the post-WW-1 peace agreements between Britain and France, the eponymous King Abdel-Aziz ibn Saud who held sway over vast areas of the interior (and some shores) of the Arabian Peninsula threw his fortunes squarely in with those of the Americans, including with their oil companies. Ibn Saud's expansion 1902-32. Meets with FDR in 1945 So yes, for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia— especially the latter— to now be standing aside from the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is a big deal. The UAE (and the GCC)Here’s a quick political geography brush-up regarding two entities:
As noted above, nearly all southern coast of the Persian Gulf had long been controlled by the British Raj in India, and prior to that the privately-owned, London-based East India Company. In the years between the two World Wars, the British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company was profitably pumping oil from both (British-controlled) Iraq and (Shah-controlled) Iran. Oil was discovered in the small state of Kuwait (literally: “the small fort”) in 1938, and commercial pumping and export started soon after WW-2. Oman had its own fairly rich history and significant landmass. Bahrain was an island, and had some income from oil… But there were eight other little sheikhdoms/princedoms along the south coast of the Gulf that were all very poor, and where the British had long exercised broad rights over trade and defense under a series of truces. So those little British-protected princedoms had long been called the “Trucial States.” In 1968, British PM Harold Wilson realized the UK could no longer afford to field the forces needed to “defend” those states, so his government started arranging for them to become independent. Most of the eight agreed to federate their little princedoms into a new governing body called the United Arab Emirates (= “princedoms”) but Qatar decided to declare its independence. Thus, in 1971, were born both the independent State of Qatar and the new United Arab Emirates. Here’s a map, with a break-out of the north-east portion, that shows the complex nature of the borders between some of the UAE members, and also between UAE members and Oman: See all those crazy boundaries, the chunk of Oman north of the UAE, and the Omani blob within the UAE I remember once in the late 1970s, when I was driving around close to Al-Ain, and we drove through areas where every village was displaying a different “national flag”— either the Emirates, or Oman, or Saudi Arabia. It all felt fairly chaotic. Anyway, clearly within the UAE, Abu Dhabi is the big kid on the block, and has lots of oil revenue. (Dubai comes in second and has a huge GDP.) However, at the level of the GCC, it is clearly Saudi Arabia that is the big kid on the block! Here, as a recap, are the population figures:
Here’s a map of the whole GCC: The GCC was founded in 1981, in response to the victory of the anti-monarchical revolution across the Gulf in Iran, and also to the big, punishing war that Iraq’s Saddam launched on Iran in September 1980 (with lots America help), to try to overthrow the Islamic Republic there. The goal of the GCC— very much at the urging of the U.S., which maintained military bases and/or basing agreements in all six of the member countries— was to have the GCC be both an EU-style economic cooperation body and a NATO-style military alliance. The military-alliance part, now known as the “Unified Military Command” got off to a slow start. It was “too late” to do much to help push back the Iraqi forces that occupied all of Kuwait in 1990. The only time it did anything palpable was during the Arab Spring of 2011, when between 1,000 and 1,200 UMC troops and some 500 UAE security forces were sent from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain to help defend facilities threatened by the large, anti-monarchy popular demonstrations. They also reportedly helped Bahrain’s own extremely brutal security forces to repress the demonstrations. Three items of note in that action:
The battle across West Asia as a wholeIf you look at the above map of the GCC within West Asia, and if you bear in mind that the central contest in that region right now is the one between Israel and Iran, then you will see that the position adopted by Saudi Arabia in this contest is very significant. Especially if you recall also that:
Let’s remember too that the Abraham Accords were also the “birth certificate” for an era of (U.S.-mediated) direct coordination between the militaries of Israel and all the Arab states with which Washington already had longstanding military ties under the aegis of Centcom. The “Operation Freedom” actions that Trump tried to launch a few days ago had almost certainly been planned in close coordination with Israel— which was where many of the numerous troops, aircraft, and weapons that Centcom planned to use in OF had been mustering in recent weeks. Israel was, in a very real sense, a key staging post for that operation, along with Jordan. In standing back from cooperating with OF, the Saudis were also standing back from cooperating with Israel in its implementation. … The intense rivalry that has now arisen between Saudi Arabia and the UAE has many aspects, in addition to the above. In Yemen, Somalia/Somaliland, the Red Sea, and elsewhere the two powers have for some time now been pursuing intense rivalries. Over in Palestine, the UAE are now making a big push to be the Israelis’ key partners in the brutal pacification of Gaza. At one level, it is very concerning to see these two states competing right across West Asia in ways that instrumentalize and inflict great harm on other, much more needy populations in the region. But at another level, it is fairly encouraging to note that— for now at least— Saudi Arabia, which is a far, far weightier state than the UAE can ever be, is acting in a way that can help to bring this war to a decent, sustainable end and can thereby block and push back the Israeli-U.S. plans to dominate the whole of West Asia. Stay tuned.
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