Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and Great
Power Competition
Remarks to the Gulf International Forum
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS,
Ret.)
Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Washington, DC, 17 October 2019
There is a rhythm in the affairs
of men, a pattern shaped by enduring interests.
It echoes through the ages. So,
it is no surprise that empires and external great powers have regularly found
themselves drawn to the Red Sea, Arabian Peninsula, and Persian Gulf
region. Afro-Asia is where Africa, Asia,
and Europe come together. It is where
modern man first exited Africa to populate the world. It is the mother of all strategic choke
points. From time to time, the region
has dominated markets for specific commodities in great demand, like perfumes,
pearls, and petroleum. And, for fifteen
centuries, its holy cities have been destinations for pilgrimage by the world’s
Muslims.
Rome looked to the region for
frankincense and myrrh, which were essential to its funeral practices. Early in the 7th century Afro-Asia was united
under Islam. Zealous Muslim warriors
then exploded outward, creating an Arabic-speaking empire that stretched from
Central Asia across North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula. This Arabian awakening led to the creation of
a vastly more populous Islamic domain, which in 637 embraced Iran and, in time,
much of sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia.
Those Arabs who emigrated with
the conquest prospered. Those who remained
in the Afro-Asian region did not. It is
true that, for a millennium, the silk and spice trade between Europe and Asia
was monopolized by Arabs and Persians, acting independently or, for a century
or so, under the Mongols. Nevertheless,
the great centers of Arab and Islamic civilization were not in its Afro-Asian
epicenter.
In 1414, China reached out
directly to the region, as the first of three great Chinese fleets arrived to
buy pearls, fine horses, and precious gems in Hormuz. In 1507, seeking to flank the Ottoman Empire
and monopolize the Indian Ocean spice trade, the Portuguese took Hormuz and
Muscat. Soon thereafter, they garrisoned
Bahrain and other trading centers in the Gulf.
In response, the Ottomans pushed south into Al Hasa, now Saudi Arabia’s
Eastern Province. A decade of fierce
skirmishing between Turks and Portuguese followed.
Regional powers reacted to the
increasing foreign presence in their midst.
Safavid Iran took Bahrain from Portugal in 1602. As the 17th century proceeded, Oman expelled
the Portuguese from its territory and built an empire spanning the Indian
Ocean. But the power of Iran continued
to grow, as did that of the first Saudi state, established near Riyadh in 1744. As the Saudis expanded from the Arabian
interior, the Persians captured Muscat, throwing the Omani Empire into
disarray. By the early 19th century,
Britain had recognized Iran as the sovereign authority in the Persian Gulf and
the Ottomans had invaded Arabia from Egypt to overthrow the Saudis and contain
Wahhabi fanaticism.
As this happened, the British were
swallowing up India. British shipping in
the Indian Ocean expanded apace. The
raids of the so-called “pirate kingdoms” on the southern coast of the Gulf –
present-day Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – threatened British
India’s strategic lines of communication.
Efforts to suppress this piracy came to naught.
In 1819, a massive
British-commanded Indian force crushed the formidable Qasimi Emirate of Ras Al
Khaimah with help from its Qatari and Omani rivals. The “Raj” had effectively dominated the
Gulf. The British rulers of India were
able to compel all the Gulf Arab statelets to renounce slavery and to fly
“white pierced red flags,” signifying their abandonment of piracy. But these
statelets continued to fight with each other, disrupting the pearl trade and
again appearing to menace freedom of navigation in their region. In 1835, Britain intervened to broker an
uneasy truce between the ten warring emirates of the Gulf, which were thereafter
known as the “Trucial States.” The
Indian rupee became the regional currency.
Britain found oil in Persia in
1908, then more in Iraq (1927) and Bahrain (1932). The discovery of these geological riches set
off a race between British and American companies to secure oil
concessions. Britain used its imperial
privileges to keep the Americans out of Iran, Iraq, and the “Trucial
States.” But, in 1938, in Saudi Arabia,
an American consortium found and began to develop what turned out to be the
world’s largest oil field. In that same
year, the British discovered huge deposits of oil in Kuwait. In the 1950s and ‘60s, oil began to be
exported from Qatar, the UAE, and Oman.
After World War II, the countries of Afro-Asia began an abrupt transformation
from poverty to wealth and technological modernity.
In 1947, India and Pakistan
gained independence from Britain. This
greatly reduced London’s interest in
securing passage through Afro-Asia to points East and South. The British remained intensely interested in
the region’s oil – as their CIA-assisted overthrow of Iranian democracy in 1953
demonstrated – but they divested themselves of the burden of protecting access
to the Gulf’s energy supplies. This task
was taken up by the United States as part of its Cold War assumption of
responsibility for the security and prosperity of the so-called “free world” beyond
the Soviet sphere. The United States
itself was not then dependent on energy from the Gulf, but its commitment to
protect access to the region’s oil and gas reserves symbolized its assertion of
global primacy.
In 1961, Britain granted Kuwait
independence and withdrew its protection of it.
In 1968, the British announced their intention to do the same for the
rest of the Gulf. Oman declared its
independence in 1970. Qatar, Bahrain,
and the United Arab Emirates followed in 1971.
In 1979, Persia threw off Western tutelage, conducted a referendum, and
asserted a revolutionary Shi`ite identity as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Two years later, the Gulf Arab states –
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates –
responded by forming the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
This brief history serves to underscore
the importance of both the strategic position and natural resources of the
independent kingdoms, emirates, and republics of the Afro-Asian region. Both the powers on their periphery and those
farther away are interested in their affairs.
The Gulf Arab states, once poor and backward, are now wealthy and able
to use their wealth to entice external partners to back them in their quarrels
with each other and with Iran.
In many respects, today’s
contentions among the states of the Afro-Asian region and their foreign
protectors echo those of the past. To
get from Asia to Europe without circumnavigating Africa, one must pass through
Afro-Asia. One-fifth of the world’s
trade traverses the region. It produces
about half of the world’s oil and gas and contains about two-thirds of its
reserves of hydrocarbons. The members of
the GCC have become significant capital exporters. As tensions among them have risen, they have come
to account for two-fifths of global arms purchases. One fourth of the world’s people revere the Saudi
cities of Makkah and Medina as the birthplace of their faith.
The world’s great powers remain
vitally interested in assured passage through the Afro-Asian region as well as
in access to its oil, gas, and capital.
They also seek to moderate its export of religious fervor and funds that
sanctify and support violence against other peoples, faiths, and cultures. The evolving
United States relationship with the region reflects shifting balances between
these interests.
At the outset, in the eyes of the
Gulf Arabs, Americans’ main virtues were that we weren’t the British, didn’t
have an empire, and didn’t want anything except easy access to their oil and
gas. The apparent disinterest of the
United States in changing the region’s political and social systems resembled
that of China today and facilitated U.S. replacement of Britain as the dominant
power in the region. Initially, the
United States left the control of strategic lines of communication to Britain. Americans knew and cared little about Islam or
its local manifestations. But, as Britain
retreated, the United States stepped in to replace it as the guarantor and
regulator of the region’s stability.
In the late 1940s, the United
States began to acquire a global sphere of military influence that included the
Gulf. In 1980, Washington declared that
“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.” The American focus on
outside threats to the Gulf was almost immediately displaced by concerns about the
region’s internal dynamics. The United
States feared that the Iran-Iraq War might enable whoever won to dominate the
region and use its monopoly to dictate global energy prices.
As the Cold War ended and the
1990s began, Iraq’s attempt to annex Kuwait led to the formation of a UN-authorized,
US-led, ad hoc military coalition of NATO and Islamic countries that was able
to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. But
neither the United States nor its coalition members had a war-termination
strategy. They failed to follow up
diplomatically either to reconcile Iraq to its defeat or to build a viable post-war
Gulf security architecture. So, despite
the successful liberation of Kuwait, the first Gulf war did not end. Instead, it sputtered on. The United States kept its armed forces in the
Gulf.
In 1993, America abruptly
abandoned its longstanding policy of offshore balancing in the Gulf. This approach had relied on Iraq and the Gulf
Arab states to join in balancing and containing Iran, while Iran balanced
Iraq. Offshore balancing had avoided any
requirement for the United States to maintain a military presence ashore in the
Gulf. In its place, Washington embarked
on a policy of so-called “dual containment” aimed at unilaterally containing
both Iran and Iraq.
“Dual containment” significantly
raised the cost to the United States of assuring stability in the Gulf. It required American troops to be stationed
there, to the extent possible at the expense of the countries that hosted
them. The Gulf Arab countries accepted
“dual containment” without enthusiasm.
Iran saw it as a threat. But
Israel welcomed it. After all, as its
authors intended, it established a permanent US-manned defense perimeter and
tripwire between Israel and its two most capable regional opponents – Iran and
Iraq.
The substantial ongoing U.S.
military presence in the Gulf irritated ordinary people in the region,
especially in Saudi Arabia, where it was resented by both religious zealots and
the welfare recipients whose benefits were reduced to pay for it. This irritation, joined with Arab backlash
against U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing oppression and dispossession of
Palestinian Arabs, helped stimulate the traumatic terrorist attacks on the
United States of “9/11.” Increasingly
thereafter, force protection requirements drove U.S. policies and relationships
in the Gulf.
After 9/11, Islamophobia quickly became
as American as the Ku Klux Klan. No
longer facing a great power rival for influence in Afro-Asia, the United States
began to pursue an expanding list of exclusively American agendas there,
including ill-considered calls for democratization and other efforts to impose
contemporary Western values on Gulf Arab societies. In 2001 and 2003, the Gulf became the staging
area for poorly planned American invasions, occupations, and pacification
efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The
main beneficiary of these regime change operations was Iran. The main losers from them, other than Afghans
and Iraqis, were Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.
America’s regime-change wars
eliminated vital checks on Iran’s influence in the region. This facilitated the Islamic Republic’s
consolidation of a sphere of influence in the Fertile Crescent and the
Levant. In time, Iranian client states
and non-state actors came to encircle both Israel and the Arab Gulf
states. Meanwhile, Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria, and Yemen remained mired in seemingly endless civil strife abetted by
American intervention.
As long as Iraq remains aligned
with Iran and thus unavailable as a security partner, the Gulf Arabs have no choice but to seek the backing of a
powerful external power to balance Iran.
The only country now capable of projecting enough force to the Gulf to deter
and defeat Iran is the United States.
But the Gulf countries have come to see Americans as demanding but
unreliable patrons. Like others in West
Asia, North Africa, and elsewhere, they are hedging against over-reliance on
Washington.
Since the U.S. launch of its
“Global War on Terror” in 2001, the institutionalization of Islamophobia in
America, and repeated demonstrations of American fickleness as successive
governments in Egypt were overthrown, the United States has carried a lot of
awkward political baggage in the Middle East.
The Trump administration’s Muslim visa bans and something-for-nothing appeasement
of Israel have added to this awkwardness.
America’s erratic treatment of Iraq’s and Syria’s Kurds has reinforced the
judgment of Arab rulers that it is unwise to rely on the United States.
Meanwhile, the
importance of transit through Afro-Asia to the global economy and its great
powers, including the United States, has, if anything, increased. The recent expansion of the Suez Canal and
its inclusion as an East-West waypoint in China’s Belt and Road Initiative are
leading to large increases in goods traffic through the region. The Persian Gulf has become a major air
travel corridor. Dubai International
Airport is now the world’s busiest. The
Bāb al-Mandab Strait is the fourth busiest waterway in the world. Despite China’s sponsorship of land routes
connecting Europe and Asia and the opening of the Arctic to shipping, this
trend seems certain to continue.
The Strait of Hormuz now ranks as
the world’s most important energy chokepoint.
About 80 percent of Saudi and all of Bahraini, Iraqi, and Qatari oil
exports pass through the Strait. So do Qatar’s
exports of natural gas – about 30 percent of global supplies. Iran’s oil ports and terminals are all within
the Gulf. Its oil and gas exports
transit the Strait, as do about 70 percent of the UAE’s. In 2018, the daily oil flow through the
Strait of Hormuz averaged 21 million barrels per day, or the equivalent of
about 21 percent of global consumption.
Of course, the United States is
once again a net exporter of hydrocarbons and no longer itself dependent on
imports from the Gulf. But the world market
relies on Gulf energy exports to avoid or mitigate volatility in global energy supplies
and prices. Were these exports
throttled, energy prices could surge to levels that would cripple global
prosperity, including that of the United States.
While protecting the free flow of
oil and gas from the Gulf and Red Sea may no longer be a direct interest of the
United States, it remains an important indirect U.S. interest and an essential
element in America’s claim to be “the indispensable nation.” If the U.S. armed forces ceased to protect
the global economy from interruptions of access to Afro-Asian energy supplies,
the world would no longer defer to Washington as the manager of the global or
regional political-economic orders.
Frankly, this outcome would suit
many Americans just fine. War weariness
and a sense that foreigners are free riding on American willingness to take
sole responsibility for sustaining global stability – if you will, “empire
fatigue” – contributed significantly to the election of President Trump. Many in the United States would welcome a
debate about whether our country should continue to bear the burdens of global
leadership. Some, like Mr. Trump, would
answer no, it should not.
Any doubt about the reality of
empire fatigue should have been erased by Washington’s limp-wristed response to
this June’s apparent Iranian attacks on ships from Norway and Japan, both U.S.
allies. In the 1980s, when tankers in
the Gulf were threatened, the U.S. Navy unilaterally intervened to protect the world’s
oil supply from disruption. But the response
of the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the June 2019 attacks was to
point out that “the circumstances are very different now than they were in the
1980s. . . . Ensuring freedom of navigation and the movement of oil in and out
of the Gulf . . . [is no longer] a U.S.-only responsibility,” he said, and called
on other “nations that benefit from that movement of oil through the Persian
Gulf” to share the burden of protecting shipping from Iranian attack.[1]
A subsequent failed effort by
Secretary of State Pompeo to organize a US-led naval coalition for this purpose
exposed how disinclined America’s allies and security partners are to support
the current U.S. confrontation with Iran.
It also underscored the diminished ability of the United States to
convene global backing for its politico-military initiatives. One of the few great powers to suggest it
might participate in protecting tanker traffic in the Gulf was China. Given Washington’s present animus against
that country, there was no audible response from it to this offer, if indeed it
was an offer.
American geopolitical priorities
are visibly changing. The end point of
their evolution remains unclear, but it is obvious that the stability of the
Persian Gulf is no longer at the center of U.S. foreign policy concerns. There are 45,000 American troops and legions
of DOD contractors deployed in and around the Persian Gulf. But their declared mission is no longer primarily
to ensure oil security or the protection of friendly Arab states. Increasingly, their presence is justified as menacing
putative Iranian nuclear programs, defending Israel against Iran, combatting
Islamist terrorism, or denying influence to China and Russia (with which all
the states of the region, whether Arab or Persian-aligned, nevertheless have
burgeoning relationships).
Thanks largely to coordinated
Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati pressure on the United States to aggressively
oppose Iran and its proxies, America’s confrontation with Iran has
escalated. Its policies of “maximum
pressure” on Iran now resemble those that panicked Japan into attacking Pearl
Harbor in 1941. The United States has no
dialogue with Iran that might influence its decisions. And America’s muddled response to the recent
attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry was followed by its abrupt abandonment
of Syria’s Kurds.
Not surprisingly, the Gulf Arabs
states are stepping up their efforts to reduce reliance on American diplomacy
and military power projection to defend them, increasing purchases of weaponry,
diversifying their international economic and arms procurement relationships,
building their own military industries, and exploring rapprochement with
Iraq. They have largely ceased to defer
to the United States in formulating their policies and managing their relations
with other great powers like China, India, and Russia. They see themselves as increasingly on their
own.
The recent attacks on Saudi oil
facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais illustrate the vulnerability of Gulf Arab
societies to foreign or terrorist attack. Their prosperity depends on the
production and export of oil and gas.
Their viability as societies depends on their ability to desalinate
water. Imagine the consequences if the
attacks had focused on desal rather than oil facilities!
Security anxieties in the Arab
Gulf countries have been aggravated by divisions over Iran and future models of
governance of Sunni Muslim societies.
These have split the GCC and suspended most politico-military and
economic policy coordination among its members.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia do not accept that Qatar’s geographical
situation dictates that it maintain a stable relationship with Iran. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh consider the Muslim
Brotherhood a terrorist movement. Doha
is aligned with Ankara in support of the Brotherhood and other democratic
Islamist movements, like Hamas. To
Iran’s delight, the Emiratis and Saudis remain engaged in a largely ineffectual
blockade of Qatar.
Meanwhile, the United States is
making no apparent effort to help the GCC reunite, though it has continued inanely
to call for what some sort of “Arab
NATO” built on it. Meanwhile, Iran has
proposed a regionwide pact to combat terrorism, advance cybersecurity, protect
energy production and exports, and assure freedom of navigation. Neither of these proposals has any real
prospect of success. But risk reduction is now an imperative.
The best that might be hoped for
is that all sides might agree to a temporary stand-down from violent
confrontation, as was the case with the British-brokered truce of 1835. This would leave the issues driving their
rivalries to be worked out later and give diplomacy a chance to enable an
acceptable non-violent status quo to emerge in the Persian Gulf as it did in the
mid-19th century. Something
like this seems to be the core of the Iranian proposal. It different from but is compatible with the
Gulf security architecture advocated by China and Russia. Despite its suspect origins, it deserves
exploration. It would buy time for a
reduction in tensions of benefit to all in the region, while reducing risks to
the global economy.
But GCC disunity, the U.S.
inability to communicate convincingly with Iran, and American diplomacy-free
foreign policy together ensure that any such détente in the Gulf will be made
in Moscow or Beijing, with possible assistance from Islamabad or a European
capital or two, rather than crafted locally or by the United States. The GCC was once described by an American
diplomat as “a large shell inhabited by a small and indecisive snail.” It is now vivisected and on life support. If
the Gulf Arabs wish to control their own destiny, they would do well to restore
the GCC to health. This is the
prerequisite for collective defense, diplomacy supporting common interests with
the world’s established and emerging great powers, intelligent management of
relations with Iran, and influence in the broader Arab and Islamic worlds. All these things, I submit, are very much in
the interest of the United States as well as the Gulf Arabs.
If the GCC can get its act
together, there is a fair chance that it can continue to enlist American
support. It if cannot, the Gulf Arabs
must reconcile themselves to the new reality of Iranian primacy in their region. America is now a war-weary and reluctant
global hegemon, riven by constitutional crises, and intent on reducing its
overseas commitments. Without unity, the
ability of the Gulf Arabs to court support for their security from outside
their region is gravely impaired. In the
famous words of Benjamin Franklin, the Gulf Arabs “will all hang together or
hang separately.”
On that cheery note, I wish this
conference every success!
