Internal and External Security Challenges in the Arabian Gulf States Research Paper

Introduction

The Gulf region remains an incredibly volatile region within the Middle East. This volatility gives rise to external and internal security threats. The region has never benefited from the various changes that took place in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the end of the 20^th century. Following these transformations, these regions ended up having their security issues intertwined with economic and political legitimacy coupled with the surfacing of myriads of concepts of cooperative security.

With regard to Henderson (2003), these concepts were “associated with a shift away from realistic approaches predicted on a zero-sum notion of national security” (p.3). Since this kind of comparative shift never took place in the Gulf region’s states since 1980s, three main interstate wars have been encountered.

They have been articulated upon consideration of balance of power. However, “the conflation of regime security with national security is a feature of local discourses on security in the Gulf as it is in many other developing countries” (Harders & Legrenzi, 2008, p.20). Indeed, the GCC ruling elites comprising six states have endeavored to pursue various strategies for surviving in a bid to manage the transition process into the oil production era.

Apparently, “external security alliances, both bilaterally within the United States and multilaterally through the creation of the GCC, met internal needs by reinforcing regimes’ security, as much against their own societies as it is for the neighboring states” (Henderson, 2003, p.4). This implies that the security situation of the Gulf region is influenced by external and internal challenges.

From this perspective, this research paper focuses on investigating the degree of validity of the statement that the Arabian political regimes are the real threats to security in the Arabian Gulf region. The paper highlights the security challenges within the Arabian Gulf region particularly on how the Arabian political regimes are threatening the oil supplies in the long term. The central goal is to create a better understanding of new challenges in the region.

Research Problem

The Gulf region has a history of volatile situations that pose threats to residents of the nations in the region and the global population. On one hand, with its nuclear weapon program, Iran exerts an external threat to the smaller nations, which have neither the military capability nor oil resources that provide large sources of capital to finance security programs in the Gulf region. Iraq has been undergoing processes of security instability with anticipation that the nation may plunge into dictatorship.

This move is a challenge to GCC’s mandate for ensuring long-term security among the GCC member states of the Gulf region. Since the long-term reliability of constant supply of fuel globally is dependent on the maintenance of the long-term security in the Gulf region, it is justifiable to relate the twists of global international oil supply to situations that may have long-term impacts on the security situation in the Gulf region.

Methodology

This research is qualitative in nature. It depends on secondary data such as books, journal articles, and case studies in order to draw inferences and conclusions. The research conducts an intensive analysis of the literature on the roles of the authoritative regime’s capacity to define the manner in which people in the Gulf region perceive and or express their political concerns that may pose threats to the internal security to region’s states.

A comparison is then made between the eminent external threats and external threats to security in the Gulf region. The goal is to establish, which of the two threats present long-term impacts on the security situation in the Gulf region.

This methodology introduces some drawbacks especially on issues pertaining to reliability of the data provided as a true reflection of the prevailing situation in the geographical area of study: the Middle East. Nevertheless, this challenge is mitigated by using recent scholarly works on which the literature review is based.

Statement of the Hypothesis

This research hypothesizes that political participation through authoritative regimes has the overall impact of posing threats to both internal and external security of the Gulf States.

Research Question

Research has made it evident that political participation through the authoritative regimes threatens the external and internal security of Gulf region and hence a constant flow of oil from the Gulf states in the future. Therefore, this paper seeks to answer this critical question:

i. To what degree does political participation through authoritarian regimes threaten the security of the Arabian Gulf region? This question seeks to unveil the correlation between political participation via authoritative regime and security situation in the Gulf regions.

Aims and Objectives

The main objective of this research is to evaluate the relative importance of internal and external security issues within the Gulf region. This objective is found vital since the challenge that has the higher impacts on security of the Gulf region has more pronounced effects on the stability security. Hence, it requires more time to resolve it.

Therefore, such a challenge will make the Gulf region unstable for a longer period thus influencing both economically and politically the nations that are dependent on Gulf oil to propel their economies. On the other hand, the research aims to provide a more informed understanding of challenges that are likely to have more pronounced impacts on the security situation in the Gulf region.

Defining Variables, Subjects, and the Research Design

There are three main variables in this research. The independent variable is the form of leadership or governance in place. The dependent variable is the security situation in the Gulf region. This means that the security situation is dependent on the form of leadership, either authoritative or democratic. The third variable is the controlled extraneous variable.

In the context of this research, this variable is the contribution of the nations outside the region to both internal and external security of the Gulf region nations. Other extraneous variables include the supply of oil in the global market based on the security situation in the Gulf region. The research is designed to be both descriptive and co-relational.

Literature Review

Evidence generated from wide scholarly researches indicates the existence of both internal and external threats to the security stability of the Gulf region (Kechichian, 2009, p.212). In the short run, the Iranian strategic move to pursue the nuclear power capability program makes the Gulf region prone to many external threats emanating from the nations opposed to the execution of the program to completion.

Another prominent external threat is the development of Iraqi military capabilities that took place under the Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime. In particular, with regard to Pollack (2003), the removal of Saddam Hussein from power has seen the Gulf region exposed to even amplified number of challenges, which rest on platforms of Iranian nuclear program and how the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will cooperate in order to balance power with potential hegemony in the region (p.3).

In this line of thought, Harders and Legrenzi argue, “as a consequence of the fact that several nations in the Gulf region have acquired independence only relatively recently, it is not surprising that their major concern is on protection of their territorial sovereignty (2008, p.76). In the wider Gulf region, conflicts of interest between the U.S. and member states of the GCC have the potential of creating an immense externally induced hostility aimed at maintaining control besides influencing the utilization of the Gulf oil in the global market.

Essentially, the influence of the superpower nations in the politics of the member states of GCC has the capacity to complicate the whole context of the security arrangement by the GCC. The claim holds because some nations where the U.S. has established immense control in shaping their politics such as Iraq may be seen as close allies to the United States (Harders & Legrenzi, 2008, p.77).

Consequently, a nation like Iran whose chief mission is to develop a nuclear capability as the weapon for shielding herself from the control and influences of the western world in her sovereign rights including the rights of control of her oil will tend to show little compliance to the security arrangement under GCC.

In fact, “the strategic interests of the U.S. in the Gulf region are directly related to the maintenance of its global hegemony: oil, navigation freedom, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction are major concerns along with the regime change and democratization” (Henderson, 2003, p.6). Arguably, some of the GCC member states have been widely accused of housing various people who engage in terrorism activities across the globe.

Many of the insecurities that people induce and or observe externally within the Gulf region states including Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan are all owed to the strategic missions to flash out masterminds of terrorism acts. Consequently, as much as Gulf region states continue to face international criticism for providing hideouts for terrorists, external threats will continue to constitute an important determinant of the security stability in the region (Henderson, 2003, p.7).

While nations like the U.S. remain focused on their claimed noble responsibility of ensuring that all people across the world are treated with sanity, high levels of violence in the Gulf region will culminate in many political participations and the violation of human rights by authoritarian regimes existing in the region.

Therefore, authoritarian regimes threaten the security of the Arabian Gulf region to the extent that external threats by nations attempting to ensure incidences of violation of human rights are brought to a dead end will continue to be experienced in the region. In the recent past, trade sanction has been imposed on Iran. This makes it impossible for Iran to export oil freely.

The goal is to make it impossible for the nation to acquire capital that is necessary for successful implementation of her nuclear weaponry program. While such a sanction may end up impairing the Iranian people negatively since it will have the negative impacts on the economy of Iran, which is largely dependent on the exportation of oil, it may act as an incredible lesson of how external influence may help in ensuring security stability in the Gulf region.

Indeed, according to Harders and Legrenzi, “the relative power and interests of the three regional great powers-Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq are strongly correlated with the global hegemonic power” (2008, p.77). To exemplify this argument, Sokolski further argues that Saudi Arabia has the history of having cooperation with the U.S. in the effort to “balance or counterweigh Iraq and Iran, which has been ‘sanitized’ after 2003…Iran’s relationship with the region is directly linked to its contest with the U.S. and the international community” (2003, p.25).

On the other hand, nations like Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Behrain among others are largely influenced by mutual relation and external overlay by their neighboring regional superpowers in the region like Iran and Iraq amongst others. However, security stability in the Gulf region’s superpower nations such as Iran acts as an external determinant to the security situation in these small nations and hence in the entire Gulf region.

Now, it sounds imperative to infer that the external security threats that are posed to the bigger nations of the Gulf region by the continued effort of Iran to explore nuclear weapons would have an overall impact of affecting the free trading of the enormous economic driver resources on the Gulf region. The driver here is oil in all nations in the Arab world.

Apparently, the provisions and the goal of GCC are not adequate mechanisms of fostering regional stability due to the eminent differences in military capabilities between the nations forming the cooperation (Harders & Legrenzi, 2008, p.80). In addition to the discussion of the impacts of the external influence on the security stability of the Gulf region states as established above, there has been an immense scholarly research on internal influences that are incredible in determining the extent to which security stability can be maintained in the Gulf region as a whole.

For instance, Hashemi (2011) argues that there were some uprisings and demonstrations among the GCC countries of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Oman in 2011 (p.15). These uprisings have posed incredible security challenges within the Gulf region states especially at the domestic level. Indeed, they have the probabilities of making the region unstable in the future. Consequently, a question emerges on the capacity of the GCC member states’ authoritarian regimes to guarantee security stability within the Gulf region in the future.

This question is perhaps more significant by considering the fact that GCC countries have predominantly focused on “increasing their spending on defense capabilities in order to meet external threats on account of welfare and education of their citizens” (Pollack, 2012, p.5). Thus, internal threats that may pose long-term impacts on the security stability in the Gulf region have been often ignored. The recent past series of uprisings in the Arab world have clearly sensitized the need of GCC cooperation to focus on the internal security stability.

For instance, the Bahrain uprising threatened to topple the entire system of administration coupled with posing immense threats to the domestic security of Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, the reaction of the social movements within the GCC member nation seems more focused to suppress their citizens rather than focusing on fostering dialogue and or embarking on political reforms (Knickmeyer & Delmar-Morgan, 2012, p.13).

Even though this suppression may truncate into restoration of peace in the short run should such an uprising happen again in the near future in Bahrain, it is not a means of ensuring long-term internal security stability. Coming up with an internal security architecture is both time consuming and one that is anticipated to face several challenges.

With regard to Pollack (2012), such an architecture deserves to fulfill goals such as “making the Gulf states safer than they already are, simplify rather than complicating the security dynamics of the region, and being flexible and robust enough to withstand both internal and external changes” (p.1).

However, in the achievement of these noble goals, there are subtle internal challenges for seeking a mechanism for dealing with potential threats emanating from external security stability factors among them being the threat posed by Iran, which is nuclear armed and seeking regional hegemony.

There is also uncertainty in the security stability of Iraq with concerns that the nation would be destabilized, go back to civil war, and or make it experience the worst form of dictatorship it has never experienced in history. The impacts of these threats on the internal security of the Gulf region states are conspicuous since there is no internal consensus for how to deal with such threats within GCC (Pollack, 2012, p.2).

This challenge is compounded by that fact that the region has been experiencing uprisings, instigated by internal challenges within the GCC member states among them being “food, water, energy security, managing and mitigating the impact of climate change, rapidly rising populations and the youth bulge, structural economic deficiencies, and spiraling inflation” (Kechichian, 2009, p.215).

Conclusion and Recommendations

Directly congruent with the claim that low levels of violence in the Gulf region will result from less political participation and violation of human rights by authoritarian regimes, the results of the study indicate that there have been wide internal security threats within the Gulf nations, which are instigated by quests to accord democracy in the nations.

Consequently, one of the subtle results of the study is that the Gulf region will face instability due to the social movements that have required GCC countries to archive economic and social security. The internal threats to security in the Gulf region have occurred amid the high focus of the GCC’s cooperation on military capability among the cooperation members to help in mitigating external security stabilities emanating from the larger Gulf States such as Iran and Iraq.

The results also indicate that GCC does not consider the potential of the threats in culminating in a long-term security threat internally among the members’ states of the cooperation. Since military confrontation cannot be deployed to resolve internal conflicts resulting to uprisings within the GCC member states such as the ones experienced in Bahrain, the results of the study indicate that internal challenges are more important than external challenges because they have a huge impact on security.

They also require more time to resolve. Unfortunately, these challenges are not given an ample attention by GCC cooperation in comparison to external threats. However, following the Bahrain uprising, Bahrain entered an agreement with Saudi Arabia. The focus of the agreement was to enhance internal security stability within the two states.

In this light, this paper recommends that similar agreements are essential in the future to strengthen relations among GCC countries besides ensuring both internal and external long lasting security in the Gulf region and hence a constant supply of oil across the global economy in the future.

Reference List

Harders, C., & Legrenzi, M. (2008). Beyond Regionalism?: Regional Cooperation, Regionalism and Regionalization in the Middle East. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing.

Hashemi, N. (2011). The Arab Revolution of 2011: Reflections on Religion and Politics. Insight Turkey, 13(2), 15-31.

Henderson, S. (2003). The New Pillar: Conservative Arab Gulf States and U.S. Strategy, Policy Paper 58. Washington Dc: Washington Institute For Near East Policy.

Kechichian, J. (2009). Gulf security: changing internal and external threats dynamics, Global Governance, 3(2), 212-256.

Knickmeyer, E., & Delmar-Morgan, A. (2012). Bahrain, Saudis to Cinch Ties. Wall Street Journal– Eastern Edition, 259(112), 10-21.

Pollack K. (2012). Security in the Persian Gulf: new frameworks for the twenty-first century: Middle East memo, 54 memo no. 54. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/security-in-the-persian-gulf-new-frameworks-for-the-twenty-first-century/

Pollack, K. (2003). Securing the Gulf. Foreign Affairs, 82(4), 2-16.

Sokolski, R. (2003). The United States and the Persian Gulf: reshaping security strategy for the post-containment Era. Washington, DC: National Defense University.