Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy
Little more than six months separated the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 from the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.[1] The manner by which the U.S. seemed to abandon the Afghan government in the face of a resurgent Taliban cast doubt among partner nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as to the reliability and ‘staying power’ of the U.S. in the region, and rekindled memories of the withdrawal of American support for Hosni Mubarak in Egypt as the Arab uprisings began in early 2011.[2] The fall of Kabul appeared to be another blow to a U.S.-led regional order that was already being questioned by officials in the Gulf States even as they contributed to its weakening by diversifying their own political, economic, and, to a lesser extent, security and defense relationships.
Whereas the withdrawal from Afghanistan witnessed the U.S. acting unilaterally to secure its own interests, narrowly defined and without seeming to take account of those of its partners and allies, the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw the Biden administration engage intensively with allies and partners and respond aggressively. U.S. intelligence and information-sharing, which were seen to have erred badly in Afghanistan, was a high-profile and very visible policy priority over Ukraine, and restored a measure of the credibility that was so shaken in 2021.[3] However, perhaps surprisingly, the sight of the Biden administration re-engaging with partners and allies over Ukraine did not deliver a ‘dividend’ in terms of restoring Gulf trust in the U.S. as a security partner, and responses to the war in Gaza since October 2023 have created new gaps in U.S.-GCC positioning.
The ‘nuts and bolts’ of security and defense ties between the U.S. and Gulf States have continued to evolve, albeit in a more transactional form as part of a looser relationship that moves beyond even the pretense of adherence to a regional order in a ‘post-Gaza’ Middle East. More than three decades after the structure of U.S. primacy in the Gulf took shape in the late-1980s and early-1990s, recent developments, including since October 7, 2023, illustrate the growing divergence of regional positions. For instance, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, receiving Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi in October 2024, just as the Biden administration was weighing its support for a retaliatory Israeli attack on Iran, demonstrated just how far regional interests had moved apart.
Two Decades of Tension
Deciding where to begin with the many issues which caused concern in Gulf capitals at U.S. policies is like asking how long a piece of string might be. The second term of the George W. Bush administration saw frictions develop between the U.S. and GCC states, notably Saudi Arabia, over the mishandling of the occupation of post-Saddam Iraq and the sense in Gulf capitals that Iran appeared to be the primary geopolitical beneficiary.[4] During the Obama administration, a perception of drift began to develop, including in relation to the ‘pivot to Asia’ which Gulf leaders saw as a shift in U.S. focus away from the Middle East, rather than post-Cold War Europe, and in Obama’s response to the Arab uprisings in 2011. Later issues that caused friction in (certain) GCC capitals included the U.S.-Iran talks in 2013 and the Trump administration’s perceived abandonment of Qatar in 2017 and then of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in 2019. The fact that the U.S. did not respond to the (Iran-linked) attacks on Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq and Al Khurais, which temporarily knocked out half the Kingdom’s production capacity in September 2019, caused shockwaves in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and led to an immediate reassessment of policy options.[5]
Decisions by multiple presidents thus injected doubt as to the value or even the existence of security guarantees which were believed by many observers of regional affairs to form the bedrock of contemporary U.S.-Gulf relations. For many in positions of leadership in the Gulf States, the fall of Kabul in 2021 appeared to be one more step in a process of U.S. disengagement which they perceived to be one-directional and to take place across three successive presidential administrations as different as Obama was to Trump and Trump was to Biden.[6] A narrative that the U.S. is less interested in the Gulf, and less relevant, has proven stubbornly resilient to counter.
The strenuous attempts made by the Biden administration to work with allies and partners to coordinate policy in early 2022 as Russian forces massed on the border with Ukraine, and then to push back against Moscow after the full-scale invasion, ought to have repaired some of the damage caused by the optics around the chaos in Kabul. Specific measures included the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Eastern Europe as well as the sharing of intelligence designed to deter Vladimir Putin from moving into Ukraine.[7] Qatar, which was accorded Major Non-NATO Ally Status by the Biden administration in January 2022, in part as recognition of its assistance to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, also sought to play a balancing role in gas markets as Emir Tamim visited Biden in the White House and hosted Russian energy officials in Doha.[8] Europe’s move away from Russia also restated the Gulf States’ centrality in global energy security considerations.[9]
The ‘coming together’ effect noticeable in U.S.-European (and NATO) response to Russia-Ukraine did not, however, appear to mollify strained relationships in the Gulf; if anything, the responses to the invasion made trajectories which had taken shape in prior years all the more visible. Indeed, policy responses in Gulf capitals to the war in Ukraine largely reinforced the narrative that the U.S. and its partners were drifting apart, as the Gulf States largely opted not to pick sides and resisted efforts to draw them into questions of great power competition and strategic rivalry. The sight of the Biden administration re-engaging with partners and allies over Ukraine did not bring a ‘dividend’ in terms of the restoration of Gulf trust in the U.S. as a security partner.
Like much of the Global South, the Gulf States did not take sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. Policymakers in GCC capitals did not share the view of their counterparts in Washington and Europe that the collective defense of Ukraine was ‘an international order defining event, a generational moment in which international alliances and norms are being reshaped.’[10]Regional leaders refused to get drawn into a new era of bloc rivalry and, unlike the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, did not deem Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to pose a direct threat to their political or security interests. This was the case even in Kuwait, with its own memory of being invaded by a larger neighbour, although Kuwaiti leaders did call out the Russian aggression more vocally.[11]
A variation in stances toward the February 2022 invasion and subsequent developments nevertheless fell along a spectrum that ranged from Qatar aligning most closely with Ukraine (and the U.S. position) and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE leaning more closely toward Russia, with Kuwait and Oman falling somewhat in-between. Coincidentally, these variations in position roughly mirrored those during the GCC rift between 2017 and 2020. However, while Qatari leaders announced a pause in new investments in Russia, existing links with Moscow remained unchanged, as the Qatar Investment Authority became the largest non-Russian shareholder in Rosneft and former Minister of State for Energy Mohammed bin Saleh Al-Sada was elected chairman of the Rosneft board in 2023.[12] The UAE response was complicated by the fact that the country had just taken up a rotating two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2022-2023. This forced the UAE to take positions even if their choice was to abstain on two Security Council votes in February 2022 which condemned the invasion and called for an emergency session of the General Assembly, which caused considerable friction with U.S. officials.[13]
Issue-specific Partnerships
U.S.-Gulf security relationships and defense partnerships have survived the shocks of the 2010s. Evidence since 2015 suggests that such ties work better on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis rather than as part of any grand framework. An example of the latter was the launch of a U.S.-GCC Strategic Partnership in 2015, at a summit at Camp David between Gulf leaders (only two of whom attended) and President Obama, and the creation of five working groups to cover cooperation in counterterrorism, missile defense, military preparedness and training, critical defense capabilities, and cyber security.[14] However, the working groups fell into abeyance during the Trump administration, when they were superseded by efforts to develop a Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) with GCC states plus Egypt and Jordan. MESA failed to gain traction for a variety of reasons, including the intra-GCC rift, a failure of parties to agree on the scope and scale of the issues to be covered by the initiative, and Egypt’s abrupt withdrawal in 2019.[15]
The U.S.-GCC working groups reconvened in February 2023, nearly a year into the Russia-Ukraine war, for their first meeting in years, against the backdrop of the supply of Iranian armed drones to Russia and the provision of Russian defense assistance to Iran. The fact that Iranian weapons systems were being tested on the battlefield in Ukraine and in operational and combat settings against civilian and infrastructure targets highlighted how the war could impact U.S.-GCC interests.[16] U.S. and Gulf States’ navies participated in a major 18-day International Maritime Exercise in February and March 2023 co-led by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the U.S. and directed from the Maritime Security Centre in Oman. Held under the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, more than 7000 personnel and 35 ships from over 50 countries and organizations took part in exercises in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf.[17] Russia and China joined Iran in a joint naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman the same month, illustrating how, in the ‘nuts and bolts’ of security and defense relationships, the GCC still chose to side with the U.S.[18]
New initiatives since 2020 suggest that security partnerships between the U.S. and individual Gulf States are continuing on bespoke bilateral and largely issue-specific bases. CENTCOM worked closely with Saudi officials to develop the Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center as a regional testing facility in Saudi Arabia to boost cooperation against the shared threat from missile and drone attacks from Iran and regional proxies.[19] Joint exercises involving U.S. and Saudi forces have tested systems to destroy and disable unmanned aerial systems of the type that breached Saudi air defences during the ballistic missile and drone strikes on oil facilities in September 2019.[20] U.S. officials also play an integral role in Saudi Arabia’s defense transformation plan with Department of Defense personnel assisting their Saudi counterparts with overhauling human-capital development, joint staff development, intelligence reorganization and force sustainment, and the development of a National Defense College. The U.S. role in capacity-building in Saudi Arabia is a step up from the hitherto-largely scattered interventions tied to the foreign military sales process rather than in support of any deeper or underlying policy objective.[21]
Another sign of U.S. commitment to security ties was the signing in September 2023 of a Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement (C-SIPA) with Bahrain. Announced during a visit to D.C. by Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, C-SIPA will expand defense and security cooperation as well as trade and investment ties through collaborative measures across the security spectrum, albeit without a mutual defense guarantee.[22] C-SIPA may build upon the recent spate of U.S. strategic dialogues, which began with Qatar in 2017 and now encompass every GCC state on a bilateral (rather than collective) basis. How C-SIPA unfolds will likely be studied in other Gulf capitals, especially Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which have sought enhanced U.S. guarantees, most recently in relation to a normalization of ties with Israel (in the Saudi case) and the desire for ‘codified’ security commitments (for the UAE).[23]
Officials in the UAE have chosen a different approach which reflects the confidence of Emirati policymakers that the country is an influential ‘middle power’ able to hold its own on an inter-regional and global stage. This was evident in the signing of the Abraham Accord with Israel in September 2020 in which the agreement signed by the UAE was more substantive than those signed by Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan, and included reference to a ‘Strategic Agenda for the Middle East’ that was unique to the Emirati-Israeli accord.[24] Emirati policymakers have also engaged with the U.S. and other partners in more focused ‘mini-lateral’ fora, including 12U2 (with India, Israel, and the U.S.), the Negev Forum (with the U.S. and other Arab states which have normalized with Israel), the Somalia Quint (with the U.S., the U.K., Qatar, and Turkey), and the Yemen Quartet (with the U.S., the U.K., and Saudi Arabia).[25] Such issue-based tie-ups outside formal institutions have become key elements in the UAE’s approach to foreign affairs, especially in Asia and the Indo-Pacific, areas of growing focus both for the Gulf States (for economic and energy reasons) and the U.S. (connected to power competition and strategic rivalry with China). [26]
New (transactional) Order
It may be that the future of relationships between the U.S. and the Gulf States will be based around a set of transactional principles that do not commit or bind the parties to long-term arrangements and represent a more fluid approach to regional affairs. U.S. force posture remains reliant on the Fifth Fleet headquartered at Juffair in Bahrain and the forward headquarters of Central Command at Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, both of which have expanded in recent years. American officials acknowledge that the Combined Air Operations Centre at Al-Udeid cannot be replicated elsewhere and is ‘the most sophisticated air-operations hub ever built and the nerve centre of CENTCOM’s air operations.’[27] A second U.S. airbase in Qatar, Camp As-Saylihah, shut in 2021 but that closure was related to a shift in military resources following the Afghan withdrawal. This was a reminder that levels of U.S. deployments in the region during the ‘forever wars’ could not be sustained indefinitely and would revert to a ‘new’ norm, which may have fed perceptions of a drawdown.[28]
That said, the Saudi-Iran agreement in March 2023 to restore diplomatic relations, which was announced in (and by) China and greeted with cautious support by U.S. officials, may be a harbinger of what a more variegated relationship might look like, with greater flexibility to rethink and reorient interests and policies. A stronger but narrower technocratic focus on shared areas of interest could help to insulate U.S.-Gulf relationships from the types of political pressures and uncertainties which have generated the perceptions of drift and disengagement, but ‘taking politics out’ of the equation may not be easy to do in practice and might add to the layers of mutual misunderstandings or grievance, as with the U.S. pressure on the UAE over its relations with China and with the flow of Russian capital and business interests into Dubai since February 2022.[29]
In the other direction, as the Gulf has seen a de-escalation of tension since 2021, officials have leveraged what influence they have to contribute more proactively to broader security initiatives. Omani officials have kept open indirect channels of dialogue between the U.S. and Iran and also between Saudi and Houthi representatives in Yemen.[30] Qatari mediators have worked intensively alongside U.S. and Egyptian counterparts in efforts to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas during their attack on Israel in October 2023, and for a ceasefire in Gaza.[31] Saudi and Emirati officials engaged differently as they sought to leverage their relationships with Russia to facilitate prisoner exchanges and other measures to mitigate the impact of the war in Ukraine.[32] The occasional releases of prisoners may only have amounted to pinpricks in the most serious conflict in Europe since World War Two, but they illustrate that, for all the political tensions over the Gulf States’ reluctance to be drawn into picking sides, the ability to maintain contacts and balance relationships is conducive to diplomatic initiatives in an otherwise polarized world.
Houthi attacks on maritime targets in the Red Sea have nevertheless highlighted the delicate balancing act facing Gulf States as the deadliest war between Israelis and Palestinians since 1948 threatens the de-escalation dynamic in regional politics prior to October 7, 2023. Memories of missile and drone attacks against Saudi cities and infrastructure (between 2015 and 2022) and against Abu Dhabi (in 2022) remain fresh in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Especially as Vision 2030 passes its halfway point, having been launched by Mohammed bin Salman in 2016, and the ‘giga-projects’ along Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coastline move into the construction and delivery phase, ‘de-risking’ has become a priority for the Saudi leadership as they try to attract foreign investors and visitors.[33] Officials are mindful of the optics that went around the world during the Saudi Grand Prix in March 2022 when the Formula One race in Jeddah took place against the backdrop of black smoke billowing from a nearby oil storage facility struck by the Houthis the day before.[34]
Policy responses to the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea which began in November 2023 and triggered a U.S.-led response in January 2024 indicated the careful balancing act at play in the Gulf. Bahrain was the only Gulf State to be named as a participant in Operation Prosperity Guardian, the multinational coalition which was formed in December 2023 to respond to the attacks on maritime targets. Moreover, Bahrain did not take part in the kinetic ship- and air-based operations, and it was notable that the airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen did not involve U.S. or British forces based in the Gulf. Instead, the strikes were launched from bases in Cyprus, the U.K., and the U.S. itself, thereby minimizing the risks to the Gulf States from blowback either from Iran or by Iranian-aligned groups. This may be a harbinger of a new approach to U.S.-GCC relations in which security and defense cooperation continues on a technocratic basis even as there is greater elasticity in political positions, and a more transactional and flexible approach to U.S.-Gulf relations may ease the shift to a new configuration of international power with multiple poles of political gravity.
References
[1] References in this paper to the Russian invasion of Ukraine refer to the full-scale invasion which was launched by Russian forces on February 24, 2022, rather than the invasion and subsequent Russian occupation of areas of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea in 2014.
[2] David Kilcullen and Greg Mills, The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan (London: Hurst & Co., 2021), 222-24; Marc Lynch, The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East (New York: Public Affairs, 2012), 94.
[3] Huw Dylan and Thomas Maguire, ‘Secret Intelligence and Public Diplomacy in the Ukraine War,’ Survival 64/4 (September 2022), 34.
[4] Katherine Harvey, A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Saudi Struggle for Iraq (London: Hurst & Co., 2021), 144-45.
[5] David Roberts, ‘For Decades, Gulf Leaders Counted on U.S. Protection. Here’s What Changed,’ Washington Post, January 30, 2020.
[6] Tobias Borck, Seeking Stability Amidst Disorder: The Foreign Policies of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, 2010-20 (London: Hurst & Co., 2023), 193.
[7] Trine Flockhart, ‘NATO in the Multi-Order World,’ International Affairs 100/2 (March 2024), 473.
[8] David Ottaway, ‘U.S. Calls for Help – Again – From the Tiny Arab Emirate of Qatar,’ Wilson Center, February 2, 2022.
[9] Li-Chen Sim, ‘The Gulf States: Beneficiaries of the Russia-Europe Energy War?’, Middle East Institute, January 12, 2023.
[10] Marc Lynch, ‘Saudi Oil Cuts and American International Order,’ Abu Aardvark’s MENA Academy (Substack), October 9, 2022.
[11] Anon., ‘Kuwait Calls for Respecting Ukraine’s Independence, Sovereignty,’ Kuwait News Agency, February 24, 2022.
[12] Hazar Kilani, ‘Qatar Investment Authority Holding Onto its Russian Assets for Now,’ Doha News, March 2, 2022.
[13] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘The GCC and the Russia-Ukraine Crisis,’ Arab Center Washington, March 22, 2022.
[14] Anon., ‘Fact Sheet: Implementation of the U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council Strategic Partnership,’ The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, April 21, 2016.
[15] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘What Next for the Middle East Strategic Alliance?’, Arab Digest, October 29, 2020.
[16] Barak Ravid, ‘Senior U.S. Delegation in Saudi Arabia for Talks with GCC,’ Axios, February 15, 2023.
[17] Anon., ‘US Leads Gulf Partners in 18-day Naval Exercise,’ Gulf States Newsletter, 47/1166, March 23, 2023, 11.
[18] Anon., ‘China and Russia Join Iranian Exercise at Sea,’ Gulf States Newsletter, 47/1166, March 23, 2023, 10.
[19] Melissa Horvath, ‘Is Red Sands the Future of Middle East Defense Cooperation?’, Middle East Institute, October 4, 2022.
[20] Anon., ‘U.S. and Saudi Arabia Conduct Combined Counter-UAS Exercise,’ U.S. Central Command press release, September 14, 2023.
[21] Bilal Saab, ‘The Other Saudi Transformation,’ Middle East Policy 29/2 (Summer 2022), 27-28.
[22] Kristian Alexander and Giorgio Cafiero, ‘Biden’s Realpolitik Approach: Analyzing the C-SIPA Agreement with Bahrain,’ Gulf International Forum, October 29, 2023.
[23] William Roebuck, ‘Bahrain Sets the Pace for Enhanced Gulf Security Cooperation with the United States,’ Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, September 27, 2023; Elizabeth Dent, ‘One Year of the U.S.-Bahrain C-SIPA: Signs of Progress, Regional Potential,’ The Washington Institute, August 21, 2024.
[24] Sanam Vakil and Neil Quilliam, ‘The Abraham Accords and Israel-UAE Normalization: Shaping a New Middle East,’ Chatham House Research Paper, March 2023, 5.
[25] Nickolay Mladenov, ‘Minilateralism: A Concept That is Changing the World Order,’ The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, April 14, 2023.
[26] Husain Haqqani and Narayanappa Janardhan, ‘The Minilateral Era,’ Foreign Policy, January 10, 2023.
[27] Jonathan Stevenson, ‘Overseas Bases and US Strategy,’ International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Series 60/484 (July 2020), 40-41.
[28] J.P. Lawrence, ‘U.S. Military Shifts Army Basing from Qatar to Jordan in Move that Could Provide Leverage against Iran,’ Stars and Stripes, July 1, 2021.
[29] Sam Fleming, Henry Foy, Felicia Schwartz, James Politi, and Simeon Kerr, ‘West Presses UAE to Clamp Down on Suspected Russia Sanctions Busting,’ Financial Times, March 1, 2023.
[30] Giorgio Cafiero, ‘Oman Keeps Trying to Dial Down Tensions in the Middle East,’ Stimson Centre, February 2, 2024.
[31] Omar Rahman and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘Condemning Qatar is Counterproductive,’ The National Interest, February 6, 2024.
[32] Anon., ‘Russia and Ukraine Swap 115 Prisoners Each in UAE-Mediated Exchange,’ Reuters, August 24, 2024.
[33] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘Saudi-Israeli Normalization and the Hamas Attack,’ Arab Center Washington, October 11, 2023.
[34] Ben Church, ‘F1 Organizers Insist Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Will Go Ahead Despite Houthi Attack on Nearby Oil Facility,’ CNN, March 26, 2022.