Abstract
For the six conservative Arab Gulf Monarchies that entered into the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) alliance in 1981, insecurity and uncertainty dominated contemporary affairs, as regional tensions especially with Iran, Turkey, Yemen, and until recently both Iraq and Israel necessitated a serious arms race. This chapter proposes to discuss some of the key developments that mobilized GCC States militarily, including the War in Yemen against Houthi rebels and Iran’s hegemonic aspirations to control vulnerable states whose limited human capabilities required global assistance. It will also touch on the ongoing arms race with imports from Western powers as well as China, Russia, India, and the Koreas, among others. The paper will assess galloping military budgets and analyze whether significant expenditures were sufficient to meet various threats. Finally, an effort will be made to decipher whether the changing global order footprint—once driven by Cold War geopolitics and high Western demand for foreign oil and gas—will be redefined. The paper will close with an evaluation of lucrative arms sales from the sellers’ perspectives, whether buyers were getting their monies worth and if political reasons were leading to the emergence of indigenous military industries, especially in Saudi Arabia.
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Notes
- 1.
While Israel conserved its military assaults against the hapless Palestinians and what were once known as confrontation states, its decisions to destroy the Osirak [Tamuz] nuclear reactor near Baghdad in 1981 illustrated its reach that, presumably, could be duplicated to hit potential Iranian targets in the future. Likewise, while Iraq engaged in attacks on maritime targets throughout the 8-year-long Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), its reach toward the Arab Gulf was significantly curtailed in the aftermath of its defeat after the War for Kuwait (1991) and, more important, after the War for Iraq (2003–2011) that literally destroyed its surviving military capabilities. Both of these countries, Israel and Iraq, consequently posed no immediate threats to the GCC in 2022 though strategists could not eliminate underlying long-term dangers (Eslami & Sotoudehfar, 2021).
- 2.
- 3.
According to data drawn from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2021, Iran’s estimated population stood at nearly 86 million, while its military forces included approximately 610,000 active-duty personnel plus 350,000 reserve and trained units that could be mobilized when needed. In other words, Iran’s military manpower strength stood at about 960,000. In comparison, GCC States’ total populations stood at around 55 million, while their active-duty military forces numbered 374,800, although an additional 76,000 paramilitary elements could be drafted during an emergency, for a total of 450,800.
- 4.
For the latest details on Combined Task Force 152, see the Combined Maritime Forces dedicated web pages at https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/ctf-152-gulf-security-cooperation/
- 5.
It was important to note that Houthi attacks on Saudi military and civilian targets and oil installations were too numerous to count. Between 2016 and the 2 April 2022 cease-fire in the ongoing War for the Yemen, at least 100 attacks were recorded, most recently in March 2022.
- 6.
It is critical to note that most Western governments, led by the USA, repeated the notion that Iran would not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons though their policies indicated hesitancy and confusion. Of course, American and Israeli cyberattacks on Iranian facilities via the 2005–2010 Stuxnet malicious computer worm—a cyber-weapon par excellence—substantially damaged Iran’s control and data acquisition systems, though the Obama Administration confronted retaliatory measures and, consequently, chose to accelerate the 2015 JCPOA deal. Of course, Obama talked the talk, but he did not walk the walk, which meant that successor administrations faced what appears to be an inevitable Iranian nuclear capability.
- 7.
For detailed discussions of the military buildups in GCC States, see Kéchichian, From Alliance to Union, op. cit.
- 8.
All of the details for arms purchases are drawn from The Military Balance annual published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
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Kéchichian, J.A. (2023). The Gulf Cooperation Council Alliance: Leading Causes and Consequences of an Unending Regional Arms Race. In: Eslami, M., Guedes Vieira, A.V. (eds) The Arms Race in the Middle East. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32432-1_10
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