THE CONTRADICTIONS HAVE BEEN FORCED

Gulf Arabs: Window of opportunity for reform (Sean Foley, 7/30. 03, Asia Times)

While many of the international and domestic problems of Gulf Arab monarchies have been building for years, the US overthrow of Iraq's government puts these issues in a different context. On the regional scene, this change has improved the security of these countries yet it has also opened new pressures - or opportunities - for domestic reform.
There were few states in the world that looked on the 2003 war in Iraq with greater fear and anticipation than the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). On one hand, the US-led military operation promised to overthrow a regime that had occupied one of their fellow states and repeatedly threatened the region's stability. On the other hand, it strained an already difficult situation for GCC states in balancing their need for close ties with Washington with the opposition of their peoples and the wider Arab-Islamic world to US policies in the Middle East. [...]

The GCC benefits as well from the new balance of power in the Gulf, in which the United States dominates without deployments to a set of sensitive regional bases. An Iraq that is stable, unified, democratic, wealthy, and in which Shi'ites participate in government in proportion to their demographic majority, could be a real force for stability in the region and a long-term check on Iranian power. Finally, recent US government commitments to reinvigorate the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and negotiate free trade treaties between the United States and the Middle East could help GCC states justify their close ties to Washington.

The new dynamic created by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government also presents a number of long-term challenges to GCC states. Many of these challenges may exacerbate the long-standing problems that each GCC state faces, to differing degrees, in foreign affairs (military weakness in relation to neighboring states and the desire to balance domestic views on foreign policy with close US ties), domestic politics (reconciling tribal and autocratic governance with demands for liberalized, consultative political institutions; politically-inspired violence and Islam; and succession), and social-economic affairs (heavy dependence on petroleum exports and expatriate works, privatization, population growth, and the budgetary issues).

Serious economic and political disputes among GCC states have already exacerbated these problems and limited the ability of the states to speak in a single voice on international affairs. Any of the following scenarios - US failure to both rebuild Iraq and form a legitimate government in a timely manner, sustained Iraqi resistance to the US administration, a significant increase in Iranian influence with Iraq, and the emergence of a Shi'ite theocratic state in Iraq - together or individually could lead to a degree of instability in Gulf Arab societies larger than that of any period since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The impact of such a future might even be worse than that of past impacts because of the ability of Arab satellite news networks and the Internet to deliver uncensored news rapidly and the close ethnic, tribal and religious linkages between the Gulf Arabs and Iraqis. A democratic Iraq would also be a more compelling client for the United States in the Gulf than the monarchies of the GCC, as well as a very potent symbol for Shi'ites and other groups pushing for change in Arab Gulf societies.

While it is still too early to make any definitive judgments as to what form the long-term impact of the war in Iraq will have on Gulf Arabs, this essay will argue that the governments of the GCC states and their peoples have an enormous amount at stake in the development process in Iraq and the need to reform their own societies generally. Though no GCC state is threatened by invasion or economic collapse in the near or medium term, Gulf Arabs must begin to reform their societies and develop new collective, integrated institutions with their allies to guarantee a secure and prosperous future.

As Ralph Peters had argued long before the war, in cases--like the Middle East--where the status quo does not favor America and its beliefs, embracing instability may be our best policy. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 30, 2003 11:46 AM