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Page added on December 9, 2013
Saudi call for Gulf Arab union faces hurdles
Saudi Arabia’s dream of binding the Gulf Arab states into a union will get a sceptical hearing at a summit this week, with differences over Iran, Egypt and Syria demonstrating that the Gulf’s absolute monarchs do not all speak with one voice.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah proposed two years ago for a stronger union with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emeriates. The plan is expected to be one of the main topics on Tuesday when the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council hold their annual meeting in Kuwait.
But just days before the leaders were due to arrive, Oman dismissed the proposal with unusual directness in a region where the royal courts are usually not known for their bluntness.
“We are not for establishing a union at all,” Foreign Minister Youssef bin Alawi bin Abdullah said on Saturday at a conference in Bahrain, shortly after a Saudi official had renewed Riyadh’s call for closer unity.
Saudis shrugged off the sign of disagreement: “Oman has every right to express that view. I don’t think that is going to prevent the union from happening,” former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said in Bahrain.
“Having a more closely knit union between the GCC countries in my view is inevitable and whether Oman wants to join now, or later, that’s up to them.”
Diplomats in the region say the Omanis are not the only sceptics: the UAE and Kuwait also expressed reservations at last year’s summit behind closed doors, they say.
Despite the similarities of the six Gulf monarchies, they have diverging regional outlooks, economies and political systems. The others are increasingly gaining the confidence to veer off a script written by Saudi Arabia, which has by far the biggest economy and more citizens than the other five combined.
“A number of Gulf states view Saudi Arabia as the gorilla in the room. Much as they have a lot in common with them, they don’t want to be dominated by the Saudis,” said Robert Jordan, U.S. ambassador to Riyadh from 2001-03.
“Given the somewhat divergent attitudes on Iran, and to a lesser extent Syria, it may be harder to get common ground in a shared foreign policy.”
IRAN
The GCC was set up in 1981 to counter the rise in the region of non-Arab Shi’ite Iran, which Riyadh views as its principle rival for hegemony in the Gulf and wider Middle East. But though all six members are somewhat suspicious of Iran, Oman and Qatar have made moves to seek better ties with Tehran.
Oman went even further in the past year, hosting secret meetings between Iranian and U.S. officials which helped lead to a nuclear pact last month – a deal that had Saudis fuming.
“I think there is going to be more tension within the GCC because the prospect of Iran’s rehabilitation into the region does introduce a new set of tensions because the Gulf countries don’t have the same policies towards Iran,” said Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute in Doha.
Oman has always been an outlier in the group, with a unique Indian Ocean maritime culture. Its predominating Ibadi sect of Islam differs both from the Sunni sect of the other Gulf ruling houses and the Shi’ism of Iran.
But other members have also veered from consensus. Qatar, an increasingly confident upstart which earned energy riches more recently than the others, has irked neighbours with bold foreign policy moves, especially since the 2011 “Arab Spring” revolts when it backed movements linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatar provided billions of dollars of funding for Egypt when it elected a Brotherhood government last year, even though other Gulf monarchs were alarmed at the movement’s rise.
This year, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates made their opposing views on Egypt plain by pledging $12 billion in aid to Cairo after the military toppled the Brotherhood.
On Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have shared leading roles arming and funding rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. But although they are on the same side in the war, Western diplomats say they have backed rival rebel groups.
Domestically, there are political differences as well. While all six GCC states are ruled by dynasties that wield ultimate power, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman have ceded some political influence to elected parliaments, something that seems far off in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the UAE.
Bahrain, though ruled by a Sunni Muslim family, has a Shi’ite majority, which means it treads a more difficult line. During the Arab Spring it was the only one of the six to see major unrest, which it and its allies blamed on Iran.
The six also differ economically, which complicates efforts to unite them. While all have oil, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE are rich OPEC members; Oman and Bahrain are poorer.
Qatar and the UAE are high-profile global traders with gleaming skyscrapers at home and airline logos emblazoned on soccer shirts abroad. Saudi Arabia, though the richest of all, needs its wealth at home to support a much larger population.
Oman said as early as 2006 that it would not join an as yet unrealised project to unite the countries under a single currency. The UAE, which sees itself as a main rival to Riyadh for dominance in regional finance, has also rejected the scheme, which would involve a Gulf central bank based in Riyadh.
4 Comments on "Saudi call for Gulf Arab union faces hurdles"
BillT on Tue, 10th Dec 2013 12:34 am
Saudi Arabia, like it’s old partner, the US, is dying. Saudi’s dictator/king is dying. Their oil fields are drying up. They are grasping at straws to try to keep some of their power and influence, just like the Us. But, they will fail eventually. All empires die. It is only a matter of when and how.
Arthur on Tue, 10th Dec 2013 8:36 am
True, old empires die, but new ones rise. I see this move as a willingness of the Saudi elite to abdicate and merge with surrounding Sunni political entities and prepare for a new Caliphate under the leadership of Turkey:
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/the-reversal-of-turkeys-grand-strategy/
Turkey knows it is not welcome in the EU and is preparing to leave the West and defect to SCO.
Meanwhile in the Ukraine hundreds of thousands, for days now, are protesting the decision made by the ruling elite of the Russian speaking eastern Donbas region to give in to pressure from Moscow not to sign an association agreement with the EU. It is going to happen anyway sooner or later and Russia will follow the Ukraine on the very moment the West inevitably will start to disintegrate after the coming financial default.
BillT on Tue, 10th Dec 2013 11:55 am
Dream on. Russia wants to dominate Europe, not be a part of some doomed-to-fail coalition of sovereign countries, currently called the EU, where EVERY country is bankrupt, just like the US and is finally realizing that they are in a corner they cannot get out of called “for-profit capitalism”. Russia is positioning itself to be one of the new super powers and I think it will be, along with China, after China settles its grudge with Japan.
South Korea has now gotten into the spitting match with their own air exclusion zone. It’s getting hot in that part of the world.
Has Japan considered that 40 missiles can cause all 40+ of their nuclear reactors to have a Fukushima event? Every one of them stores lots of spent fuel in their unshielded buildings. Japan is only minutes from the China mainland. Ditto for Korea, Taiwan and, yes, the Philippines. Taiwan and Japan are trade competitors. The Philippines, not so much. All the Ps have are resources, not electronics factories or a military threat.
The US is trying hard to goad China into a war with Japan so that attention can be deflected from the economic disasters in both Japan and the US. I think China will work by it’s own time table and will do the unexpected when they are ready.
Interesting times, Arthur and we may both be wrong. Time will tell.
Arthur on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 2:20 pm
Dream on. Russia wants to dominate Europe
Bill, consider Putin’s ‘State of the Union Address of 2012’…
http://rt.com/politics/official-word/putin-russia-changing-world-263/
“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans. We are by no means indifferent to developments in united Europe.”
Do you hear that… Russia is part of ‘Greater Europe’. There is no way that Russia will be able to ‘dominate’ Europe. Go to wiki “List of countries by GDP (nominal)”:
EU $17T
Russia $2T
That’s a factor of 8.5. Very similar to the ratio USA-Japan in 1941. Or do want to maintain that ‘Japan wanted to dominate the US?’.lol
Give me a break about Russia ‘dominating’ Europe. The only reason why Russia is currently allied to China is because of the last NWO imperial
expectoration from Washington. In reality the Russians are scared to death for a rising Chinese super power, that could lust for Siberia at the end of the American era. The Chinese can have Australia instead and as such double their territory. Nobody is going to defend that empty space, formerly known as ‘New Holland’ and then became a British colony, once the US will abdicate as a super power. Siberia is going to be, ahem, Greater European Lebensraum, with ample opportunities for skilled Americans, hint, hint.
Russia these days de facto lost the Ukraine (population twice that of Canada) that is screaming for entrance in the European world and so is in reality Russia, but Russia cannot switch to Europe too early, as long as the EU is still a (loose) US colony; first it must wait until China has initiated the ‘de-Americanization of the world’, as the Chinese call it. Once that has happened we can do business in Eurasia and things will move very fast.
I already have visions of a conference of European, Russian, American and Chinese politicians, somewhere in Kazakhstan or Mongolia, hammering out the contours of a new world order, in line with similar conferences in the past like the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 (4 months before Pearl Harbor and endorsed by the USSR. Neutrality?lol), Tehran 1943 and Potsdam 1945, where you Americans divided the European loot between yourself and your Soviet palls.
Now it is European payback time. The American empire is going to be dismantled and the world of this century is going to be run by Greater Europe of 700 million (creating the greatest civilization this world has ever seen) and China of 1300 million. If Euro-America is lucky it manages to escape from Zionist run Washington and will join Greater Europe as an outpost and junior partner.
If not, the Orwellian vision of USA/Anglosphere=Oceania will become reality:
strangemaps . files . wordpress . com/2007/01/1984_fictious_world_map.png
Enemies of Oceania will put a big star of David on the map of Oceania; enemies of Euro-Siberia will but a big swastika on that civilization. China noncontroversial will carry the star with 5 spokes of Confucius:
personal . psu . edu/mkb199/Confucianism.jpg
And in between there will be the Orwellian ‘disputed territories’ aka the rising Islamic empires around Istanbul and Tehran.