Toby Jones: Embracing Crisis in the Gulf
article Toby Jones, in a featured article for the Middle East Research and Information Report, discussed how opposition movements in the Gulf countries are affecting the United States. Arab Gulf monarchs have summoned the specter of an Iranian threat ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Today, however, anti-Iranian hysteria is at an all-time high, whipped up by Iran’s perceived strategic benefit from the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the rise of Shi‘i Islamist parties to power in post-Saddam Iraq, Iran’s posture of “resistance” during Israel’s wars on Lebanon and Gaza, and now the Arab revolts. Riyadh and Manama have been particularly provocative, deliberately poking their rival across the Gulf. Theirs is a conscious effort to discredit Shi‘i empowerment -- Bahrain’s population is majority-Shi‘i and Saudi Arabia’s some 15 percent Shi‘i -- and to undermine popular support for domestic protest. For Saudi Arabia, in particular, stoking fear of Iran is one way to keep protests from spreading from the Eastern Province, where most of the Shi‘a live, to the rest of the country. No doubt the Saudis, Bahrainis and others also believe that heightened tensions with Iran help to secure the backing of their benefactors, chiefly the United States.Here, the Gulf regimes appear to have calculated correctly, for to date Washington has paid far more attention to Iranian maneuvering, real and imagined, than to the excessive force used to grind down pro-democracy and human rights activists on the Arab side of the Gulf. Gulf Arab rulers have turned what historically has been a source of US leverage -- security guarantees and military might -- to their own advantage. The US in the Gulf There is a structural weakness in the US position, however, one that has become evident over time. The US is tied to partners in the Gulf who are politically vulnerable, as clearly demonstrated by the protest of 2011-2012 and the failure of the usual buyoffs and blandishments to restore quiet. Washington has long been committed to a set of security assurances that aim to maintain a regional system that is not sustainable on its own. The consequence is a paradox: The US is by far the strongest power in the Gulf. Its Fifth Fleet, squadrons of warplanes and pre-positioned infantry and armor hold the region together. But its clout is also limited. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon is able to dictate political outcomes, not in Iraq, not in Iran and particularly not in the Arab Gulf states. The Gulf thus becomes no more stable as a result of the heavier and heavier US deployments, the increasingly more direct interventions, in the name of guaranteeing stability. Indeed, since the close of the twentieth century, US security commitments have contributed to the exact opposite trend. The US has helped to destabilize a region it claims to protect.Washington’s clear preference for the status quo in the Gulf has come at considerable cost to activists in the region. The US has enabled the Gulf regimes to behave badly; the regimes, for their part, have exploited geopolitical rivalries to consolidate power at home.Gulf security, notably the “energy security” supplied by the region’s oil and gas, is a perennial American obsession. In the early days after the discovery of oil, it was corporate profits that placed the Gulf at the center of US strategic thinking, but commercial and political concerns had converged by the middle of the twentieth century. [2] The US military commitment to the regional order was stepped up in the 1970s, with the closure of British bases in Bahrain and elsewhere. For most of that decade, weary of projecting power directly, the US attempted to arm surrogates -- the “twin pillars” of Saudi Arabia and the Shah’s Iran -- to do its bidding. That policy collapsed in 1979, with the revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.Over time, it has become axiomatic in political and diplomatic discourse, and even in scholarship, that Gulf states are engaged in a “ceaseless quest for security.” This phrase, indeed, served as the subtitle of a 1985 study of Saudi Arabia by Nadav Safran, a Harvard scholar who resigned from his administrative job at the university following the revelation that the CIA had funded his research.Yet while US and Gulf monarchy interests have been served -- oil has flowed, the revenues are high and Washington’s allies remain in place -- it is a stretch to call the Gulf secure, let alone stable. The region has been wracked by war for more than three decades, with hundreds of thousands dead, much of the natural environment laid waste and every prospect of a repeat performance. The reality is that when US leaders iterate their commitment to security in the Gulf, what they mean is that they are committed to the survival of their allies and the political systems that dominate in the region. The result -- Washington’s blind eye to the Gulf states’ repression -- is often criticized as inaction.But the opposite is true. In spite of considerable Congressional opposition, the Obama administration found a way to sell more weapons to Bahrain in 2012. It has also overseen significant sales to other regional allies, including almost $30 billion to Saudi Arabia, all based on the pretense that these states are instrumental in checking a troublesome Iran. The reality, however, is that none of the Arab states in the Gulf are capable of mounting their own defense. They are entirely dependent on the United States for their security. It is something US policymakers know well: Since the beginning of 2012 the US has positioned the USS Ponce, a large floating base, in the Gulf, moved a squadron of F-22 fighters to the UAE, doubled its minesweeping presence and deployed the Sea Fox undersea drone. All these moves amount not to inaction to help aspiring democrats, but to forceful and purposeful intervention on the side of some of the most authoritarian states on the planet.Thrive by the Sword In the mid-2000s, most of the Gulf kingdoms were keen to indulge the pretense of reform. They did more talking about reform than reforming -- but even the talk is now passé. Back in vogue today are the police state and the counterrevolutionary tactics that prevailed in the 1970s. Indeed, the Arab uprisings and local unrest seem to have convinced rulers in the Gulf to offer less accommodation and wield more blunt force. It is arguable that, in the Gulf of the twenty-first century, crises are no longer undesirable, but rather have considerable political utility. In fact, given the arc of history -- whereby the redistribution of oil wealth has failed to ensure regime stability or political quietism -- the regional system may have arrived at a moment where political survival actually requires the manufacturing of permanent crisis at home and in the region.The upsurge in oppression by Gulf states in 2011 reflected their shared deep disquiet about their own weakness: They have narrow social bases and historically have sought to manufacture loyalty to governments that are corrupt and self-serving. From Riyadh to Muscat, the Arab uprisings induced a sense of looming disaster, one perhaps unprecedented in intensity. It is clear, however, that the regimes believe they have arrived at a winning formula, turning crisis into opportunity. Paradoxically, therefore, the Gulf states have thrived off the very thing -- political upheaval -- that they have for so very long claimed to fear above all else.To be sure, the uprising in Bahrain and protests elsewhere are potential sources of revolution, but the monarchies have been successful in recasting them as threats to the system (and domestic and regional security) rather than groundswells that reflect the interests of actual subjects. Rather than engage the ruled, the Gulf states feel increasingly compelled to characterize the terms of domestic politics, and especially opposition politics, as destabilizing, inimical to the (fictional) national interest and beholden to a conspiracy of outsiders

It may be that the embrace of crisis, at least for short-term political gain, represents the latest stage of political development in the oil-rich states of the Gulf. With new grassroots political energy and emboldened demands for change, it is apparent that old patterns of political engagement such as handing out patronage are increasingly ineffective. While the redistribution of wealth has never satisfied everyone, even in times of plenty, levels of political engagement by ordinary Gulf Arabs seem greater than ever. What has not changed, however, is the reluctance of regional authorities to part with power. They remain steadfast in preserving an antiquated and rotten political order. These contradictory vectors, the growing expectation of participation versus intensifying efforts to maintain a closed system, help to explain the power of crisis in shaping regime behavior. To the extent that the United States endorses the status quo, it is complicit not only in the Gulf regimes’ efforts to quash citizen protest, but also in the redesign of Gulf security architecture by which crisis becomes the norm.

[ED NOTES:THOUGH IT IS A LIGTH EXPOSE ,IT SERVES TO INCRIMINATE JUSTFULLY SO,THE US GOVT AND  THE ROLE OF THE US IN GULF BY SUPPORTING AND ARMING THE BRUTAL GCC MONARCHIES.IT ALSO EXPOSES THE FRAUDULENT SCAPEGOATING TECHNIQUES EMPLOYED BY US AND ITS ALLIES THERE IN SUPRESSING DISSENT AND HUMAN RIGTHS IN REGION UNDER RIDICULLOUS  CLAIM THAT ITS ALL A  CONSPIRACY HATCHED BY IRAN AND EXTERNAL ACTORS!FACT IS GCC IS GOING TO FALL REGARDLES SOF WETHER US CONTINUES ITS SUPPORT TO IMPEDE THIS..