April 23, 2015
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes to grasp how they
see the world is the best way to understand their behavior. So I have been
discussing conditions around the Arab world and the Gulf with friends and
colleagues in Dubai this week, seeking to understand the reasons for the
newfound militancy of the Saudi Arabian-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
states in Yemen and other Arab lands. I left with much better appreciation for
the domestic, regional and global developments that have pushed the GCC into its
new orbit of concern and vulnerability—but also with more questions than
answers about the perceived threats and whether war in Yemen is the most
effective way to deal with them.
There is no question that a new set of leaders at the upper
and middle echelons of state authority in the GCC have embarked on a radically
different way of dealing with the regional threats they perceive. They are
using a combination of policy tools that include offering or withholding
massive financial support, military assistance to like-minded allies across the
region, and overt war, as we witness most sharply in Yemen, following lesser
episodes in Libya, Bahrain and northern Iraq.
Seen from Riyadh, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, the world around the
mostly wealthy oil-producing GCC states has been turned on its head in the last
four years. Every major geo-strategic potential threat or fear that they have
quietly harbored for years has started to materialize—and virtually
simultaneously. These include half a dozen different developments that is
each dangerous enough on its own, but they take on tsunamic dimensions when
they occur simultaneously. They have included, in the last four years: the
expansion of militant Salafist-takfiri movements like ISIS and Al-Qaeda that
are a security threat but also in ways challenge the religious authority of
Saudi Arabia’s custodianship of Sunni Islam; the populist street revolutions
that overthrew several Arab leaders; the consequent widespread assertion of
desires for democratic pluralism in many Arab countries; the elected rise to
power of Muslim Brotherhood parties in Egypt and Tunisia; the fragmentation of
countries like Libya, Iraq and Syria that opens the door to the expansion of
terror groups and unchecked militias; the demise of GCC-supported elements in
Yemen in the face of the nationwide military expansion of the Houthi-based
Ansarullah movement; the increasing structural influence of Iran in several
Arab countries, especially Iraq, Syria and Lebanon; concern that a
nuclear/sanctions agreement between Iran and the U.S.-led P5+1 powers would
increase Iran’s power and its presumed hegemonic ambitions in the region; and,
worry that Washington is both downgrading its overall Mideast engagements
in favor of Asian relations, and will also distribute its strategic
relations in the Middle East more evenly among Israel, Iran and its traditional
Arab GCC allies.
All of these frightening developments taking place
simultaneously have suddenly demanded from the GCC states an effective response
that would reduce the impact of the new dangers. The intensity and military
nature of the Saudi response in Yemen reflects how deeply the GCC states feel
the threats, though it remains unclear whether the war coalition in Yemen can
provide credible antidotes to the long list of dangers that shape current GCC
attitudes. The war in Yemen seems designed in the first instance to send a
message to all current or potential enemies, real or imagined predators, or
just ill-willed possible troublemakers, that from now on the Saudi-led GCC will
initiate its own swift and tangible response, instead of waiting for others to
step in.
Years will be required to learn if the military actions in
Yemen will result in greater stability in the Arabian Peninsula, or create a new
source of long-term tension, refugee flows and Arab radicalism for export. How
quickly the war can end and a shift to a negotiated political solution begin
will be a crucial factor in answering this question.
What remains unanswered is the equally important question of
whether the GCC’s new militarism will respond to the long list of perceived
troubling regional threats as well as it already responds to the GCC’s need to
assert itself as a dynamic, strong actor capable of safeguarding its own
national interests. The problems of terrorism, democratic Islamism, state collapse,
popular revolutions, Salafist-takfiri expansion, refugee flows, Iranian
assertion and rebalanced U.S. interests are all real and very serious threats
in the eyes of the GCC leaders. All of them also seem to have been enhanced,
not reduced, by recent wars across the Middle East, making the shift from war
to diplomacy in Yemen all the more urgent.
Rami G. Khouri is
published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding
director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public
Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter:
@ramikhouri.
Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global