Balance-of-threat theory and the genesis of the gulf cooperation council: An interpretative case study

Security Studies

Volumn 5, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 143-171

  Priess, David ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0013013103     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636419608429291     Document Type: Article

References (215)

1. For examples of recent literature discussing these simultaneous shifts, see Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity," International Organization 44, no. 2 (spring 1990): 137-68;
2. John Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War," International Security 15, no. 1 (summer 1990): 5-56;
3. James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, "A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era," International Organization 46, no. 2 (spring 1992): 467-92;
4. Joseph S. Nye Jr., "What New World Order?" Foreign Affairs 71, no. 2 (spring 1992): 83-96;
5. Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise," International Security 17, no. 4 (spring 1993): 5-51;
6. and Aaron L. Friedberg, "Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in Multipolar Asia," International Security 18, no. 3 (winter 1993/94): 5-33.
7. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). Walt analyzes both alliances and alignments (as scholars and statesmen have used the terms) but tends to call both alliances, while authors such as Steven David specifically address alignments.
8. See Steven R. David, "Explaining Third World Alignment," World Politics 43, no. 2 (January 1991): 233-56;
9. Steven R. David, and idem, Choosing Sides: Alignment and Realignment in the Third World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Ole Holsti, Robert Kann, Glenn Snyder, among others, discuss the differences among these concepts and the difficulties that the lack of scholarly consensus on alliance terminology present.
10. See Ole Holsti, P. Terrence Hopmann, and John D. Sullivan, Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances (New York: Wiley, 1973), 3-4;
11. Robert A. Kann, "Alliances and Ententes," World Politics 28, no. 4 (July 1976): 611-21;
12. Glenn H. Snyder, "Alliance Theory: A Neorealist First Cut," Journal of International Affairs 44, no. 1 (spring 1990): 103-23. In The Origins of Alliances, Walt defines an alliance as "a formal or informal relationship of security cooperation between two or more sovereign states" (1), a description which is followed here. Walt offers a sound justification for this definition in ibid., 12.
13. Waltz defines balancing and bandwagoning as opposites; the former indicates alliance with a state to offset power(s) while the latter is defined as joining with the most powerful state or coalition. See his Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), esp. chap. 6.
14. Walt calls his approach to alliance formation a "refinement of balance of power theory" in The Origins of Alliances, 263.
15. See Michael N. Barnett and Jack S. Levy, "Domestic Sources of Alliances and Alignments: The Case of Egypt, 1962-1973," International Organization 45, no. 3 (summer 1991): 369-95;
16. Laurie A. Brand, "Economics and Shifting Alliances: Jordan's Relations with Syria and Iraq, 1975-81," International Journal of Middle East Studies 26, no. 3 (August 1994): 393-413;
17. Laurie A. Brand, idem, Jordan's Inter-Arab Relations: The Political Economy of Alliance Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994);
18. David, "Explaining Third World Alignment";
19. David, idem, Choosing Sides
20. F. Gregory Gause III, "Balancing What? Threat Typology and Alignment Decisions in the Gulf, 1971-1991," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 1-4, 1994;
21. Robert G. Kaufman, "To Balance or To Bandwagon? Alliance Decisions regarding Nazi Germany, 1933-1941," Security Studies 1, no. 3 (spring 1992): 714-47;
22. Robert G. Kaufman, idem, "The Lessons of the 1930s, Alliance Theory, and U.S. Grand Strategy: A Reply to Stephen Walt," Security Studies 1, no. 4 (summer 1992): 690-96;
23. Jack S. Levy and Michael N. Barnett, "Alliance Formation, Domestic Political Economy, and Third World Security," Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 14, no. 4 (1992): 19-40;
24. Dan Reiter, "Learning, Realism, and Alliances: The Weight of the Shadow of the Past," World Politics 46, no. 4 (July 1994): 490-526;
25. Jao Resende-Santos, "System and Agent: Comments on Labs and Kaufman," Security Studies 1, no. 4 (summer 1992): 697-702;
26. Randall Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In," International Security 19, no. 1 (summer 1994): 72-107;
27. and Paul Schroeder, "Historical Reality vs. Neo-realist Theory," International Security 19, no. 1 (summer 1994): 108-48. In these critiques, balance-of-threat theory is denounced for its inattention to or inadequate coverage of domestic security threats (David, Barnett and Levy), domestic factors in alliance choices (Barnett and Levy, Brand, Kaufman), a weighting system for the factors of threat assessment (Gause), a state's past experiences with alliances and threats (Reiter), state options other than balancing and bandwagoning (Schweller), historical detail (Schroeder) - and even for not being true to its structural realist roots (Resende-Santos).
28. David Garnham, "Explaining Middle Eastern Alignments During the Gulf War," Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (1991): 79.
29. Eric Labs, "Do Weak States Bandwagon?" Security Studies 1, no. 3 (spring 1992): 406.
30. Among the other works published since The Origins of Alliances which offer support for some (or all) aspects of balance-of-threat theory are Stephen M. Walt, "Testing Theories of Alliance Formation: The Case of Southwest Asia," International Organization 42, no. 2 (spring 1988): 275-316;
31. Stephen M. Walt, idem, "Alliances, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy: A Reply to Kaufman and Labs," Security Studies 1, no. 3 (spring 1992): 448-82; and, to some degree, Gause, "Balancing What?" and Resende-Santos, "System and Agent." Also worth noting is Glenn Snyder's judgment that "Walt has made a useful theoretical clarification, one that brings balance-of-power theory more into line both with common sense and with the historical record."
32. See his review of The Origins of Alliances in Glenn H. Snyder, "Alliances, Balance, and Stability," International Organization 45, no. 1 (winter 1991): 126.
33. Throughout this paper, the body of water Arabs refer to as the Arabian Gulf and Iranians call the Persian Gulf is simplified to "the Gulf."
34. The UAE represents the only successful attempt at lasting Arab political unity (the 1990 union of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen into the Republic of Yemen notwithstanding). This federation of small emirates along the southern littoral of the Gulf is comprised of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras al-Khaimah, Ajman, Fujairah, and Umm al-Qaiwain. The relations between the emirates of the UAE are themselves a fascinating microcosm of Gulf geopolitics; see John Duke Anthony, Arab States of the Lower Gulf: People, Politics, Petroleum (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1975), 97-215;
35. Malcolm C. Peck, The United Arab Emirates: A Venture in Unity (Boulder: Westview, 1986), esp. chaps. 2-4;
36. and Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates: A Political and Social Study of the Trucial States (New York: St. Martin's, 1978). My thoughts on this parallel owe much to discussions with Bruce Kuniholm.
37. Notable exceptions are Mahnaz Zehra Ispahani, "Alone Together Regional Security Arrangements in Southern Africa and the Arabian Gulf," International Security 8, no. 4 (spring 1984): 152-75;
38. and William T. Tow, Subregional Security Cooperation in the Third World (Boulder Lynne Rienner, 1990). My appreciation goes to Gregory Gause for bringing the latter to my attention. Charles A. Kupchan deals with the Gulf region and alliance theory, but the alliance under examination is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the branch of theory is not alliance formation but alliance cohesion.
39. See his "NATO and the Persian Gulf: Examining Intra-Alliance Behavior," International Organization 42, no. 2 (spring 1988): 317-46. Walt himself mentions the Gulf Cooperation Council, albeit in passing, in several of his works;
40. see Stephen M. Walt, "Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power," International Security 9, no. 4 (spring 1985): 16;
41. and Stephen M. Walt, idem, The Origins of Alliances, 29, 270.
42. See A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington, D.C.: The White House, 1994).
43. See Arend Lijphart, "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method," American Political Science Review 65 (September 1971): 682-93.
44. The crucial case study is examined and defended in Harry Eckstein, "Case Study and Theory in Political Science," in Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby, eds., The Handbook of Political Science, vol. 7, Strategies of Inquiry (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 79-137;
45. see also the discussion of "crucial experiments" in Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), esp. 20-28.
46. Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba assert that, generally, "the single observation is not a useful technique for testing hypotheses or theories." See their Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 211. Emphasis added.
47. Lijphart, "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method," 692.
48. Walt, "Testing Theories of Alliance Formation," 280.
49. See Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 179. Of course, since balance-of-threat theory does not deal with partner choice, benefit/cost allocation, or the form (that is, formal or informal) of alliances in any depth, it cannot be called a theory of alliance formation in the strict sense. I thank Glenn Snyder for his insightful comments on this matter.
50. Walt, The Origins of Alliances Ibid. 179
51. The Middle Eastern and southwest Asian cases can be found in ibid., chaps. 3-4; and Walt, idem, "Testing Theories of Alliance Formation," respectively.
52. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 28-32, 172-78.
53. See Walt, The Origins of Alliances ibid.,28-32 chaps. 6-7.
54. As Glenn Snyder points out, however, this attention to threat may not be quite the novelty Walt sometimes implies it to be; see Snyder, "Alliances, Balance, and Stability."
55. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 22.
56. Walt, "Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power," 10.
57. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 23. Interestingly, and perhaps because he would consider them part of the offensive power category, Walt does not discuss how advances in military technology (such as air power and long-range missiles) have changed the importance of geographic proximity over time.
58. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, Ibid., 24.
59. Ibid., 165 fn. 38. Walt admits that the scope of his offensive power category creates problems with the empirical aspects of balance-of-threat theory; "because offensive power is closely related to other sources of threat (for example, aggregate power and geographic proximity), assessing the independent impact of changes in a state's offensive power is difficult." Ibid. This is especially true for acts of aggressive subversion, as will be discussed later in this article.
60. Ibid., 25-26.
61. Ibid., 26.
62. Kuwaiti Ministry of Information/Al-Arabi, Kuwait on the March (Kuwait Ministry of Information, 1989), 222;
63. Michael Sterner, "The Gulf Cooperation Council and Persian Gulf Security," in Gulf Security and the Iran-Iraq War, ed. Thomas Naff (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1985), 17;
64. Erik R. Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Search for Unity in a Dynamic Region (Boulder: Westview, 1988), 99.
65. Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 372-73.
66. Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 99. The Iran-Iraq war, though an added threat to most of the Gulf states, was beneficial in one respect - it allowed the six GCC members to exclude Baathist Iraq on the grounds that the organization should not "take sides" in the conflict.
67. Federal Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Middle East and South Asia (hereafter FBIS-MEA), 5, no. 26, 9 February 1981, C1.
68. See also Kuwaiti Ministry of Information/Al-Arabi, Kuwait On the March, 223.
69. The Gulf Cooperation Council charter is available in English in American-Arab Affairs 7 (winter 1983-84): 157-62.
70. Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Routledge, 1992), 101-2.
71. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Joseph Kostiner, "The Damascus Declaration: An Arab Attempt at Regional Security," in Regional Security Regimes: Israel and Its Neighbors, ed. Efraim Inbar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 110.
72. Ali M. Al-Mehalmeed, "Security and Political Cooperation Among GCC States," King Khalid Military Academy Quarterly 10, no. 38 (summer 1992): 6-15;
73. and Majid Khadduri, The Gulf War: The Origins and Implications of the Iran-Iraq Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 150.
74. Personal correspondence with the Omani embassy, February 1993. A military committee within the secretariat of the organization was established in May 1981. See Tow, Subregional Security Cooperation in the Third World, 54.
75. Dilip Hiro, "A Few of Our Favorite Kings," in Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Times Books, 1991), 410.
76. Joseph Wright Twinam, "Reflections on Gulf Cooperation, with Focus on Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman," in The Gulf Cooperation Council: Moderation and Stability in an Interdependent World, ed. John A. Sandwick (Boulder: Westview, 1987), 42.
77. Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 25. Also, within several years of the GCC's establishment, the United Arab Emirates and surprisingly (because of its pro-Western orientation) Oman established diplomatic ties with Moscow.
78. See Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council ibid., 135;
79. and Stephen Page, "The Soviet Union and the GCC States: A Search for Openings," in Sandwick, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 145-67, esp. 163-66. In addition, the United States was at the time actively seeking base rights in the Gulf for its Rapid Deployment Force, but only Oman granted such rights - and even in the Omani case the main facilities (on the island of Masirah) were on the Oman's Arabian Sea coast and not in the Gulf proper. If the GCC was truly formed as an American lackey organization, it is shocking that these base requests were not only turned down but also heavily criticized by the Gulf press and by the Gulf states' public officials. It is also worth remembering, finally, that Gulf leaders feared and sought to discourage direct American military intervention in the Gulf (to preserve the unobstructed flow of oil at reasonable prices), which they had to consider as a possibility after Henry Kissinger's 1975 statement suggesting American intervention in the case of "some actual strangulation of the industrialized world."
80. Quoted in R. K. Ramazani (with the assistance of Joseph A. Kechichian), The Gulf Cooperation Council: Record and Analysis (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988), 9.
81. See R. K. Ramazani Joseph A. Kechichian The Gulf Cooperation Council: Record and Analysis ibid., 1.
82. As Joseph Wright Twinam writes: "...the Saudis took steps to ease longstanding tensions with Abu Dhabi and Oman over Buraimi [a disputed oasis], thus fostering the viability of the fledgling UAE and facilitating Oman's entry into the Arab political community. A steadying Saudi hand was evident in assuring that newly independent Qatar would be tranquil in the wake of the bloodless 1971 family coup bringing Amir Khalifa to power. By the mid-1970s the Saudi defense umbrella was clearly cast around Bahrain. Also by the mid-1970s the two least affluent Gulf states, Oman and particularly Bahrain, were significantly benefiting from a variety of supportive Saudi acts in the economic sphere. As the 1970s drew to a close, all of the smaller states were much more comfortable with the Saudi connection than some perhaps would have been a decade earlier." Twinam, "Reflections on Gulf Cooperation," 26.
83. Ursula Braun, "The Gulf Cooperation Council," in Hanns W. Maull and Otto Pick, eds., The Gulf War: Regional and International Dimensions (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), 91.
84. Tow, Subregional Security Cooperation in the Third World, 6.
85. Other works hinting that the small Gulf states established the GCC primarily due to the effects of the First Gulf War include Dilip Hiro, The Longest War The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict (New York: Routledge, 1991), 78;
86. Ispahani, "Alone Together," 152, 155;
87. and William B. Quandt, "Saudi Views of the Iranian Revolution," in Iran Since the Revolution: Internal Dynamics, Regional Conflict, and the Superpowers, ed. Barry M. Rosen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 59.
88. Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 6.
89. See also Charles A. Kupchan, The Persian Gulf and the West: The Dilemmas of Security (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), chap. 7;
90. and Roger Savory, "Ex Oriente Nebula: An Inquiry into the Nature of Khomeini's Ideology," in Peter J. Chelkowski and Robert J. Pranger, eds., Ideology and Power in the Middle East: Studies in Honor of George Lenczowski (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), 353.
91. Joseph A. Kechichian, Oman and the World: The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy (Santa Monica: RAND, 1995), 117-18. Cooperation in the area of internal security enabled the GCC governments to stop an Iranian-sponsored coup attempt in Bahrain during December 1981.
92. See Christine Moss Helms, Iraq: Eastern Flank of the Arab World (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1984), 182-83;
93. R. K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 50-53, 131;
94. R. K. Ramazani, idem, "Shi'ism in the Persian Gulf," in Juan R. I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie, eds., Shi'ism and Social Protest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 49-50;
95. and Joseph Wright Twinam, The Gulf, Cooperation and the Council: An American Perspective (Washington, D.C: Middle East Policy Council, 1992), 125.
96. Kechichian, Oman and the World, 117.
97. Kechichian, Oman and the World, Ibid. 117.
98. Among the many excellent works describing the events of this period are Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), chaps. 6-8;
99. Shaul Bakhash, Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1984), esp. chaps. 1-4;
100. John L. Esposito, Islam and Politics (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984), esp. 190-98;
101. David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), chaps. 1-3;
102. Robin Wright, In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), chaps. 1-2;
103. and, for a compelling account from an American perspective, Gary Sick, All Fall Damn: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985).
104. William F. Hickman argues that original Western reports that Iran's armed forces had been utterly "decimated" by the effects of the revolution were somewhat exaggerated; see his "Ravaged and Reborn: The Iranian Army, 1982," Brookings Institution staff paper (Washington, D.C: Brookings, 1982).
105. By 1970, Iran was importing more arms per year than all of the other Gulf states combined - including Iraq. Iran's defense expenditures at the end of the 1970s were nearly half a billion dollars more per year than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman taken together. Based on figures from Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf and the Search for Strategic Stability: Saudi Arabia, the Military Balance in the Gulf, and Trends in the Arab-Israeli Military Balance (Boulder: Westview, 1984), 494, 504.
106. See Richard Haass, "Saudi Arabia and Iran: The Twin Pillars in Revolutionary Times," in The Security of the Persian Gulf, ed. Hossein Amirsadeghi (New York: St. Martin's, 1981), 151-69.
107. The new militant Shi'i foreign policy was an especially dangerous threat to the Arab Gulf states because of their large Shi'i minorities (or in the cases of Iraq and Bahrain, majorities) which could now look to Iran as a source of support for subversive activity. See R. K. Ramazani, "Shi'ism in the Persian Gulf," 30-54;
108. and Fred Halliday, "The Iranian Revolution in International Affairs: Programme and Practice," in Oil and Security in the Arabian Gulf, ed. Abdel Majid Farid (New York: St. Martin's, 1981), 18-35.
109. The most notable modern instance of Persian expansion to the Arab side of the Gulf occurred in 1602, when Shah Abbas I annexed the islands of Bahrain. The Persians held the islands until 1782. Fred H. Lawson, Bahrain: The Modernization of Autocracy (Boulder: Westview, 1989), 28-29.
110. The ruling Al Sabah family had viewed the Shah's relatively secular Iran as a useful balance against Iraq, which had threatened Kuwait several times since its independence in 1961. In that year, Iraq based its claim for Kuwaiti territory (as in 1990) on the fact that Kuwait was once nominally a part of the Basra vilayet (province) of the Ottoman Empire. The British (and later, members of the Arab League) sent troops to the emirate to deter Iraq. See Abdul-Reda Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy: City-State in World Politics (Boulder: Westview, 1990), 19-26;
111. Jill Crystal, Kuwait: The Transformation of an Oil State (Boulder Westview, 1992), 126;
112. Dilip Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm: The Second Gulf War (New York: Routledge, 1992), 19-21;
113. J. B. Kelly, Arabia, The Gulf and the West (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 277;
114. and Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder: Westview, 1985), 180-88.
115. For a more involved narrative, see David E. Finnie, Shifting Lines in the Sand: Kuwait's Elusive Frontier With Iraq (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), chap. 9. Iraq revived its claim in the early 1970s. An ominous border clash between the two countries in 1973, with deaths on both sides, did not develop into a more serious challenge to the emirate and the other Arab Gulf states due to Soviet restraint of Iraq and Arab League efforts to defuse the crisis.
116. See Finnie, Shifting Lines in the Sand, 154-56;
117. Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy, 54-56; Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm, 25;
118. Haim Shemesh, Soviet-Iraqi Relations, 1968-1988: In the Shadow of the Iraq-Iran Conflict (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 87-88;
119. and, for a closer examination of the Soviet Union's role in the 1973 Iraq-Kuwait dispute, Oles M. Smolansky with Bettie M. Smolansky, The USSR and Iraq: The Soviet Quest for Influence (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 170-78.
120. A reference to Muhammad.
121. Ruhollah Khomeini, "Islamic Government," in idem, Islam and Revolution, trans. by Hamid Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), 31.
122. An account of Khomeini's exile and the Kuwaiti denial of entry can be found in Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals with the U.S. (New York: Brassey's [US], 1991), esp. 64-66.
123. Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy, 65.
124. Middle East Contemporary Survey (hereafter MECS), 1978-79 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980), 540.
125. Middle East Contemporary Survey Ibid., 1978-79, 449 52, 540.
126. For details, see Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran, 118-19;
127. Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy, 68;
128. and MECS, 1978-79, 540.
129. Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy, 68.
130. Quoted in Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990-1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 7.
131. Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy, 68-69.
132. FBIS-MEA, V, no. 232, November 30, 1979, C1; see also ibid., no. 233, 3 December 1979, C1.
133. MECS, 1979-80,403. The hostages were taken on 4 November 1979.
134. Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 33.
135. FBIS-MEA, 5, no. 110, 5 June 1980, C2; MECS, 1979-80, 403; MECS, 1980-81, 477; Khadduri, The Gulf War, 126.
136. Regarding the latter, see Hickman, "Ravaged and Reborn," esp. 8-18.
137. Good accounts of the First Gulf War which contain discussions of its effects on the small Arab Gulf states include Hiro, The Longest War, Efraim Karsh, ed., The Iran-Iraq War. Impact and Implications (London: Macmillan, 1989);
138. and Khadduri, The Gulf War.
139. MECS, 1980-81, 33; Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy, 71.
140. See FBIS-MEA, 5, no. 221, 13 November 1980, C1; ibid., no. 223, 17 November 1980, C1.
141. For more on Iraqi threats to Kuwait before the time under examination here, see the sources in fn. 53.
142. As Erik Peterson notes, "The war of attrition that emerged took a heavy toll on Iraq's economy, especially its capacity to sustain the war effort through the export of oil." In The Gulf Cooperation Council, 82.
143. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 165 fn. 38.
144. References to Saudi insecurity are spread throughout ibid., chaps. 3-4. The constant vulnerability felt by the Saudis is also the subject of Bruce R. Kuniholm, "What the Saudis Really Want: A Primer for the Reagan Administration," Orbis 25 (spring 1981): 107-21; and Safran, Saudi Arabia. This condition, shared by the other small Arab Gulf states, qualifies them in Randall Schweller's typology as either "lions" or "lambs," more concerned with self-preservation and thus reaction than initiation of revisionist actions. See Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit."
145. Wahhabi Islam, a "steadfastly fundamentalist" movement of Sunni Islam born in eighteenth-century Arabia, is succinctly described in Cyril Glassé, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 414-16. The founder of the Wahhabi movement and the leader of the Al Saud joined forces in the 1740s; the religious alliance continues to provide legitimacy for Saudi rule of the kingdom.
146. The political dimensions of Wahhabism, particularly its initial ties with the Al Saud, are discussed in David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud: The Rise and Rule of the Most Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), 20-23;
147. Sheikh Mohammad Iqbal, Emergence of Saudi Arabia: A Political Study of King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, 1901-53 (Srinagar, Kashmir Saudiyah Publishers, 1977), chap. 1; and Safran, Saudi Arabia, 9-14.
148. For more on recent conflicts between the Al Saud and the Wahhabi religious elite, see Mordechai Abir, Saudi Arabia: Government, Society and the Gulf Crisis (New York: Routledge, 1993), 155-60, 180-203;
149. F. Gregory Gause III, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges to the Arab Gulf States (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994), 33-40, 158-63;
150. and Peter W. Wilson and Douglas F. Graham, Saudi Arabia: The Coming Storm (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), esp. ch.6.
151. Quoted in Menashri, Iran, 95.
152. See Jacob Goldberg, "Saudi Arabia and the Iranian Revolution: The Religious Dimension," in The Iranian Revolution and the Muslim World, ed. David Menashri (Boulder: Westview, 1990), 159.
153. For descriptions of the occupation and recovery of the Grand Mosque, see MECS, 1979-80, 682-88; Abir, Saudi Arabia, 79-82; James Buchan, "The Return of the Ikhwan," in Holden and Johns, The House of Saud, 511-26;
154. Robert Lacey, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'ud (New York: Avon Books, 1981), 478-91;
155. Sandra Mackey, The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom (New York: Signet, 1990), 247-56;
156. and Robin Wright, Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 146-52.
157. For the claim that the Grand Mosque takeover spurred the planning which led to the formation of the GCC, see J. E. Peterson, "The GCC and Regional Security," in Sandwick, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 172 fn. 3.
158. Safran, Saudi Arabia, 359.
159. See MECS, 1979-80, 688-90; Abir, Saudi Arabia, 82-88; Lacey, The Kingdom, 487-91;
160. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran, 39-42;
161. and Wright, Sacred Rage, 149-150, 154-55.
162. See Barry Rubin, "The Gulf States and the Iran-Iraq War," in Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War, 121-32.
163. Quoted in Wright, Sacred Rage, 158.
164. Also see William B. Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s: Foreign Policy, Security, and Oil (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1981), 39-40.
165. Quandt, "Saudi Views of the Iranian Revolution," 54-55.
166. MECS, 1979-80, 691.
167. Quoted in Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 78-79.
168. See Savory, "Ex Oriente Nebula," 351.
169. Goldberg, "Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Revolution," 159.
170. MECS, 1980-81, 736.
171. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 24. Acts of aggressive subversion, which Walt does not consider independently, are quite difficult to classify within balance-of-threat theory's present structure. I extend my gratitude to Glenn Snyder for helping clarify my thoughts on this topic.
172. Controversy remains over the percentage of the Bahraini population adhering to Shi'i Islam. Although some authors claim that the population is evenly split between Shi'i Muslims and Sunni Muslims, for the modern time period a figure between a 53 percent figure (from the 1941 census) and a 75 percent estimate from the mid-1980s is probably accurate. See Lawson, Bahrain, 3; and Emile A. Nakhleh, Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1976), 96. In Table 1, a 70 percent figure is given; this is Gause's estimate in Oil Monarchies, 8.
173. Iran had claimed ownership of the islands of Bahrain based largely upon its most recent administration of the islands in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Iran dropped the claim in 1971 upon a United Nations mission's determination that the people of Bahrain preferred independence to rule by Iran. See Graham E. Fuller, The "Center of the Universe": The Geopolitics of Iran (Boulder: Westview, 1991), 75-77;
174. and Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf and the West, 55-56, 58-59.
175. For information about the referendum in Iran, see the sources in fn. 48.
176. MECS, 1978-79, 440.
177. See Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs, 126-27.
178. MECS, 1978-79, 440-41.
179. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran, 49.
180. MECS, 1979-80, 539.
181. See Maziar Behrooz, "Trends in the Foreign Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979-1988," in Nikki R. Keddie and Mark J. Gasiorowski, rds., Neither East Nor West: Iran, the Soviet Union, and the United Stated (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 15.
182. For the full statement, see FBIS-MEA, 5, no. 93, 12 May 1980, C1-C2.
183. See Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 78-79.
184. Behrooz, "Trends in the Foreign Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran," 14.
185. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran, 50.
186. Menashri, Iran, 208; see also MECS, 1980-81, 563.
187. The Gulf states' similar governments tended to attract common enemies, such as Nasser's Egypt, Khomeini's Iran, the Marxist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and (more often than not) Saddam Hussein's Iraq. For the Iranian case see F. Gregory Gause III, "Revolutionary Fevers and Regional Contagion: Domestic Structures and the 'Export' of Revolution in the Middle East," Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 14, no. 3 (spring 1991): 1-23.
188. For a comparison of the effects of the Nasser and Khomeini revolutions see Maridi Nahas, "State-Systems and Revolutionary Challenge: Nasser, Khomeini, and the Middle East," International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 4 (November 1985): 507-27.
189. Two excellent recent works analyzing the effects of the Iranian Revolution (and others) on the international system are David Armstrong, Revolution and World Order: The Revolutionary State in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993);
190. and Stephen M. Walt, "Revolution and War," World Politics 44, no. 3 (April 1992): 321-68.
191. The Shah sent several thousand Iranian troops into Oman (with the sultan's approval) during the 1970s to help suppress a communist-sponsored uprising in the sultanate's Dhofar region. For somewhat sympathetic views of the Dhofar rebellion, see Fred Halliday, Arabia Without Sultans: A Political Survey of Instability in the Arab World (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), chaps. 10-11;
192. and Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf and the West, 10-4-163. At the narrowest point of the Strait of Hormuz, less than 21 nautical miles separate Iranian and Omani territory.
193. R. K. Ramazani, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz (Alphen aan der Rijn, The Netherlands: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1979), 1.
194. MECS, 1978-79, 462-64.
195. See Khadduri, The Gulf War, 124.
196. See Peck, The United Arab Emirates, esp. 143-44. Of course, the onset of warfare between Iran and Iraq disturbed cross-Gulf trade even further.
197. Kechichian, Oman and the World, 101-03.
198. Kechichian, Oman and the World, Ibid., 101. That Kechichian's book is based on an unprecedented set of interviews with high-ranking Omani goverment officials, including Sultan Qaboos himself, adds credibility to such assertions.
199. In November 1971, after the shah relaxed his claim to Bahrain, the Iranian military seized Abu Musa and the Tunbs, small islands previously administered by the emirates of Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Outrage from the Arab side of the Gulf, unaccompanied by any real action, highlighted the sheikhdoms' difficulties in dealing with their larger neighbors. See R. Michael Burrell and Keith McLachlan, "The Political Geography of the Persian Gulf," in The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey, ed. Alvin J. Cottrell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 127-28;
200. Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf and the West, pp. 87-97;
201. Peck, The United Arab Emirates, 52-53; Ramazani, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, esp. 72-75; and Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, The United Arab Emirates and Oman (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 103.
202. MECS, 1978-79, 480.
203. One author calls the Iranian policy toward the disputed islands a "litmus test for [Iran's] new credentials as a pro-Arab power." Jasim M. Abdulghani, Iraq and Iran: The Years of Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 184.
204. MECS, 1978-79, 435, 441.
205. Helms, Iraq, 182.
206. Kechichian, Oman and the World, 109.
207. See Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 78-79.
208. MECS, 1979-80, 432.
209. FBIS-MEA, 5, no. 151, 4 August 1980, C3.
210. Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam, 1982), 559.
211. Because this analysis emphasizes domestic subversion as a factor in alliance decisions, the "omnibalancing" framework developed by Steven David might seem fitting. Although this article is an interpretative case study using balance-of-threat theory and is not meant to compare competing approaches, it is worth noting why David's model is not appropriate here. In Choosing Sides, David writes: "leaders of states will appease secondary adversaries to focus their resources on primary adversaries...in the Third World, this will often mean appeasing other states (which often pose less pressing threats) in order to counter more immediate and dangerous domestic threats. They seek to split the alignment against them and focus their energies on their most dangerous (domestic) opponents. To do this they appease their domestic opponents' international allies. This superficially appears to be bandwagoning (accommodation to threat) but is better classified as balancing (the accommodation is made to conserve strength for the battle against the prime threat, so is part of a general policy of resistance)" (6; emphasis added). This was clearly not the case in the Gulf. The Gulf states chose to balance with each other to counter the greatest threat to their security-the subversion instigated by Iran. Were omnibalancing a superior explanation, we would see the Gulf states, especially Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, appeasing Iran and not forming the Gulf Cooperation Council as a forum for increased security cooperation among themselves.
212. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 164.
213. As Walt himself notes, "assessing the independent impact of changes in a state's offensive power is difficult" (ibid., 165). To show that such an undertaking is still possible, he attempts to find cases where offensive capabilities changed while the other dimensions of threat remained uniform. His claim that the Soviet-Egyptian arms deal serves this purpose, however, is troublesome, as one cannot reasonably argue that the arms deal increased Egypt's offensive power without at the same time affecting its military capabilities, which fall into Walt's aggregate power category, or other states' perceptions of Egyptian intentions, certainly altered by the growing institutionalization of the Soviet Union's influence in Egyptian affairs. See ibid., 165-66.
214. Gause, "Balancing What?" 1.
215. See the preface to the 1990 paperback edition of The Origins of Alliances, vii.