Workshop 3 / GRM 2024
Europe and the Multipolarization of the Gulf

Abstract

Over the past few years, the geographically strategic Gulf region has been adjusting to new internal and external realities on the political, economic, and security fronts, some of its traditional balances and logics being challenged by a wide range of parameters such as the emergence of a new generation of GCC rulers, a growing Russian and Chinese presence in the Middle East, and growing tensions between the US and Iran, locked in a dichotomized logic of “maximum pressure” vs. “maximum resistance.” It is worth underlining that many of these parameters have directly come from or have been somewhat affected by the policy choices and general attitude towards the region brought about by the Trump administration. On one hand, some evolutions of regional dynamics, the most important of which is perhaps the beginning of the Gulf crisis within the GCC in June 2017, illustrate how leaders of the Arabian Peninsula have at times felt emboldened by a new US President with a transactional approach to international relations who seemed ready to support their claims in the region without interfering. On the other hand, the fast-paced and sometimes surprising or seemingly irrational stances adopted by President Trump, as well as the specter of a “US disengagement from the Gulf” which arguably does not exist outside political discourses and strategic calculi have increasingly pushed them to look for solutions to supplement their strategic relationship with their traditional American partner. While the impact of the US policies in the region are certainly extremely important in explaining many evolutions of regional dynamics, it is, however, at least as crucial to analyze them against the backdrop of a broader multipolarization of the Gulf which go beyond the sole US parameter (although it is obviously more or less directly related to it). This workshop is built with the conviction that regional analyses need a deeper acknowledging of the shifting dynamics of the Gulf as a result of new powerplays and evolving strategies from major actors both inside and outside of the region. Within this framework, it more specifically offers to focus on how European powers play out in this reorganization of international relations of the Gulf. This subject is not only relevant because of the historic and everchanging presence of these actors in the region, and how important they have always been in diversification strategies of the leaders from the Arabian Peninsula, but also because European powers increasingly find themselves at a crossroads, in the context of Brexit, difficult relationships with their American ally, and a growing momentum to work around – if not with – Russia and/or China in the Middle East. With the 11th edition of the GRM taking place at a time when the Gulf region has faced numerous turbulent years, and when the world is looking to the United States in an election year to try and get a pulse of what will happen, this workshop comes at a key moment to assess in a comprehensive way what other crucial dynamics are impacting the Gulf region and how such dynamics will continue to do so in the near future.




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Workshop

Directors


Dr. Abdullah

Baabood

Chair of the State of Qatar for Islamic Area Studies and Visiting Professor, Faculty of International Research and Education -
Waseda University



Dr Geoffrey

Edwards

Professor -
University of Cambridge - Department of Politics and International Studies



Dr. Christian

Koch

Director of Research -
Gulf Research Center


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