Workshop 2 / GRM 2024
Gulf States and the Indo-Pacific: Agents or Objects of Geopolitical Competition?

Abstract

For many years, Gulf countries looked at the US-China competition in the Indo-Pacific as a topic disconnected from their own foreign policies. The great power rivalry may have intensified throughout the last decade but seen from Gulf capitals, its effects were mostly felt in East Asia. Likewise, the Indo-Pacific concept may have gained traction in the US during the Trump presidency, but Gulf thinkers and decision makers largely felt that this was a designated region that started on the US West Coast to end on India's shore with minimal impact for the Arabian Peninsula.As a result, Gulf states have not considered the Indo-Pacific as a security complex of immediate consequence and followed policies and bilateral engagements in the area with little concern for their strategic implications. The benign neglect of Gulf states for the Indo-Pacific did not mean they were absent from the regional developments. In fact, they have built stronger ties with most of the primary players. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have increased their engagement with India under the premiership of Narendra Modi while economic and military cooperation with countries like Indonesia, Australia and South Korea have also expanded.The most spectacular change relates to the attitude of Gulf states towards China. Overall, they embraced China's rise as an opportunity: it increasingly shaped Gulf energy exports at a time when Western demand declined. Starting in 2013, the emergence of the Belt & Road Initiative was largely perceived as a potential area of cooperation that could benefit Gulf states in their own quest for economic diversification. Eventually, this led those countries to attract Chinese foreign investment.But it also rapidly touched on sensitive domains. Chinese companies gained access to port infrastructure in the UAE and Oman while Huawei has been involved in the deployment of 5G networks in all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Moreover, these deepening economic ties with China have resulted in nascent military relations: Beijing sold UAVs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE while Qatar bought Chinese ballistic missiles. The Saudi Kingdom even agreed on a partnership to open a Chinese UAV factory on its territory. Moreover, the Covid pandemic deepened Gulf-Chinese ties with Beijing providing medical supplies and later partnering with the UAE and Bahrain for the trial of the Sinopharm vaccine. Abu Dhabi went even further by announcing in the Spring of 2021 that it would manufacture and distribute HayatVax, a Sinopharm COVID vaccine. By 2021, the trajectory of Gulf states seemed, almost inexorably, pulling them towards China.However, this increasingly stirred frictions with the US. These tensions were in many ways predictable: the fundamental reliance of Gulf states on US military presence and security guarantees traditionally led these countries to align their foreign policy agenda on US priorities, or at least forced them not to openly go against Washington’s preferences. Whereas the Trump and Biden administrations looked at the Indo-Pacific competition as a zero-sum game that implied third parties need to choose their sides between Washington and Beijing, Gulf states seemingly operated under the assumption that this principle did not apply to them.Eventually the conundrum crystallized around the issue of the US sale of the F-35 fighter aircraft to the UAE. If observers initially anticipated the negotiations to circle around the issue of guaranteeing Israel's qualitative edge, it ended up becoming a US investigation into the UAE’s growing ties with China and their implications for American military cooperation in the region.All in all, one could argue that Gulf states now find themselves at a turning point. They may have seen their rapprochement with China as a necessary way to diversify their foreign policy options, and possibly hedge against a US disengagement from the region. But such logic may have reached its limits as evidenced by the increased scrutiny of Washington regarding Gulf activities with China.This turning point is even more crucial as Gulf states built ties with all the regional powers of the Indo-Pacific and will have to adapt their policies in light of the new confrontational environment between China and those countries. Finally, these developments may have affected all Gulf states but talks and decisions have taken place on a national basis with no coordination at the GCC level. Eventually, Gulf states may find it necessary to define a collective response to the rivalries in the Indo-Pacific.




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Workshop

Directors


Dr. Jean-Loup

Samaan

Senior research fellow -
National University of Singapore



Dr. Jonathan

Fulton

Assistant professor of Political Science -
Zayed University



Dr. Li-Chen

Sim

Assistant Professor Energy politics in Russia and GCC
Khalifa University


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