III. Dependence of the Gulf states on external security guarantees The previous part of the

“Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the U.S.-Qatar political relationship soured badly, driven in particular by Qatar’s foreign policy initiatives and maddening behavior on the UN Security Council from 2006-07. The Amir thought they made a big mistake toppling Saddam Hussein. Qatar continued high level engagement with Hamas leaders, even as the US seeks to isolate them, and supports the Syrian government, even while the U.S. worked to support the democratic majority. Qatar is also often accused of funneling money to Hamas, senior Qatari leadership appeared to have grown jealous of the US relationships with regional rivals (including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan) and annoyed that they don’t give Qatar more attention, including senior-level visits and visibility in

For the United States, the Gulf region remains one of the most geo-strategically important locations in the world for diplomatic, intelligence cooperation, and business opportunities such as hydrocarbons and arms. This strategic cooperation has provided the region some stability, particularly with the rise of Iran and the Shi’a crescent and the chaotic outcome of the war in Iraq. The council members have also relied on the United State to fend off some of the domestic challenges to the existing regimes that are both internally and regionally rooted.

The relationship between the United States and the Middle East has not been the best. This has been as a result of past battles between the U.S and the Middle East. For example the United States led a 34 nation to fight

In 2004 in the midst of the Iranian nuclear aspirations and the slow slide of Iraq into a civil war, there was talk publicly of a “Shia crescent” in the Middle East. The president in the country of Jordan who was a Sunni that proclaimed direct relation to the prophet Muhammad was the person that sounded the alarm about the “Shia crescent”, which started at the Mediterranean Sea and ended at the Persian Gulf. The crescent continued from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. Abdullah and Mubarak along with the Saudi officials suggested the threat of a divided Middle East along the sectarian lines. It would put the forever-downtrodden Shia against their Sunni rulers. They thought that the first battleground might be Iraq followed by the oil laden Persian Gulf region. If this were to occur then the Shiite leader of Iran could secure all of the oil and gas fields in

In the post -World War II era, the competition of global supremacy between the superpowers of the time, United States and the Soviet Union resulted in the Cold War. Many countries in the world were pulled into this rivalry including many of the states of the Middle East. Allies against the Soviet Union received substantial quantities of United States aid and were encouraged to purchase weapons of Western means. Those who were in opposition to the United States’ power received economic and military assistance from the Soviet Union. The United States were inclined to view the rivalry between them and the Soviet Union as a vie for global supremacy. The challenge of attaining democracy in the Middle East has been insufficient leadership specifically in those who shared a common border and were in proximity to the Soviet Union. The United States, in their determination to impede the threat of expansion of the borders of the Soviet Union as well as contain the spread of communion, provided economic and military assistance to keep Iran, Iraq and Turkey politically stable. Although this was the goal of the United States, they actually impeded the democracy and political stability of these countries through its persistent influence in government affairs, determining its future’s livelihood.

Conflict between the U.S. and the Middle East has gone on for too long. Starting in the reagan administration and continuing until now. In the book “Fool’s Errand” Scott Horton, the author, writes about what has caused this conflict to last so long and why the U.S. is involved anyway. Horton believes that the problem in the Middle East will get worse before it gets better, and that it will last for generations to come.

In order to understand why the U.S. should remain a consumer of Middle Eastern oil it is first necessary to agree that overlap exists between the four elements of national power: Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic. For starters, there is an important difference between “energy security” and “energy independence.” Energy security is a condition in which the net supply of energy resources is reliably delivered at a fair market price in order to meet a country’s domestic energy demands. As the end of the Second World War drew near President Roosevelt struck a bargain with King Abdul Aziz that the U.S. would support the house of al Saud in exchange for reliable access to the Kingdom’s oil resources. The roots of the Central Intelligence Agency’s 1953 coup d’état of Mohammad Mossadegh are firmly entwined in

interests between great powers with a million causalities. Either in 1980s or today in twenty-first century, the controversy of US involvement in the Middle East never stops.

Instead of fostering cooperation, efforts to bring Sunni and Shiite elites together have only rubbed at raw wounds, exacerbated tensions and accelerated the slide toward a regional confrontation. ISIS is now targeting Shiite pilgrims in Saudi Arabia in order to enflame that country and widen the religious war that is brewing across the region. Iran is sponsoring terror armies across the region and trying to turn Shiite Iraq into a satellite state. A brutalizing dynamic is now firmly in place: Sectarian tension radicalizes the leaderships on both the Sunni and Shiite sides.

Conflict over energy resources—and the wealth and power they create—has become an increasingly prominent feature for geopolitics particularly in the Middle East . The discovery of oil in the late nineteenth century added a dimension to the region as major outside states powers employed military force to protect their newly acquired interests in the Middle East. The U.S.’s efforts to secure the flow of oil have led to ever increasing involvement in the Middle East region’s political affairs and ongoing power struggles. By the end of the twentieth century, safeguarding the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf had become one of the most important functions of the U.S. military establishment. The close relationship between the United States and the Saudi royal family was formed in the final months of World War II, when U.S. leaders sought to ensure preferential access to Saudi petroleum. The U.S. link with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region has demonstrated to be greatly beneficial to both parties, yet it has also led to ever deepening U.S. involvement in regional politics.

Countries dependent on primary commodities exports are more likely to experience violent conflict (Social Development Department, World Bank, 2005). Oil security, and specifically oil security in the Gulf, had been part of US military strategy for thirty years prior to the invasion in 2003 (Ritchie & Rogers, 2007). In 1981, Iraq was identified as a threat: as even before the Iraqi–Iranian war such a contingency exerted a major influence on U.S. force planning for non-NATO contingencies; Iraq’s Soviet-supplied armed forces are the largest of any in the Gulf region; and the principal oil fields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are within comparatively easy reach from Iraq’s southern border (Ritchie & Rogers, 2007). By 2000, Iran was still hostile to the

The Middle East has long been home to very deep-rooted conflict. For too long, the citizens of the Middle East have lived in the central of death and fear. The animosity between few, takes the hope of hundreds. The Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict is most notably the largest issue preventing peace in the Middle East, but it is by no means the only issue. The issue of bankrolling and foreign aid are also issues preventing peace; because the U.S provides so much funding and foreign aid to certain countries, it is in some sense encouraging them to continue acting the way they act now and not change for the better of the region. It is also making the U.S look biased and can potentially cause issues for America in the long run, if they haven’t already. There is also the conflict of the Persian Gulf; the importance of these “new” resources and how it could affect the world economy and also the balancing of powers in the Persian Gulf; The U.S and the Middle Eastern nations will need to work to together to bring about security and stability into the Persian Gulf and hopefully it can overflow to the Middle East as well.

Persian Gulf War, also called Gulf War, (1990–91), international conflict that was triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the apparent aim of acquiring that nation’s large oil reserves, canceling a large debt Iraq owed Kuwait, and expanding Iraqi power in the region1. The Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein claimed as a reason for the invasion a territorial dispute over the Shatt al-Arab, the waterway which forms the boundary between the two countries2. Saddam Hussein believed that Iran was in turmoil and that his forces could achieve quick victory3.

According to Jackson and Sorensen (2003), the leading contemporary neorealist thinker is undoubtedly Kenneth Waltz (1979). His starting point is taken from some elements of classical and neoclassical, such as independent state existing and performing in an anarchical international system. Waltz’s Theory of international Politics (1979) seeks to provide a scientific explanation of the international political system. A scientific theory of international relations leads us to expect the certain pattern that states to behave in predictable ways. In Waltz’s view the

the conflict in the middle east between 1948-1973 was not purely fuelled by the interest and concerns of the superpowers but rather of a series of conflictual incidents, aswell as the main wars that took place from the years from 1948-1967 such as the: 1948 War, The Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973. But although the conflict was not fuelled by the superpowers, the influence of the superpowers and the reach of the superpowers into the Middle East was evident in the years both prior and following 1978. But even despite the influence and interests of the superpowers between and including 1948-1967 being undeniably evident, the extent of this influence cannot be said to have “fuelled the conflict”.