Gulf Security and the GCC Five Years Later

By Michael Collins Dunn

It has been five years since the fall of 1990, when the U.S. and Saudi Arabia led an international coalition to oppose, and ultimately reverse, Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. In the months which followed the Aug. 2, 1990 Iraqi invasion, the conservative states of the Gulf openly acknowledged their dependence on outside military assistance by inviting in half a million foreign troops. Much was said at the time about enhancing regional cooperation and defense once the crisis was over. After five years, however, regional security cooperation has made limited progress, and there is little doubt that in the event of any new external threat to Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states, the United States would again be called upon to provide the response.

The basic problem of Gulf security remains unchanged. Two-thirds or more of the world's proven oil reserves and most of its excess productive capacity (the ability to increase production to make up for shortfalls elsewhere) lie in the Gulf region. One state in that region, Iran, has a population of at least 63 million—significantly larger than all of the others combined, including Iraq with 20 million and Saudi Arabia with about 18 million residents. Regardless of the ideologies or the particular regimes in place in a given country, this is a recipe for geopolitical tension. In a dangerous neighborhood, where some neighbors are very small and weak but very rich, those who are stronger may be tempted to bully—or to grab.

Because the industrialized world is heavily dependent on oil and gas from the Gulf, access to those resources is a key strategic interest for all of the major powers. The British Royal Navy had barely converted from coal-burning to oil-burning at the turn of this century when Iran—the first Gulf state to become a major oil producer—became a pawn between Britain and Russia. U.S. commitments to the security of the region date from World War II, and since the rollback of British power in the early 1970s, the U.S. presence has grown inexorably. That presence is one of the few American overseas commitments which was not directly linked to the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union.

American interests require access to the plentiful energy resources of the Gulf not only for the United States but even more so for its allies. This imperative of U.S. foreign policy, which requires protection of that access from any external threat, has not lessened with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, depletion of oil resources elsewhere and growing U.S. dependence on imported oil actually are increasing the importance of Gulf security to the industrial world. Facile suggestions that greater Western oil conservation would somehow lessen this strategic importance overlook the sheer size of the oil and gas reserves in the Gulf compared to those elsewhere.

That is the fundamental problem of Gulf security for the rest of the world. In practice, it generally has meant Western support for the conservative regimes of the Gulf. While these traditional paternalistic societies do not necessarily conform to Western ideas of democracy, they have provided stability and economic growth to the region.

U.S. Commitment Continues to Grow

The U.S. concern has long included a military aspect. Since the 1991 Gulf war, this commitment has become explicit. Despite a broad representation of the Arab and non-Arab worlds in the ranks of the coalition that liberated Kuwait, the U.S. provided by far the largest military component and shared overall command with Saudi Arabia, which provided the bases from which most of the military operations were conducted. The U.S., therefore, remains the main defender of the smaller Gulf states, and U.S. air and naval units (as well as smaller land components) remain stationed in the region.

U.S. and allied aircraft regularly fly over both southern and northern Iraq (Operation Southern Watch and Operation Provide Comfort). When Iraq moved forces toward the Kuwait border in the fall of 1992, the U.S. responded with a massive deployment. Since 1991, the U.S. has signed security agreements with every one of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states except Saudi Arabia. It is an open secret that there also are many areas of extremely close cooperation with the Saudis, albeit not formalized in an agreement due to Saudi sensitivities on the subject. Kuwait and Qatar have agreed to pre-position U.S. equipment to support one brigade each, and the UAE may follow suit, giving the U.S. enough equipment on the ground to support a division.

This pre-positioning is important for two reasons. First, in 1990 Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait and then sat still for five months while the United States and the coalition carried out a massive deployment of manpower and equipment. Any future aggressor is unlikely to be so generous with the defenders. Had Saddam been able to push forward into the Saudi oilfields immediately after occupying Kuwait and seize the major air bases in eastern Saudi Arabia, the coalition would have had a much harder time in driving Iraq back inside its borders. Also, at that precise moment in history when the Soviet Union was disintegrating and Eastern Europe had just become free, the U.S. maintained extensive military personnel and stores in Europe which were available for the buildup in the Middle East. The post-Cold War reduction of the U.S. presence in Europe means that U.S. forces would have much farther to go in a future crisis. Pre-positioning alleviates that problem somewhat.

The basic problem of Gulf security remains unchanged.

Clearly the U.S. does not consider the threat to Gulf security likely to go away soon. Recently, the U.S. redesignated its naval forces in the Gulf and Southwest Asia region as the Fifth Fleet—the first new fleet designation since World War II and a clear recognition that the waters of the Gulf region are of permanent interest to the United States.

The U.S. commitment was demonstrated again in the fall of l994, when President Clinton deployed U.S. forces to Kuwait in response to what were believed to be threatening gestures by Iraq. This U.S. move has served as a deterrent against further problems so long as Iraq remains isolated and its military much reduced by the effects of the war. The U.S. commitment presumably also stands as a deterrent to reckless action by Iran. Though the U.S. policy of "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran goes against traditional power politics and may be unwise for other reasons, it appears likely to remain in place for the duration of the Clinton administration.

Because the U.S. commitment increasingly is taken for granted, some of the Gulf states still have only limited deterrents of their own. This is not to say that they do not share in the burden of their defense. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in particular, paid most of the costs of the Gulf war, as well as of the U.S. deployment to Kuwait in 1994. These costs added enormous burdens to already stressed economies and, in the Saudi case, led for a time to increased indebtedness which was reversed only by some serious belt-tightening.

All of the Gulf countries have continued to spend heavily on modern, high-technology defense equipment, particularly for their air and air-defense forces and their navies. It is in the area of ground forces that they remain weak. Iran and Iraq both have enormous armies, while most of the GCC states have tiny ground forces. Technological superiority and air and naval power can provide deterrence, but only up to a point.

Of the six GCC states, the four smaller Gulf states—Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE—have small populations and cannot hope to build up large armies. On the other hand, they have limited territories to patrol. Oman, with more territory, can claim something of a martial tradition and a longstanding commitment to military professionalism. It has a competent army for its size and is the strongest advocate for larger ground forces elsewhere.

The Saudi army has always been small and deployed on the periphery of its vast territory. The separate National Guard, recruited traditionally from tribes close to the ruling family, is used for internal security. Before and during the Gulf war, Saudi spokesmen spoke of planning an increase in the army's size, going so far as to suggest the possibility of conscription. But the army has grown at best marginally and conscription remains highly unlikely. It is sometimes argued that the Saudis simply do not have the population to support a large army. This is only partly true. Saudi Arabia's population is comparable to Switzerland's and larger than Israel's, and both of those countries have powerful armies. But Saudi society has no tradition of military service and suspicions remain of army coups. The sort of citizen army found elsewhere is not about to be created on Saudi soil.

The GCC's Role

After the Gulf war, the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman) pledged to increase their mutual defense cooperation. At successive meetings of the GCC, Oman pushed for a genuine, quantitative and qualitative upgrade of joint defense, including an eventual 100,000-man joint force. (The GCC has had a joint force for years, called Peninsula Shield, but at full strength it is barely a tenth of this size, and is rarely maintained at full strength.) The other Gulf states are reluctant and have consistently shelved any action on these efforts—the Saudis because they are not prepared to build up their own ground forces, and the others because they could not contribute equally to such a force and would thus be heavily dependent on Saudi Arabia and Oman. They would prefer being dependent on the more distant U.S.

The GCC has therefore done little in real terms to promote collective defense. At the same time, internal GCC divisions are numerous. Saudi Arabia and Qatar had a minor border skirmish in 1992 and have quarreled on a variety of issues; Qatar and Bahrain remain quarrelsome over a serious territorial dispute; and the six countries all face economic problems to one degree or another, which limits the extent of defense expenditures. (In Kuwait's case, defense procurement has also come under fire from the elected parliament.)

The Damascus Declaration

One other approach to the problem of lack of ground forces was attempted—and effectively abandoned. Just after the Gulf war in 1991, the GCC states met with two of their Arab coalition partners, Egypt and Syria, and issued the Damascus Declaration, which envisioned a long-term partnership to provide for security for the GCC states. According to the declaration, Egyptian and Syrian forces would be stationed in the region and would be available for rapid deployment, and the GCC states would foot the bill. For four-and-a-half years, the GCC states have regularly met and proclaimed their allegiance to the Damascus Declaration, and periodically they meet with Egypt and Syria to do the same. They have not, however, actually done anything to implement it, and, as the Egyptians recognized early on, they have no intention of doing so. Egyptians and Syrians living in large numbers in Saudi Arabia would provide more complications than they would security. For all practical purposes, the Damascus Declaration is dead.

As this brief overview suggests, the U.S. commitment to the Gulf remains solid and is likely to remain so in the future. The GCC states themselves seem sincere about increasing their own deterrent capabilities while decreasing reliance on the U.S., but have proven unwilling or unable to do much other than buy high-tech equipment. Omani proposals for a larger joint force are periodically reintroduced and—like the Damascus Declaration—are not rejected, just deferred. The economic problems created by the war's expense have added to the GCC's inability to provide real deterrence. So, too, to be fair, has the lack of a clear-cut threat. Iraq is contained, and while Iran makes everyone a bit nervous, it is not actively hostile and several GCC states have important trade relations with it.

Five years after the Gulf war, the Gulf seems little changed. Saddam remains in power, though increasingly isolated. Of the GCC states, Kuwait again has a parliament, Qatar has a new emir and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain recently got their first new cabinets in decades. But in these conservative states change is slow and rarely dramatic.

The same is true of major new defense commitments. At best, any new GCC force needs to deter aggression only long enough to hold the line until the U.S. can come to the rescue. In the end, therefore, the GCC countries will be able to inflict severe initial punishment with their superior airpower and high-tech weaponry, but a roll-back or long-term defense against a determined aggressor still will require a U.S. or Western protective military umbrella for some time to come.

Michael Collins Dunn is senior analyst of the International Estimate, Inc., a Washington-based consultancy. He is editor of its bi-weekly newsletter, The Estimate.