The Gulf Cooperation Council was established on May 25, 1981 and
includes 6 countries: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
State of Kuwait, Sultanate of Oman, Kingdom of Bahrain, and State of Qatar.
Although geographical proximity is one of the foundations for the establishment
of the Council, the six countries are similar in their political, economic, and
social systems, as well as share a common history. The emergence of the
Cooperation Council was linked to several security threats faced by the Arab
Gulf states, which motivated the common conviction of the leaders of those
countries that each country alone is not able to confront these threats. Some
of these threats were the success of the 1979 Iranian revolution and its
principles which include exporting the revolution and the Gulf states were its
first target. Another major threat was the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war in
1980, in the desire of both sides to change the balance of power in the Arab
Gulf region, which was an unprecedented challenge for the Arab Gulf states.
Moreover, there was a division amongst the Arab states following the signing of
the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel 1978. Additionally, the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 at the height of the Cold War, posed a
challenge to the Arab Gulf states, with the United States calling for the
establishment of a military deployment force to protect oil sources and
confront the influence of the Soviet Union.
Despite these threats, which reflects
that security environment was the basis for the establishment of the
Cooperation Council, this was not significantly reflected in the charter
establishing the Council, which includes 22 articles, none of which stipulates
security and defense cooperation. Article 4 of the charter stipulated the goal
of coordination and integration, leading to unity in the economic and social
fields. Perhaps the drafters of the charter wanted cooperation between the Arab
Gulf states to adopt a gradual formula like the establishment of the European
Union (the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951), starting with the
economic goals up to security and defense issues.
This does not mean that security and
defense cooperation was not a priority for the Arab Gulf states, but rather
found its way through two mechanisms, the first: approval of the establishment
of the Peninsula Shield Force in 1982, which witnessed many developments, the
last of which was the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Unified
Military Command to include the Peninsula Shield Force, GCC Unified Command and
Control Unified Air Defense Operations Center, and the Unified Maritime
Operations Center. The second: the Joint Gulf Defense agreement signed by the
Arab Gulf states in 2000. It consists of 12 articles that reflect the vision of
the Gulf states that the security of the Gulf is indivisible, especially the
second article of that agreement entitled “Aggression and Threat,” which
stipulates that “Member States consider that any attack on any of them is an
attack on all of them and any threat to one of them is a threat to all of
them.” It is comparable to Article 5 of the charter establishing the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Article 3 of the Gulf Agreement
completes the ways to respond to the aggression against one of the Gulf states.
Military cooperation between the Gulf
states has witnessed other developments, including the establishment of the
Unified Maritime Operations Center in 2014, the approval of the Communications
security project in 1995 and the start of its official operation in 2000, the
establishment of the Cooperation Belt project in 1995 to link the operations
centers of the air force and air defense in the armed forces in the GCC
countries, and the first phase started at the end of 2001. Moreover, the joint
military training programs were implemented periodically among the GCC states,
and cooperation in the economic and social fields had a large share of that
cooperation, including the Unified Economic Agreement in 1981 and the Economic
Agreement in 2001.
On the institutional level, the Gulf
Cooperation Council witnessed several important developments, in which the most
important are two mechanisms. The first: is to provide an opportunity for the
citizens of the Arab Gulf states to participate in the decision-making of the
Council through the establishment of the advisory body in 1997. It consists of
30 members, 5 from each country, and specializes in providing its views on
issues referred to it by the Supreme Council. The second: the establishment of
a consultative summit in 1999, that is not linked to the official agenda or
protocols of the annual Supreme Council summit and is a quick mechanism to
discuss any developments that require an urgent meeting at the summit level for
the Arab Gulf states.
Like other regional organizations, the
Gulf Cooperation Council faced many challenges, including security crises,
whether faced by one of its members, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in
1990 and the events of the Kingdom of Bahrain in 2011. There are also regional
crises in which the Arab Gulf states found themselves a party to, such as the
Iraq-Iran war 1980-1988 or the Yemen crisis which required a Gulf military
intervention in 2015, and the Council was able to manage those crises in a way
that achieves maintaining the security of its member states. These crises were
a real test for the main three defense goals for any small state which are
maintaining their own security, regional and international alliances, and the
policy of neutrality.
At the global level, despite the
establishment of the GCC, member states whether individually or on the
institutional level were seeking several international partnerships aimed to
achieve regional security and global security. The transformations in the
international system undoubtedly have an impact on the positions of the Arab
Gulf states. Moreover, there is no doubt that the Qatar crisis in 2017 was a
major turning point in the course of the Gulf Cooperation Council as a regional
organization. In terms of the emergence of new regional security systems, there
are important variables to be taken into consideration, such as the change in
the concept of the region itself, or rather the emergence of new regions with
which members of the Council interact with and either influence or are
influenced by them namely the conflicts in the eastern Mediterranean, and the
competition in the Horn of Africa. Another important variable to be considered
is the emergence of several collective mechanisms aimed at confronting threats
to regional security such as the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition,
the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, as well as some regional groupings such as
the Council of Arab and African States bordering the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden
and the Djibouti Code of Conduct to Combat Maritime Piracy. These mechanisms
and alliances include some of the Arab Gulf states that are members of the
Council, which raises questions about the impact of these systems on the
council's endeavors as a regional security organization.
Gulf Research Meeting
