UK Strategy in the Gulf and Middle East after American Retrenchment.

• Author: Stansfield, Gareth
• Position: ARTICLE

The default U.S. post-war grand strategy has been one of deep engagement with active security alliances and responsibility for regional stability. As the system becomes more constrained with the rise of other great powers such as China and the West declines economically, does American deep engagement still make sense? If the U.S. is in the early phases of relative decline, conventional logic suggests that "great powers moderate their foreign policy ambitions and offer concessions in areas of lesser strategic value" (1) through exercising greater strategic restraint. (2) Many analysts now call for the U.S. to scale back its ambition and retrench to avoid being sucked into regional wars, and to focus its resources in areas of greater concern.

Arguably, the Middle East has felt the American impulse toward retrenchment more than most regions. Former President Obamas pivot to Asia sent a very clear signal that the U.S. wished to concentrate its resources on managing China's rise. His now infamous failure to reinforce Americas "red line" in Syria, after the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, only further weakened the U.S. credibility. While President Trump has sought to reassure regional allies like Saudi Arabia of the U.S.' continued commitment, he remains reluctant to commit the U.S. to nation-building or 'boots on the ground,' a reticence no doubt complicated by Russia's now more assertive footprint in the region.

This then leads us to a question that this paper will attempt to answer: what happens when America becomes more reluctant to take on the mantle of stabilizing regional security orders, at least in the interests of their regional allies? Theories of 'rival hegemonic transition' argue that another nation, or group thereof may fill the strategic void left by American retrenchment, altering the balance of power in ways that are not deemed amenable to U.S. interests. In relation to the Middle East, an important question is what exactly the effects of the U.S. retrenchment will be "upon the region's geopolitical order..." Indeed, "Washington's retreat onto a more 'hands off' strategic approach may further compound geopolitical contestation and instability across the Middle East." (3) For instance, some fear that as America continues to withdraw, China will move in, capitalizing on its already large and growing trade linkages with most of the region's states. (4) Likewise, there is a related fear that American withdrawal may precipitate nuclear weapons proliferation, itself related to the criticism that the United States is not doing enough to curtail Iranian nuclear ambitions -criticism that may well accelerate given Trump's 2018 abrogation of the Iran deal. Most obviously, Russia is now operating forcefully in the region, with strong support for the Assad regime and close links to Iran.

Theoretically, Karl Hayne's work on the successor state model proposes that a hegemon seeking to retrench from a regional order can do so more easily if there is a suitable ally or other external hegemon that can prevent geopolitical instability. He goes on to suggest that two criteria define a potential successor state's suitability: "the capability of its strategic preferences with those of the declining state and its military capacity to maintain regional order." So which states fit such a description? In this paper, we seek to empirically explore some of these broader theoretical points as the Gulf and Middle East become strategically less important to the U.S. national security interests. We do so by examining the UK's turn to 'east of Suez.' This has been driven by a range of factors, but mostly by the opening precipitated by America's declining interest in the region. The U.S. and the UK share many similar national security interests and the UK has a long history in the Gulf and the Middle East. We will begin by drawing out recent developments in the UK national security strategy and exploring key issues with it moves to east of Suez. The UK's ongoing relationship with the Middle East will also be conditioned in future years by the likely exit of the UK from the European Union (EU). While the UK already has significant strategic and commercial interests across the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), it is possible that a post-Brexit UK will view the GCC states as primary partners in security and markets for commercial interests, building upon its extant and relatively stable relationships at a time when uncertainty may be the norm in regard to the UK's engagements elsewhere.

The UK Returns to 'East of Suez'

As argued in the 2013 paper, "A Return to east of Suez? UK Military Deployment to the Persian Gulf," the UK has sought to deepen its presence in east of Suez in the Gulf. (5) The unveiling of sets of military, defense, and trade arrangements between Whitehall and the governments of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar announced in mid-April 2013 has been consolidated with the HMS Juffair, a now permanent naval base in Bahrain and the al-Minhad air base near Dubai, a key platform for the coalition's air campaign against ISIS. This 'deeper engagement' in the region by the UK presents challenges, opportunities and a delicate balancing act between often shifting alliances subject to both regional and global balances of power.

Specifically, the UK's now consolidated return to 'east of Suez' has committed Whitehall to the security and longevity of the Arab Gulf States -sheikhdoms which display only limited, if any, elements of democratization and which have taken positions opposed to the transformational dynamics seen in the in 'Arab Spring' events across the Middle East; notwithstanding Qatar's important engagements and Saudi Arabia's activities in Syria, the sheikhdoms certainly move to prevent any expression of change in the Gulf itself. As such, by following a strategy of allying itself with counter-revolutionary powers in the Arab Gulf States, the UK has found itself very much on the fault line of the searing sectarianism that is increasingly defining the geopolitical landscape of Gulf and Middle Eastern security. The UK will have to tread a delicate regional path: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and (less so) Kuwait are now all contending with significant sectarian challenges to their internal security whilst Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in what was a sectarian cold war and is now an increasingly hot one. The ongoing proxy campaigns between the two regional hegemons in Yemen and Syria will only add volatility to that evolving security matrix.

Importantly, the international relations context for the UK's strategy of deep engagement in east of Suez is not just about securing loyal and wealthy allies in the Persian Gulf, but has wider global geopolitical import. Specifically, it is also a new, different, iteration of the trans-Atlantic special relationship -a relationship which has been strained in recent years. With the 'Obama Pivot' serving to re-focus U.S. efforts away from the Middle East and towards the Far East and Pacific Rim, the pull of the potential vacuum in the Gulf region, particularly for the UK, is strong. Just as the U.S. was drawn into Gulf and Middle East politics by the UK's withdrawal of east of Suez in 1971, the situation now seems to be in the process of being reversed, with the UK moving early, perhaps opportunistically, to fill the potential vacuum that would be created by a downsizing of the U.S. interests and presence, itself part of a broader U.S. grand strategic recalibration from deep engagement to regional retrenchment. (6) In effect, for the UK, heightened strategic engagement with the Arab Gulf States and with India are new geopolitical expressions of the U.S.-UK special relationship -an expression that may be designed to emphasize to the U.S. the continued value of the UK as a strategic underwriter of the broader US.-led liberal international order. For example, the 2015 UK Strategic Defense and Security Review made explicit that the UK's value to the U.S. was contingent on its stabilizing role: "Our contribution to the special relationship includes our European and global reach and influence... We work together to support peace and stability" with a "permanent and more substantial UK military presence" in the Gulf region designed to "reflect our historic relationships, the long-term nature of both challenges and opportunities and to reassure our Gulf allies."

The UK's Involvement in Gulf Security

The 'return east of Suez' (7) is an emotive phrase, on both the Left and the Right in British politics. It recalls the highly controversial decision by Harold Wilson's Labor government between 1966 and 1968 to oversee a broad global retrenchment of UK military power.

While Labor ministers such as Tony Benn, Richard Crossman, and Barbara...