US troop withdrawals threaten to fuel greater, potentially problematic Gulf assertiveness
By James M. Dorsey
As far as Gulf leaders are concerned, President Donald J.
Trump demonstrated with his announced
US troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan that his insistence
that the “world is a dangerous place” has never been truer.
The troop withdrawals coupled with Mr. Trump’s praising of
Saudi Arabia’s alleged willingness to foot the reconstruction bill in Syria,
moves that emphasized his lack of geopolitical interest in the Middle East,
leave primarily standing as a common interest between the United States, Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates only Iran and a shaky Afghan peace process.
If former US president Barak Obama’s seeming unwillingness
to whole heartedly support embattled Arab leaders during the 2011 Arab popular
revolts that toppled the heads of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, was at the
root of at times reckless greater assertiveness displayed since then by the
leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Mr. Trump’s moves literally threaten to
leave them hanging in the air.
A similar conclusion can be drawn for Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, who appears to have successfully persuaded Mr. Trump to
postpone publication of his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan until after Israel’s
April 9 early elections because it portends
to be less favourable to Israel than expected.
Despite Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital
of Israel, the plan reportedly sees the city
as the capital of both the Jewish and a Palestinian state.
The troop withdrawals and the peace plan confirm Middle
Eastern leaders’, particularly those in the Gulf, worst fears: they are left
without a reliable ally that will unconditionally protect their interests and
they have no one to turn to who could fully replace the United States as their
unquestioned protector.
The resignation
of US defense secretary Jim Mattis deepens the crisis for Gulf
leaders. “Mattis’ departure means the loss of a key interlocutor at the
Department of Defense, the Cabinet-level agency with which the Gulf countries
deal most. It also means losing a senior figure who views Middle Eastern
strategic realities in terms very similar to their own. The fact that Mattis
resigned over policy disagreements with the president does not bode well for
future trends in Washington from a Gulf Arab perspective,” said Middle East
scholar Hussein Ibish.
Mr. Trump has proven to be unreliable. His granting
of waivers to Iran’s major oil buyers as well as for Indian
investment in the Iranian port of Chabahar, viewed by Saudi Arabia
and the UAE as a threat to their geopolitical and economic interests, was the
writing on the wall despite the harsh sanctions imposed on Iran by the
president. Syria and Afghanistan cement the fact that Mr. Trump is both
unpredictable and unreliable.
The world’s other three major powers, Europe, Russia and
China, have at best aspects of what the United States has to offer but lack the
ability and/or interest to fully replace the United States as the Gulf leaders’
protector in the way that Mr. Trump seemed to do at the outset of his
presidency.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE already have fundamental
differences over Iran with the three powers who oppose US sanctions and want to
salvage the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic republic’s
nuclear program. Similarly, the three world powers have refused to back the 18-month
old Saudi-UAE-led economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar and call for a
speedy resolution of the crisis.
Russia, moreover, is keen to sell weaponry to the Gulf, who
are among the world’s biggest buyers, exploit vacuums created by US policy, and
capitalize as a non-OPEC producer in enabling Gulf efforts to manipulate
production and world oil prices but is not eager to inherit the US defense
umbrella for the region.
Said Russia and energy expert Li-Chen Sim: “The Gulf is not
a key focus of Russian foreign policy… I don’t see the Russians taking any
advantage of the problems between the Saudis and the Americans to play a larger
security role.” Ms. Sim was referring to US Congressional blaming of Saudi
crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
and condemnation of Saudi conduct of the war in Yemen.
By the same token, China has neither the ability nor the
appetite to replace the United States in the Gulf. On the contrary, China has
preferred to benefit from US regional protection, prompting US assertions that
the Chinese were free-riders. As is evident across Eurasia in projects related
to China’s infrastructure and energy-driven Belt and Road initiative, Chinese
support does not come without strings. The same is true for Europe.
China’s brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims that is expanding
to other Muslim groups in the country, moreover, represents a
potential black swan in China-Gulf relations.
The impact of Saudi and UAE uncertainty with no one world
power available to cater to all their needs is reflected in apparent efforts to
rebuild bridges with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad whose ouster they sought
for much of the Syrian civil war.
A recent visit to Damascus by embattled Sudanese president
Omar al-Bashir, the
first by an Arab leader since the civil war erupted in 2011, was
widely seen as the beginning of a thaw in Syrian-Arab relations.
Ali Mamlouk, the head of Syrian air force intelligence and a
close associate of Mr. Al-Assad, met
in Cairo days later with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.
The UAE is, according to unconfirmed reports, refurbishing
its embassy in Damascus that has been empty since Gulf states broke
off relations with Syria early on in the civil war.
Adding to Gulf leaders’ uncertainty, Mr. Trump left many
guessing when he this week thanked
Saudi Arabia on Twitter for agreeing to “to spend the necessary money
needed to help rebuild Syria, instead of the United States.”
With Saudi Arabia refraining from comment, it was not clear
what Mr. Trump was referring to. Saudi Arabia transferred
in October in the immediate wake of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
US$100 million to the US to help stabilise parts of Syria.
The vacuum created by Mr. Trump risks fuelling greater Gulf
assertiveness with potentially messy consequences.
A close associate of Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi
asserted earlier this year that the UAE had offered Tunisia financial
assistance if
Mr. Essebsi followed the example of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who
imposed a brutal autocracy after staging in 2013 a military coup to topple
Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s only democratically elected president.
Saudi
Arabia this month pledged US$830 million in aid for Tunisia
following Prince Mohammed’s controversial visit last month as part of a tour
designed to demonstrate that his position remained strong despite Mr.
Khashoggi’s killing.
Mr. Trump described the world as a dangerous place in
shrugging off allegations that Prince Mohammed may have been responsible for
the killing. Gulf leaders are likely to share that perception in response to
the president’s seeming unwillingness to fully take their interests into
account.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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