Literature Review on the Gulf Cooperation Council and mainly the UAE’s relationship with the Gulf States.
Goal: The chapter aims to comprehensively understand the UAE’s evolving foreign policy and strategic partnerships with a formal regional alliance such as the Gulf States. It should include the following:
1. Literature on alliances (Formal Alliances) and coalition building: Look at the literature related to alliance literature and about coalition building. There is always the argument that the GCC is basically there for the Saudis to exercise control over the other GCC states, and at the same time, it’s not a static thing as the relationship that the Emiratis or the Omanis or the Kuwaitis have had with the GCC has changed and it has evolved.
2. Evolving relationship between the UAE and the GCC: Literature on the kind of the GCC, and the Emirati relationship with the GCC as well as a historical overview of this relationship including . The argument is often that the GCC in some respect bears parallels with the United Nations. Many people say that the UN is ineffective. But then when pushing to the next question, so what are the alternatives, would they
want to disband it, do without it? The answer is always no and the same way with the GCC, there are many who say as a collective security organisation, it has been found wanting, and you can look at the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, but at the same time, if you were to turn to most elites in the Gulf and say, do you want to disband the GCC, they would say no. So, you have to got to kind of think about it in these terms; What
is it that the Emiratis want to contribute to the GCC? What is it that they wanted to get out of the GCC, and how is that kind of evolved? How the UAE has fitted in and evolved and in some respects moved away from the GCC? given that the GCC was supposed to be a kind of collective security guarantor that emerged from the Iran-Iraq war or the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war.
3. The UAE’s National Role Conception within the GCC: When looking at the Emirati relation with the GCC states that started as a kind of a bandwagoning type of relationship in terms of the type of the National Role Conception. It has a status quo power, but it has evolved to perhaps be more of a hedging strategy or something in between. So, how you understand and what have been the drivers of the National
Role Conception, which is effectively a domestic driver, and how that National Role Conception then plays out in how the decision-making elites in the UAE and then related to things like the GCC.