International Politics of the Persian Gulf By Mehran Kamrava (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011. 374 pages.)

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Turan Kayaoglu

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Abstract

The Persian Gulf region is home to the six members of the Gulf Cooperation


Council (viz., Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia),


Iran, and Iraq. Holding over 60 percent of the world’s oil and over 40 percent


of its natural gas reserves, the Persian Gulf is central to the global economy.


Yet a dominant regional power is lacking; beginning with the British in the


late nineteenth century, foreign powers have consistently been meddling in


the region. Significant economic, social, cultural, and political changes have


transformed the region’s international relations since Britain’s withdrawal in


the 1960s. The contributors to this volume, which provides a rich account of


this transformation, focus on natural resources, the Iranian-Saudi competition,


the interest of major external actors, and political reform.


The volume’s main thrust is the centrality of both state and regime security


in order to understand the region. The volume’s editor, Mehran Kamrava,


notes that the international politics there is essentially that of security


politics. He offers four reasons for this: (1) its central role in oil and natural


gas production and, increasingly, global finance, (2) the competition between


Iran and Saudi Arabia over regional leadership, (3) the long-standing


American-Iranian conflict, and (4) the instability brought about by intermixing


politics and religion.


He identifies three poles of power that shape the region’s security dynamics:


the American pole; the GCC pole, which is centered on Saudi military


and Qatari-UAE financial power; and the Iranian pole, which relies both on


military might and soft power. Since the Iranian revolution, the American and


the GCC poles have built a resilient alliance that has been driven by both the


United States’ growing direct involvement and the GCC’s failure to provide


security to its members.


The chapters, written by leading regional specialists, further elaborate on


the region’s security dynamics. In Chapter 2, J. E. Petersen offers a useful typology


of boundary formation. He discusses how the state-building process,


historical claims, colonial imposition, and resource competition have shaped


state boundaries. As these boundaries remain contested, Petersen details various


ongoing problems. In Chapter 3, Fred H. Lawson refines the concepts “security


dilemma” and “alliances dilemma” and uses them to explain the arms race in


the Gulf since the first Gulf War. Middle East specialists and international relations


scholars will find these chapters useful in conceptual refinement ...

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