The Gulf Cooperation Council: Prospects for Expansion

The enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been the focus of debate in both academic and non­academic circles, with the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic forthcoming despite growing awareness of the costs and dangers of expansion. Likewise, the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations (ASEAN) recently accepted Vietnam into the group, and plans to add Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia to its membership. Will this trend of alliance expansion carry over to the Gulf region?

 

Founded in 1981, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) includes the Arab Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman. Although the GCC has had its controversies - border disputes have erupted between members; the council has been unable to provide for member states' defense without external assistance; steps toward economic union have taken much longer than the people of the Gulf had hoped - it has proven to be the most durable and effective of the Arab regional groupings (others being the Arab Cooperation Council and the Arab Maghreb Union) that emerged during the 1980s.

 

Although the GCC charter limits membership to the six founding states and contains no explicit mechanism for enlargement, elites in the region have considered it at least a possibility that the GCC will expand to include one or more of the council's neighbors. Although some authors suggest that the GCC should (or predict that it will) become a broad collective security organization involving even Iran and Israel,¹ Gulf leaders have little if any confidence in the merits of attempting to create such a broad-based organization.2 Even the Damascus Declaration, separate from the GCC but including all of the GCC states as well as Egypt and Syria, has not received the political support necessary for it to become a credible military alliance, much less the basis or example for a wider body. Thus, the simple enlargement of the GCC alliance is more likely than its transformation into some other form of international organization.

 

In this paper, I assess the prospects for GCC expansion, looking briefly at the formation of the organization and what its charter says about expansion bef6re analyzing the pros and cons for the GCC of inviting Jordan, Yemen, or Iraq to join the alliance. I conclude that although there are reasonable arguments for including one or more of these states in the GCC framework, it is unlikely that full membership will be extended to any of them in the near term. In the medium to long term, however, it may be difficult for the GCC to resist some movement towards enlargement, despite the difficulties a policy of inclusion would certainly involve.

 

 

 

THE GCC, ITS CHARTER AND EXPANSION

 

During the Arab summit of November 1980 in Amman, Jordan, the rulers of the six future GCC states met apart from the larger group and accepted a "unified framework" based on a memorandum from the Kuwaiti emir as the foundation for progress toward an organization of the small Arab Gulf states.3 Sessions in Taif, Saudi Arabia, on the sidelines of an Islamic summit conference led to formal agreement on the membership of the grouping, to include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman.4  The genesis of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, shortened by common usage to the Gulf Cooperation Council, was announced to the world at a meeting of the member states' foreign ministers in Riyadh on February 4, 1981.

 

The foreign ministers' statement did not mention security or defense issues directly but noted that the organization developed out of their states' need to "deepen and develop cooperation and coordination among them in all fields in a manner that brings good, development and stability to their peoples."5 Similarly vague language characterizes the GCC charter, approved by the heads of state in May 1981. It states that the primary objective of the GCC is to "effect coordination, integration, and interconnection between member states." Although the Gulf states had been cooperating in several issue-areas for years, and the Iran-Iraq War provided the six Gulf monarchies with the opportunity to come together, the threat from revolutionary Iran was the key factor pushing the states to form the GCC at this time.⁶ Security issues, despite the absence of direct citations thereto in these documents, were high on the agenda of the council in its early days.7

 

The charter is explicit about membership. Article Five, "Council Membership," reads (in its entirety): "The Cooperation Council shall be formed of the six states that participated in the Foreign Ministers' meeting held at Riyadh on 4 February 1981." There is nothing in the charter laying out a specific mechanism for enlarging membership. Because of the language in the charter effectively limiting membership of the council (by reference to states present at the Riyadh meeting), it seems likely that the GCC charter would need to be changed if new members were to be admitted. The process for amending the charter is described in Article Twenty: "1. Any member state may request an amendment of this Charter. 2. Requests for Charter amendments shall be submitted to the Secretary-General who shall refer them to the member states at least four months prior to submission to the Ministerial Council."8 The Ministerial Council, according to the terms of Article Twelve, Section Six, is empowered to "review proposals related to amendments to this Charter and submit appropriate recommendations to the Supreme Council."

 

Upon its submission to the Supreme Council, one can only assume that a recommendation to add a member would be considered a "substantive" issue. This places it under the voting rules for the Supreme Council stipulated in Article Ten, Section Two, of the Charter: "Resolutions of the Supreme Council in substantive matters shall be carried by unanimous approval of the member states participating in the voting." Effectively, this would give each member state a veto over any motion to admit another state into GCC membership.

 

The possibility of GCC expansion has been the topic of frequent speculation during the last 16 years. From the beginning, several neighboring states have expressed interest in joining the alliance, and Yemen formally asked to join in late 1996. Since the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen united to form the Republic of Yemen in May 1990, three countries have been mentioned plausibly as GCC additions: Jordan, Yemen and Iraq.

 

 

 

POTENTIAL MEMBERS

 

Jordan

 

When the establishment of the GCC was announced, King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan was supposedly shocked. According to a former high-ranking Jordanian official, the king had hosted a "working dinner" for the leaders of the future GCC states at the Amman summit in November 1980 to highlight the need for closer cooperation among the seven "like-minded and Western-looking" monarchies.9 Expecting future consultation or at worst benign neglect of the idea by the Gulf Arabs, King Hussein instead heard that his proposed organization was being formed without him in the shape of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

 

Jordanian officials apparently pointed out to their GCC counterparts the negative impressions the GCC's establishment left in Jordanian and wider Arab circles. As the Jordanian prime minister at the time of the GCC's formation revealed:

 

When it was established, I asked them, "Why just Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the Emirates, and Oman?" The answer was that the relations between these states were very close. Then I asked, "Why not Jordan? The relations between His Majesty and King Khaled are very close, relations are very friendly - we like you, you like us." They said, "Only the states of the Gulf." "But Iraq is a state of the Gulf." They said, "The regime is different, and [the GCC] is about the Arabian Peninsula." I asked, "Then why not Yemen? It is in the Arabian Peninsula." They answered, "The regime is different." I said, "Jordan has the same regime...." They were worried. I said, "I think this council is against the Arab states." 10

 

Ties between Jordan and the Gulf states were generally good through the 1980s, given their common interest in preventing Iran from defeating Iraq in the 1980-88 war, but declining oil revenues led the GCC states to cut their aid to Jordan drastically during the decade.11 With the Jordanian economy in need of resuscitation, and given King Hussein's desire for closer inter-Arab cooperation, it should not have been surprising that he took the lead in the late 1980s and helped initiate the formation of the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) between Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and the Yemen Arab Republic. Several GCC states, however, saw the ACC as a threat. The Saudis in particular felt challenged, encircled by four states that had threatened the kingdom's security in the past. One of the Saudi leaders commented to a Yemeni official that the ACC was a "pincer movement" against the Saudis.12

 

Jordanian relations with the entire GCC worsened when Jordan took a neutral position in the Gulf conflict of 1990-91; the GCC states (led by the Saudis) believed, under the principle "if you aren't with us, you 're against us," that Jordan was in league with its ACC ally, Iraq. Remaining aid to Jordan from the wealthy Gulf states was slashed and relations reached their lowest level since the intense Saudi-Hashemite feud earlier this century. Although Jordanian ties with most of the Gulf states have returned to their prewar level, the Kuwaitis in particular have not fully forgiven the Jordanian people for their enthusiastic support for the Iraqi invasion and occupation of their emirate.

 

An expanded GCC including Jordan would benefit the current alliance members in several ways. Adding Jordan would solidify the moderate wing of Arab politics, increasing the prospects for regional stability. Perhaps more important for the regimes in question, Jordan's membership in what has been perceived as a "monarch's club" would enhance the stability of the Hashemites in Jordan at a time when a transition from the longest­ serving head of state in the Middle East looms on the horizon. Bolstering the monarchy through association with the Gulf states - and through the financial assistance such a link would be likely to spur - could also have a feedback effect, strengthening the GCC regimes themselves.

 

On the other hand, the GCC would inherit severe problems by enlarging the alliance to include Jordan. Although a resumption of the state of war between Israel and Jordan seems unlikely, a Jordanian policy change or the eruption of a crisis on the Syrian-Israeli front would risk direct GCC confrontation with Israel if Jordan were a member. Also, the GCC would take in a state populated mostly by Palestinians, rather different demographically than its potential partners,13 as well as lacking the natural­ resource base of the Gulf states and requiring massive financial assistance over an extended period of time.

 

 

 

Yemen

 

The only Arabian Peninsula country not in the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the only state to formally request membership in the alliance, is Yemen. Before 1990, Yemen was divided into two independent states, the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), which had difficult relations both with one another and with their neighbors. It was easy enough to exclude the PDRY from the GCC. As the only Marxist state in the Arab world, the PDRY supported efforts to destabilize the GCC states, especially Oman, for years. Although the YAR was not as easily dismissed, the lack of political stability there justified concern. As of 1981, President Ali Abdullah Salih had been in power for less than three years, after his two predecessors had been killed in office within nine months of one another. During the 1980s, GCC-YAR relations were generally good, but the Saudis maintained a patronizing attitude toward Sanaa.14

 

The Saudis (and, to a lesser extent, the other Gulf states) were as anxious about the YAR's membership in the Arab Cooperation Council as they were about Jordan's participation in the organization. Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Dr. Abdulkarim al-Iryani relates: "None of them liked [the ACC] ... they were irritated, and they were afraid of Iraq. But we had been excluded from the GCC. We said to the Saudis, what do you expect us to do?"15

 

Soon after joining the ACC, the YAR merged with the PDRY to fulfill the Yemeni dream of unification, achieved ahead of schedule on May 22, 1990.16 Many in Yemen expected that unity would lead to GCC consideration of the new state as a member; even the Saudis might find it beneficial to admit Yemen into the GCC and use the organization to constrain any lingering Yemeni irredentism. Within three months after unification, however, Iraq invaded Kuwait and changed the landscape of Middle Eastern politics. At the time, Yemen held a seat on the U.N. Security Council and felt that with the Arab world divided, it could neither support Iraq's invasion and occupation nor endorse the Coalition's actions. This line was too fine for the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and the rest of the Coalition. As a result, the Gulf states expelled about one million Yemeni workers, most of them from Saudi Arabia, where the authorities had previously allowed them to work without visas. The return of so many people to a country that was unable to provide for them led to a scarcity of resources, dramatic inflation and a dramatic rise in unemployment.

 

Over six years after the liberation of Kuwait, while ties have improved with most Coalition members - including GCC members Oman, the UAE and, especially, Qatar - relations between Yemen and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are still somewhat chilly. The split in the GCC over policy towards Yemen was highlighted by reactions to the 1994 Yemeni civil war. Most of the GCC states (led by Saudi Arabia) supported or sympathized with the southern secessionists, while Qatar sided with the government of Ali Abdullah Salih.17 Perhaps this explains why Yemen's formal request to join the GCC in December 1996 was presented in a letter from President Salih to Qatar's Crown Prince, Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin Khalifah Al Thani, in Doha, just hours before the 1996 GCC heads-of-state summit.18

 

The GCC would reap several benefits from including Yemen in the organization. First, given their small domestic markets, the GCC states would like to have large (and growing) outlets for their burgeoning export industries. Yemeni membership would add over 15 million additional "captive" consumers to the GCC market, with the promise of many more in the near future, given Yemen's rapid population growth. Along with GCC financial assistance, such economic involvement in Yemen would also help steady the troubled Yemeni economy. GCC membership would facilitate the employment of millions of Yemenis in the Gulf states, reducing chronic Yemeni unemployment (and thus Yemeni economic and political instability) while providing a secure source of relatively cheap Gulf labor. Enhancing the stability of Yemen is an important goal for the Gulf states: previous crises in Yemen such as the 1962-70 war in the YAR (which brought Egyptian troops to the peninsula and even into Saudi territory), the border wars between the two Yemens, and the 1994 Yemeni civil war all had negative impacts on the GCC states. GCC membership might eliminate or at least reduce the frequency of future crises for the six states.

 

However, it is clear that the GCC would inherent many difficulties by expanding the alliance to include Yemen. First, the Yemeni infrastructure is rather underdeveloped; massive investment would be necessary to bring it up to the standards of the GCC states. Second, despite the similarities among all of the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is distinct from the GCC states in its political and social culture. Yemen has also had several parliamentary elections and is actively publicizing its role as the most democratic state in Arabia. Although Kuwait also holds elections and Qatar and Oman are moving in this direction, Saudi Arabia is loath to bring a dynamic democratic experiment, one with voices quite critical of the kingdom, into the council. Finally, the Saudis are likely to reject Yemeni moves for membership until their border issues are both fully resolved by the two governments and accepted as permanent by the Yemeni people. As al-Iryani notes, "Resolving the border dispute with Saudi Arabia will deprive them of a very strong argument against having Yemen in the GCC."19

 

 

 

Iraq

 

According to the criteria established by the full title of the organization (the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf), Iraq is the natural country to become the seventh member of the GCC. Thus it is not surprising that Iraqis and citizens of the GCC states alike have often called for the GCC to invite Iraq to join.

 

Looking back at the nearly exponential growth of Gulf cooperation during the 1970s, it is difficult to believe that Iraq was not included in the GCC.20 Many of the bilateral and multilateral arrangements that blossomed in the years after the British withdrawal from east of Suez in 1971 included Iraq, although, as R. K. Ramazani notes, "There had been far more cooperation among the six Arab states which subsequently formed the GCC than between them and Arab Iraq."21 If there was any serious chance of the most populous of the Gulf Arab states being included in the group in its early period, it was dashed when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980. The outbreak of the war enabled the Gulf states to justify their exclusion of Iraq from the GCC on the grounds that the organization's members should be neutral in the conflict. Of course, the Gulf states feared Iran more than Iraq and went on to support Iraq during the war, but the war provided a convenient excuse for the GCC rulers to separate themselves from their Baathist neighbor, which had threatened their sovereignty (notably Kuwait's) before.

 

With the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the ties between the GCC states and Iraq seemed ready to flourish. In fact, Riyadh inked a non-aggression pact with Baghdad, and contacts increased throughout the Arab side of the Gulf. The major negative aspect in GCC-Iraqi relations was a dispute over oil policy. Iraq objected to Kuwaiti and Emirati quota-busting, which kept oil prices low. Baghdad also resented suspected Kuwaiti "theft" of Iraqi oil from the Rumaila field. Saddam perceived these as acts of war, preventing him from rebuilding his country (and its army) after the war as quickly as he wished.22 Still, there was hope for closer ties between the GCC and the lone outsider of the Arab Gulf.

 

The invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990 put to rest any such wishes, as the GCC rallied around Kuwait's cause and quickly moved together in full opposition to the Iraqi action. Since the defeat of Iraqi forces and liberation of Kuwait in 1991, internationally enforced U.N. sanctions have prevented a replay of Iraqi aggression, but Saddam Hussein's regime endures. Thus, despite increasing calls throughout the Gulf for a rehabilitation policy towards Iraq,²³ GCC membership remains unthinkable.

 

For the current member states of the GCC, an Iraqi role in the alliance would be useful to balance Iran, the country which most Gulf elites and military analysts identify as the more serious medium- and long-term threat to GCC security and regional stability despite the recent movement toward improved relations. The Iraqi population, large by Arab Gulf standards, would be a welcome addition to efforts to counter Iranian military manpower advantages over the six GCC states. Also, having Iraq in the GCC would be good for the growing export-oriented communities in the GCC. Iraq was a relatively wealthy country, and has the potential to be so again, and the GCC states could reap the rewards of developing its economy. The inclusion of Iraq might also help reduce some of its revisionism, largely driven by Saddam Hussein's personality but to some degree determined by the facts on the ground. Iraq's difficulties derive from its narrow outlet to the Gulf and have contributed to Iraqi claims on Kuwait under governments ranging from the Hashemite monarchy to the Baathists. Alliance ties with Iraq could lead to a deal on Iraqi access to the Gulf and dampen the effects of one of the most dangerous geopolitical realities in the region.

 

Of course, there is one large negative aspect to Iraqi membership in the council: the present Iraqi leadership. Saddam Hussein's presence to date has prevented any real rapprochement between Iraq and the GCC, and as long as Saddam Hussein holds on to power (and fails to account for the hundreds of Kuwaitis still missing after the war), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will ensure that the GCC as a whole does not get too close to Iraq. Two other factors will hurt Iraqi chances for membership no matter what government sits in Baghdad. First, the Iraqi people developed politically and socially on a rather different track than the citizens of the Gulf monarchies. This will make even a non-Baathist government less than fully compatible with the GCC states. Second, the mere size of Iraq will make the Gulf regimes, especially Saudi Arabia, think twice before inviting Iraq to join the GCC. Having played the role of GCC "big brother" for sixteen years, Riyadh would find either sharing the informal leadership of the council or, even worse, playing second fiddle to Baghdad hard to swallow.

 

 

 

PROSPECTS FOR GCC EXPANSION

 

What are the chances that the GCC will expand? For one candidate, Jordan, the prospects are weak. From the perspective of the GCC states, the Hashemite kingdom has little to give and a lot to take. The main benefit of including Jordan would be to use alliance membership to shore up the moderate monarchy, but this is perhaps just as likely to be achieved by continuing present policies and by free-riding on the efforts of other regional powers (Israel, Egypt) and extra regional ones (including the United States) with interests in Jordanian stability, making stronger GCC action unnecessary. GCC leaders have shown little interest in including Jordan despite the kingdom's recently improved relations with Kuwait, and the GCC is quite unlikely to invite Jordan to join the group.

 

Although Yemeni relations with the GCC have steadily improved since the Gulf War, Yemen will probably not become a GCC member in the near future. Recently, Emirati, Omani and Qatari statements have indicated support for including Yemen, but it is no secret that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia continue to frown upon the possibility. A more likely scenario than membership is that, by the early years of the next century, the GCC countries will reach an informal agreement with Yemen on the nature of GCC-Yemeni ties, especially on economic issues but eventually touching on security issues as well. If formalized, this could be sold as "associate membership" in the council, an option the Yemeni government would find disappointing but one they could hardly pass up, given the lack of available alternatives in the region.

 

Both the least and most likely country to be invited into the GCC as a full member is Iraq. It is the least likely new member as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power; most of the council's states, and Kuwait in particular, will not accept the mastermind of the invasion, occupation and near destruction of Kuwait as an equal in Supreme Council deliberations. However, public and elite opinion in the Gulf states increasingly supports closer ties with the Iraqi people,²⁴ such that when a new regime emerges in Iraq (especially if it is one with existing ties to the Arab Gulf leadership), after a "get-acquainted" period it is probable that Iraq and the GCC will develop a special relationship if not full alliance ties.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

The GCC does not face the predicament of NATO, where expansion appears to be necessary to give the alliance a confidence boost, if not a reason to carry on at all, in the post-Cold War world. The GCC is relatively stable with its current membership. This is easily explained: the Gulf monarchies have a great deal in common, including common threats to their security in a very tough neighborhood. Yet demands for expansion continue.

 

One important actor in the GCC equation neglected in the analysis to this point casts a long shadow over any discussion of international relations in the Gulf- the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regional giant in population, Iran often has criticized the GCC for allowing Western forces into the Gulf (during both the 1987 reflagging operation and Desert Shield/Desert Storm), for supporting their continued presence since the liberation of Kuwait, and for excluding Iran from the council itself. It is understandable that the GCC members did not include Iran in the organization upon its founding, since the group was formed largely to facilitate their efforts to counter Iranian-sponsored internal subversion and, as the war with Iraq wore on, to prepare for Iranian military challenges to the Arab side of the Gulf. The Gulf states were not about to bring the wolf into their pen, and will not now.

 

This does not preclude some form of arrangement with Iran on issues of mutual interest such as Gulf security. For years, many Gulf officials as well as observers of the region have supported a critical dialogue with Iran; recently some critics of the U.S. "dual containment" policy have urged the GCC states to go much further and transform their grouping into some type of collective-security organization including the Islamic Republic.25 Any understanding on security between the Arab states of the Gulf and Iran will be more along the lines of a critical dialogue than a Gulf League of Nations. It will be largely informal, limited in scope and not within the framework of the GCC.26

 

If the Gulf states continue to open up their political systems - following the trend since liberation in Kuwait and, if plans become sustained realities, in Oman and Qatar - pressure for widening GCC membership will increase. The people of Arabia, looking outside of the peninsula at the rest of the world, are quite similar. Even Yemen can be imagined within the GCC "in-group" when the alliance is compared to certain "others" such as Iran. Of course, the current GCC members have much more in common among themselves than an expanded council would; in the present GCC, "there is one culture, one religion, one set of customs ... it is a family."27 In the words of the long-serving GCC secretary-general, the six monarchies "are like-minded countries, similar domestically, internationally, in their politics and their history and their culture."  28 But in an increasingly open international system, in which elites recognize the need to stand together or hang separately, it may be easier to accept a wider view of the GCC, one with a slightly more inclusive identity and an expanded membership.

 

* The author would like to thank the American Center for Oriental Research and the Near and Middle East Research and Training Project for their financial support, and John Duke Anthony, Sheila Carapico, Jill Crystal, Gregory Gause, Shafeeq Ghabra, Gary Sick and Naser Tahboub for their assistance.

 

1 See Rolin G. Mainuddin, Joseph R. Aicher, Jr., and Jeffrey M. Elliot, "From Alliance to Collective Security: Rethinking the Gulf Cooperation Council," Middle East Policy, Vol. 4, No. 3, (March 1996), pp. 39-49; and Kenneth Katzman, Beyond Dual Containment, Emirates Occasional Papers, No. 6, (Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1996).

 

2 Author's interviews with Gulf officials, March-May 1997. Some interviews (or portions of the material therein) were given under the condition that the sources would not be directly attributed by name or position.

 

3 Kuwaiti Ministry of Information/ Al-Arabi, Kuwait on the March, (Kuwait: Ministry of Information, 1989), pp. 222.

 

4 Erik R. Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Search/or Unity in a Dynamic Region, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), p. 99.

 

5 Federal Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Daily Report: Middle East and South Asia, February 9, 1981, p. Cl.

 

6 David Priess, "Balance-of-Threat Theory and the Genesis of the Gulf Cooperation Council: An Interpretive Case Study," Security Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4, (Summer 1996), pp. 145-71; R.K. Ramazani, with the assistance of Joseph A. Kechichian, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Record and Analysis, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1988), ch. I.

 

7 The GCC Charter is available in English in American-Arab Affairs, No. 7, (Winter 1983-84), pp. 157-62. On security discussions early in the GCC, see John Duke Anthony, "The Gulf Cooperation Council," Journal of South Asian and Middle East Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4, (Summer 1982), esp. p. 4; Majid Khadduri, The Gulf War: The Origins and Implications of the Iran-Iraq Conflict, p. 150; and Ali M. Al-Mehalmeed, "Security and Political Cooperation Among GCC States," King Khalid Military Academy Quarterly, Vol. IO, No. 38, (Summer 1992), pp. 6-15.

 

8 The charter establishes three main bodies in the GCC: The Supreme Council, the highest body, which is comprised of six heads of state; the Ministerial Council, made up of the foreign ministers of GCC states (or their representatives); and the Secretariat-General, located in Riyadh.

 

9 Author's interview, June 1996, Amman. It should be noted that several Gulf officials involved in the formation of the GCC deny these assertions; author's interviews, March-May 1997.

 

10 Author's interview with Mudar Badran, July 1996, Amman.

 

11 See Laurie A. Brand, Jordan's Inter-Arab Relations: The Political Economy of Alliance Making, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), chpts. 3 and 4.

 

1 2 Author' s interview with Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Dr. Abdulkarim al-Iryani, May 1997, Sanaa.

 

13 As one Gulf official told a Jordanian minister, "You have many problems which you can't handle, like the Palestinians. Our dangers become much greater if you are a member." Author's interview with former Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Marwan al-Qasim, June 1996, Amman.

 

14 On Saudi-Yemen relations in the early 1980s, see F. Gregory Gause, Saudi-Yemen Relations: Domestic Structures and Foreign Influence, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), chpts. 8 and 9.

 

15 Author's interview, May 1997, Sanaa.

 

16 See Charles Dunbar, "The Unification of Yemen: Process, Politics, and Prospects," Middle East Journal, 46:3, (Summer 1992), pp. 81-93.

 

17 Mark N. Katz, "External Powers and the Yemeni Civil War," The Yemeni War of 1994: Causes and Consequences, (London: Saqi Books for the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1995), pp. 81-93.

 

18 Reuters World Service, December 1, and December 16, 1996, Dubai and Sanaa.

 

19 Author's interview, May 1997, Sanaa.

 

20 A good review of Gulf cooperation in the 1970s is provided in Joseph Wright Twinam, The Gulf. Cooperation and the Council: An American Perspective, (Washington: Middle East Policy Council, 1992), ch. 4.

 

21 Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council, p. 4.

 

22 See Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order, (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 40-41, 46-47.

 

23 See Abdullah Al-Shayeji, "Dangerous Perceptions: Gulf Views of the U.S. Role in the Region," Middle East Policy, Vol. 5, No. 3, (September 1997), pp. 1-13.

 

24 Author's interviews with Gulf officials and citizens, March-May 1997.

 

25 For example, see the somewhat idealistic prescriptions in Katzman, Beyond Dual Containment, and Mainuddin, Aicher, and Elliot, "From Alliance to Collective Security."

 

26 Author's interview with Kuwaiti Minister of Information Shiekh Saud Nasir al-Sabah, March 1997, Kuwait.

 

27 Ibid.

 

28Author's interview with Abdulla Yacoub Bishara, March 1997, Kuwait.