Why the Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain [and the US]
A summary
Anglo-American interest in the enormous hydrocarbon reserves of the Persian Gulf does not derive from a need to fuel Western consumption.
The US has never imported more than a token amount from the Gulf and for much of the postwar period has been a net oil exporter. Anglo-American involvement in the Middle East has always been principally about the strategic advantage gained from controlling Persian Gulf hydrocarbons, not Western oil needs.
What remains a US strategy: the US and Britain would provide Saudi Arabia and other key Gulf monarchies with ‘sufficient military supplies to preserve internal security’.
In a piece for the Atlantic a few months after 9/11, Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne explained that Washington 'assumes responsibility for stabilising the region’ because China, Japan and Europe will be dependent on its resources for the foreseeable future: ‘America wants to discourage those powers from developing the means to protect that resource for themselves.’
The developed Asian economies are heavily reliant on Persian Gulf oil and Qatari natural gas. US dominance in the Gulf gives it decisive strategic influence over any potential Asian rival.
The US has a huge military presence in the region: United States Central Command is based at al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, the largest air force base in the world. Only Iran, which broke away from the US system in 1979, houses no American military bases.
It was the cost of the military ‘protection’ of the Gulf that forced the end of Britain’s formal empire there in 1971, and the beginning of US hegemony.
Before withdrawing from its dependencies, the British government placed retired military officers as advisers to Gulf monarchs it had for the most part installed in order to protect ‘oil and other interests’ and a ‘very profitable market in military equipment’, in the words of the then foreign secretary, Michael Stewart. Even now, a striking number of Middle East rulers are graduates of Sandhurst.
In 2016, Theresa May pledged to increase Britain’s military commitments there, ‘with more British warships, aircraft and personnel deployed on operations than in any other part of the world’.
Britain’s residual influence in Saudi Arabia meant that during the oil crises of the 1970s the kingdom secretly broke its own embargo to supply Britain. Saudi Arabia also continued to pump much of the massive surplus generated by oil sales into British financial institutions.
Barclays received £4.6 billion from Qatar and £3.5 billion from the UAE, helping it to avoid nationalisation. Qatar’s investments in the UK are many and conspicuous.
The US’s inherited mastery of the Gulf has given it a degree of leverage over both rivals and allies probably unparalleled in the history of empire.
The Arab Gulf states have proved well-suited to their status as US client states, in part because their populations are small and their subjugated working class comes from Egypt and South Asia.
Western oil companies had been extracting huge profits while the Gulf states received little more than an allowance. These companies have less power now, except in Oman, where Royal Dutch Shell still owns a third of the main oil company.
Saudi Arabia’s helotry to the West was one of al-Qaida’s preoccupations but the US-Saudi alliance has if anything strengthened since the group’s founding. The extreme conservatism of the Gulf monarchies, in which there is in principle no consultation with the citizenry, means that the use of oil sales to prop up Western economies – rather than to finance, say, domestic development – is met with little objection.
Since the West installed the monarchs, and its behaviour is essentially extractive, I see no reason to avoid describing the continued Anglo-American domination of the Gulf as colonial.
Saudi Arabia and the other five members of the Gulf Co-operation Council are collectively the world’s largest buyer of military equipment by a big margin.
In 2017, the US and Saudi Arabia signed the largest arms deal in history, estimated to be worth $350 billion.
Arms sales are useful principally as a way of bonding the Gulf monarchies to the Anglo-American military. Proprietary systems – from fighter jets to tanks and surveillance equipment – ensure lasting dependence, because training, maintenance and spare parts can be supplied only by the source country.
The US made its guarantees of Saudi and Arab Gulf security conditional on the use of oil sales to shore up the dollar. In addition, the US compelled Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC countries to set oil prices in dollars, and for many years Gulf oil shipments could be paid for only in dollars. A de facto oil standard replaced gold, assuring the dollar’s value and pre-eminence.
—Tom Stevenson reviewing David Wearing's AngloArabia: Why the Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain (2019) London Review of Books, 9 May 2019
Given the above, would it be logical and practical for the US and its Western allies to support a genuine change in the Gulf? The Gulf monarchies, after all, have not witnessed uprisings. The Bahraini one was quickly put down with Saudi and Emirati assistance. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been taking an active part in aborting uprisings and restoring military dictatorships. Any meaningful change would not only jeopardise the geo-politico-economic leverage the US has, but any leverage London and Washington have at home in shoring up their financial markets and their economies as a whole, and maintaining the consent of their populations.
A summary
Anglo-American interest in the enormous hydrocarbon reserves of the Persian Gulf does not derive from a need to fuel Western consumption.
The US has never imported more than a token amount from the Gulf and for much of the postwar period has been a net oil exporter. Anglo-American involvement in the Middle East has always been principally about the strategic advantage gained from controlling Persian Gulf hydrocarbons, not Western oil needs.
What remains a US strategy: the US and Britain would provide Saudi Arabia and other key Gulf monarchies with ‘sufficient military supplies to preserve internal security’.
In a piece for the Atlantic a few months after 9/11, Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne explained that Washington 'assumes responsibility for stabilising the region’ because China, Japan and Europe will be dependent on its resources for the foreseeable future: ‘America wants to discourage those powers from developing the means to protect that resource for themselves.’
The developed Asian economies are heavily reliant on Persian Gulf oil and Qatari natural gas. US dominance in the Gulf gives it decisive strategic influence over any potential Asian rival.
The US has a huge military presence in the region: United States Central Command is based at al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, the largest air force base in the world. Only Iran, which broke away from the US system in 1979, houses no American military bases.
It was the cost of the military ‘protection’ of the Gulf that forced the end of Britain’s formal empire there in 1971, and the beginning of US hegemony.
Before withdrawing from its dependencies, the British government placed retired military officers as advisers to Gulf monarchs it had for the most part installed in order to protect ‘oil and other interests’ and a ‘very profitable market in military equipment’, in the words of the then foreign secretary, Michael Stewart. Even now, a striking number of Middle East rulers are graduates of Sandhurst.
In 2016, Theresa May pledged to increase Britain’s military commitments there, ‘with more British warships, aircraft and personnel deployed on operations than in any other part of the world’.
Britain’s residual influence in Saudi Arabia meant that during the oil crises of the 1970s the kingdom secretly broke its own embargo to supply Britain. Saudi Arabia also continued to pump much of the massive surplus generated by oil sales into British financial institutions.
Barclays received £4.6 billion from Qatar and £3.5 billion from the UAE, helping it to avoid nationalisation. Qatar’s investments in the UK are many and conspicuous.
The US’s inherited mastery of the Gulf has given it a degree of leverage over both rivals and allies probably unparalleled in the history of empire.
The Arab Gulf states have proved well-suited to their status as US client states, in part because their populations are small and their subjugated working class comes from Egypt and South Asia.
Western oil companies had been extracting huge profits while the Gulf states received little more than an allowance. These companies have less power now, except in Oman, where Royal Dutch Shell still owns a third of the main oil company.
Saudi Arabia’s helotry to the West was one of al-Qaida’s preoccupations but the US-Saudi alliance has if anything strengthened since the group’s founding. The extreme conservatism of the Gulf monarchies, in which there is in principle no consultation with the citizenry, means that the use of oil sales to prop up Western economies – rather than to finance, say, domestic development – is met with little objection.
Since the West installed the monarchs, and its behaviour is essentially extractive, I see no reason to avoid describing the continued Anglo-American domination of the Gulf as colonial.
Saudi Arabia and the other five members of the Gulf Co-operation Council are collectively the world’s largest buyer of military equipment by a big margin.
In 2017, the US and Saudi Arabia signed the largest arms deal in history, estimated to be worth $350 billion.
Arms sales are useful principally as a way of bonding the Gulf monarchies to the Anglo-American military. Proprietary systems – from fighter jets to tanks and surveillance equipment – ensure lasting dependence, because training, maintenance and spare parts can be supplied only by the source country.
The US made its guarantees of Saudi and Arab Gulf security conditional on the use of oil sales to shore up the dollar. In addition, the US compelled Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC countries to set oil prices in dollars, and for many years Gulf oil shipments could be paid for only in dollars. A de facto oil standard replaced gold, assuring the dollar’s value and pre-eminence.
—Tom Stevenson reviewing David Wearing's AngloArabia: Why the Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain (2019) London Review of Books, 9 May 2019
Given the above, would it be logical and practical for the US and its Western allies to support a genuine change in the Gulf? The Gulf monarchies, after all, have not witnessed uprisings. The Bahraini one was quickly put down with Saudi and Emirati assistance. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been taking an active part in aborting uprisings and restoring military dictatorships. Any meaningful change would not only jeopardise the geo-politico-economic leverage the US has, but any leverage London and Washington have at home in shoring up their financial markets and their economies as a whole, and maintaining the consent of their populations.
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