Toby Jones: Embracing Crisis in the Gulf

Photo Credit: Arabian Business

Toby Jones, in a featured article for the Middle East Research and Information Report, discussed how opposition movements in the Gulf countries are affecting the United States. Jones argues the key task for the U.S. “is to aid those states in managing their domestic crisis so that the regional order can remain intact.” Gulf States initially reacted to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt by raising public-sector salaries, “trying to spend their way out of potential trouble.” There has been an increase in state violence however, with detentions, disappearances, and killings partly driven by anxiety and “mixed with a sense of opportunity, all of which are related to the balance of power with Iran.” Jones notes that “anti-Iranian hysteria is at an all-time high,” and many Gulf countries may view the heightened tension as a way to “secure the backing of their benefactors, chiefly the United States.”

Jones lamented that unfortunately “the U.S. has enabled the Gulf regimes to behave badly” and is in a weak position, “tied to partners in the Gulf who are politically vulnerable.” The U.S. is also deeply concerned about energy security and “would not outsource the protection of the oil patch” it has in the Gulf. Jones suggests that “while U.S. and Gulf monarchy interests have been served … it is a stretch to call the Gulf secure, let alone stable.”

The Arab uprisings “induced a sense of looming disaster,” yet the Gulf kingdoms have been able to utilize uprisings and unrest to create political utility. As Jones points out, “the monarchies have been successful in recasting (uprisings and protests) as threats to the system … rather than groundswells that reflect interests of actual subjects.” While the Gulf monarchies seem to take no issue with redistributing wealth, they “remain steadfast in preserving an antiquated and rotten political order.” Jones concludes that “the United States endorses the status quo [and] is complicit not only in the Gulf regimes’ efforts to quash citizen protest, but also in the redesign of Gulf security architecture by which crisis becomes the norm.”