Gulf Cooperation Council

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a political and economic partnership composed of six Persian Gulf countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Formed amid warfare and political tensions in nearby Middle Eastern nations, the council was intended to foster friendship and collective security among member states by encouraging collaborative militaries, commerce, and communications, as well as educational and cultural exchanges. In the early twenty-first century, the main international issues facing the GCC were an increasingly powerful Iran and the terrorist organization the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Origin of the Council

The Gulf Cooperation Council came about as a response to a variety of regional political events of the late 1970s and early 1980s. One of these was the Iranian revolution of 1979 that saw the shah, or king, of Iran overthrown and replaced with an Islamic supreme leader. The revolution made the kingdoms of the Persian Gulf region—Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—begin to fear that uprisings could soon topple their own monarchies.

Later in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded the nearby nation of Afghanistan to bolster the crumbling Communist government there. This move also threatened the Gulf kingdoms because it meant the Soviet Union was attempting to expand its influence into the Middle East. Finally, the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980 made the Gulf nations realize they needed to protect themselves collectively or risk being destroyed by regional instability.

In May 1981, the heads of state of the six Gulf kingdoms convened in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, to discuss how they could safeguard one another against foreign threats. They eventually emerged with the Gulf Cooperation Council Charter. This document officially established the Gulf Cooperation Council, which consisted of Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

Although collective security was the main concern of most council members, the issue did not appear in the final GCC charter. It was, however, a major point for various parties during preliminary negotiations of the charter. Saudi Arabia, for instance, requested that all six nations form a joint army if any member states were attacked by a foreign country. Oman, meanwhile, lobbied for a common navy to defend the strategically important Strait of Hormuz, the only waterway between the Persian Gulf and the open ocean.

Terms of the Charter

The six GCC countries ultimately agreed to assist one another militarily if the need arose, but these provisions were not included in the text of the GCC charter. Instead, the agreement focused on the cultural similarities of the six nations and their need to cooperate politically and economically to reinforce these connections.

The broadest tie among the six nations was that they were all Islamic, Arab-speaking monarchies. To help one another sustain their unique culture, the GCC nations agreed to collaborate in a variety of areas. These would include commercial trading, customs (the national authorities responsible for overseeing the flow of goods into and out of a country), economic pacts, and exchanges of educational opportunities and culture.

The financial-cooperation aspect of the charter was especially important to the GCC members. These energy-rich nations all shared in the profits of the lucrative global oil market and so were highly interested in working together to maximize their returns. The GCC would also facilitate the growth of the Gulf nations' private industries by establishing joint projects in the fields of scientific research, agriculture, natural resources, and mining.

Activities of the Council

One of the first major actions of the GCC was its creation of the Peninsula Shield in 1984. This was a small collective-defense military consisting of forces from each of the six member countries and stationed in Saudi Arabia, near the Kuwaiti border. However, the Peninsula Shield was weak and ineffective, and, for many years, was not expanded to an appropriate fighting size.

The army did nothing to stop Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the event that began the Persian Gulf War; a United States–led coalition ultimately defeated Iraq in early 1991. Later that year, Oman proposed establishing a new GCC collective military of one hundred thousand troops, but the idea was rejected.

In 2003, the GCC sent Peninsula Shield reinforcements to Kuwait to protect the country from any residual violence resulting from the American invasion of Iraq that year. In 2004, due to an increase in terrorism in the Middle East, the six GCC countries enacted an intelligence-sharing agreement to intercept terrorist activity in their territories.

Over the next decade, the GCC began significantly fortifying its regional security. In 2011, the council deployed about ten thousand troops to Bahrain to quell civilian protests against the monarchical government. In 2014 and 2015, the GCC increased its arms spending by 20 percent to about $83 billion.

Concerning finances, the GCC has been an economic success since it began. This was due almost entirely to its considerable oil reserves. In fact, the Gulf region's oil industry helped keep the GCC countries relatively financially stable during the global economic recession of 2008 and 2009.

Over the years, numerous other Arab nations—including Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf state of Yemen—attempted to join the GCC, but all were refused. The GCC, however, continued to fund infrastructure and security efforts in these countries.

In the mid to late 2010s, the GCC nations disagreed fundamentally on how to manage an increasingly powerful Iran. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain distrusted Iran and believed it was attempting to destabilize the Middle East. Meanwhile, Oman, Qatar, and the Emirate of Dubai believed diplomacy was required to work with Iran. The issue of Iran and the rise of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS continued to divide the GCC countries into the late 2010s. In the early and mid-2020s, the GCC signed trade agreements with Turkey, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Japan, among other nations. Additionally, between the mid-2010s and mid-2020s, the countries in the GCC invested over $100 billion in African nations, and in 2024, the GCC announced plans for over seventy projects totaling $53 billion across Africa.

Bibliography

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