"AngloArabia" - David Wearing

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Given the recent killing of Jamal Khashoggi, who would not be interested in learning more about Britain's ties to the Gulf States?  This book is an edited version of David Wearing's PhD thesis (and more about that later).

Wearing's contribution is summed up in his concluding chapter from which I copiously quote.

"This book has attempted to map the deep underlying structures of UK relations with the Gulf Arab monarchies."

The book is centred around Britain's historical links and current relationships with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

"Gulf hydrocarbons and the petrodollar riches that are generated by their production are important to the UK not only for narrow commercial reasons but also because they play a vital role in addressing some of Britain's specific and fundamental needs as a major capitalist power. London built its relationships with the GCC monarchies through a century and a half of imperial dominance of the Gulf region and another half-century of developing and maintaining those ties beyond the end of formal empire. ...

"The primary significance of the Gulf lies in its vast energy reserves, first because the stability of the global economy depends on the reliable flow of oil and gas from the region, second because control over those resources constitutes a major source of geostrategic power for any state or states interested in global hegemony, and third because the revenues generated by Gulf hydrocarbon production can be 'recycled' to the leading capitalist states in a number of advantageous ways."

Given the importance of oil to strategic adversaries such as China, exclusive control of the Middle East oil fields has been a continuing major priority for the West.

"London therefore seeks to support and complement the projection of US military power into the region, protect the Gulf monarchies from internal and external challenges, and maximise petrodollar recycling in various forms that benefit British capitalism and the UK's status as an international power, from capital inflows to the City of London to major arms purchases. ...

"Britain is not directly energy-dependent on the Gulf, although disruptions in the region's hydrocarbon exports would have a damaging indirect effect on the UK economy. "

That surprised me. It turns out that most Gulf hydrocarbons are sold to Asia. Britain's major import from the region is Qatari gas. Britain gets most of its imported oil from Norway, Algeria, Nigeria and Russia.  Only 3% comes from Saudi Arabia and an insignificant amount from the other Gulf states (p. 52).

"There is a 'dual logic' shaping British and American energy strategies relating to security of Gulf energy flows and US control over them, based on the increasing importance of Gulf oil and gas in meeting global demand and on the growing dependence of emerging Asian powers - China in particular - on Gulf energy imports.

"The UK also has a major commercial interest in Gulf hydrocarbons given that two of its largest corporations - BP and Shell -are among the leading international energy firms. The Gulf has always been important to those firms, and is becoming increasingly so. While they have had to absorb some setbacks in recent years, they have also enjoyed notable successes and remain in a fairly strong position in a region that, overall, remains economically dependent on energy production."

The book documents some remarkable examples of the intertwined links between the British oil majors and the Foreign Office and relevant embassies.

"Gulf petrodollars recycled through UK-GCC trade and investment play an important role in addressing the key macroeconomic challenges facing the British economy and in maintaining Britain's status as a leading capitalist power. This has been particularly true in the period following the sharp rise in oil prices around the turn of the millennium.

"The region has become a key export market relative to others in the developing world. UK-based banks were more successful in attracting Gulf capital than those in other financial centres, and those inflows were highly significant by the standards of the global south, if not the global north. The Gulf bailout of Barclays Bank in 2008 demonstrated that GCC capital could play a highly significant stabilizing role in certain circumstances."

Also a rather opaque one.

"Perhaps the most important role played by Gulf capital, especially Saudi petrodollars, is in financing Britain's large current account deficit, thus also indirectly helping to maintain the status of the pound sterling. In this regard, these net capital inflows are significant compared with those from any other source, whether in the developing or the developed world.

"British arms exports to the GCC states help the UK to maintain the military-industrial capacity required as the basis for global power projection. Exports to the rest of the world are in steady long-term decline while those to the Gulf market have steadily risen in parallel. When questions of corruption have arisen over these arms deals, Whitehall has gone to considerable lengths to avoid formal scrutiny, going so far as to defy the wishes of Washington and some major City investors in the process. "

The UK's SFO (Serious Fraud Office) bribery investigation against BAE - which was somewhat scandalously dropped - is a case in point (pp. 171-177).

"British commitments to the protection of the Gulf monarchies, while plainly of less significance than those of the US, are nonetheless wide-ranging, extensive and multi-layered. The UK's continuing support for Bahrain in the wake of its violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011 amounted to a major strategic vote of confidence in the Al Khalifa monarchy, just as the wider deepening of military ties with the GCC states against the background of the Arab uprisings was a clear expression of support for the conservative regional order.

"Meanwhile, the large-scale material and practical assistance London provided to the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen despite numerous credible reports of indiscriminate bombing, the unfolding of a major humanitarian disaster, and considerable consequent pressure on the British government to suspend arms sales - demonstrated both the extent of Whitehall's commitment to military cooperation with the Saudis and the extent of the latter's dependence on the UK (not only the US) in wartime."

It's not in the West's interests to have an Iranian-backed regime at Saudi Arabia's southern border exerting control over the Bab-el-Mandeb strait connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden - a major oil route. Public angst is really driven by Saudi Arabia's incompetence in waging the war, its failure to bring about a swift victory.

"When evaluating the extent to which each side needs the other in the relationship, we should also consider what each side needs the other for. London needs to support American domination of the Gulf as part of its commitment to supporting US global hegemony, but this commitment is ultimately a choice.

"London needs the GCC states to spend their petrodollars on major arms purchases to sustain its domestic military industry, but only because it has chosen to attempt to preserve its status as an international military power. The social wellbeing of the British population is not necessarily dependent on London retaining this status (many prosperous societies manage very well without it).

"In economic terms, Britain needs Gulf capital inflows to help finance its current account deficit, but that deficit is in no small part the product of a choice to balance the UK economy away from visible exports and towards financial services as part of the move to neoliberalism in the 1980s.

"By contrast, the Gulf monarchies' need for support from the leading capitalist powers is of a more existential nature. The United States is their main protector, but the UK's complementary role and its own state-to-state defence agreements with the Gulf states are not insignificant. Seeking such protection, for monarchical governments with uncertain levels of domestic legitimacy and support, is less of a choice and more of a necessity.

"For the UK, while the difficulty of effecting a departure from long-established geopolitical and economic strategies should certainly not be underplayed, it remains the case that Britain's close relationship with the Gulf states is based on a series of choices, each of which have possible alternatives."

Wearing suggests that Britain could choose to swap its support for Washington's global hegemony for a more neutral and peaceful position, abandon international power projection, restrict its military posture to direct self-defence and move its high-tech manufacturing capacity away from arms production towards sectors such as renewable energy.

The capitalist class is, of course, aware of these options and chooses not to take them. Wearing must therefore have in mind countervailing social forces which could compel his alternative strategy (one which the dominant fraction of the UK elite would consider highly suboptimal and damaging). He does not, however, enlighten us further as to what these might be.

Let me return to the evaluation of this book. The format of PhD theses is heavily formalised and choreographed. You need a literature review, a survey of work already done, the presentation of new material in a thorough and dispassionate form, and an emphasis on sources and detail. All of this generally makes for exceedingly dry reading.

Wearing has done his best, but his book is tedious. It's heavy on facts and somewhat underweight on analysis. It will suit those who are studying the region and need the details but for the average reader it's just too much of an effort to keep the pages turning.