Managing Regional Conflict: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Embargo of Qatar

Abstract

This article will explore the arrangement of and relations between states inside ROs as they move from conflict to negotiation, as well as the different types of negotiations that they choose – bilateral, mediated, multiparty, or hybrid. In doing so, it will illuminate the opportunities that exist at the regional level to develop inclusive regional frameworks for mediation and negotiation and, in the right circumstances, effective security communities. Broadly defined, a security community exists when sovereign states can overcome a lack of mutual trust and difficult regional environments to develop new forms of cooperative security that prioritize self‐restraint and the peaceful resolution of differences and reduce the expectation of the need to resort to organized violence to settle interstate disputes (Adler and Barnett, 1988; Adler and Greve, 2009).

The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Failure of Peacebuilding in Yemen

“…The GCC's mixed record in fostering negative and positive peace is taken into account when examining its contribution to peacebuilding in Yemen. While peacebuilding as a concept has not yet been applied to the GCC, literature exists about its involvement in mediation in the region (Pinfari 2009;Nuruzzaman 2015), the extent to which it could be considered a security community (Barnett and Gause 1998;Koch 2010) and the position of the GCC within the regional security framework in the Persian Gulf (Kraig 2004;Miller 2019). By providing a case study on the contribution of the GCC to peacebuilding in Yemen, this article aims to add to the literature on regionalisation and peacebuilding.…”

Kuwaiti Policy toward the “Qatar Crisis“

“…The failure of the GCC to solve the current crisis has undermined its future viability and threatened regional stability. 49 What makes the situation worse for Kuwait is that the Gulf crisis happened when the regional system was already facing security challenges. U.S. foreign policy toward the GCC has noticeably changed since Trump came to the White House in January 2017.…”