Author’s Note: Welcome back to my weekly commentary. I do apologise for not posting anything last week! A mix of interviews, illness, and travels made it a bit much but hopefully this week’s piece makes up for it!
It is hardly a profound insight to say that Trump has been stirring the pot when it comes to international relations. His America-First approach has meant placing tariffs on the EU, withdrawing support for Ukraine while it remains at war with Russia, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, and trying to turn Canada into the 51st state. Whether one is based in North America, Europe, or the Middle East, American leadership has transformed into something more cutthroat.
In a world that is rife with competition, unforeseen changes, and new demands, the desire for Americans to put themselves first is at the very least understandable. Changing priorities, logically, results in changing commitments. Yet it is a logic of tactical advantage, not strategic gain. Focusing on ones self-interest is encouragement for others to do the same which inevitably leads to new competition where before there was cooperation. This is something that Trump himself recognises as witnessed in a recent press conference held in the Oval Office. Here, he said that certain allies will be sold military planes that are “toned down” because “someday, maybe they’re not our allies”.
To a Realist student of international relations, this seems like a fitting response to a world in which anarchy seems to be re-asserting itself. With no overarching power that can govern the actions of states, states must fend for themselves – or so the argument goes. Yet, anarchy is what we make of it and such a view of anarchy is often imposed instead of inherent. Britain’s imperial history can shine light on this point.
Imperial Dawn
To say that the British empire has a mixed history often sounds like a delicate way of avoiding the horrors imposed by imperialism. Nonetheless, the empire spanned multiple centuries and continents. Suffice to say, not all of the experiences of empire were the same. One such example is the Persian Gulf (or ‘Gulf’ for short – I hope you now appreciate the pun in the title).
Prior to the arrival of the British, the Gulf was a hyper-competitive region that seemed to vindicate Western understandings of anarchy. Owing to a lack of natural resources and thus military capacity, no single power could come to dominate the rest. Local sheikhs, when going up against a stronger opponent, required outside help and in order to gain this help, they would pay tribute. As Onley writes, the ‘protector regarded his tributary as a part of his own tribe. Similarly, the protector regarded his tributary’s territory as his territory’. The tribute was known as khuwa – a brotherhood fee – paid by the weak to the strong in such a way that it ‘clothed unequal power relations in a culturally meaningful kinship ideology’.
In the late 18th century, partly because of the Napoleonic Wars, the UK became slightly more involved in the Gulf by enforcing an anti-piracy treaty and by setting up a diplomatic posting to liaise between Gulf leaders and the British government in Bombay. Between 1805 and 1861, however, the ‘Resident’ (as the office was known) received no less than 98 requests for protection from Gulf rulers. The British were hesitant of overstretching commitments and of becoming dragged into local conflicts they had little understanding of. They were also worried that such protection would secure rulers against their rivals, making them less dependent on their people for support and thus allowing them to become despotic. Crucially, the British understanding of protection was that protection was reliant on a would-be attackers respect for the firepower of the protector whereas the Gulf’s concept of protection also relied on the honour of the protector. Simply put, enemies who shared the same protector were unlikely to attack one another. If that security could be granted to everyone, no one would fight.
Over the course of the 19th century, this was slowly realised by the British and turned into a reality with the creation of Pax Britannica. It is because of this period that Kuwait remains Britain’s single-largest investor.
Fast-forward to the 20th century and Britain staggered out of the mercilessness of two world wars. For a country that had come together, it was only fair that those who had been willing to sacrifice so much be granted the social care befitting such service. This was the start of the state pension and the NHS. Such changing priorities, on top of a world that had finally accepted that self-determination was a principle owed to all peoples, meant that the UK was no longer able or willing to commit to its empire.
In 1961, Kuwait led the way in gaining independence from the UK (though a Treaty of Friendship was signed). Days later, the Iraqi Prime Minister announced that the country would annex Kuwait, and the ruler of Kuwait was forced to request British protection. The other sheikhs saw that independence brought vulnerability. It was thus a worrying development in 1968 when Harold Wilson declared that the UK would withdraw its military from the Gulf by the end of 1971. The rulers of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar all offered to pay for a continued military presence while Kuwait said it was willing to consider financial contributions. Nonetheless, the decision was made.
At the time, the US had come to realise the military and economic importance of oil, and thus the value of the Gulf to American interests. Also wanting to ensure the Soviets weren’t the ones to replace Great Britain, the US took on the old mantle of Pax Britannica.
Self(ish)-Determination
The GWU Program on Extremism recently hosted a discussion with former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (US Ambassador to the Middle East). After witnessing Trump’s start to his second term, she said that leaders in the Gulf had asked the question ‘is the United States still a reliable partner?’. The question, she said, had a “strong whiff of the 1890s”. Her point was that the cultural understanding of anarchy and security that characterised the Gulf remains there today. With American leadership becoming more cutthroat and less consistently considerate of its partners, Gulf leaders face the possibility that they may have to contend with more active external influence and more internal competition in the region. For an area that has a host of class, gender, migrant, religious, and nationalist challenges, this is a worrying development. Kuwait has already stripped the nationality and passports of 42,000 citizens to ensure that democracy can’t “be exploited to destroy the state”.
When Britain’s international priorities – and thus commitments – turned away from the imperial, regions like the Gulf were left vulnerable and a country like Cyprus that was promised a guarantor was left dealing with Empire-made problems by itself. Though the Gulf was able to avoid such a fate in the 1970s, today it cannot make that same guarantee. The lesson is that changing priorities are to be expected, but changing commitments need to be communicated and managed. As the US changes its commitments, Ukraine is not the only place where British leadership might make the difference between cooperation and violent competition.