UNITED STATE OF AMERICA AND THE POLITICS OF GULF

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background Of Study

The united states of America is a country of 50 states, it covers a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the extreme Northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major cities include New York, a global finance and culture center, and Washington, DC, the capital, both on the Atlantic Coast; Los Angeles, famed for filmmaking, on the Pacific Coast; and the Midwestern metropolis Chicago.

The united state of America has being the world power for several years; having their mark on the history of peace keeping; there have being some significant changes that lie ahead for U.S. security strategy in the Persian Gulf after almost a decade of stasis. In the decade between the Gulf War and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the strategy of dual containment of Iraq and Iran was a key driver of American military planning and force posture for the region. During these years, the overriding U.S. concern was preserving access to Gulf oil at reasonable prices; both Iran and Iraq possessed only a limited ability to project power and influence beyond their borders; the Persian Gulf states acquiesced to a significant U.S. military presence on their soil despite the domestic costs; and the United States was reasonably successful, at least until the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000, in insulating its relationships with key Gulf states from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the end of the Clinton administration, it seemed safe to assume that the regional security environment would continue to evolve more or less on its present trajectory and that the challenge confronting the United States was how to manage U.S. forward presence for the long haul under increasingly stressful conditions. This premise is no longer valid. The strategy of dual containment, which is just barely alive, will expire in one way or another in all likelihood because the United States decides to end Saddam Husayn’s rule. American success in engineering a regime change in Baghdad will require a substantial increase in U.S. forward deployed forces followed by a multinational occupation of Iraq that is likely to include a significant U.S. military component. At the same time, even if regime change does not occur in Iraq, other factors are likely to put pressure on the United States over the next decade to alter the shape of its military posture toward the region. The campaign against global terrorism will demand a closer look at U.S. policies toward the Persian Gulf that complicate this effort, including the U.S. military presence. Political and social trends in Saudi Arabia will make the royal family even more wary of U.S. forces on their soil.

The demands of the war on terrorism and American defense strategy more broadly could make sustaining current military commitments in the region increasingly difficult. Finally, the transformation of U.S. military capabilities is likely to create new opportunities to enhance force projection capabilities with fewer forward deployed forces. With or without regime change in Iraq, the U.S. military posture toward the region will become increasingly brittle unless it adapts in creative ways to these looming changes. On the one hand, if the Gulf security environment stays on its present trajectory continued deterioration and eventual collapse of dual containment and no American effort to change the geopolitical landscape the central dilemma facing U.S. policymakers will be reconciling the military requirements of a containment strategy with the political imperatives of reducing the American military profile in the Gulf. On the other hand, the elimination of Iraq as a strategic threat, or the installation of a new but still antagonistic regime, would confront the United States with a number of complex and novel policy issues: the role of Saudi Arabia in U.S. regional security strategy, the degree to which a friendly and pro-American Iraq could become the focus of U.S. regional defense strategy, and the type of military presence the United States should maintain in the region if the removal of the Saddam regime ushers in a period of prolonged instability and disorder inside Iraq and beyond.

1.2 Statement Of Problem

All claims to the contrary, the Persian Gulf monarchies have been deeply affected by the Arab revolutionary ferment of 2011-2012. Bahrain may be the only country to experience its own sustained upheaval, but the impact has also been felt elsewhere. Demands for a more participatory politics are on the rise, as are calls for the protection of rights and formations of various types of civic and political organization. Although these demands are not new, they are louder than before, including where the price of dissent is highest in Saudi Arabia, Oman and even the usually hushed United Arab Emirates. The resilience of a broad range of activists in denouncing autocracy and discomfiting autocrats is inspirational. As yet, there are no cracks in the foundation of Gulf order, but the edifice no longer appears adamantine.

This state of affairs poses a historic challenge to the order’s number-one guarantor, the United States. The task is not, as some might think, to reconcile the Obama administration’s professed affinity for Arab democracy with the fact of its firm alliance with the states that the activists are working to open up. It is to aid those states in managing their domestic crisis so that the regional order can remain intact.

1.3 Research Question

1. Does the changing nature of U.S. interests and threats to those interests require changes in the size and composition of forward deployed forces, peacetime engagement activities, military operations, and force protection?
2. What the united state of America interested in the gulf states?
3. Does the United States need to reconfigure its security and military relationships with regional friends and allies to take account of their changing security perceptions and policies?
4. What is the major problem between the united state and UAE in the fight for the gulf state?
5. Are there trends in the strategic environment that are likely to generate new demands and requirements for the Armed Forces?
6. How can the United States reconcile the call in the Quadrennial Defense Review 2001 for greater flexibility in the global allocation of U.S. defense capabilities with the harsh reality that, for the foreseeable future, forward defense of the Persian Gulf will remain dependent on substantial reinforcements from the United States?

1.4 The Objectives Of The Study

1. To understand the interest of the united state in the gulf states.
2. To reveal the trends in the strategic environment that are likely to generate new demands and requirement for the Armed forces.
3. To investigate the reconciliation of the united state with the quadrennial defense.
4. To state the major problem with the UAE in the fight for the gulf state.

1.5 Significance Of Study

The research work is a very important one as it will reveal the interest of the united state of America in the gulf state, the study will also reveal the causes and factors affecting the gulf state, and the united state of America participation in the gulf state.

1.6 Scope Of Study

The research work is limited to the united state of america and the politics of the gulf, it will also cover the gulf states and the factors affecting them.

1.7 Methodology

Many of the challenges facing the United States in the Gulf today were explicitly discussed in May 1993, when the Clinton administration unveiled its dual containment strategy. This approach to regional security, which has governed U.S. Gulf policy for most of the ensuing years, was explicitly founded on four basic premises:

1. Both Iraq and Iran were hostile to American interests in the Middle East and, implicitly, were likely to remain so for the indefinite future.
2. Iran presented the more serious threat.
3. Seeking regional security by balancing Iraq and Iran against each other would be ineffective, dangerous, and unnecessary.
4. The Gulf War coalition could be sustained to defend the region against the threats posed by both countries.

A fifth premise, unstated in public, was that the turmoil in Iraq after the Gulf War and the reign of terror necessary to suppress it underscored the weakness of Saddam Husayn’s regime. The strategy, then, was to place this weak regime on the horns of a dilemma. If Saddam humiliated Iraq by fully implementing the post-Gulf War cease-fire resolutions, his own generals would oust him; if he did not, the prolonged application of sweeping economic sanctions would lead to a wave of popular unrest that would topple the regime.

1.8 Organisation Of Study

The chapter one of the research work will include the introduction, the background, the statement of problem, research question, objectives,significance of study, the scope of study and the methodology. The chapter two will reveal the united state interest and objectives in the gulf state. The chapter three will reveal the internal and external factors that will shape the threat perceptions, security doctrines, and military policies of key regional actors. The chapter four of the research work will assesses the long-term trends in the regional military balance with particular emphasis on prospects for Iraqi and Iranian acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and the ability of the Gulf Cooperation Council states and other U.S. regional friends, such as Jordan and Egypt, to contribute to Gulf defense. The chapter five of the research work will looks at how U.S. military requirements and force planning for the region will be affected by changes in American global defense strategy and transformation priorities.

1.9 The Gulf States

The countries bordering the Persian Gulf in southwest Asia, including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, …