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THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF THE PERSIAN GULF

wRITTEN bY F. GREGORY GAUSE

Book review By Harald Dahle-Sladek

F. Gregory Gause, III is the John H. Lindsey '44 Chair, professor of international affairs and head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.

He also is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. He is the author of three books and numerous articles on the politics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

Gause was previously on the faculties of the University of Vermont, 1995-2014, and the Columbia University from 1987-1995, and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-1994). Below, Gause speaks at the Middle East Institute, 2013 Annual Conference Agenda. During the 2009-10 academic year he was Kuwait Foundation Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In spring 2009 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the American University in Kuwait. In spring 2010 he was a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Studies and Research in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

To the left is the book cover showing statues of Iraqi military pointing their finger accusingly towards Iran. "The International Relations of the Persian Gulf", written by distinguished professor F. Gregory Gause, III head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, is a book that will appeal to both laymen as well as scholars. It will appeal to the layman because it is well written and contains a lot of facts and it will be read by scholars, because what the book reveals is only ten percent of the huge undisclosed "iceberg of knowledge" that is needed to create such a brilliant gem of wisdom. The picture below shows the Iranian revolution in full swing; Khomeini is cheered by the crowd in Tehran.

Professor Gause takes the reader on a guided tour where he ex- plains the Persian Gulf as a security region; he continues to broaden the picture by explaining the emergence of the Gulf regional system from 1971-1978 ;the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq-Iran war. The reader will get detailed insight into the Gulf War and the following years, the impact of 9/11 and the Iraq War as well as thoughts about the future of the Persian Gulf. Professor Gause sums up his book by explaining American decision making with regards to the Iraq War and concludes with some "scratches on the surface" about war and alliances in the Persian Gulf.

The book's title "The International Relations of the Persian Gulf" seems to reveal that the author has knowingly chosen to emphasize the historic correct labeling of the area. Historically the Gulf is called the Persian Gulf, but as seen from the Arab side of the Gulf today it is always named the Arabian Gulf. Picture to the left, King Salman, Saudi Royal.

A minor detail perhaps, but one that brings together two completely different point of views with regards to this particular geographical and political area. The Gulf, that is all the water from Iraq in the North to the Oman Sea in the South, means different things to different people. Point of view and perspective are two guidelines when reading this book.

Undoubtedly being one of the sharpest written and thematically condensed literary works on the subject today, from a writer that I understand has also traveled extensively in the Gulf-area, the reader ought to bear in mind the revealing words of the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, Ali Ibn-Abu-Talib, below.

He was the fourth Caliph of the Muslims: "He who has thousand friends has not a friend to spare." Ali ruled over the Rashidun Caliphate from 656AD to 661 AD. Anyone can look up in Google and see for himself how successful that "friendship based" Caliphate was.

Am I implying something here? Yes, in fact there has been Empires who on several times in the history have understood more about how to "govern" the Gulf area than what modern-day politicians have. The Ancient, Persian Sassanian culture, for instance, which lasted from 224BC till 636AD, covered both sides of the Gulf of what is today Oman, United Arabic Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and a portion of Western India. Not to forget the birth of Islam 500AD. It stretched through Egypt, Libya and Algeria to Spain. Below, the ancient Sassanian empire.

Although our times are the most technical advanced in the history of mankind, our reasoning can sometimes be questioned; was it right to go to war on Iraq on totally falsified premises? Is it right and proper that Iran might very well suffer the same fate? And what country will be next in line? Shouldn't the United States start to make more friends in the region, including Iran, or will war-mongering remain as the highest expression of the Western Culture? Professor Gause is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. Iran-Qatar relations refer to the bilateral relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the State of Qatar.

Iran has an embassy in Doha while Qatar has an embassy in Tehran. Relations between the two countries have been soured after Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran following the January 2016 attack on the Saudi diplomatic mission in Tehran. Qatar and Iran have close ties. Both are members of OPEC, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of Islamic Conference. But Tehran’s concession to Qatar is not infinite. Tehran watched as Qatar joined forces with NATO in toppling the Muammar Qadhafi regime in Libya. Iran was plainly unsettled by this new Western-Arab model for political-military intervention, in which Qatar played a prominent and enthusiastic role, but its criticism of Doha remained largely subtle. The simple reason for Iran holding back at that moment was Libya’s relative irrelevance to Tehran. Qadhafi’s rapprochement with the West since 2003 had created great distance between Tehran and Tripoli, and Iran had little to lose with Qadhafi’s departure. Bellow, Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani meets with Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2009.

Unlike fellow GCC member states Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar generally refrains from criticizing Iran’s domestic and foreign activities. Qatar has also held several high-level meetings with Iranian officials to discuss security and economic agreements. The two countries have a close economic relationship, particularly in the oil and gas industries. A big portion of Qatar's Oil comes from a field that is related to Iran. They held joint ownership of the largest independent gas reservoir’s in the world, named "the North field" on the Qatar side, and "the South Pars field" on the Iranian side.

Qatar has 13% of the world’s total proven gas reserves. Qatar is producing 650 million cubic meters of gas per day from its section of the field, and Iran is producing 430 million cubic meters of gas from the field. In addition to ties in the oil and natural gas arena, Iran and Qatar also cooperate in the shipping sector. The Iranian community in Qatar, although large, is well integrated and has not posed a threat to the Iranian government. It accounts for some 30,000 people of the Iranian diaspora worldwide.

The book surprisingly enough does not concern itself with good or bad, right, or wrong, moral or immoral, lawful or not lawful. It is nowhere written that an historian cannot have an opinion about these subjects. The U.S. Military operated Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and the scandal that followed exposes a darker, dehumanizing side within the military system. I therefore view the sanitized absence and lack of initiative from author Gregory Gause to address at least some of these central issues as the book's most serious and weakest, structural point!

Although being an "academically correct" presentation, (no doubt about that) one tends to ask oneself during the reading of the book, where the author's empathy and humanistic bearing lies? It is the p e o p l e of the Middle East that we are interested in. And as such, one should avoid simply "theorizing some of them away" in an academic cloud of "politically correct" hybris. The picture bellow shows the United States Army abuse convictions in the Iraqi "Abu Graib" prison abuse scandal ordered by date.

The mistreatment of prisoners of war at Abu Graib was clearly in violation of "the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, U.N.T.S. 135" (entered into force October 21, 1959.)

To start with, let us look at Article 3, section a: "Each party of the conflict shall be bound to apply, as minimum, the following provisions: (Refrain from) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture." Section c: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

Article 12: "Prisoners of War are in the hands of the enemy Power, but not of the individuals or military units who have captured them. Irrespective of the individual responsibilities that may exist, the Detaining Power is responsible for the treatment given to them."

Article 13: "Prisoners of war must at all times be humanly treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular no prisoner of war may be subject to physical mutilation, or to medical or scientific experiment of any kind (...) Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war is prohibited."

The picture bellow to the right shows US military, private first class, Lynndie R. England in the process of dehumanizing one of the Abu Graib prisoner of war, while another prisoner, left, is wired to electrical current making a grotesque pose!

Many people today, this writer included, are of the opinion that the United States should, instead of criticizing some countries all the time and punish them with everlasting sanctions, look into its own, domestic problems first! In 1961 Erich Fromm, the German Jewish social psychologist who lived and worked as a psychologist, philosopher and writer in Mexico and in the United Sates, and later in his life in Locarno, Switzerland, published his thesis, "May man Prevail?

It is an Inquiry into the facts and fictions of Foreign Policy" in which he analyzed the Cold War. Fromm noted that "both countries, the United Sates and the Soviet Union, used the same projections to experience the other as an enemy and arguing for an end to this dangerous confrontation. Picture to the left shows Erich Fromm in 1971 working on a manuscript in his apartment in Locarno, Switzerland. Picture bellow shows American and Russian tanks barrel-to-barrel in Friedrichstrasse, west Berlin in East Germany between 4-9 June of November 1961. A potential extremely dangerous situation.

Which is in many ways analog to the situation in the Gulf region of today, and the ongoing escalating confrontation between NATO and Russia over Ukraine.

To be quite honest, I had expected from a man the caliber of Professor Gregory Gause to have included at least some of the same thoughts in his otherwise excellent book. Also, I would have preferred to read a bit more "temperament" towards the end. The book is well written, but academically "dry" and somewhat "lifeless". A much stronger emphasis on ethnic "values" would be desirable, and also open up a chapter dedicated to creating "dialog and common ground" in the area would cap the theme like a roof on a house.

A sharper searchlight from Gregory Gause part on "the international responsibility for" and pointing out a "call to action", to paraphrase President Barack Obama's Nobel lecture in Oslo in 2009 would have been desirable.

Understandably, there is a limit to how much material the author and the publisher deem relevant to put between two covers. Distinguished Professor Gregory Gausses five-star book, "The International Relations of the Persian Gulf", spite its flaws already mentioned, is highly recommendable reading.

The book can be bought on Amazon.com