Knowledge of the energy4balance

The ded­i­cated study of region­al­ism is a rel­a­tively recent phe­nom­e­non in the vast schol­ar­ship of inter­na­tional rela­tions (IR) the­ory. There­fore, for our pur­poses this paper shall treat region­al­ism as a sub­field of Inter­na­tional rela­tions, recon­struct­ing major the­o­ret­i­cal trends in a regional space. On the sur­face this may seem to be some­what of an uncon­tro­ver­sial choice, as IR the­ory has since its incep­tion had regions as a sub-component regard­less of whether the­o­rists rec­og­nized or focused on them. How­ever the attribute of dense inter­con­nec­tiv­ity that char­ac­ter­izes regional actors neces­si­tates a more spe­cial­ized lens through which to engage with theory.

Dense inter­con­nec­tiv­ity entails that despite the fact that states within the Gulf sub-region impact, and are in turn impacted by actors and phe­nom­e­non within the broader Mid­dle East , cer­tain pat­terns of behav­ior, struc­tures, or the effects of spe­cific events and phe­nom­e­non occur in forms more unique to one space than oth­ers. For exam­ple, while the entirety of the region is effected by the role of hydro­car­bons, the pro­duc­tion of oil occurs pri­mar­ily in one sub regional space, while the ben­e­fits may trickle down to oth­ers in the form of worker remit­tances, finan­cial aid, polit­i­cal assis­tance or oth­er­wise. The same is true for any num­ber of phe­nom­e­non rang­ing every­where from secu­rity due to prox­im­ity and struc­ture, to envi­ron­men­tal and social issues. In the Mid­dle East, which is char­ac­ter­ized by an over­all ‘bal­ance of weak­nesses, the study of sub-regions also entails the study of the unique ppower balance dynam­ics among states, which are prone to max­i­miz­ing power over geo­graph­i­cally prox­i­mal neigh­bors, due to the inabil­ity of any mem­ber to project power balance wholesale over the entirety of the region equally. (Nobel, 2008, p. 123)

There­fore, for the pur­poses of this study the Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Coun­cil shall be treated as an orga­ni­za­tion within the Gulf sub­com­plex, a zone com­prised of the five smaller lit­toral Gulf states, two major Arab pow­ers, Iraq and Saudi Ara­bia, and one major non-Arab power, Iran. Yemen is treated as a sub-member of this space due to the lower level of secu­rity inter­con­nec­tions between it and its North­ern and East­ern neigh­bors, which is largely lim­ited to Saudi Ara­bia, and to a lesser extent Oman. While the secu­rity inter­de­pen­den­cies with Yemen have recently gained promi­nence, and will likely increase in the near future, it is beyond the scope of this paper to engage with it in great detail. The Gulf sub­com­plex is char­ac­ter­ized by sig­nif­i­cant secu­rity inter­de­pen­den­cies between its mem­ber states, and cor­re­lates closely with many attrib­utes of Buzan and Waever’s the­ory of ‘Regional Secu­rity Com­plexes’ (RSC) (Waever & Buzan, 2003). An RSC is defined as being com­posed of “a set of units whose major processes of secu­ri­ti­sa­tion, dese­cu­ri­ti­sa­tion, or both are so inter­linked that their secu­rity prob­lems can­not rea­son­ably be ana­lyzed or resolved apart from one another’. (Waever & Buzan, 2003, p. 43) Apply­ing this con­cept of secu­rity allows for a broader under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes a secu­rity risk, and does not limit them to ema­nat­ing from spe­cific types of actors, such as states. It also does not pre-establish the form of a secu­rity prob­lem, for exam­ple, aggre­gate mil­i­tary strength, or eco­nomic clout. For exam­ple, as shall be demon­strated in a sub­se­quent sec­tion, because depen­dency on hydro­car­bon rents is a pri­mary fea­ture of most states in the region, rises or falls in oil prices effect each state within the region sim­i­larly, and thus has been a moti­vat­ing fac­tor in caus­ing states engage in coop­er­a­tive, or in some cases, coer­cive behavior.

Regions, how­ever, are not based sim­ply on geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­ity and secu­rity. This is just the lens this paper intends to focus on them through for the pur­pose of lim­it­ing our ana­lyt­i­cal scope to a set of processes where clearer pat­terns can be deduced. There­fore it is help­ful to also under­stand the con­cep­tual space of the Gulf as being a geo­graph­i­cal region that exists within over­lap­ping cul­tural regions. These are how­ever, by essence of being iden­tity based, sig­nif­i­cantly less con­crete, more inter­pre­tive and mal­leable. At the most gen­eral level these can be broadly defined as the ‘Arab Com­mu­nity’ (qawmiyah), based on the nation­al­ist myth of an Arab nation dis­jointed by impe­r­ial dom­i­na­tion, and the ‘Islamic Com­mu­nity’ (umma). (Ramazani, 1988, p. 3) These over­lap­ping cul­tural regions, pro­vide sets of transna­tional link­ages between the peo­ples of these states, and often as a mat­ter of legit­i­macy, require at the very least ges­tures of sym­bolic sol­i­dar­ity. In the case of orga­ni­za­tions as the GCC which pur­sue a process of region­al­ism (iqlamiya) out­side of the Arab League’s endeav­ors to develop an ‘Arab’ inter­na­tional front, this split between transna­tional cul­tural aspi­ra­tions on one hand, and sta­tist sub­re­gional speci­ficity on the other, places addi­tional pres­sures from both state and non-state actors to pur­sue a for­eign pol­icy beyond those defined in terms of self-interest. (Tripp, 1995, p. 284).Go to power bracelets for choose what you want.

In look­ing at the Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Coun­cil more specif­i­cally, two processes of inte­gra­tion and coop­er­a­tion should be dis­tin­guished. The first, region­al­ism, refers to the process wherein “states and (and other actors) share com­mon goals and coor­di­nate strat­egy and pol­icy in any given region.” (Faw­cett, 2009, p. 194) This is illus­trated for, exam­ple, by the delib­er­ate cre­ation of coop­er­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions or pro­grams between state actors such as the Gulf Orga­ni­za­tion for Indus­trial Con­sult­ing (GOIC), or the Fed­er­a­tion of GCC Cham­bers of Com­merce and Indus­try (FGCCI). Adapt­ing a loose under­stand­ing of region­al­ism as such is nec­es­sary as it does not pre-ascribe qual­i­ties such as the sub­or­di­na­tion of sov­er­eignty to supra-national author­ity. Ernst. B. Haas for exam­ple has defined inte­gra­tion as