Some of the mounting pressures have clearly been recognised by the Gulf monarchies, but many others have been ignored, inadequately addressed, or left undiagnosed for too long. Thus, after considering the earlier, unsuccessful predictions of monarchical demise and providing an understanding of the emergence, development, and survival of these polities to date, this book’s primary purpose will be to identify better these contemporary pressures and demonstrate why they now matter so much. Against this backdrop I will assert that these pressures will soon lead to the collapse of the Gulf monarchies, or at least most of them in their present form. Although I claim that this collapse is inevitable — regardless of the Arab Spring and wider events — an argument is made that the revolutionary movements of 2011 and 2012 in North Africa, Syria, and elsewhere are undeniably going to serve as important, if indirect catalysts for the coming upheaval in the Persian Gulf. Not least because many of the pressures that had been building up in the Arab republics are now also manifest in the Gulf monarchies, even if sometimes below the surface.
The revolutions that never came
By the time the monarchies were all independent states in the early 1970s the threat of some sort of popular, Gamal Abdul Nasser-inspired Arab nationalist revolution reaching the Persian Gulf seemed to have petered out. As discussed later in this book former national front activists, especially in Dubai, Bahrain, and Kuwait, had long since been co-opted by their respective ruling families, often becoming successful businessmen with stakes in fast growing, oil-rich economies.[2] The humiliation of military defeat by Israel in 1967 had also dealt a significant blow to the prestige of the Arab republics and their ability to project nationalist sentiments elsewhere, and the final nationalist revolution — Libya in 1969—served only to clear a path for Muammar Gaddafi’s military junta. Moreover, despite their non-revolutionary status and an ‘Arab Cold War’ between Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the 1960s,[3] by 1971 all of the Gulf monarchies had become full members of the Cairo-based Arab League,[4] and, through their partial participation in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel,[5] they were increasingly tolerated by the Arab republics and perceived as playing a reasonably active role in countering Israel and other foreign interests in the region.
Instead, the most acute threat to the Gulf monarchies in the early 1970s was deemed to be some sort of sweeping socialist or Communist revolution, likely supported by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the People’s Republic of China. In 1962 restive tribes in Dhofar — the southern province of Oman — had formed a liberation front, which by 1968 had already adopted a Marxist-Leninist stance and had openly begun to receive Soviet and especially Chinese support in a bid to overthrow the British-backed sultan of Muscat.[6] Furthermore, the following year a Marxist-Leninist wing of the South Yemen-based liberation front[7] had seized power, eventually forming a Soviet, Chinese, and Cubanbacked People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen — right on the southern flank of Saudi Arabia.
Understandably, much of the scholarship devoted to the region at the time reflected these circumstances, often discussing the likelihood of further Marxist-Leninist rebellions spreading throughout the Arabian Peninsula.[8] After all, the Dhofar Liberation Front had renamed itself the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf, and was only finally defeated in 1975 following a series of British-backed counterattacks on behalf of the beleaguered Omani ruling family.[9] Published in 1974, Fred Halliday’s Arabia Without Sultans was based on extensive fieldwork in Dhofar during the early 1970s and remains one of the best perspectives on this period. Focusing heavily on Oman’s underdevelopment and the disenfranchisement of various tribes under the yoke of a traditional monarch supported by an imperial power, the book is vividly optimistic about the prospects of successful armed insurrection in the region. Although not explicitly attacking capitalist structures, Halliday nonetheless painted a grim picture of continuing misery and the deepening exploitation of the region’s indigenous population. He argued strongly that increased social conflict was going to be the major impetus for political change in the Gulf monarchies.[10]
But while Dhofar-like Marxist-Leninist rebellions were perceived as acute, short-term threats to the Gulf monarchies by some area specialists, those focusing on other parts of the Middle East were boldly claiming that longer term, intangible ‘modernising forces’ were also likely to lead to significant shifts in the political and social order, and eventually the demise of traditional ruling systems. Writing in 1958, Daniel Lerner had already predicted in his Passing of Traditional Society: The Modernizing of the Middle East that most of the region’s societies would pass through a series of distinct phases, beginning with urbanisation, proceeding through literacy and mass communication, and then eventually leading to political participation.[11] By the early 1960s many more scholars had put forward similar arguments for other parts of the developing world, all essentially claiming that a combination of more modern social settings, especially cities, combined with new, modern technologies — especially relating to communications — would inevitably lead to the formation of some sort of educated, conscious, and better-connected middle class, which in turn would become increasingly unwilling to be governed by primitive, non-participatory political structures. Seymour Martin Lipset, for example, in his 1959 article ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy’ and a volume that appeared the following year, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, had asserted that the wealthier a nation became, and the more its population was exposed to modernising forces, then the better was its chances of sustaining democratic institutions.[12] Similarly, the following year Karl Deutsch packaged these forces and processes under his ‘theory of social mobilisation’, stressing both their cumulative impact and their inevitable or extremely likely capacity to transform political behaviour.[13]
Published in 1968, Samuel Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies took ‘modernisation theory’ to a higher level. Questioning the smooth predictability of such political changes, he argued that incumbent regimes would resist strongly, often by developing short-term containment strategies, and possibly by resorting to violence. Nevertheless he still subscribed to the inevitability of new, modern social groupings eventually dispensing with traditional polities. And in one particularly celebrated chapter—‘The King’s Dilemma’—he even singled out traditional monarchs, stating that they would soon have to grapple with the dilemma of either suppressing modernising forces and thus facing mass rebellion, or instead allowing modernisation to occur and thus risk ceding absolute powers to a mobilised middle class.[14] On the latter scenario, his claim that ‘…the monarchical parent is eventually devoured by its modern progeny’[15] seemed particularly relevant for the Gulf monarchies, even if they were not explicitly mentioned, as at that time all were on the cusp of accelerating socio-economic development. Oil revenues were beginning to flow to fledgling governments, populations were being urbanised as oil boom opportunities abounded in fast-expanding cities, literacy rates were increasing as more and more schools were being established, and mass communications was arriving in the region for the first time in the form of newspapers, transistor radios, and television. Thus, while Huntington would have also probably predicted an ‘Arabia without sultans’, he would have likely foreseen the demands for political change being led by a restless, newly-created middle class, rather than by Halliday’s exploited and insurgent proletariat.
2
2. For discussions of this activity see, for example, Davidson, Christopher M., ‘Arab Nationalism and British Opposition in Dubai, 1920–1966’,
3
3. For a full discussion see Kerr, Malcolm,
4
4. Saudi Arabia, already an independent state, was able to join the Arab League upon its inception in 1945. Kuwait joined in 1961, and was followed by the other Gulf monarchies in 1971.
5
5. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait joined OPEC upon its inception in 1960. Qatar joined in 1961, and the UAE’s principal oil-exporting emirate of Abu Dhabi joined in 1967. Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE’s other constituent members eschewed OPEC.
6
6. See Calabrese, John, ‘From Flyswatters to Silkworms: The Evolution of China’s Role in West Asia’,
8
8. For a good overview see Ismael, Tareq Y.,
9
9. Ladwig, Walter C., ‘Supporting Allies in Counterinsurgency: Britain and the Dhofar Rebellion’,
10
10. See Halliday, Fred,
11
11. Lerner, Daniel,
12
12. Lipset, Seymour Martin, ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy’,
13
13. Deutsch, Karl, ‘Social Mobilization and Political Development’,
14
14. Huntington, Samuel P.,