Until the oil boom of the mid-1970s, the states of the Arab Gulf under study here – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain – were economically and militarily weak, commanded little political influence in the Arab world and depended on the British to provide security. Since then the Arab Gulf has found itself increasingly at the center of global security and economic systems. This chapter examines the evolving efforts of these regional actors to develop grand strategies in a vitally important and highly vulnerable sub-region of the wider Middle East since the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981. In doing so, it not only considers the grand strategy of the sovereign actors that make up the membership of the GCC; it also examines the grand strategy of the GCC as a regional organization (RO) in the Arab and wider international system.

There is an extensive literature that considers ROs as actors in peace and security as well as mediators involved in conflict management and conflict resolution. However, there is almost a complete absence of scholarly research dealing directly with the formulation and execution of grand strategy inside ROs in general, and inside the GCC in particular. The following chapter addresses this deficit in the literature over three sections.

The first addresses the interrelationship between regional organizations (ROs) like the GCC, grand strategy and the international system. In particular, it examines the structural constraints experienced by all ROs that make it difficult for them to develop coherent grand strategies. The second section examines the GCC's attempts, stilted and otherwise, to develop a grand strategy in the three complex strategic environments that it has inhabited from the time of its launch in 1981 until the embargo of Qatar in 2017: (1) The GCC Gulf; (2) The non-GCC Gulf; (3) The wider Arab and Muslim world. The third section briefly contrasts the GCC's record as a strategic actor with the attempts by two of its most active member states – Saudi Arabia and Qatar – to formulate and execute independent grand strategies outside of the GCC in response to their own specific threat perceptions and in the service of their own national interests.