Threats and threat perceptions in the Persian Gulf region.

Gause, F. Gregory, III

States act in the international arena on perceptions of threats (and perceptions of opportunities, but that is another subject). Sometimes those perceptions are correct; your perceived enemy really is out to get you. Sometimes those perceptions are wrong, but they can be wrong in one of two ways: 1) a state can underestimate the threats facing it, as Kuwait did in 1990, when its leadership did not believe that Saddam Hussein would occupy the entire country; and 2) a state can overestimate the hostility of a neighbor. Misperceptions of the first type are easy to identify, but historically rare. Misperceptions of the second type are not as dangerous as the first. They do not leave a state open to invasion and conquest, the ultimate worst-case scenario. Misperceptions of the second type are much more common. States tend to fear the worst about their neighbors. This kind of thinking is built into the anarchical structure of international politics. But this does not mean that threat overestimation is cost-free or benign. Overestimating the hostility of another state can contribute to hostility spirals that exacerbate regional tensions, waste resources and cause leaders to miss opportunities for cooperation. Hostility spirals might even lead to wars.

In the Persian Gulf region, threat perceptions are driven by two categories of threats. The first is power capabilities--the military strength of neighbors. If a state in your region is much more powerful than you are, you will see it as a potential threat and act to balance against it. This is classic balance-of-power politics. The second category is threats to the domestic security and stability of the ruling elite emanating from abroad. Regime elites in one state can fear that their rivals are trying to destabilize them not through military pressure and attack, but rather by encouraging domestic opponents of their regime to act against it. A ruling elite that fears for its own domestic security could see a neighbor's meddling in its domestic politics as a weapon even more dangerous than that neighbor's conventional military power.

Because of the multitude of transnational links that connect people across borders in the Persian Gulf region, governments there tend to be particularly concerned about the ability of foreigners to meddle in their domestic politics. These fears are not unfounded; there are numerous examples of states working to destabilize their neighbors. A good case can be made, however, that regional leaders tend to overestimate the ability of outsiders to threaten their regimes through such meddling. Like Bullwinkle J. Moose in Jay Ward's classic Cold War cartoon series "Rocky and Bullwinkle," Persian Gulf governments "don't know their own strength." (1) The fears of many in the region about a rising "Shia wave" can be attributed to regimes' overestimation of their vulnerability to foreign-inspired domestic unrest and their underestimation of their own resources.

THREAT PERCEPTIONS

The classic international-politics threat - the fear of military attack by another state--is certainly part of the threat perceptions of Persian Gulf rulers. Since 1980, there have been three major international wars in the area (Iran-Iraq, 1980-88; the Gulf War, 1990-91; and the Iraq War, 2003-present), with the possibility of others (a U.S. attack on Iran, regional military intervention in Iraq). States in the region spend huge amounts of money on arms, among the highest levels of military spending as a percentage of GDP in the world. Arms races are part of recent regional history. Saddam Hussein tried to obtain nuclear weapons in the 1980s; Iran is developing a nuclear infrastructure now; the GCC states in reaction have expressed interest in (though not much movement toward) developing their own nuclear programs. The fear of conventional military attack is exacerbated by border disputes such as those between Iran and Iraq, Iraq and Kuwait, and even among the GCC states. Moreover, one of the major factors driving the decline at the global level in interstate war since the middle of the twentieth century--the fact that acquisition of territory is no longer an efficient way to increase a country's wealth--does not apply in the region. If a country can acquire territory with oil underneath it, the national wealth (or, better put, the regime's wealth) can vastly increase.

For all these reasons, classic power threats based upon the military capabilities of neighbors and other regional actors (including, in this case, the United States) are one of the drivers of threat perceptions in the Gulf region. It is surprising, therefore, to note that on at least two, and perhaps three, recent occasions, Gulf regimes underestimated the threat of military attack. Kuwait's rulers in 1990 did not think that Saddam Hussein would occupy their whole country; at most, they believed he would snatch a disputed oil field and other territory and then bargain. (2) In 2003, even as American forces were building up in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein apparently did not think that Washington would launch a full-scale war against him. There is some evidence that Saddam also did not believe that the United States would launch a ground attack against him in 1991, though it is unclear whether he changed that opinion over the course of the Gulf crisis. (3) This is an analytical puzzle that requires more investigation.

It is no surprise that Persian Gulf leaders worry about the military power of their neighbors. This conforms to the long experience of states worldwide and is consistent with balance-of-power theories. What is less recognized, both theoretically and empirically, is the important role that perceptions of threat to regime stability, originating domestically but abetted by foreign actors, play in the foreign policy decisions of Persian Gulf leaders. These kinds of threats are seen as particularly salient and potentially efficacious because of the strength of trans-border political identities and ideologies in the region. These cross-border links come in a number of forms:

* Ethnic: Kurdish communities in Iran and Iraq, Iranian communities in Iraq and the Gulf monarchies, Arab communities in Iran, Baluchi communities in Iran.

* Sectarian: Shia communities in Iraq and the Gulf monarchies. The Shia marjaiyya system does not accord with state boundaries. Ayatollah al-Sistani in Najaf is the marja of numerous Shia in Iran and the Gulf states, for example.

* Tribal: numerous tribes cross borders between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait and among the Gulf monarchies. Perhaps the largest is the Shammar, found in Saudi Arabia and Iraq (among other places). Post-Saddam Hussein Iraq's first president, Ghazi al-Yawir, is a Shammari who spent much of the period of Saddam's rule in Saudi Arabia.

* Ideological: Baathist and other Pan-Arab sympathizers in the Gulf monarchies, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s; parties sympathetic to the Iranian Revolution, like al-Dawa, operating in Iraq and Kuwait in the 1980s; salafi jihadists like al-Qaeda operating across borders.

In each of these cases, there are concrete examples of aggressive governments using such trans-border identities to try to influence politics in neighboring countries, including efforts to weaken if not overthrow the regimes of their opponents:

* Ethnic: The shah's Iran and the United States supported Iraqi Kurds against the Baathist regime in the early 1970s, until the Algiers Accord of 1975. Iraq likewise supported Iranian Kurdish groups and Arab groups in Khuzestan, particularly in the lead-up to Iraq's attack on Iran in 1980. Voices in the United States have called for American efforts to exploit ethnic divisions in Iran as a means to weaken its regime. (4) Is it a coincidence that we are seeing more reports in the Western media about unrest among Arabs and Baluchis in Iran?

* Sectarian: The current fears of (or hope for, depending on one's perspective) a "Shia rising" are driven by the sense that Arab and Iranian Shia share a common identity. Revolutionary Iran certainly tried to stir up Shia opposition to Baathist Iraq and the Gulf monarchies in the 1980s.

* Tribal: It is harder to document past efforts by governments to use tribes across borders. Saudi Arabia has made use of tribal discontent in Yemen at various times. The United States supported efforts in the 1990s to stir Sunni tribal discontent against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

* Ideological: Both Nasserist Egypt and Baathist Iraq (until the 1980s) supported Arab nationalist opponents of the Gulf monarchies. During the Gulf War of 1990-91, Saddam Hussein used both Arab nationalist and Islamist ideological appeals to try to foment instability in Saudi Arabia. Iraq supported dissident anti-regime Baathists in Syria and vice-versa. Iran supported Shia revolutionary groups in Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, and Iran is supporting Iraqi Shia parties now, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia supported Muslim Brotherhood and salafi groups in many countries in the region, as well as the mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1980s. While al-Qaeda does not receive explicit state assistance, it seems to have engaged in tactical ties with intelligence services in a number of countries (Pakistan, Iran). The recent U.S. support for its democracy agenda is also an ideological threat to Gulf regimes, particularly when linked to a regime-change strategy.

Sometimes both kinds of threats--the classic power-capabilities threat and the domestic-destabilization threat--emanate from the same source. For Saudi Arabia in 1990, Saddam's Iraq was both an immediate military threat and an ideological threat. When revolutionary Iran had turned the tide in its battle against Iraq and went on the offensive, from 1982 through 1986, the Gulf monarchies faced a threat that was both potentially military and actively ideological. It can be argued that the United States today poses both a military threat and a domestic-destabilization threat to Iran. In these cases, when the two types of threat are combined, it is easy to predict how the threatened state will behave. It will use all of its resources to resist that threat.

The more interesting cases theoretically are those where the two types of threat are de-linked. In many instances in recent Gulf history, we find that leaders have perceived the domestic-destabilization threat as more serious and immediate than the classic power-capabilities threat. In both 1980 and 1990, Saddam Hussein went to war because he thought foreign actors were working to destabilize his regime internally. (5) In neither case was the source of the perceived threat--Iran in 1980, the United States and its regional allies (Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) in 1990--an immediate military threat to Iraq. Rather, Saddam saw his domestic problems in each period as originating in efforts hatched by foreigners to bring down his regime. In the 1980 case, he had good reason to believe this. The new revolutionary regime in Tehran did want to spread the revolution and encouraged Iraqi Shia to rebel. In 1990, Saddam greatly exaggerated the hostility of the United States toward his regime. What is important for this argument is that, in both cases, it was a perceived domestic threat to regime security that sparked Iraqi war decisions.

The importance of domestic threats to regime security is also key to understanding regional-alliance decisions. Faced with multiple potential threats emanating from the Gulf region in the 1980s and early 1990s, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan all balanced against the perceived source of threat to domestic stability rather than the most powerful military actor. (6) In Saudi Arabia's case, that meant supporting Iraq at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, despite Iraq's apparent military advantage, out of fear of that contagion the Iranian Revolution would spread.

In the Persian Gulf, states worry about both conventional power threats and neighbors interfering in their domestic politics. Outside analysts tend to concentrate too much on the former kinds of threats and ignore the importance of the latter in regional foreign policies.

THE "BULLWINKLE CONUNDRUM"

State Strength and Regional Security Threats

In the same way that states generally tend to overestimate the threats they face, they also tend to overestimate their own domestic weaknesses in the face of efforts by foreign powers to interfere in their domestic politics. Like Bullwinkle Moose, they "don't know their own strength." Gulf regimes have survived numerous threats presented by ideological/political challenges emanating from abroad. Gamal Abd al-Nasser's Arab-nationalist pressures could not bring down the Saudi regime in the 1960s. The Iranian Revolution failed to unseat either the Baathist regime in Iraq or the Gulf monarchies. Saddam Hussein failed to shake the stability of the Gulf monarchies, despite an active campaign using both Arab-nationalist and Islamist themes. During the Gulf War, international sanctions and active American efforts at destabilization failed to dislodge Saddam. It took a massive American military effort to replace his regime. While transborder ideological and political challenges in the Persian Gulf region are real, the local states have developed relatively strong state structures to maintain their regimes in power. (7) However, they continue to conduct their foreign policies on the assumption that such transborder challenges are major threats.

The current focus on the "Shia threat" in the Middle East is only the latest example of regional states overestimating the danger emanating from transborder political/ideological challenges. Undoubtedly, the fall of Saddam's regime has allowed Iraqi Shia to have a political voice for the first time in decades. That is a huge change in Iraqi politics. But how much of a ripple effect will this change have in the region as a whole? First, an analysis that emphasizes the transnational sectarian character of this political phenomenon does not give enough attention to the state. It does not recognize that Iranian foreign policy is a major element in the regional fears about a "Shia crescent." Iranian foreign policy could change. Tehran tried to export the revolution in the 1980s, but it failed. Then Iran pursued a foreign policy based more on conventional state-to-state relations with its Arab neighbors (for the most part). Now Iranian policy seems to be a bit more forward leaning, not pushing revolution, but putting more emphasis on challenging the status quo. That could change, of course, as Ahmadinejad is already having problems at home. Such an analysis also leaves out the Arab states. The two places in which Shia social movements have had the most political success are Lebanon, where the state has always been weak, and Iraq, where the United States destroyed the state. But other Arab states have quite a few resources, both coercive and cooptive, with which to deal with their Shia minorities (or majority, in the case of Bahrain). The "rise of the Shia" must be interpreted through the lens both of Iranian foreign policy and Arab state structures.

Second, if there is a rising Shia sociopolitical movement in the Arab world, it very likely has already peaked:

* Iraqi Shia groups have taken the power that their numbers give them in the new Iraq, but they have not been able to consolidate that power. There are differences among them that will be submerged as long as they are in a civil war, but will undoubtedly surface from time to time and become more prominent as they eventually consolidate power. As Iraqi Shia do consolidate their power, they will need their ties to Iran less and less, and frictions in what are now fairly stable patron-client relations will arise.

* Hezbollah has ridden a wave in Lebanon, but it has reached the high-point of its power. It cannot "take over" the Lebanese state, given demographic and regional realities. It is doubtful that it can long sustain its ongoing crisis with the Lebanese state. And, once General Aoun gets what he wants, Hezbollah loses its only cross-sectarian ally. The fact that Iran seems to be reaching out to Saudi Arabia (in March 2007) is one indication that Hezbollah's mentor is looking for a way to de-escalate the Lebanese crisis.

* Iran undoubtedly has regional ambitions, but it does not have the power to be a regional hegemon. If the United States cannot pull that off, Iran--with all its economic problems and political divisions--cannot pull it off, either. Iran will overplay its hand, much as the United States has, if it overreaches.

* Finally, where does the "Shia wave" go from here? There is only one other state in the Arab world with a Shia majority: Bahrain. But there is a fairly effective state in Bahrain that will prevent a Shia takeover; and if it cannot, there is that long bridge connecting the island to Saudi Arabia. The Shia minority in Kuwait seems to be fairly well integrated into Kuwaiti politics, and the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia does not seem to have much revolutionary potential fight now.

It is analytically important to recognize that transborder ideological and political threats continue to drive Gulf-state foreign policies. The perception of threat can be more important than an objective assessment in forming leaders' world views. At the same time, however, it would be a mistake for the United States to base its regional policies on the belief that the states are weak reeds ready to be toppled by the latest ideological wind. Like Bullwinkle, regional leaders underestimate their own strength. That does not mean the United States should do so as well.

(1) In a recurring lead-in to a commercial, Bullwinkle would act the magician, saying to Rocky, "Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat." Rocky would express skepticism that the trick would work. Bullwinkle would then pull anything but a rabbit out of the hat. In one version, he would pull a snarling rhinoceros head out of the hat, turn toward the viewer and say, "Ooh, don't know my own strength." www.answers.com/topic/the-rocky-and-bullwinkle-show. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find an Internet-available clip of this classic bit.

(2) In testimony before a Kuwaiti parliamentary committee investigating the war, then-Crown Prince Saad Abdallah said: "I had the impression that if there was going to be an Iraqi attack it would be limited, in specific places like the Rutqa oil field and maybe Bubiyan Island. It never even occurred to me that Iraq would occupy Kuwait. I said that the most it would do is attack there and then bargain." Then-Foreign Minister Sabah al-Ahmad told the same committee: "I said that maybe Iraq wants to get the two islands--Warba and Bubiyan--and might occupy them. But Iraq occupied the whole country. By God, that never crossed my mind." Quotes taken from sections of the committee's report published in al-Hayat, August 19, 1995, pp. 1, 6.

(3) "By late 2002 Saddam had persuaded himself, just as he did in 1991, that the United States would not attack Iraq because it had already achieved its objectives of establishing a military presence in the region, according to detainee interviews." Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD [Duelfer Report], 30 September 2004, Regime Strategic Intent section, p. 32, www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/ index.html.

(4) Edward Luttwak has been particularly vocal on the possibility of the eventual break-up of Iran along ethnic lines. "Before Bombing: A Three-Year Plan for Iran," Cato Unbound website, July 18, 2006, www.cato-unbound.org/2006/07/18/edward-n-luttwak/ before-bombing-a-three-year-plan-for-iran.

(5) I make this case in my article "Iraq's Decisions to Go to War, 1980 and 1990," Middle East Journal, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter 2002).

(6) I make this case in my article "Balancing What? Threat Perception and Alliance Choice in the Gulf," Security Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Winter 2003/4).

(7) I developed this argument in two earlier articles: "Revolutionary Fevers and Regional Contagion: Domestic Structures and the 'Export' of Revolution in the Middle East," Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, (Spring 1991); and "Sovereignty, Statecraft and Stability in the Middle East," Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 45, No. 2, (Winter 1992).

Dr. Gause is an associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont.