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Trust between Non-Democracies? A
study of the Gulf Cooperation Council
Vincent Charles Keating, Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark
Lucy Abbott, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Introduction
The standard line in international relations is that interactions between states within the international
system take place within an anarchical environment, which generates a level of uncertainty not found in
most domestic settings. This uncertainty does prohibit cooperation, but it does mean that the
possibility of defection looms larger than it does in a domestic hierarchical context where there is the
possibility of contractual enforcement. Indeed, as many international relationships scholars have
suggested, the condition of anarchy means that states must always rely on their own means and be
distrustful of others.
Despite this reasonably pessimistic understanding of the nature of international interactions, there has
been a considerable amount of recent scholarship that has attempted to consider where and how states
might be able to trust each other even given these negative structural conditions. Though these
scholars have developed theory and demonstrated across several illustrate case studies how states can
enter into, and fall out of, trusting relationships, the majority of these studies have examined liberal
democracies in the Western world. The possibility of trusting relationships developing between nonWestern non-democracies is, alternatively, rarely considered. This is arguably an important omission,
because if trusting relationships can only be shown to occur between Western liberal democracies, then
not only does this limit the analytical scope of trust research in international relations, but it also leaves
it open to questions of whether trust research is simply a niche element of democratic peace theory.
Given this, this paper looks into the possibility of trusting relationships between the member states of
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The members are both neither liberal, democratic, nor Western,
being all conservative monarchies located within the Gulf region. The members of the GCC have been
studied from a primarily realist angle, which presupposes that the relationships between the states are
necessarily mistrustful, and the organization itself merely a temporary tool from which to balance other
actors in the region. Other attempts to study it using cooperative theories, such as Neoliberal
Institutionalism, have run into problems. As Legrenzi puts it, “[d]iscussions of ‘long shadow’,
transparency and sophisticated game theory models bear little resemblance to the international
between the shaikdoms in the Gulf.” (Legrenzi, 2011: 46) Finally, attempts to look at it from a social
constructivist point of view, particularly through the lens of security communities, have come to
reasonably negative assessments of the region, doing little to oppose the prevailing realist position.
We argue, alternatively, that trust research can provide some analytical support that helps us to
understand the dynamics of the region beyond the realist claims. This paper aims to provide two
contributions to the trust in international relations literature both tied to the theoretical concept of
specific trust. The first is the necessity of focusing on specific issues of trust that are important to the
participants in the region, not those that are of interest to most international relations scholars. Here,
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despite continued acknowledgements of the priority of internal security to the states of the GCC, most
of the analysis focusses on external security concerns – in line with prevalent international relations
thinking.
Second, trusting relationships are invariably affected by social conditions, which mean that
understanding the specific social relations within the region must be taken into consideration. This is
particularly important because what is specifically entrusted is often tied into larger expectations of
behavior. With respect to the states of the GCC, these include norms of external unity and the
appearance of consensus decision-making. Focusing on the specific cultural norms that are entrusted in
all of the members is important because breaking these norms potentially creates feelings of betrayal
that have larger political effects than one might expect given nature of the offense to an outsider.
With these two contributions in mind, this paper aims to show that by focusing on internal security
concerns, those that are of the most importance to GCC members, and looking at the patterns of
behavior surrounding the norm of external unity and the appearance of consensus decision-making, we
can show the existence of a trusting relationship between the states by focusing on the contentious
relationship between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the Arab Spring. This is an interesting case study
because it highlights the dynamics of trust and betrayal and helps us to understand a pattern of political
action that is not generally captured by trust scholars operating in the field of international security. In
this, we aim to demonstrate that there was a trusting relationship in three steps: first by showing that
there was a prevailing norm that was entrusted, that is, that was not directly under the control of the
other members of the GCC, leaving them open to vulnerability that, absent a trusting relationship,
would have led to hedging activities among the members. Second, we show that this trusting
relationship was broken by Qatar, provoking a betrayal reaction by Saudi Arabia that further suggests
that there was a trusting relationship surrounding the norm. Finally, we show that Qatar subsequently
was aware that it had violated the others trust and began to initiate a series of trust-building measures
to make up for the initial betrayal.
In addition to these contributions we believe can be made to trust research in international relations,
we believe that we are also making a contribution to area scholarship of the Middle East that rarely
engages in trust as an analytical concept. We hope to show that this oversight is important, since the
possibility of trusting relationships signals not only a fundamental transformation in specific
relationships, but also that, where possible, trusting relationships are exceptionally valuable to states
because where they exist, states do not have to take costly hedges against the risk of defection. But it
also reinforces the need found in the area studies literature to study these phenomena within the
specific social conditions of the region, which we believe can be easily facilitated by linking the existence
of trust to specific social norms.
This paper proceeds in three sections. The first covers the scholarship on the GCC in order to highlight
what we believe to be the weaknesses in the literature that would suggest that there is little trust to be
had between the member states. The second considers how we might think about issues of trust,
particularly the limits of the ‘emotional turn’ in trust research and a defense of the utility of social
theories of trust. Finally we turn to the case study to demonstrate how there are existing trusting
relationships between the members of the GCC by focusing on the reactions to a betrayal of longstanding norms within the council and subsequent attempts by Qatar to regain the trust of their comembers.
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The GCC and International Relations
The GCC is an organization of six Arab Gulf states founded in 1981 that is used by the rulers to cooperate
to maintain their regimes (Legrenzi, 2011: 1). Most scholars argue that culture and identity played a
central role in the creation of the organization. The GCC was open only to Gulf States that shared
common political and cultural structures, all being monarchies based on tribal political structures, and
excluded more republican neighbors (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 164-167) Though the independent
political power of the tribes has waned, these social organizations still cut across state borders. As
Barnett and Gause explain, “It is not unusual to have branches of the same extended family represented
in three or four of the six GCC states.” (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 167) In addition to being both tribal
and monarchical, the GCC states also shared cultural similarities, such as traditional male dress - unlike
the ‘Westernized’ dress of other Arab states (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 167). These similarities have
given rise to feelings of solidarity and the creation of an inside/outside distinction between the GCC
states and the other Arab states, many of which are seen as a threat (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 167).
These exclusionary beliefs not only played a role in the initial selection of states to be in the
organization, but have also made the GCC resistant to expansion (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 168).
The primarily research in international relations concerning the GCC has been over its status as an
international alliance facing external threats. From an external security point of view, the main threat
that initiated and sustained the alliance has been the threat of competition between the two regional
powers, Iraq and Iran (Legrenzi, 2011: 44). Thus much of the literature has focused on the GCC’s ability
to pacify relations within the alliance and cooperate to produce common defense structures. From this
perspective, most scholars consider the GCC to be a failure. Writing from the security community
literature, Barnett and Gause put it explicitly, “The states that comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council ...
are not a security community. Nor do we anticipate their becoming a security community in the near
future.” (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 161) Instead, the GCC is a traditional alliance that coheres when
motivated by external threats, but tends to fall apart or become redundant when these external threats
disappear (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 161, Guzansky, 2014: 652). Despite some minor cooperative
defense measures, such as an integrated air-defense system, “the general record on defense
cooperation is dismal.” (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 183)
This pessimistic outlook is buffered by a history of interference in each other’s affairs (Barnett and
Gause III, 1998: 162). For instance, iIn 1996 Qatar experienced a coup plot, which it blamed partially on
an unnamed neighboring state (Heard-Bey, 2006: 215), demonstrating for Barnett and Gause that
“when it comes to regime security, some GCC states still see other GCC states as potential threats.”
(Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 185) From this perspective, there seems to be little trust to write about.
Indeed, as Barnett put it, it was “not initially intended as a trust-building organization,” (Barnett and
Gause III, 1998: 179) so perhaps there should be little to say about it. Thus, while there has been some
deepening in interstate cooperation through the GCC, there is still a great deal of “mistrust and
suspicion” among the leadership - despite the creation of an overarching identity among the societies
(Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 163).
We argue, alternatively, that this negative assessment results from a focus on traditional international
relations problems, that is, the way that alliances work in terms of abandonment and entrapment
against common enemies, and whether the alliance members themselves fear each other militarily. This
view, however, does not account for the security problem that most Gulf States are arguably most afraid
of: their own internal security. It is over issues of internal security, we argue that, GCC states have
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established certain trusting relationships, and that these trusting relationships are shaped by the
particular cultural norms that tie together the GCC states.
We are not the first to note that the GCC states are driven by internal security pressures. Even from the
beginning, scholars have argued that both internal threats, that is, regime security, and external threats,
that is, international security, both have a role in the foreign policy of the GCC states (Barnett and Gause
III, 1998: 162, Guzansky, 2014: 640). This is partially because one of the leading causes of the formation
of GCC, the creation of revolutionary Iran, was seen as more of a threat because its model of Shia
rebellion, particularly given that the Iranian regime openly called for the downfall of monarchies across
the Muslim world (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 170, Gause III, 2003: 278). Though all ruling families are
Sunni, there are important Shia minorities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, while the
majority of Bahrainis are Shia. Wahhabi Sunni Islam, moreover, is only shared by Saudi Arabia and Qatar
(Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 165). Given the autocratic nature of the regimes, destabilizing discourse
that have potential resonance among the state’s citizens are often more immediately threatening than
the weapons of other states (Barnett, 1998: 7-12, Gause III, 2003: 2). Some scholars have noted how
this has affected external relations, for instance, with states like Saudi Arabia “balanced against states
that were militarily weaker but hostile to their ruling regimes, and allied (sometimes to their alter
regret) with states that presented potentially greater threats from a conventional military standpoint
(Gause III, 2003: 2).
This priority towards internal regime security can be seen in the outcomes of cooperation. Though
some scholars argue that it has not come close to the goals of its founding charter, the GCC has
managed to achieved a high level of cooperation in certain areas, particularly internal security (Legrenzi,
2011: 1). This where the creation of an overarching identity among the member states has been
important, leading to greater mutual identification at the societal level with a nascent “khalijiin” identity
that overlaps other pre-existing identities (Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 162-163). In this, the GCC gave
Gulf citizens an alternative identity and institution from revolutionary Iran or secular Arab nationalism
through stressing the historical, tribal and cultural factors that differentiated them from their neighbors
(Barnett and Gause III, 1998: 171). Though this identity has not created a security community, it serves
a much more important role in the solidification of self/other identities that help the GCC states to
manage the internal security of their regimes from the influence of ‘alien’ external forces.
The common identity among the GCC states also comes with a common cultural and political heritage,
which underwrites particular norms of interaction among the states. These norms allow the GCC to
operate as a means of coordination without being highly institutionalized. The GCC has very little in the
way of supporting staff or civil servants dedicated to the implementation of the various decrees (HeardBey, 2006: 217). But as Heard-Bey puts it, “what the GCC is lacking in Brussels-style clout, it makes up it
for in the strengths of its common bonds, which encompass the ruling houses and the ordinary nationals
in these countries.” (Heard-Bey, 2006: 218) The informality of the institutionalization and high
importance of particular social norms leads the GCC to function quite differently from other
international organizations. These social norms which predated the GCC include the focus on informal
mediation, consolation, advice-making, and consensus (Heard-Bey, 2006: 209, 219, Legrenzi, 2011: 42,
88). The tradition of consensus, particularly, not only arises from the traditions of the tribal societies,
but is also prescribed by Islam (Heard-Bey, 2006: 218). The combination of the cohesiveness of rule and
the cohesiveness of their societies creates “a reliable foundation for the essential co-operation ... [and]
ultimately for the inner coherence of the GCC.” (Heard-Bey, 2006: 219)
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In summation, studying trust in the GCC requires at least two modifications to the standard way that
trust and security are studied in international relations. First, there is an almost equal if not greater
emphasis on internal regime security as there is external international security. To date, most scholars
have taken the standard international relations line and focused on the trust and cooperation with
respect to the external security concerns and have found it lacking. But in doing so, we believe they are
studying the wrong phenomenon. Because of the priority of internal security, the necessary trusting
relationships within the international organization must be linked to vulnerabilities over foreign policies
that have the potential to destabilize regimes in the organization. Second, the GCC operates under very
different norms that scholars tend to study within multilateral institutions. This is important to note,
because relationships of trust are tied to strong norms of proper conduct. It is compliance with these
norms that will form part of the trusting relationship. Thus, in order to study trusting security
relationships within the GCC, we must do so both in terms of vulnerabilities over internal security, and
take into account the role of special social norms in the process.
Trust Theory
As we have established in the last section, standard international relations issues of abandonment and
entrapment fail to capture the most important security dynamic at play within the GCC. For the GCC
states, the primary issue is not that the other will fail to come to their aid in a time of crisis, but over
whether divergent interests might harm the internal security of the state. Indeed, it is the internal
pressures that states face that makes them primarily vulnerable in a security sense. But how do we
know whether there are trusting relationships, held together by certain social rules, which exist
between the members of the GCC over matters of collective internal security?
We draw on both the concepts of hedging and of betrayal in our analysis. Hedging arises as a key
variable because if states are rational actors facing vulnerability in their security relationships, then they
should pursue some type of self-insurance against defection, that is, they should hedge. Hedging, or
paying a cost in the present that decreases the severity of a potential negative future event, can be as
simple as ensuring that you have extra military forces available should you be abandoned by your ally
within traditional security studies, or to simultaneously cultivate alternative relationships outside of the
alliance should you be entrapped by your ally and need to break your alliance promises. In either case,
hedging provides a solution to the pervasive uncertainty faced by states by reducing the variability in
potential outcomes. However, it does come at a cost in the present (Keating and Ruzicka, 2014).
Because it is intimately linked with a state’s perception of uncertainty, hedging becomes a central
concept in identifying changes in trusting relationships. This operates under all potential theories of
trust. From the rational trust perspective, trust is a matter of identifying likelihood that the other party
will live up to their commitments. As James Coleman puts it, trust is conferred if “the chance of
winning, relative to the chance of losing, is greater than the amount that would be lost (if he loses),
relative to the amount that would be won (if he wins).” (Coleman, 1990: 99) So an assessment of trust
involves two things: the probability of trustworthiness, which falls between 0 (absolute
untrustworthiness) and 1 (absolute trustworthiness), and the payoffs associated with successful
cooperation and defection (Gambetta, 1988: 218). The calculation of trustworthiness is done through a
Bayesian process, where an initial guess at trustworthiness is then modified up or down based on the
success or failure of the last interaction, which will eventually converge to some value (Hardin, 2002:
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113, Kydd, 2005: 19). Where the trustworthiness of the other goes up because of these iterated
interactions, the less hedging we should expect states to take for any given opportunity.
While there is no doubt that trust between states has some type of rationalist, calculative component,
this does not completely exhaust the study of trust. Indeed, several scholars have noted that by
reducing trust to mere calculation, rational trust scholars “are not really studying trust at all. What they
are investigating are the processes by which individuals come to formulate and act on the predictions
about the behaviour of others.” (Lewis and Weigert, 1985: 976) Trust, for social trust theorists, is
partially calculative, but is also strongly involved by social conditions (Parsons, 1969: 336-337, Lewis and
Weigert, 1985: 972, Mayer et al., 1995: 717-720, Möllering, 2006: 360).
The importance of social trust is not simply that it means that additional social variables come into play
in the creation of the trusting relationship, but also that the trusting relationship can become noncalculative and habitual. Trusting relationships operates not purely calculatively, but cognitively lowers
our perception of the risk of defection of the others, essentially taking for granted that their motivations
and behavior will meet our expectations (Luhmann, 1979: 15, Anheier and Kendall, 2002: 349, Keating
and Ruzicka, 2014: 755). This can occur to the extent that “contingently possible future events are
thought of as zero for all practical purposes ... because to trust is to live as if certain rationally possible
futures will not occur.” (Lewis and Weigert, 1985: 969)
If actors believe the other to be trustworthy, either for calculative or social reasons, the less actors
should rely on hedging activities (Keating and Ruzicka, 2014: 761). Thus, if actors are reducing their
hedging behavior with respect to one another, and the social meaning of the hedge appears to be in
alignment with the reduction, then we can make some claims that the actors are transforming their
relationship in a more trusting way - and vice versa for increasing hedging behavior (Keating and
Ruzicka, 2014: 762). In this respect, we can see that the GCC is a very different organization in its lack of
institutionalization. Institutions provide liberal security hedge that provide benefits to states, since they
create “strong surveillance mechanisms which would detect and frustrate any attempt to unilaterally
gain a decisive military advantage.” (Hasenclever and Kasten, 2016: 4) The lack of institutionalization
unto itself signals that the states are forgoing control and surveillance mechanisms in favor of assuming
that the social norms will hold, in essence, voluntarily exposing themselves to vulnerability and
suggesting a trusting relationship.
The second variable that we are looking for is evidence of betrayal. Betrayal is often used within the
literature to demonstrate why trust is something more than a simple calculative exercise put forward by
the rationalist scholars. The feeling of betrayal that can occur when a trusted actor does not fulfil their
duties is not simply a result of misplaced expectations. Indeed, this explains why certain misplaced
expectations, such as your alarm clock failing to ring, does not prompt the same response (Holton, 1994:
66). The emotional response to the broken trusting relationship is what differentiates trust from mere
expectations. Trust is therefore not a purely calculative exercise based on the strategic assessment of
the other.
Emotions thus also play a role in trust. As Jonathan Mercer puts it, “emotion is the basis of trust ...
[since] trust is a feeling of optimism in another’s goodwill and competence.” (Mercer, 2005: 95) Trust
thus requires feelings of “warmth and affection” (Mercer, 2005: 95) Later, Mercer is explicit, arguing
that “cooperation behaviour leads to a feeling of trust, and the feeling of trust is evidence that one
should cooperate.” (Mercer, 2010: 5) Trust, from this perspective, is tied to directly experienced
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feelings. However, though we see betrayal as an important emotional response to a breach of a trusting
relationship, there are dangers in going too far down the line in the ‘trust as emotions’ argument.
First, it potentially conflates the characteristics of an independent causal variable with the
characteristics of the phenomenon itself. Requiring something is not the same as being something. In
this case, whereas feelings of warmth and affection might help trust, it does not follow that trust itself is
emotional, only that certain emotional characteristics help us to trust. This is particularly important
because in ‘making trust emotional,’ there is the potential to conflate the factors that might lead to a
trusting relationship - empathy, affection, etc. - with the characteristics of the trusting relationship itself.
While emotions likely play a role in the story of getting to trust, there is no necessity for the result, the
trusting relationship, to be explained as an emotion as well. This is particularly important for social trust
theorists because by making trust emotional, some type of continuously lived experience, it makes it
much more difficult to consider trust to be a habitual, everyday experience (Lewis and Weigert, 1985:
969) that removes us from a purely calculative/experienced mode of being - which is arguably the
biggest functional benefit of trusting relationships (Luhmann, 1979).
Second, it focuses on an intermediary variable that arguably less important that the causes of that
variable. In this case, the social scholars of trust suggest that there are several factors that create trust
outside of pure rational calculation, such as shared identity and solidarity, common values, group
membership, and a feeling of working towards common goals (Parsons, 1969: 336-337, Luhmann, 1979:
179, Rousseau et al., 1998: 399, Hurley, 2011: 30). These social elements are acknowledged in some
emotional literature, for instance, when Mercer argues that in/out group discrimination is part of the
decision to trust (Mercer, 2005: 96). This, however, begs the question: what does saying that trust is
emotional add to this causal chain? He claims that “recognizing emotion’s role in trust and identity may
help analysts better understand how alliances might work and how security communities might form,”
(Mercer, 2005: 97) but does not provide any suggestions as to how this might work. Indeed, without a
connection to observable social phenomenon, Michel’s critique of trust-building after betrayal, that
social science can have little to say about it (Michel, 2012: 887) because trust is simply an ‘individually
distinct trans-rational process which lies beyond the conscious and wilful control of the betrayed,’
(Michel, 2013: 102), is likely to be valid.
On the issue of betrayal, the third problem with trust as emotion is that it has a distinct one-sided bias.
While feelings of goodwill are often connected with external social phenomena, and therefore might not
add much to the causal analysis, when it comes to mistrust, there is a better case for independent
emotional effects, but in the opposite causal direction than most trust as emotion scholars consider.
This occurs with the emotional effects of betrayal (Michel, 2013: 99). Part of the problem with the onesided bias is that there is no similar ‘betrayal’ effect on the trusting side of the problem that is quite so
dramatic and effective. Michel argues that this is the case because of the essential link between
vulnerability and trust (Michel, 2013: 99), particularly since betrayal occurs within an emotional field of
trust and presupposes “a willful act to cause harm” (Michel, 2013: 100).
Still betrayal is important not only because it is linked to negative emotions, but also because it
potentially also shifts the worldview of those betrayed, leading to a reassessment of the actor’s horizon
of expectation (Michel, 2013: 101). In making this move, Michal unpredictably shifts to ‘expectations’
here and away from emotions - it is unclear what role emotions play in this case, despite the fact that
they should be the most important effect of betrayal if trust is indeed ‘emotional.’ Again, this effect is
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better explained by social trust theorists like Niklas Luhmann, who argued that what trust allows us
create a less-complex model of reality that ‘overdraw[s] on the information which it possesses”
(Luhmann, 1979: 32) through social identification. Betrayal is so disorienting and shocking because it
suddenly opens up a ‘gulf of unfamiliarity’ with the betrayer that, in addition to having negative
emotional effects, pushes subsequent analysis in a rationalist direction (Luhmann, 1979: 33). Thus, we
agree with Michael that betrayal is the materialization of existential vulnerability, but this is exactly why
conceptualizing trust as a habitual structure is important. It is the move from habituation to
calculativeness through an act of betrayal that is important here. But unlike Michael, it also means that,
in a move to calculativeness, that there exists the possibility of mending fences between the betrayer
and the betrayed, should the betrayer be interested in doing this.
In summary, to demonstrate the importance of trusting relationships within the GCC we need to take
trust research in a slightly different direction. First, as explained in the first section, we need to consider
how the specificities of the GCC both in terms of security perception and culture affect the primary
variables of interest. In this case, the potential relationships of trust should exist primarily with respect
to vulnerabilities over the internal security of the states instead of the external security focused on by
most international relations scholars. Additionally, we need to understand how these vulnerabilities
and potential trusting relationships occur within specific social environments that can have a causal
effect on the trusting relationship. Second, we will identify the trusting relationship through both
identifying and examining the absence of hedging strategies on issues where internal security might be
threatened by the foreign policy of the other member states and through looking for reactions to
betrayal when these relationships are breached.
The Arab Spring and Crisis in the GCC
The Arab Spring was a particular crisis for GCC. The political instability that spread across the region
began to affect the GCC states, with all states facing public and virtual demonstrations against their rule
(Colombo, 2012: 110-111). In response, the GCC states both clamped down domestically on political
forces that they supported in Arab spring states. So at the same time that the GCC states were using a
heavy hand against demonstrators in the UAE and Bahrain, Qatar stood out for its activity in supporting
anti-regime revolts in both Libya and Syria. It was the first Arab state to recognize the Libyan
Transitional National Council and supplied the rebels with financial and military aid (Colombo, 2012:
116). It also used Al Jazeera to rally public opinion around foreign intervention in Libya (Colombo, 2012:
117). There is some speculation that Qatar has built up lines of communication and influence over
Islamist parties and civil society organizations in order to gain preferential access to energy supplies and
European markets (Colombo, 2012: 117). Similarly in Syria, the inability of the UNSC to come to an
agreement over a collective response has allowed Qatar to step in, sending weapons and economic
support to Syrian rebels (Colombo, 2012: 117).
These moves, however, placed Qatar in direct competition with Saudi Arabia, who saw the uprising as
more of a threat than an opportunity. This is particularly the case with Qatar’s links to Islamists in Egypt,
where the newly opened subsidiary channel Al Jazeera Mubashir Misr was openly supportive of the
Egyptian Islamist faction in the 2011-12 parliamentary elections (Colombo, 2012: 118). Saudi Arabia, on
the other hand, saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a potential source of ideological competition with
Wahhabi groups, having traditionally suppressed the group domestically and increased surveillance and
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repression from 2011 onwards. Saudi Arabia alternatively backed the Salafist Nur party in opposition to
Qatar’s move (Colombo, 2012: 118-119).
Silvia Colombo understood this pattern of behavior to represent a conscious double standard through
which the GCC states can both ensure that their external and internal environments are secure. It is
competitive, but ultimately cohesive. As she puts it, “even what may appear as diverging domestic and
foreign policy strategies by the two most powerful members of the GCC, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, boils
down to the inside vs. outside dichotomy ... This apparent division of labour between Saudi Arabia and
Qatar - whereby the former is the guardian of the status quo inside the GCC, while the latter cultivates
its role as the champion of Arab public opinion with a view to increasing its projected influence - is
functional to the attainment of the common goal of managing instability internally and externally.”
(Colombo, 2012: 119) However, this was not without problem. She noted at the time that “a rift is
opening between Qatar’s outreach to Islam-rooted movements and parties outside the Gulf area, such
as the Muslim Brotherhood in the countries undergoing transition, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia’s
and the UAE’s clear message to the same forces via the brutal clampdown on the Islamist movements at
home.” (Colombo, 2012: 112)
We, however, argue that there is more of a story to be told in the relationship between Saudi Arabia and
Qatar that can be understood through the dynamics of trust, betrayal and attempted trust-building
within a Gulf-state cultural context. Thus, the narrative about Qatar and Saudi Arabia should not be
framed as some type of cohesive strategy by the GCC, but rather was a rupture between two of the
states centered on entrusted norms of conduct that were broken by Qatar.
The Trusting Relationship
The primary domain of trust within the GCC is that all parties will do what it takes to maintain face. As
we stated before, the absence of a formal legislative mechanism with the powers to resolve disputes or
to compel decisions by the executive (Secretariat General), suggests that members of the GCC must cite
infractions of accepted norms (the long term pursuit of coordination and cooperation oriented towards
the realisation of unity of all members) as a means of constraining the self-interested activism of
individual member states.1 In addition to establishing ideological goals, the emphasis on norms also
serves a specific practical purpose. It sets the rules of the game for inter-state dispute resolution
allowing for the voicing of disagreement while minimizing the potential for losing face. The member
states can then lodge complaints through the GCC, acting as a third party, and thus occludes the
connection of the aggrieved party to its own grievance. The operations of the GCC show it to abide by a
norm of minimizing the loss of face/maximizing preservation of social status. Taking steps to minimize
the loss of face allows for the future possibility of reconciliation.
The GCC alliance, having agreed publicly to these norms, then operates with respect to a further,
informal, norms that ensure the behavior of these states towards each other meets local social
expectations for business conduct.2 This ensures that the respect and reverence required by the elite
1
Articles 4 and 10, GCC Charter
2
Conduct in the GCC is influenced by social norms which place an paternal emphasis on collective benefit over
individual benefit. Business trusting relationships reflect the norms of tribal kinship which are characterised by the
preservation of honour, respect, tradition with the overall goal of avoiding causing insult. Conduct that breaks
these norms signifies more than a simple divergence of views, it constitutes a personal rejection of the respect and
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social status of its members is preserved towards all parties. This effectively minimizes the potential
threat of losing face publicly. Given the lack of institutionalization that might otherwise punish
defecting actors, trusting relationships built around following these norms are central to the functioning
of the organization. The following discussion of Saudi Arabia - Qatar relations shows that breaches of
the informal norm are just as, if not more, serious as breaches of the formal norm.
Prior to the Arab spring, the GCC alliance did not engage in much formal internal discipline. Though
ostensibly an alliance of social equals, Saudi Arabia commands the greatest influence within the group,
the other states routinely look to it for discursive leadership in issues related to foreign policy. Formally
invested in the realization of the shared external security goals of the GCC Charter (1981), and bolstered
by the Internal Security Agreement (1982), GCC states were free to pursue to domestic economic
development goals. The period from 1981 to 2011 saw many of these hydrocarbon rich states prosper
rapidly, establishing capital cities Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha equipped for the tourism and business
opportunities the globalized economy could provide. It also saw the emergence of a competitive rivalry
between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
In 1995, the Qatari ruling family experienced a bloodless coup d’etat. Having deposed his father, the
reform oriented Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani ascended to power.3 Sheikh Hamad, with the help of
Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, turned his hand to foreign policy and embarked on a series of
soft power initiatives which raised Qatar’s international profile. The most notable of these was the
establishment of Arabic language international news channel Al Jazeera, the first of its kind to be based
in the Middle East and not in Europe. With a potential audience of over 200 million Arabic speakers in
region alone, Al Jazeera quickly became a household brand. The network’s willingness to broadcast
views other than official government views (which more often than not incorporated the public criticism
of all Arab governments, with the exception of Qatar) began to complicate the trusting relationship
underpinning the GCC alliance.
The format of shows on Al Jazeera ensured it could avoid being held publicly accountable for criticising
other states directly. Its most political show, The Opposite Direction (al ittijah - al muakis), featured callin segments where members of the public could contribute their views. Guests were often of divergent
political viewpoints and, more importantly, were from Arab states other than Qatar. This meant that
whatever was said on the program by either the guests or public callers could not be attributed to stateowned Al Jazeera, and therefore not to the state of Qatar by extension. This was important in ensuring
that both the formal and informal norms stayed intact. Saudi Arabia too left the formal and informal
norm intact and did not engage in any public rebuke of Qatar, opting instead to establish its own rival
satellite channel (al Arabiya) in 2003. Thus, even despite the pressure on the established norms, the
trusting relationship over whether one state would directly cause the other to lose face remained intact,
with no increasing in hedging activity on the part of Saudi Arabia in response to what could be seen as a
growing threat.
honour of the business partners. See Valeri, M., Hertog, S. & Luciani, G. 2013. Business Politics in the Middle East
London, Hurst & Company.
3
His first year in power was tested when other Gulf monarchies supported a counter-coup attempt to reinstall the
ousted former emir, Khalifa, in 1996.
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Bolstered by Al Jazeera’s success, and in the absence of any public sanction from other members of the
GCC regarding its foreign policy activism, Qatar began to acquire a regional reputation in leadership and
mediation. Qatari mediation was involved in Yemen (2008-2010), Lebanon (2008), and Darfur (20082010) and worked to resolve disputes between Sudan and Chad (2009) and between Djibouti and Eritrea
(2010) (Ulrichsen, 2014: 6). This reputation for stability and the presidency of the Arab League in 20112012 gave the Qatari leadership the confidence to support the rising Islamist forces in transitioning
countries following the outbreak of the Arab Spring. Deciding to support the winds of change, Qatar
pursued interventionist strategies in Libya and Syria (Arab solutions to Arab problems) and organized
economic assistance for Tunisia and Egypt. Within the GCC however, Qatar constrained its ambitions,
cognizant of Saudi Arabia’s larger influence in its neighbors. It opted for cautious coordination with GCC
actions to restore order in Bahrain and Yemen (Ulrichsen, 2014: 8).
The Betrayal
Qatar’s support for rising Islamist forces in Egypt caused a damaging rupture in relations and curtailed
its capacity for autonomous policy-making. Following Egypt’s designation of the ousted Muslim
Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Qatar provided refuge for ousted Brotherhood officials.4 This
was finally a step too far, because Saudi Arabia saw it as a lack of respect for the shared GCC
commitment to non-interference in the internal affairs of a member state and forced a shift in the
longstanding dynamics of trust operating in the GCC alliance.5 The manner of this rupture was so
shocking and unexpected for the alliance, and Saudi Arabia in particular, that it constituted more than a
simple defection: it was a public betrayal of the social ties that bind the GCC order over a matter of
internal security. Qatar’s disregard for both the formal norm of non-interference and informal norm of
minimizing the loss of face over an issue of internal security allowed Saudi Arabia the room to respond
publically rather than through back channels – a shocking action given the established rules in GCC
diplomacy. Additionally, it formed a coalition with UAE and Bahrain who all recalled their ambassadors
from Doha (2014b). The magnitude of this action sent a very strong public signal to Qatar and was the
first time in the GCC’s thirty year history that a diplomatic grievance has been aired so publicly,
suggesting that Qatar’s actions both in threatening internal security and breaking public norms were
more than a simple diplomatic reaction: they suggest an overreaction caused by feelings of betrayal
over basic norms and security.
However damaged the relations had become by Qatar’s international activism, the fact that its behavior
had forced Saudi’s hand to restore confidence of the other GCC states, threw salt on Saudi’s wounds.
Saudi Arabia and the other states, to a lesser extent, were lost face on the international stage, as they
had already backed the new government in Egypt with a public pledge of $12 billion to prop up the
Egyptian economy (Ravinsky, 2013). This loss of face meant that it gained a moral superiority in the
Qatar-Saudi rivalry which could not be ignored by Qatar. Saudi Arabia status as the aggrieved party in
this dispute meant that it was incumbent on Qatar to make amends.
4
It was also running daily coverage of events in Egypt via Al Jazeera
5
This was specified in the 1982 internal security pact, also known as the Riyadh pact. This agreement has never
been written down or made available in a document. See also 2014a. Gulf Ambassadors Pulled from Qatar over
‘Interference’, BBC News. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26447914 (Accessed 1 June
2016).
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Qatar did not match the public action undertaken by Saudi, UAE and Bahrain in the recalling of their
diplomats, instead opting to stay silent: operating within the original set of norms that would preserve
face for all parties. Qatar’s strategic silence indicated to Saudi Arabia that it had received the message to
desist and was open to informal discussions. It furthered suggested that Qatar understood the nature of
the betrayal, and was open to taking the necessary costs in order to regain Saudi’s favor. Meetings
between November 2013 and November 2014 provided a formal yet private channel of communication
by which to reset the GCC agenda.6 Although neither the substance of these meetings nor copies of the
agreements reached have been made public, Qatar has since embarked on a strategy of active
deference towards the GCC, in the hope that its old status as a respected mediator might be restored.
Rebuilding Trust
According to social trust theory, when an actor has been betrayed it creates a ‘gulf of unfamiliarity’ that
moves the relationship into a calculative direction. A necessary part of this calculation on the part of the
betrayer is to openly and actively demonstrate to the other that they are willing to mend their ways.
With a sufficient amount of contrition, the actor attempts to influence the others calculations to move
the relationship back in a trusting direction. Qatar has continued to take the costs for resolving the trust
relationship by taking on other international duties which fitted with the GCC consensus priorities. Qatar
did not issue a declaration to remove MB and Freedom and Justice Party leaders from Qatar, rather it
was reported that they left of their own accord in Sept 2014 (Kirkpatrick, 2014). Since the assumption of
the presidency of the GCC, it has instead turned to confidence-building measures designed to placate
the fears of other GCC states, for example, recalling its ambassadors to Egypt over ISIL in Feb 2015, and
more recently its recall of the Qatari envoy to Iran, following in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia and
Bahrain (2015).
The case of Saudi Arabia and Qatar presented here tells a story of trust, betrayal and reconciliation.
Where scholars have described the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Qatar as ‘competitive’ yet
ultimately ‘cohesive’ (rational), we alternatively find the post-Arab Spring relationship to be
characterized also by restitution and reconciliation. Qatar’s policy activities towards Egypt broke the
norms governing the trust relationship that underpins GCC cohesiveness. Reminiscent of Egypt’s exile
from the Arab League in 1979, Qatar found itself discursively though not formally on the outside of the
GCC, which prompted them to actively take costs to demonstrate their trustworthiness.
Breaking the norm of minimizing the loss of face, a key rule intended for cohesiveness in the GCC, over a
matter of internal security moved Saudi Arabia to doubt the trusting relationship. In these conditions,
Saudi Arabia was not free to pursue any course of action available to it. It was limited to actions which
preserved face with the other members of the GCC. Its status as the ‘wronged’ party also allowed it to
act with moral authority, allowing it to adopt a strategy of restitution rather than pursuing a simple
exclusion of Qatar from the GCC. The trusting relationship underpinning the GCC alliance required that
both the party which committed the betrayal (Qatar) and the aggrieved party (Saudi Arabia) must do
what it takes to preserve face both for themselves and for the GCC as a whole. This sequence of events
placed the onus on Qatar to repair the relationship indicating its willingness to taking on the cost to its
own interests until such times as the relationship may be restored.
6
1st Riyadh Agreement (23rd Nov 2013) - outcomes are all secret; Riyadh Supplementary Agreement (16th Nov
2014); 35th GCC Summit, Doha (9th Dec 2014)
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Draft version for BISA 2016 – Please do not cite without authors’ permission
In sum, Saudi Arabia - Qatar relations after the Arab Spring demonstrate that the pre-existing and
longstanding norms for trust underpinning the GCC alliance were severely compromised by Qatar’s
pursuit of its foreign policy objectives in Egypt. Qatar’s actions were egregious on two counts: first its
alleged interference in the affairs of another state and second the implicit disrespect for the GCC’s
‘common and shared values’ signaled by Qatar’s self-serving actions. These actions further broke the
entrusted norm of minimizing the loss of face as it forced Saudi Arabia to act publicly to indicate its
opposition.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to show how trust theory can be applied successfully to understand
political relationships between non-democracies. In choosing the GCC, we have chosen a group of
states that are possibly as far away from democracies as can be imagined. Yet still, we argue that we
can find evidence of the effects of trusting relationships. This is important because it demonstrates that
trust theory within international relations has a very wide scope, given the Sinatra-inference quality of
this case study.
In addition, our paper has reinforced the necessity of considering social trust theory in the framework of
IR, both by highlighting problems with the ‘emotional turn’ in the discipline and demonstrating how
social norms of behavior are key to understanding subsequent emotional responses that then have
political effects in the GCC. Indeed, without this understanding of social norms and the trusting
relationships that follow from them, it would be difficult to understand the significance of the political
events that transpired between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Importantly, this paper also expands the
relationship between norms and trust beyond the ‘norms of reciprocity’ {Kegley Jr., 1990 #49} found in
some previous literature to include almost any type of social norms present so long as they represent
key organizational norms for the institution.
For scholars of the Middle East, understanding that there can be trusting relationships within the GCC is
important because, when operational, it creates additional stability among the members. Furthermore,
it allows the organization to function without a costly institutional support that would otherwise be
necessary as a liberal security hedge. By substituting trusting relationships based within social norms for
institutional checks and balances, the GCC can operate in a much more streamlined way than if this
were not possible. It also raises the questions of how trusting relationships that develop over social
norms can be used to consider wider effects in the region.
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