Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies: Continuity and Change

David B. Roberts (Ed.), Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies: Continuity and Change, New York, Columbia University Press, 2023, 304 pp., US$35.00 (paperback), ISBN: 9780231205252

For too long, Gulf security has attracted immense scholarly attention among American and European scholars primarily concerned with the security of the States in the Arabian Peninsula. Historically, these studies were anchored in understanding and explaining the threats to the security of this geostrategic region connecting Asia to Europe and Africa. Hence, the scholarly attention emanated from the need for European powers to safeguard critical maritime trade and access routes to Asia during much of the colonial period. In the post-Second World War period, while the attention to security remained, the primary reason shifted to Cold War politics and the geopolitical contestation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Thus, studies on Gulf security focused on hard security, with military and defence attracting the bulk of the attention. However, as hydrocarbon geopolitics emerged as one of the main preoccupations of Western powers so far as Gulf security was concerned, the attention of Gulf scholarship also concentrated on oil security.