The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972–2005

1. Exploring Great Powers in Regions

c h a p t e r o n e Exploring Great Powers in Regions The United States has faced profound threats and attempts at outright hegemony not only at the regional level from Iran and Iraq but also from outside states at the global level, which has complicated efforts to develop foreign policy toward the region. The Soviet Union played a key role in the international relations of the region in part of the period covered in this book. Hence, we need to consider U.S.-Soviet competition in order to understand American behavior in the Persian Gulf. It may be that the United States did not balance in the Gulf because of pressures at the global level or vice versa. Moreover, the Cold War is over, but great powers still have vital interests in regions of the world. Indeed, China and Russia have repeatedly asserted the importance of balancing the United States globally, though it is unclear to what extent they do so in reality.∞ Considering both the regional and global levels, therefore, remains important. Furthermore, the United States must consider how its interests at the global level will be affected by the actions it takes at the regional level and vice versa. This may have always been the case, but it is probably even more so in a world of global interdependence, in which a situation and its ramifications are often not Exploring Great Powers in Regions 19 confined to only one state or region. In such a world, the consideration of globalregional linkages becomes even more pressing. Conceptualizing the Global-Regional Dimension To understand the role of external actors in regions, it is necessary to explore what is meant by ‘‘regional’’ and ‘‘global.’’ Naturally, experts disagree on the meaning of these two concepts. My goal here is simply to identify basic elements that can reasonably be viewed as constituting the regional level of analysis to help us distinguish it from the global level. Such distinctions do not exhaust the different points made in the literature in the past several decades; nor do they settle the many interesting debates on the subject.≤ But they do offer some basis for further analysis in this book at least. In this discussion, I draw heavily on the work of William R. Thompson.≥ First, we can distinguish the global and regional levels of analysis by the actors that constitute them. The global level consists of the major international powers —for the purposes of this book, the permanent members of the UN Security Council: Russia, the United States, China, France, and Britain. Other states could certainly be included as major or middle-range international powers, but these five states have played an important role in the Gulf and are key actors at the global level, as well. The regional level or subsystem consists of at least two and probably more than two actors. In this book, the Persian Gulf states consist of Iraq and Iran, the two historically most powerful actors in the region, as well as the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Second, as Thompson points out, the pattern of relations or interactions in a subsystem exhibits a degree of regularity and intensity such that a change at one point in the subsystem affects other points.∂ Barry Buzan suggests something along the same lines in asserting that each region consists of states whose major security concerns and perceptions are linked in such a way that those of each state cannot realistically be considered separately.∑ David Lake approaches this issue from another angle. He defines a regional system as a set of states affected by at least one transborder but local externality that emanates from a particular geographical area. Under this definition, although geography is important in defining a region, it may not be sufficient. That is because externalities that pose a perceived or actual threat to states, such as pollution or arms proliferation, may extend beyond a geographical area. Lake prefers to define a region in terms of 20 The Absence of Grand Strategy externalities, asserting that it is the ‘‘limited scope of such externalities that differentiates regional subsystems from the global system.’’∏ Whether one prefers Thompson’s approach or Lake’s, the intensity and impact of relations at the regional level differ from those at the global level...