Challenged Hegemony: The United States, China, and Russia in the Persian Gulf by Steve A. Yetiv and Katerina Oskarsson (review)

Challenged Hegemony's primary argument is that the United States has become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, protecting oil security for the entire global economy upon which its prosperity relies. Being able to achieve hegemony in the Gulf during the Cold War and various upheavals such as the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and up to the Arab uprisings has been quite remarkable, but authors Steve Yetiv and Katerina Oskarsson attest, the situation is determined by strategic cooperation with regional states and the picture remains complex. Certainly, the US is lauded for greater hard and soft power influence, if only through shared security interests with the Gulf states (minus Iran) and economic interests in maintaining the international capitalist system. By way of contrast, the cases of China and Russia are intriguing because both continue to probe and test the limits of US hegemony in different contexts. Clearly this has resulted in a 2017 US national security plan that paints China and Russia as strategic competitors. Yet, both China and Russia remain constrained by a lack of hard and soft power capabilities, which make them less attractive to regional states looking to diversify their international relations. China's focus mainly on trade and energy (China overtook the US as top oil importer in March 2013) and Russia's focus on hard power, energy and arms relations with states such as Syria and Iran illustrate the complex interplay between resource allocation, capacity-building, and alliance formation. From maintaining a series of patron-client relationships during the Cold War, Russia was able to establish new diplomatic relations after the fall of the Soviet Union and is now in a preeminent position to attract Gulf allies due to its intervention in Syria (see Saudi king Salman's visit to Russia in October 2017). For all intents and purposes though, Russia looks fixated on the Great Power game with the US and European Union rather than (re)constructing regional relations per se.

The book is structured into three parts. The first deals with the US in the Persian Gulf, through chapters on the global oil era, security, economics, and energy. The second part deals with China and Russia, with chapters on China's ascent in the Persian Gulf, energy and economic penetration, a history of Russian engagement since the Cold War, and Russia's trade and energy shift. The third part concentrates on the changing dynamics between the US, China, and Russia; the dominance of oil security; and hegemony as a problematic concept.

While the authors are right to focus on oil security as the dominant factor, they fail to give the Gulf states any relative autonomy in their international relations. We know that states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are dependent on the US for security, as outlined by the 2012 inauguration of the new Integrated Air Missile Defense Center in the UAE, a key touchstone for missile defense cooperation (p. 135). The UAE has built up an exceptionally close security relationship with the US and participated in every US-led coalition since the 1991 Gulf War (except the 2003 Iraq War) leading US generals to refer to the UAE as "little Sparta."¹ Many states in the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) have impacted US policy through arms purchases and various lobbying activities, driven policy toward other members such as Qatar (some might say US policy after President Donald Trump's visit to Riyadh in May 2017) and outside of the GCC grouping, Yemen being a prime example. In 2016, President Barack Obama made clear that Saudi Arabia was one of the "free riders" that was eager to drag the US into geo-sectarian conflict with Iran where there were no clear US interests at stake.² Their growing sphere of influence beyond the...