Editor's Note

By the time you read this, the chapter of our lives that was the year 2020 will have finally come to a close. With a vaccine on the way, we can hope that 2021 will bring better tidings for you, the United States, the Middle East, and the world. For us at the Middle East Institute and the Middle East Journal staff, it was also a tough year, with the transition to mobile work and various obstacles that popped up along the way. Nonetheless, MEI managed to produce outstanding content and hold engaging events with soaring (virtual) attendance, and we at the Journal are closing out the year with what I think is one of our strongest issues.

Whereas most of our spotlights begin with a timely article or two about international politics before moving onto conceptual and archival-based studies that provide context on historical or sociocultural matters, we decided to invert that formula. This issue largely focuses on one of the most dynamic subregions in the Middle East: the predominantly Arab southern coast of the Persian Gulf (and, to be precise, the Gulf of Oman). Because of the dramatic transformation the Gulf has undergone in the last two generations—from being a string of smaller polities that dotted the trade routes to and from the region's centers to being regional power brokers and global destinations themselves—this sequence seemed more appropriate.

The issue begins with an aptly titled, invaluable discussion of "Tribe and State in the Arabian Peninsula." A follow-up to the first of six articles he has previously published in the Journal,^* historian J. E. Peterson provides a broad, richly sourced look at how tribes have been a central part of the growth of the area's nation-states and how they continue to dominate its politics and societies. What will be perhaps of most interest to both students and specialists alike is the comparative discussion of the historical and political role of tribes in the smaller Gulf states (Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), the larger monarchies (Oman and Saudi Arabia), and Yemen.

Our next article shifts focus from the tribe to the city. In his fourth article for the Journal, Mehran Kamrava, the former director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University Qatar, looks at three of the cities that have been so influential in transforming the Gulf: Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai. "Cities, Globalized Hubs, and Nationalism in the Persian Gulf" looks at how policy-makers consciously chose to develop these three cities into regional hubs in various sectors. Professor Kamrava then considers which have truly become "global cities," utilizing a concept from urban studies.

According to Kamrava, Manama and Kuwait City do not trail far behind the three cities he looks at, but their leaders have not had the same resources or resolve, respectively. While our fourth article is not framed around this specific question, it looks at the latter case in more depth. In his first full article for the Journal,^† McGill University's Imad Mansour, a nonresident scholar at MEI, looks at how Kuwait's leaders have embraced China's Belt and Road Initiative in order to leverage this emerging global network to advance the country's development goals. "The BRI Is What Small States Make of It" engages with the international relations literature on small states, frequently cited in writing on Kuwait, and shows the role that strategy plays in helping decision-makers circumvent their countries' geographic and demographic limitations.

Professor Zoltan Barany of the University of Texas at Austin closes out our Gulf cluster with what is perhaps one of the most fortuitously timed articles in our pages, directly tying into what has been one of the most dramatic developments in the Middle East this year. For his first article in the Journal, and third contribution overall,^* Professor Barany explains the political and historical currents undergirding what has culminated this summer with the Abraham Accords. While the warming of Gulf-Israel ties has been written about a lot in recent years, including in this publication,^† the English-language scholarship has tended to focus more...