Gulf Security and the U.S. Military: Regime Survival and the Politics of Basing

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2015 by Geoffrey F. Gresh. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gresh, Geoffrey F., author.

Gulf security and the U.S. military : regime survival and the politics of basing / Geoffrey F. Gresh.

pages   cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8047-9420-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. National security—Persian Gulf States.   2. National Military bases, American—Persian Gulf States.   3. Military bases, American—Persian Gulf States.   4. Military bases, American—Arabian Peninsula   5. Persian Gulf States—Military relations—United States.   6. United States—Military relations—Persian Gulf States.   7. Arabian Peninsula—Military relations—United States.   8. United States—Military relations—Arabian Peninsula.   9. Gulf Cooperation Council.   I. Title.

UA832.G74  2015

355'.0330536—dc23

2014036174

ISBN 978-0-8047-9506-7 (electronic)

Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion

Gulf Security and the U.S. Military

Regime Survival and the Politics of Basing

Geoffrey F. Gresh

Stanford Security Studies

An Imprint of Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

For LEIGH, AUDREY, JOAN, and MY PARENTS

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction—Gulf National Security and the Politics of Basing

1. Oil and War

2. Negotiating a Foothold

3. Regime Survival and the U.S. Military

4. A Light Footprint in Bahrain

5. Sultan Qaboos and Operation Eagle Claw

6. A Saudi Sandstorm: Revolution, Rivalry, and Terrorism

Conclusion—The GCC Today and Lessons Learned for the U.S. Military

Notes

Bibliography of Primary Sources

Index

Acknowledgments

This book has been a long endeavor, and I am forever grateful and indebted to my many friends, colleagues, and family members who supported me throughout. To begin, I want to express my eternal gratitude to Andrew C. Hess and John Curtis Perry of the Fletcher School of Law Diplomacy at Tufts University for their unwavering support, mentorship, and friendship. They have both enriched my life in so many meaningful ways. I would also like to thank Richard H. Shultz, Ibrahim Warde, and, in memoriam, William C. Martel and Alan M. Wachman of the Fletcher School for their support and valuable insights during the early writing and research of this project. Additionally, I am deeply grateful to Bernadette Kelley-Leccese, who championed my work from the very beginning. Countless friends and National Defense University (NDU) colleagues have assisted me in multiple ways throughout my research and writing, and to them, I am extremely thankful: Hassan Abbas, Kenneth E. Baker, Alejandra Bolanos, Matan Chorev, Ethan Corbin, Thomaz Costa, Charles B. Cushman Jr., Craig Deare, William T. Eliason, Jennifer Jefferis, Sean McFate, Jeffrey Meiser, Jay M. Parker, Rebecca Patterson, Elena Pokalova, Kyle Taylor, Peter Thompson, and David Ucko. I was also supported by several great interns during the latter stages of the book, including Griffin Dottle, Jenna Hargens, Henry Holst, Zachary Lemisch, and Clayton Thomas. Similarly, I would like to thank William Kloman for his excellent copy-editing. Also at NDU, I would like to thank Chancellor Michael Bell of the College of International Security Affairs for his strong support of this project and my research endeavors. In addition to my NDU colleagues, I would like to thank Carol Atkinson, Cindy Jebb, Daniel Lake, and Jeffrey R. Macris for their fantastic insights and critiques during various presentations and iterations of this research. I would particularly like to thank David F. Winkler of the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, DC, for his comments on my Bahrain chapter and for graciously lending me his personal papers and entire research collection on Bahrain. I am grateful as well to the blind reviewers for their excellent comments and insightful suggestions. And to my editor at Stanford University Press, Geoffrey Burn, and his assistant, James Holt, as well as the rest of the editorial team, thank you for the wonderful guidance and support, which has been integral to this manuscript.

I am particularly appreciative of all the excellent assistance that I received in person or from afar by the staffs of the following institutions: the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the William E. Mulligan Papers at Georgetown University, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress, the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Ft. McNair, the Naval History and Heritage Command, the British National Archives, and the Middle East Centre Archives at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.

Last, I would not have completed this book without the encouragement and love of my family. I am grateful to the Nolan family, and particularly Tony and Beth, for many years of support during numerous research and writing trips away. Thank you as well to my sisters, Kristen and Ashley, for being inspirations in all that they do to achieve deeper meaning in the world. My parents, Sean Gresh and Katherine Hoffman, deserve particular praise in their tireless enthusiasm for all my endeavors large or small, and for teaching me early on about the power of knowledge and the rewards that come with lifelong learning. My daughters, Audrey and Joan, were important sources of love, laughter, and inspiration, especially during the final push of the book. But most important, I would have never finished without the love and encouragement of my wife, Leigh Nolan. She took on many burdens over many years, including reading and offering essential insights on many drafts, and yet continued to provide endless support and good humor, which gave me motivation and strength every day. With all this, it is still important to note that any mistakes or errors found here are my own.

Map courtesy of University of Texas Libraries

Introduction—Gulf National Security and the Politics of Basing

In December 2013, U.S. secretary of defense Chuck Hagel delivered a speech in Bahrain at the Manama Dialogue, a regional security summit, on the current state and future of the U.S. military’s Gulf presence. In the speech, he stated that U.S. capabilities are not in isolation of our partners’ capabilities. Over the last three decades, we have helped Gulf nations become some of our most capable military partners. Going forward, the Department of Defense will place even more emphasis on building the capacity of our partners in order to complement our strong military presence in the region.¹ As the United States executes its final drawdown from Afghanistan, the Gulf will again come into national focus as the U.S. military positions itself to protect regional and strategic national interests in an age of austerity. Basing access will be a core component of any U.S. national security strategy, but in the wake of the Arab uprisings and the violent spillover from Syria of the past several years, many U.S. regional partners or potential host nations will face increased scrutiny and pushback against supporting a prolonged U.S. military basing presence. If the uprisings and violence continue long into the future, the U.S. military’s regional foothold could be thrown into question. In Bahrain, for example, many policy-makers and scholars alike have wondered about what might become of the U.S. Navy’s base at Juffair. In May 2013, Bahrain’s cabinet approved a parliamentary proposal to put an end to the interference of U.S. Ambassador Thomas Krajeski in Bahrain’s internal affairs.² This sort of rhetoric puts the bilateral relationship on unsteady ground. Moreover, if the ruling Khalifa family proves vulnerable to domestic pressure, opposition groups will perhaps ratchet up their rhetoric beyond targeting the U.S. ambassador and take aim at the U.S. Navy’s basing presence. The United States has long maintained a naval presence in Bahrain, but terminating the U.S. naval basing lease is not beyond the realm of possibility for the Khalifa family if it feels the need to end the U.S. basing presence to relieve destabilizing pressure on the monarchy. It happened in the 1970s amid internal unrest, and it could happen again today.

Although the spread of the Arab uprisings and regional violence since 2011 marks an unprecedented period for the region, the possibility of a U.S. military base eviction, or the unexpected termination of a basing lease, is a threat that has plagued U.S. government and military officials across the Middle East since World War II. The U.S. military established its first basing foothold in Saudi Arabia at the end of World War II, but in 1962 the Saud monarchy unexpectedly called for the U.S. military’s basing expulsion because of mounting internal pressures.³ In 1973, a similar announcement took place when the Bahraini government declared the termination of the U.S. Navy’s basing contract in the wake of the Yom Kippur War.⁴ Other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have similarly threatened the U.S. military with a termination of its basing access,⁵ including Oman in 1980, when Sultan Qaboos called for an end to a U.S. basing presence when he learned that the United States had used a local base without explicit permission during the failed hostage rescue mission in Tehran following the overthrow of the shah.⁶ In 1990, Saudi Arabia again permitted the U.S. military full basing access following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but once the United States had successfully overthrown Saddam Hussein during the Second Gulf War in 2003, Saudi Arabia terminated its basing contract in response to heightened internal security concerns and the threat posed by radical domestic extremist groups seeking to overthrow the king.

Indeed, base politics dynamics are nothing new for either the U.S. military or the respective Gulf Arab host monarchies. Probing further into these historical basing cases reveals several trends that have influenced either a U.S. military basing expulsion or the reinstallation of U.S. basing in the wake of regional events. External and internal security dynamics are the main drivers influencing a GCC host nation either to accept or reject the U.S. military from local bases. External security concerns may consist of the threat of invasion by a neighboring rival or the jockeying for control over a contested territory, while internal security problems could include social upheaval, violent opposition movements, or mounting economic grievances against the ruling regime. Understanding the puzzle of how internal and external security concerns cause either a base eviction or a basing renegotiation also helps to explain the national security strategies and policies of the host GCC countries. GCC host nations face a spectrum of national security concerns that shift in priority on a regular basis. When external security concerns outweigh perceptions of internal security, a Gulf Arab host nation is more likely to maintain a U.S. military basing presence. As rentier states, many of the Gulf monarchies are incapable of properly defending themselves against a rival neighbor and therefore require a U.S. military basing presence as an important deterring factor to assist with external security. Domestic security forces are generally well equipped to handle the local population, while few mass mobilization mechanisms exist to assemble national forces in the event of an external attack.⁷ By comparison, when internal security threats far outweigh external security considerations, a host Gulf Arab nation will be more likely to call for the U.S. military’s expulsion or the termination of any U.S. military basing lease. In other words, when the respective host monarchy feels that its regime’s survival is threatened due to a possible coup or the imminent threat of revolution, the monarchy will call for the termination of a U.S. military basing agreement as a means to relieve pressure and as an attempt to re-exert its power and legitimacy locally.

While it would seem plausible that expulsion could lead to a souring of bilateral security relations, in the case of both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia the underlying security relationship did not appear to be severely damaged following the termination of U.S. military basing contracts. Instead, in both instances the U.S. military accepted the basing termination notices, while simultaneously proposing a subsequent light military footprint model where U.S. military personnel would be deployed solely for training missions or to advise the local government on technical matters, including maintenance and operation of U.S.-supplied military equipment. The basing eviction was a way to quiet threatening opposition groups that used a prolonged U.S. military basing presence to undermine the legitimacy of the ruling regime. A light footprint meant that U.S. military advisors could continue to support the local armed forces with new technology or weapon systems. For example, after the basing expulsion from Saudi Arabia in 1962, as well as in 2003, U.S. security and military advisors continued in an advisory and technical capacity to support a military training mission for Saudi Arabia’s National Guard. In Bahrain, the United States lost its full basing access by 1977 but was permitted to maintain an administrative support unit to assist with Gulf logistics and other U.S. naval operations in the region. In Oman, the United States did not lose its access but instead used promises of a lower military basing profile, as well as significant increases in military and economic aid, as a means to ensure that the U.S. military did not lose its basing access following the sultan’s threats to end the military basing presence.

Since the Gulf remains a top U.S. geostrategic and national security priority, understanding the politicization associated with a U.S. military basing presence in the Arabian Peninsula is important if the United States desires to preserve a secure presence long into the future. Since World War II, the U.S. military has viewed the Gulf largely as an essential region for maintaining a forward military presence to protect regional assets and to ensure Gulf security and stability. Its regional presence also links into a larger strategy of maintaining a lifeline of foreign military bases around the world similar to those of great historical powers such as Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France, to buttress U.S. strategic and vital national interests, including the protection of the global commons.⁸ U.S. strategic and vital national interests in the Middle East, and in particular in the Gulf, have remained largely constant throughout the latter half of the twentieth century: the protection of oil and natural gas supplies, unfettered economic and maritime trade, the security of Israel, regional stability, nuclear deterrence, and, until 1991, the prevention of a Soviet expansion across the Middle East and greater Gulf region. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union made numerous attempts to undermine a U.S. regional presence through the spread of communism and promotion of local revolution or by the threat of invasion following the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. The United States prevailed in the Cold War and immediate post–Cold War era, but the security dynamic has changed significantly in the post-9/11 world. The global commons remains the same, but globalization has spurred a proliferation of new and threatening actors, especially nonstate armed groups and other rogue actors, that threaten U.S. strategic national interests as well as global security.⁹ The rise of domestic extremism and the continuing threat from nonstate armed groups such as Al-Qaeda or the newly formed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) are important concerns for the Gulf Arab monarchies, but for the majority of GCC nations Iran will most likely remain as a top external security priority, as evidenced by events of the past several years, including the conflict in Syria and the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. military bases will likely remain in place in the near future. But as history shows, any host Gulf Arab monarchy’s national security priority could easily and rapidly shift, especially in the currently unpredictable environment. If the U.S. military desires to avoid any future surprise announcement from a host monarchy calling for the termination of its basing presence, the United States must stay attuned to domestic politics and aware of host nation internal security affairs that could adversely affect the U.S. military basing presence.

U.S. STRATEGIC INTERESTS AND THE IMPORTANCE OF BASING

Base politics and basing access for military forces is one of the oldest enduring features of international relations among nations and empires. Here, base politics is defined as the interplay between basing nations and host nations on affairs relating to the operation of local military facilities in host nations. Basing nations are understood as nations deploying forces overseas and host nations as those receiving such forces.¹⁰ Historically, a foreign and global military presence has been essential for the power projection and longevity of great world powers or empires. Thucydides described the basing access competition between Sparta and Athens and the dynamics of alliance formation between the warring Greek city-states in the History of the Peloponnesian Wars.¹¹ In the fifteenth century, the famed Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed with an impressive fleet through the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, searching for basing access to expand China’s global maritime ambitions from South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula and the Spice Islands of East Africa.¹² During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Holy League, Venice, Genoa, and the Ottoman Empire engaged in an epic struggle for strategic bases, leading up to the famous battle, or galley clash, at Lepanto in 1571. The battle marked the end of a basing system associated with technologies and politics attached to Mediterranean warfare and the geopolitics of European oceanic sailing ships.¹³ By the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth, the Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, and Dutch all competed for global bases to build up their colonial empires.¹⁴ Alfred Thayer Mahan, author of The Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1660–1783, regarded command of the sea and basing access as essential to global dominance, noting that ironically, the supercession of sailing vessels by those powered by steam increased the dependence of major powers on bases, that is, coaling stations.¹⁵ Certainly, access to bases around the globe remained important to the European colonial powers and would become increasingly important for the United States as it emerged as a dominant world power following World War II.

For the United States, establishing a global basing network became a priority only with the coming of World War II, when it was thrust into both the European and Pacific Asian theaters of war. In 1938, it only had fourteen military bases beyond its continental boundaries, in locations or colonial outposts such as Panama, Cuba, the Virgin Islands, Midway, Wake, Guam, the Philippines, and American Samoa.¹⁶ At the start of the war, the United States focused mainly on preventing Nazi Germany’s expansion into the Atlantic and did not want to expand its basing presence into Pacific Asia, for fear of provoking a war with imperial Japan. Following the tragic events of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, however, the U.S. quickly realized the need for a global basing and logistics network.¹⁷ The Gulf fell strategically in the center of transit routes to and from Europe and the Pacific and a new emerging U.S. global basing network. Saudi Arabia and Dhahran in particular would become increasingly valuable as basing stopovers fortifying the southern flying corridor and decreasing the flying distances between East Africa and South Asia.¹⁸ In addition to the U.S. need for strategic basing, many in the U.S. government desired additional oil resources to assist with a spike in consumption during the war and postwar era. Since the United States supplied an estimated 90 percent of the oil used by the Allied powers, Saudi Arabia offered an important alternative energy source.¹⁹ It was also an added benefit to the U.S. government that most of the oil companies operating in the Gulf were American-owned or -run. Moreover, U.S. oil company lobbying helped convince the U.S. government that increasing its regional military presence would be mutually beneficial to the U.S. military and local American business interests, since the added security guarantees would ensure that oil continued to flow and assist in U.S. war efforts.²⁰

By the end of World War II, the United States had constructed 4,433 military bases and facilities around the globe.²¹ It had emerged as a great maritime and military power and surpassed Great Britain as the largest overseas military power by the height of the Cold War.²² With the end of the war, the U.S. military basing network took on a renewed purpose as an important global protection element against a rising Soviet Union in Europe and Pacific Asia as well as the Gulf. In the United States, officials upheld the belief that its extensive overseas basing system was a legitimate and necessary instrument of U.S. power, morally justified and a rightful symbol of the U.S. role in the world.²³ Maintaining its global basing network became essential in the postwar reconstruction period, since Gulf oil became a critical component for rebuilding war-torn areas of Europe and the Pacific.²⁴

Following the initial postwar reconstruction efforts, the United States and Soviet Union continued unabated in their global competition for influence, power, and resources. The U.S. military realized the vital importance of using its global military presence to protect the world’s sea lanes of communication, particularly for U.S. maritime trade traveling from the Suez Canal to U.S. military bases in Pacific Asia, including Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. And the U.S. military’s need for oil access and other natural resources grew to new heights during the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s. At the height of the war, regular oil shipments arrived to U.S. bases in the Philippines en route to Vietnam, since an estimated 85 percent of the oil used by the United States in the Vietnam War originated from the Gulf.²⁵ During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the U.S. military’s basing and logistics network, including air transit and tanker-refueling facilities in Spain and the Portuguese Azores, was essential to U.S. air and sea lift missions in support of Israel.²⁶ Beginning in 1979, a U.S. military presence in the Gulf also became essential following three major events: the overthrow of Iran’s shah, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The Gulf Arab monarchies feared Iran’s export of its Islamic Revolution, in addition to fearing further Soviet aggression following its Afghan invasion. Most of the GCC nations would rely upon a U.S. military basing presence as a deterrent against both threats. Saudi Arabia, however, was the main exception and did not permit the reinstallation of a U.S. military base during this period, because of continued and sustained internal security concerns.

Since the end of the Cold War, base politics and basing access has remained an essential strategy for the United States to maintain its global influence and power. Today, with an estimated 80 percent of goods worldwide transported via the sea, protecting the global sea lanes of communication remains as strategically important as ever.²⁷ Moreover, when it comes to the Gulf, any disruption or blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which handles an estimated 21 percent of the world’s oil demand, or approximately 17 million barrels of oil per day, would have major repercussions for nations that rely upon maritime trade traveling in and out of the Gulf.²⁸ Further, any interference from a menacing neighbor such as Iran to the Gulf’s offshore oil installations or sea lanes of communication would put the global economy at risk, not to mention the Gulf states that rely on oil and gas revenues for survival. Force projection and maritime security are therefore crucial for both the United States and GCC strategic national interests. For the United States, this means an extended regional basing network to deter aggressors and contain the spread of any future Gulf conflict. In the words of Professor Kent Calder, foreign military bases are essential for deterring aggression, reinforcing alliance relations, inhibiting balance-of-power conflict, providing formidably efficient global logistics networks, assuring smooth resource flows, and helping most recently to combat terrorism.²⁹ In both 1990 and 2003, U.S. military bases and basing access in Saudi Arabia and across the Arabian Peninsula were essential to conducting operations and to defeating Saddam Hussein during the First and Second Gulf Wars. The U.S. regional basing presence has also been critical during the past decade for the war in Afghanistan. According to recent official estimates, the U.S. military maintains 598 overseas bases in thirty-eight countries, excluding such countries as Qatar and Afghanistan.³⁰

Despite this significant basing network, a more permanent U.S. military basing presence in regions such as the Gulf is not a foregone conclusion. In 2003, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, for example, Saudi Arabia terminated U.S. military basing contracts, reacting to heightened internal security concerns. A similar dynamic could affect other GCC host nations amid the spread of regional violence and massive societal upheaval following the Arab Spring, threatening the future U.S. military regional basing posture. As the U.S. military draws down its operations in Afghanistan, new debates will undoubtedly emerge about the current and future strategy of U.S. military basing in the Gulf and how host Gulf Arab nations can best strike a balance between internal and external security concerns.

GULF NATIONAL SECURITY

Aside from benefiting the United States, any Gulf Arab host nation also reaps major benefits from permitting a U.S. military basing presence, including access to the latest military and arms technology, training, border protection, and a physical presence to assist in deterring a possible external invasion. The United States and the GCC nations have mutually overlapping interests, mainly the protection of oil assets and regional political stability. But hosting a foreign power such as the United States is also filled with significant domestic challenges, since for local populations a basing nation is often an unwelcome presence. In many instances throughout the Gulf, the host monarchy has been depicted as weak or as a puppet of the West when it permits U.S. military basing. During the 1950s, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser launched a propaganda campaign portraying the Saud monarchy as a pawn of the West for continuing to permit a U.S. military basing presence. The spillover effects into the domestic realm and the spread of pan-Arab nationalism in the kingdom made the basing issue all the more contested and seriously undermined the king’s ability to exercise power during this period.³¹ The 1990s witnessed a similar dynamic when conservative religious clerics and other extremist groups used the U.S. military basing presence to attract a large following pushing for the monarchy’s overthrow. As a result, Saudi Arabia and other host Gulf Arab monarchies have historically trod delicately on the subject of foreign military basing, fearing internal opposition that uses the issue to undermine the legitimacy of the monarchy.

Although the conception of national security remains ambiguous and imprecise at best, GCC nations often view national security as directly intertwined with regime survival or political stability. Moreover, they view national security on a spectrum including both external and internal security concerns.³² Domestically, GCC countries have had to deal with conservative religious and sectarian forces, as well as transnational actors such as pan-Arab nationalist groups or advocates of communism that possess the ability to raise powerful opposition movements.³³ As depicted by the scholars Edward Azar and Chung-in Moon, Domestic factors such as legitimacy, integration, ideology, education, economic development and policy capacity play equally important roles in shaping the national security posture. Security challenges in many parts of the Third World are of endogenous rather than exogenous origin.³⁴ In other words, domestic security will often be a top national security priority for Gulf Arab monarchies and can spill over, affecting the outcome of basing negotiations. This dynamic is demonstrated by the three main cases considered in this book: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman.

An additional national security challenge for the Gulf Arab monarchies is that they have largely developed rent-seeking behaviors since the petrodollar windfall of the 1970s. As rentier states, the monarchies rely on oil and gas revenues to stay in power and to secure domestic political alliances. This poses a significant national security dilemma because countries such as Saudi Arabia, for example, developed a system that provided extensive benefits for society, including subsidies or monthly stipends, rather than fostering a culture of self-reliance or one that also extracts resources from its domestic population (that is, taxes and required military service). Its national defense system was inherently handicapped, lacking the manpower and mobilization capacity needed to defend its territorial sovereignty in the event of an external attack. Since the Cold War, Saudi Arabia’s armed forces have been designed mainly to operate in a domestic police state, intent on preserving the monarchy’s power and control over society.³⁵ As a consequence, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab monarchies have few options other than to depend upon the United States when confronted with the need to protect oil installations or other regional security assets from arch-rivals such as Iraq or Iran.³⁶ In 1990, the Saud monarchy approved a U.S. basing presence to counter a threat posed by Saddam Hussein to the monarchy that was far too great to ignore. The Saud monarchy came to realize that it was unequipped to push back Iraqi forces from Kuwait, let alone defend its own kingdom.³⁷

A U.S. military basing presence proved essential during critical moments such as the First Gulf War, but such a presence has also historically elicited intense domestic opposition to Gulf Arab monarchies and at times became a source of violent protests. During sustained waves of anti-American sentiment or virulent domestic opposition to a U.S. military presence (as in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain), the respective host monarchies engaged in hotly contested internal debate over the prolongation of U.S. basing access. In each negotiation, U.S. basing access was never the predetermined conclusion, being such a domestically sensitive issue. During each basing negotiation period, each monarchy engaged in internal deliberations that factored internal versus external security concerns into account and evaluated how the continuation of a U.S. basing presence might affect the regime’s power domestically as well as regionally. Studying these several cases, therefore, helps explain why host monarchies widely fluctuated in their approval or disapproval of a U.S. military basing presence. As demonstrated by the Saudi and Bahraini cases, when external security concerns were the top national security priority, a U.S. military basing presence went largely unchallenged. But when external security was less a national concern and domestic threats put a host regime’s survival at risk, internal debate on the basing question often resulted in the termination of a previously agreed upon U.S. basing lease.³⁸

There was one major exception to this rule: Oman. Oman was similarly faced with internal security concerns at the end of the 1970s, including a lingering threat from Dhofari rebels in the south. It also faced domestic and regional pressure in the early 1980s following the embarrassment of the unsuccessful U.S. Eagle Claw mission, which had used Omani bases without the sultan’s permission. The U.S. military, however, was able to stave off the termination of its basing access agreement through increased military and economic aid incentives, as well as promises of keeping a low military basing profile on Masirah Island. It is instructive to compare Oman’s case with those of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, because it assists in providing insight into the national security dynamics of and the challenges faced by each respective host monarchy. There are valuable lessons to be derived from the Oman case that could assist the U.S. military in today’s forward operations in GCC countries. The principles described here seem to apply also to other regions of the world, such as Central Asia or Pacific Asia, but require greater in-depth research. Avoiding or mitigating conditions that cause abrupt expulsion or result in adverse changes to U.S. foreign military basing contracts may serve U.S. long-term strategic aims such as regional stability, energy security, and the end of regional conflict. As both the Arab uprisings and spread of violent extremism in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen shape the domestic policy agendas of many GCC nations, the U.S. basing question may rise urgently to the fore once more, so it is important for U.S. policymakers and military officials to be equipped with these important historical cases.

BASE POLITICS

Despite the historical and current global importance of foreign military bases for Great Powers such as the United States, the literature on