It has been decided that the American President will meet with the leaders of the Gulf States on the 13th and 14th of May at the Camp David retreat. Many in the American capital believe that one of the most important means to calm their fears is to sell the States more American weapons alongside the support of the American military presence within these States.
So White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said on 06/05/2015 that the summit presents an opportunity for the United States and the Gulf States to discuss the ways of strengthening their partnership and security cooperation and it counts as an opportunity for the United States to reaffirm the strategic partnership of the United States with the Gulf States.
And Ben Rhodes, the American President’s National Security Advisor said on 04/05/15, the United States shall strive to bring about an effective strategic cooperation with the Gulf States to confront the Iranian hostile conduct in Yemen and Syria and that will be through the upcoming summit. And he said what is most important is that we will be dialoguing with the Gulf States and particularly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia about the guarantees that we will provide them and to the security of the Gulf. This is the aim of the Camp David summit which President Obama has called for.
Reuters News agency reported on 06/05/2015 from an American source that the American President Barack Obama is expected to renew his efforts in the upcoming week to help the allied Gulf States upon the distribution of a missile defence system to confront the Iranian missiles which is in order to put to rest their fears in respect to any nuclear deal made with Tehran.
So from these statements it becomes apparent that America is working to spread its influence and strengthen its hegemony and control over the Gulf States under the pretext of strengthening the strategic cooperation and the preservation of their security in the face of Iranian threats and to confront their missiles.
The name ‘Strategic cooperation’ or ‘Strategic partnership’ represents one of the new American tools which it works to apply upon many of the world’s states to maintain its control and dominance over them after its actual occupation came to an end as it did with Iraq and Afghanistan; or to be employed in order to spread its influence upon them as it is doing with the Gulf States or like it has done with the Central Asian states; or to be used to gain control over them and to utilise them to fight Islam as it has done in respect to Pakistan or as a means to monitor and for purposes of containment like it has done in relation to China.
America has already established strategic relations with the Gulf States and set up the forum for Gulf-America relations and its first meeting of a foreign ministry level took place in Riyadh on 31/03/2012. It aimed to lay out an official framework for strategic cooperation between the two sides and to strengthen it from the military angle, sea security, to protect the basic strategic infrastructure, to fight piracy and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, to study the Arab realities or situations and to establish a missile shield.
America expediently makes use of the Iranian missile threat but has until now been unable to establish this (missile defence) shield despite a number of attempts to accomplish that. The opportunity has now become more favourable so as to approach this issue in a serious manner in the presence of their agent Salman who is now at the head of the Saudi authority and will be absent from the summit whilst being deputised by his heir Al-Ameer Muhammad Bin Naayif who is planned to meet alone with Obama prior to the start of the summit. For that reason the US President’s National Security Advisor made reference to this when he stated: ‘…and particularly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’ and this is because it is the largest, richest and most powerful state from the Gulf States by which America is able to dictate to the Gulf States whatever it wishes to and to hinder what it wills in terms of the thoughts and directions of the English which are given to the Gulf States so that they work alongside it.
It is worth mentioning that America already has a strong military presence in the Gulf in the case where there are thousands of American soldiers in Kuwait who have been stationed there since they entered under the pretext of liberating it in 1991 and are stationed in bases the most significant of which are those of Camp Doha and Arifjan. Its fifth fleet has been present in Bahrain since 1971 and is considered to be its real striking force in the Gulf region, the Arabian Sea, the Sea of Oman, Red Sea and East coast of Africa. This comprises of war battleships, fighter aircrafts and helicopter carriers and twenty thousand troops. In its turn the Emirates signed a security agreement with the Americans in 1994 and in accordance to that, five thousand American military personnel were stationed close to the Jabal Ali port in additional to the Zafrah Air Base and they also signed an agreement with her to train their troops. In Qatar there is the American ‘Al-Udeid’ Airbase which has been there since 2003 alongside camp ‘As-Sayliyah’ which represented an important centre for American Military operations during the American aggression against Iraq. The Sultanate of Oman in 1980 signed an agreement permitting the American forces to use the Omani military facilities like the airbase in the Maseerah Island. The US has signed a number of security and military agreements with Saudi since 1945 and has continued to do so until this day. These included an air base in Dhahran for the American forces, the ‘Fourth special point’, mutual defence assistance, military training delegations, military facilities, the Dammam port and special privileges and immunity to American personnel.
In addition to the above, in recent years the Gulf States have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on American weaponry. So during 2014 alone Saudi purchased around $80 billion worth of weaponry whilst the Emirates spent around $23 billion and Qatar spent approximately $11 billion. The situation is such that it has demanded a permanent presence of major American weapons companies like Boeing, Lockheed and Martin who have set up permanent offices in Doha to serve their Gulf agents. It is as if they are merely opening up offices and showrooms to sell cars or fridges due to the great quantity of weapon sales they are making to these agents.
Alongside bilateral agreements that the US has signed with the Gulf States, America desires a precisely measured strategic relationship so that its control prevails over the Gulf Cooperation Council which was initially established by Britain for the purpose of safeguarding its interests within the region. So America wishes to take from Britain its colonial projects and turn them to its advantage and benefit just as it has already done with the Arab League and the OIC which were both initially formed by Britain before America was able to turn them to serve its benefit and advantage. Now America seeks to gain a singular control over every State from amongst the Gulf States whilst utilising Iran to accomplish that. It seeks to control the Gulf Council to use it as a regional power in order to paralyse and disable the hand of the English from being able to utilise and shape it towards its own advantage.
It is therefore expected for America to apply pressure in this summit to establish the missile defence shield whilst using the (supposed) Iranian missile threat as the pretext for that and this is so that it can strengthen its military presence and firmly set its control over the region. America also seeks to apply pressure utilising the area of freedoms and democracy, as spoken about by Obama previously, to enable it to gain political control over these States or to facilitate its agents coming to the seat of rule in addition to preventing these States from working for the British agenda in secret and particular in relation to Yemen. This is all alongside its continuing policy of extortion in respect to selling these States even more weapons to aid the recovery of its faltering economy which has been in a sluggish state since the economic crisis erupted in 2008 in addition to applying pressure upon them in respect to raising the oil and gas prices.
And so it is in this way that the Gulf States have become a tool in the hands of western colonialism in the case where they bind themselves to it in order to preserve their won entities and family material gains. They therefore leave a free hand to the colonialist to extort them and to plunder the resources of the Muslims and extend their influence upon the region whilst acting as a means to prevent the liberation of the Ummah from the clutches of colonialism.
By: As’ad Mansour
* Written for Ar-Rayah Newspaper – Issue 25