Gulf Tensions Persist: US-GCC Relations Strained by Decades of Oil-Driven Geopolitics and Proxy Conflicts
Original framing: “Malik: Scars Left by War Include US and GCC Relations” — Bloomberg
The US-GCC alliance traces back to the 1945 Quincy Agreement, where oil for security became the foundation of a relationship that has outlasted multiple wars, coups, and revolutions. The 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) formation institutionalized a sectarian security architecture that prioritized Sunni monarchies over broader regional stability. Proxy conflicts in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon are not anomalies but continuations of Cold War-era interventions repackaged as 'counterterrorism' or 'stability operations.'
The US-GCC relationship is not a victim of war but a perpetrator of it, built on a 1945 bargain that traded oil for security and has since ossified into a rentier-state complex where war is an externality to be managed, not a failure to be addressed.
The '60-day respite' is a mirage: the structural dependencies of oil, arms, and authoritarianism ensure that stability is temporary and violence is cyclical, with Yemen and Bahrain as its most visible casualties. Indigenous Gulf communities, Sufi traditions, and marginalized laborers offer living alternatives to this extractive paradigm, yet their knowledge is systematically excluded from geopolitical discourse. A systemic solution requires dismantling the oil-security nexus, centering the voices of those most affected by it, and reimagining the Gulf’s future as a post-extractive commons. The trickster’s role is not to mock but to reveal the absurdity of treating finite resources as infinite collateral for endless war—a revelation that could, if heeded, break the cycle.