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CONTEMPORARY GULF STUDIES
SERIES EDITORS: STEVEN WRIGHT · ABDULLAH BAABOOD
Post-Brexit Europe
and UK
Policy Challenges Towards Iran
and the GCC States
Edited by Geoffrey Edwards ·

Abdullah Baabood · Diana Galeeva
Contemporary Gulf Studies
Series Editors
Steven Wright, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hamad bin
Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
Abdullah Baabood, School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda
University, Tokyo, Japan
Salient Features:
• The Gulf lies at the intersection of regional conflicts and the competing
interests of global powers and therefore publications in the series reflect
this complex environment.
• The series will see publication on the dynamic nature of how the Gulf
region has been undergoing enormous changes attracting regional and
international interests.
• The series is managed through Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University,
which has emerged as the leading institution within the Gulf region offering
graduate degrees in Gulf Studies at both masters and doctoral level.
Aims and Scope:
This series offer a platform from which scholarly work on the most pressing
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will encompass work being done on the member states of the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC): Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain,
Kuwait in addition to Iraq, Iran and Yemen. The series will focus on three types
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Politics and political development

Regional and international relations
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Health and education
Media, literature, arts & culture
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15318
Geoffrey Edwards · Abdullah Baabood ·
Diana Galeeva
Editors
Post-Brexit Europe
and UK
Policy Challenges Towards Iran and the GCC States
Editors
Geoffrey Edwards Abdullah Baabood
Pembroke College School of International Liberal
Cambridge, UK Studies
Waseda University
Diana Galeeva Tokyo, Japan
St. Antony’s College
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK
ISSN 2662-320X ISSN 2662-3218 (electronic)

Contemporary Gulf Studies
ISBN 978-981-16-2873-3 ISBN 978-981-16-2874-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2874-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Preface
Britain’s unprecedented withdrawal from the EU presents a unique chal-

lenge both to the UK and the EU in defining their policies towards
the countries of the Gulf, whether together, in friendly rivalry, or in less
constructive competition. The regional dynamics in the Middle East, espe-
cially the challenges to the regional security posted by Iranian behaviour,
and the world challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted
in human and economic losses, and the crush of oil crises in March 2020,
has increased the levels of uncertainty in which European policies will be
played out. Both individually and collectively European states and the UK
have been seeking to play a more critical role in the Gulf. Given Britain’s
historical role played in the Gulf, it is not surprising that it has been
seeking to reestablish itself as an influential actor, alongside and some-
times in competition with France. This relationship has developed while
both countries are aware of the more unpredictable role of the United
States and the growing interest of China and Russia in the region. It is
possible, however, that, due to the challenges the UK is likely to face in
the years following Brexit, it will lose its place in the region. Post-Brexit
Europe and UK: Policy Challenges towards Iran and the GCC States iden-
tifies and explores the most urgent questions associated with this ambi-
guity both in relation to Britain and other European states as well as to
the Gulf states themselves.
Providing a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis, this book will find
wide readership, especially among scholars and policy experts. Given the
v
vi PREFACE
uncertainty of the Brexit results for British and European politics, the
book’s focus on how Brexit affects to relations with Iran and the GCC
states will attract policymakers who follow these developments. Finally,
the book will be a valuable resource for course adoption in undergraduate
and post-graduate models which focus on British and European policies
towards the Middle East.
Oxford, UK Diana Galeeva

March 2021
Acknowledgements
The publication is the result of a workshop held at the Tenth Gulf

Research Meeting (GRM), 15–18 August, 2019, which was organised
by the Gulf Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. Our sincere
gratitude is reserved to the Gulf Research Centre for the opportunity to
conduct the workshop. In particular, we sincerely would like to thank
all the people who believed in this project, and give thanks for their
efforts and generous support for making the workshop possible (in alpha-
betical order): Aileen Byrne, Sanya Kapasi, Abdulaziz Sager and Oskar
Zeimelis. Finally, it would have not been possible to conduct the work-
shop and complete this publication without the valuable expertise, far-
reaching perspectives on the studied topics, hard work and dedication of
all contributors.
vii
Contents
Part I GCC and Post-Brexit Europe and UK

1 Introduction 3
Geoffrey Edwards, Abdullah Baabood, and Diana Galeeva
2 Converging Diversification Concerns: Why
Are the Europeans and Gulf States Looking
for a Deepening of Relations? 13
Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney and Vişne Korkmaz
3 Rising Challenges to the US-Led Regional Security
Architecture in the European Union and Gulf 41
Shady Mansour and Yara Ahmed
4 EU–Gulf Relations in Post-Brexit Environment 69
Samuel Ramani
Part II Iran and Post-Brexit Europe and UK

5 UK–Iran Relations and Brexit 101
Nicole Grajewski
6 JCPoA’s Destiny: Europe Between the US and Iran:
For How Long? 131
Alexander Shumilin and Inna Shumilina
ix
x CONTENTS
7 Assessing the Potential Impact of Brexit

on the E3/EU’s Iran Policy 153
Jacopo Scita
8 Afterword 181
Index 189
Notes on Contributors
Yara Yehia Ahmed is the Managing Editor and Political Researcher at

Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS), an Abu Dhabi-based
think tank. Yara has more than 5 years of experience in policy-oriented
research. Her Research interest is the international relations of the Gulf,
with special focus on GCC–EU relations. Yara holds a M.Sc. in Public
Policy from University College London.
Dr. Abdullah Baabood is Visiting Professor at Waseda University. He
holds a Master in Business Administration (M.B.A.), a Master in Inter-
national Relations (M.A.) and a Doctorate in International political
Economy (Ph.D.) at Cambridge University. He particularly focuses on
the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and their economic,
social and political development as well as external relations.
Dr. Geoffrey Edwards is Deputy Director Europe @POLIS; Reader
Emeritus in European Studies, University of Cambridge; Jean Monnet
chair in Political Science, Department of Politics and International
Studies, University of Cambridge; Emeritus Fellow, Pembroke College,
Cambridge.
Dr. Diana Galeeva is currently an Academic Visitor to St Antony’s
College (Oxford University), having previously also been a Scholar-in-
Residence at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. She completed her
Ph.D. at Durham University (UK), an M.A. at Exeter University (UK)
and B.A. at Kazan Federal University (Russia). Her research interests
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
include International Relations theory, Gulf Cooperation Council states’

foreign policies, and Russia and the Middle East.
Nicole Grajewski is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford in
the Department of Politics and International Relations, where her disser-
tation examines Russian and Iranian perspectives on international order.
She is also a predoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center’s Interna-
tional Security Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
and an Associate Research Fellowship at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek.
Nicole received a M.Phil. in Russian and East European Studies from the
University of Oxford and a B.A. in International Affairs, Security Policy
and Middle East Studies from George Washington University.
Prof. Dr. Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney is Professor of International Rela-
tions (IR) in İstanbul based Nişantaşı University and a member of
Turkey’s Presidential Security and Foreign Policies Council. She is Presi-
dent of CEMES, the Center of Mediterranean Security. She is a member
of IISS. Prof. Guney has been part of many second track diplomacy initia-
tives. Her research interests cover energy politics, security issues, current
world affairs, non-proliferation and disarmament, American, Russian and
Turkish foreign policy. She is commenting on national and international
broadcasting, writing analysis in daily newspapers and monthly political
journals on a regular basis. She has published numerous scholarly books
and articles, one of the latest is her edited book entitled New Geopolitical
Realities for Russia, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, Lexington
Publishers (London, September 2019).
Prof. Dr. Vişne Korkmaz is Professor of International Relations (IR)
in İstanbul based Nişantaşı University. She is vice-director of CEMES,
Center of Mediterranean Security. Prof. Dr. Korkmaz has given lectures at
the National Defense University of the Turkish Republic on current affairs
and regional security issues in the Middle East, Russia and Caucasus. Her
research interests cover IR theories, FP theories, regional security and
security issues, Russian, American and Turkish foreign policy. She is the
author of several books and has published a number of scholarly papers,
chapters and articles on these issues, including newly launched chapters
“New Russian Mahanism Failed: Futile Geopolitical Dreams in the Black
Sea and Mediterranean” (with Nursin Guney) and “Russia and Turkey:
Interdependence in the Time of Hybrid Mahanism” (with Nursin and
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Eda Guney), in New Geopolitical Realities for Russia, from the Black Sea
to the Mediterranean, Lexington Publishers (London, September 2019).
Dr. Shady Abdel Wahab Mansour serves as Executive Editor-in-Chief
of Trending Events Periodical and Head of Security Studies Unit in
“Future for Advanced Research and Studies” (FARAS), Abu Dhabi. Previ-
ously, Dr. Shady worked at the “Information Decision and Support
Center” (IDSC), the Egyptian Cabinet’s think tank. Research inter-
ests include MENA political and security affairs with a special focus on
regional security and conflict management. Dr. Shady holds a Master and
Ph.D. degree in Comparative Politics from the Faculty of Economics and
Political Science, Cairo University.
Dr. Samuel Ramani completed his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford’s
Department of Politics and International Relations. Based out of St.
Antony’s College, his research focused on contemporary Russian foreign
policy, Russia-Middle East relations and the international relations of
the Persian Gulf. Samuel is a regular contributor to leading interna-
tional publications and think tanks, such as the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, the Middle
East Institute, The Diplomat and Al Monitor. He is a regular commen-
tator on Middle East affairs for Al Jazeera English and Arabic, the
BBC World Service, CNN International and France 24, and has briefed
the U.S. Department of State, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
NATO Intelligence Fusion Center and France’s Ministry of Defense on
international security issues.
Jacopo Scita is H.H. Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah doctoral
fellow at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham
University. Jacopo’s doctoral project explores the role(s) borne by China
within Sino-Iranian relations from the 1979 Revolution to the 2015
JCPOA. His research interests include the international politics of the
Middle East, with a specific focus on Chinese interests in the region,
Iranian foreign policy and the analysis of nuclear policy in the MENA
region.
Dr. Alexander Shumilin holds Ph.D. in Political Science, Head of the
“Euro-Atlantic—Middle East” Center, Chief Researcher of the Depart-
ment of European Security at the Institute of Europe of the Russian
Academy of Sciences. Head of the Civilizational Conflicts Center at
the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of USA and Canada studies
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
(2002–2018), Consultant of the UN Department of Political and

Peacebuilding Affairs (2013–2014), external consultant to the Japanese
Government on the Middle East issues (2016), participated in interna-
tional conferences in the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, UAE,
Qatar, EU countries. Author of several monographs on the relationship
within the triangle Middle East-Russia–US/EU.
Dr. Inna Shumilina holds Ph.D. in Political Science. She is the senior
research fellow at the Institute for the USA & Canada studies of the
Russian Academy of Sciences. She is author of a number of scientific
papers and articles on the issues related to Political Islam in the Middle
East and its repercussions in the Western societies. She has participated
in international conferences in the United States, UAE, Qatar and EU
countries.
PART I
GCC and Post-Brexit Europe and UK

CHAPTER 1
Introduction
1.1 Introduction
The UK withdrew from the European Union on 31 January 2020.
Though the UK’s future relationship with the EU, both economically
and in terms of foreign and security policies remains uncertain. One
key unknown outcome of the UK’s withdrawal is its future relation-
ship with EU-level security resources and institutions, including the
Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security
and Defend Policy (CSDP). This comes at a time of possible significant
developments; especially for the latter with moves towards Permanent
Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and closer collaboration on defence
G. Edwards
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
e-mail: gre1000@cam.ac.uk
A. Baabood
School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: baabooda@aol.com
D. Galeeva (B)
St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
e-mail: diana.galeeva@sant.ox.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
G. Edwards et al. (eds.), Post-Brexit Europe and UK, Contemporary
Gulf Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2874-0_1
4 G. EDWARDS ET AL.
equipment through the European Defence Agency. If there is progress,

it means that the UK will not benefit from the advantages available to
the EU27, at the same time as it loses the voice ‘magnification’ that EU
membership has brought it. Moreover, a second unknown is the indi-
rect consequences for the UK’s ability to pursue any grandiose policies
independent of its erstwhile EU partners if the British economy suffers
adversely from leaving the European market.
Moves within the CSDP point also to a third unknown; the extent
to which the EU itself sees and acts on the potential of better relations
with the Gulf states. On the one hand, the economic relationship between
the EU and the GCC might have reached stalemate despite some efforts
by, for example, Chancellor Merkel to restart negotiations on a free trade
agreement during her visit to the Gulf in 2017. Meanwhile German bilat-
eral trade has been continuously improving. Both may well impact on the
UK’s ability to sign any advantageous free trade agreements with either
the GCC or individual Gulf states. On the other hand, France has for
some time been seeking to establish itself, via, for example, its base in
Abu Dhabi, as a key security actor in the region.
A fourth unknown is the role of the US in the region under the Biden
administration, and the relationships both the post-Brexit UK and the
EU27 may seek to establish with it. The UK has always been at great
pains to maintain its historical relationship with the US, which post Brexit
may be of even greater importance given the former President Trump’s
endorsement of the Brexit vote. This endorsement was symbolized in
the reciprocation of official visits in January 2017 (former UK’s Prime
Minister Ms. May’s visit to the US) and in July 2018 (President Trump’s
visit to the UK). However, the UK, alongside the rest of Europe, faced
a dilemma in its relationship with the Trump Administration. The former
President’s unpredictability, his clear dislike of multilateralism whether
expressed through NATO or the WTO, created tensions in the Atlantic
relationship. The former President himself may not rue the loss of the
UK as a diplomatic ‘bridge’ between the US and Europe but certainly
past Administrations have seen it as useful. The British government may
remain confident in the continuation of the ‘special relationship’ especially
in terms of intelligence sharing, and yet US policies create difficulties for
this relationship. One area of difficulty is uncertainty of the Biden admin-
istration further steps towards the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPoA), and the US relations with Iran.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
The JCPoA epitomizes especially strongly contemporary tensions. As a

member of the EU3, the UK worked hard to develop a better relationship
with Iran. On the one hand, it was firm in supporting EU-level sanc-
tions as part of the comprehensive strategy that, on the other hand, also
included negotiations to bring Iran’s nuclear programme under control.
The success of that strategy lay in the JCPoA of 14 July 2015. Boris
Johnson, the current Prime Minister of the UK, during his Foreign Secre-
tary appointment remarked: ‘I hope this will mark the start of more
productive cooperation between our countries, enabling us to discuss
more directly issues such as human rights and Iran’s role in the region, as
well as ongoing implementation of the nuclear deal and the expansion of
the trading relationship between both our countries’ (Gov.uk 2016a). The
decision by then President Trump to pull out of the agreement in May
2018—despite, inter alia, Boris Johnson’s last minute efforts to persuade
the Trump administration to the contrary—left the UK government at
odds with the US and working with the EU27 in an effort, along with
Russia and China, to save the agreement.
The US decision places the UK in a particularly delicate position not
simply in its relationship with the US but also with Saudi Arabia. The
former British Prime Minister, Theresa May, during her visit to the Gulf
in December 2016 wanted ‘to assure you that I am clear-eyed about the
threat that Iran poses to the Gulf and the wider Middle East; and the
UK is fully committed to our strategic partnership with the Gulf and
working with you to counter that threat’ (Gov.uk 2016b). However, the
Iran deal had considerable economic and financial potential that has had
to be weighed against the existing significance of the relationship with
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain especially. Considering the challenges
to EU/US relations, and occurred tensions between the UK and Iran
in summer 2019, post-Brexit policies towards Iran remain particularly
uncertain.
The GCC states are crucial partners for the UK, sharing deep-rooted
relations in a number of contexts, including diplomacy, trade, mili-
tary/security cooperation, culture, education, and relations between the
royal families. Theresa May participated in the Gulf Cooperation Council
of 2016, and discussed relations between the GCC states, highlighting the
historical ties between the UK and the GCC; she stated her ambition ‘to
build new alliances but more importantly, to go even further in working
with old friends, like our allies here in the Gulf, who have stood alongside
6 G. EDWARDS ET AL.
us for centuries’ (Gov.uk 2016c). Clearly the UK will be seeking agree-

ments on a basis that may give it an advantage over the EU27, although
the extent that is possible may well depend on the UK’s final agreement
with the EU.
The withdrawal agreement will also in part determine the extent to
which the post-Brexit UK will retain its attraction as both a global finan-
cial hub and an attraction for inward investment from the Gulf. While
there may be few challenges to the City of London as a financial centre
in the immediate future, there are predictions of a movement of financial
services towards other European centres. Whether the UK can remain the
‘eighth emirate’—to use the words of Tony Blair in 2006 and echoed by
Boris Johnson a decade later—may well be of crucial importance given
the levels of investment by the Gulf states, and not just the UAE. In part,
for the UK, the importance of continued investment lies in whether it can
persuade Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to invest beyond the London
property market. It is also a question of whether the ambitious visions and
plans of the Gulf states remain attractive to British capital, and of course,
Germany and the other EU countries are also following such plans closely.
Britain and the other EU member states have inevitably hedged their
bets in the crisis over Qatar. Given the need to attract inward invest-
ment from both sides in the Gulf dispute, most European states have been
supporting the mediation attempts of others, especially Kuwait. Further-
more, visits by the Saudi Crown Prince and the Qatari Emir to Paris,
London and Berlin resulted in new commitments for investment and
lucrative sales deals.
However, the sales of arms and military equipment, while increasingly
significance for both British and French manufacturers, have also exacer-
bated tensions for the war in Yemen and for human rights issues. In such
circumstances, the extent to which Brexit reinforces the importance of
Saudi purchases may create further embarrassment for the British govern-
ment. On the other hand, Britain’s move to increase its physical presence
in the Gulf has appealed to other sectors of the British polity; particu-
larly as this might align with France’s physical presence enhances French
support for the continuation of the concept of a Global France.
Taking all of these factors into account, this book considers how these
different tensions and unknowns may impact future relations between the
post-Brexit UK, the EU and the countries of the Gulf including Iran.
The authors of this book consider in different ways whether British and
1 INTRODUCTION 7
EU27 relations with the Gulf States may change or whether the tradi-
tions and the weight of their history reinforce the pre-existing patterns
of these relationships. Ongoing changes in the Gulf, the present disputes
and the trajectories economic reform will also influence these discussions.
Our analyses will also include the changing positions of the US, China and
Russia that are likely to impact on Europe’s interests. Finally, the book
explores outcomes of ongoing world challenges, such as the COVID-
19 pandemic and the crash of oil prices, to further examine Post-Brexit
Europe and UK policy challenges towards Iran and the GCC States.
Recognizing Brexit as a unique moment in the development of UK
and European politics that shifts foreign policy of the last 40 years, this
book adds value by focusing on relations between the post-Brexit UK
and the GCC and Iran. Most existing research into the aftermath of Brexit
focuses on the future of UK–EU relations, or considers UK foreign policy
elsewhere only generally. A very limited number of investigations explore
UK foreign policy in the Middle East, and especially the Gulf. Taking
into consideration the nature of their previous engagement in the Gulf,
this publication will open a discussion about whether it will be possible
for Britain to return to the Gulf as a global power, or if the UK’s future
foreign policy will not play such a key role.
1.2 The Structure of the Book

The book is split into Two Parts and contains Eight Chapters, including
the editor’s introduction. The First Part discusses Post-Brexit Europe and
the UK’s relations with the GCC States, while Part Two of the book
focuses on Post-Brexit Europe and UK–Iranian relations. In Chapter 2,
Nurşin Atesoglu Guney and Vişne Korkmaz evaluate structural and
conjunctural factors complicating the EU/European–GCC relationship,
despite the fact that diversified relations are an increasing need for
both sides and that they have many reasons to look to each other in
their search for diversification. The authors aim to underline that, apart
from existing structural difficulties in EU–GCC relations, new post-2011
factors have continued to create more complexities—if not difficulties and
obstacles—for the construction of inter-regional interdependence.
Chapter 3, written by Shady Mansour and Yara Ahmed, argues that the
European Union and Gulf Cooperation Council have had to deal with a
series of internal crises for the past couple of years that have negatively
influenced security cooperation. Yet despite the challenges, both regions
8 G. EDWARDS ET AL.
have been dedicating efforts to establish regional security institutions. The

chapter aims to analyse the extent of success of the American efforts to
lead the security architectures in Europe and the Middle East. Particularly,
this chapter proposes three interlinked arguments. First: the EU and some
Gulf states are attempting to establish an autonomous security structure
away from the US hegemony. Second: the US will resist these efforts,
and aim to maintain its hegemony over the regional security, especially as
both regions still lack the military capability that enables them to collec-
tively defend their region, without the American umbrella. Third: both
regions will try to avoid any clash with the US, while trying to develop
an autonomous security architecture.
In Chapter 4, Samuel Ramani, examines EU–Gulf relations in a post-
Brexit environment. The UK’s vote to withdraw from the European
Union (EU) in June 2016 (‘Brexit’) prompted speculation about a major
overhaul in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s relationship with
Europe. One popular hypothesis was that the UK and EU would emerge
as economic competitors in the post-Brexit order, which would force the
GCC to engage simultaneously with and balance its relationships with
the UK and EU. This scenario did not unfold, however, as EU–GCC and
UK–GCC free trade agreements were not ratified, and intra-European
discord created cleavages that often superseded the overarching UK–EU
divide. This chapter analyses Europe’s evolving relationship with the GCC
in the post-Brexit era. After briefly outlining the forays of major Euro-
pean powers, like France and Germany, into the GCC, this chapter will
explore two overarching phenomena, which define post-2016 EU–Gulf
relations. The first is the sustained dominance of bilateral, instead of EU-
GCC trade deals. The second is the hardened Franco-German divide on
diplomatic and security crises involving GCC countries. France has peri-
odically supported unilateral interventions by regional powers, such as the
UAE, while Germany has tried to de-escalate the Qatar, Libya and Yemen
crises. The chapter also explores future scenarios impacting Europe, such
as a marked expansion of British trade links with GCC countries, the
impact of US resistance to Chinese investment in the GCC on UK–Gulf
and EU–Gulf relations, and how the trajectory of intra-GCC cleavages
and a retrenchment of GCC countries from military interventions due to
low oil prices, might ease the Franco-German divide.
The Second Part of the book, which focuses particularly on Iran’s rela-
tions with Post-Brexit Europe and UK, starts with the chapter authored
1 INTRODUCTION 9
by Nicole Grajewski. This examines the evolution of Iran’s bilateral rela-

tions with the UK and the impact of Brexit on UK–Iran relations.
Through its interpretivist approach, this chapter analyses the diplomatic
practices, domestic debates, and exogenous factors that have influenced
the evolution of the UK–Iran relationship. It employs a variety of Persian
and English language primary sources including archival documents, offi-
cial government statements, academic literature, and news reports in
order to elucidate the salient issues in the bilateral relationship and better
understand Brexit within the context of UK–Iran relations. The chapter
begins by providing a broad historical overview of the main domestic,
regional, and international factors that have shaped UK–Iran relations.
Next, it locates Iran’s perspectives on UK foreign policy, tracing the
salient cleavages in Iranian domestic debates about its relationship with
the UK over the past two decades. In particular, Tehran’s shifting assess-
ment of UK foreign policy from the 2016 Brexit referendum until 31
January 2020 concurrently illustrates the impact of the regional and inter-
national context in constituting and constructing Iranian foreign policy
towards Britain. Therefore, the chapter proceeds to more closely examine
the developments in the UK–Iran relations since the 2016 Brexit refer-
endum with an emphasis on tensions in the Persian Gulf, Trans-Atlantic
relations, and the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action. Finally, the chapter concludes with future projections about
Brexit’s potential influence on UK–Iran relations.
In Chapter 6, Alexander Shumilin and Inna Shumilina examine the
Iranian nuclear deal and its potential outcomes. They argue that the US
administration’s pulling out of the agreement signed by P5 + 1 with
Iran in 2015 has not collapsed the «nuclear deal» (Joint Comprehen-
sive Plan of Action—JCPoA) even though undermining it substantially.
The EU countries, joined by Russia and China, condemned and resisted
the Trump decision. Nevertheless, the capabilities of the EU to salvage
the deal have been put into question. Europe itself has become a field
of political and economic wrestling between the US and its Middle East
allies (Gulf monarchies and Israel), on the one hand, and Iran, on the
other. The former tried to convince the Europeans to reject the deal in
the same way that the US did. The Iranian demarche of 8 May 2019—
the announced suspension of a part of its commitments under the 2015
accord in response to the re-imposed US sanctions—pushed Europeans
to gradually re-examine its previous attitude (one very favourable to the
10 G. EDWARDS ET AL.
deal) while reproaching Tehran and distancing itself from it. Iran, never-
theless, opted to show its muscle by increasingly pressuring Europe by
spectacularly reducing its commitments in the deal. The EU’s resistance
policy to Trump in Iran has had few chances to be successful. Many Euro-
pean politicians have been trying to draw up a compromise to ease the
tension with the US over the Iran issue while betting on Joe Biden’s pres-
idency. They believe, with Biden in the White House the chance to bring
the US back into the JCPoA would substantially increase. As well as the
new mediation role of the EU to bring the US and Iran closer could be
stronger.
By contract, Jacopo Scita, in Chapter 7, looks at the potential impact of
Brexit on the E3/EU’s Iran Policy and argues that the aim of the chapter
is not to predict the future of UK–Iran relations or of the Nuclear Deal.
Drawing on the role played by the E3 (Germany, France and the UK) in
first approaching Tehran in 2003 and setting the framework for the EU
involvement in Iran’s nuclear issue, the chapter argues that Brexit risks an
abrupt interruption of the constructive path that began in 2003. In partic-
ular, the paper suggests three macro problems that Brexit may generate
to the E3/EU agenda vis-à-vis the Iranian dossier: (1) the potential re-
emergence of mistrust and tensions between London and Tehran due
to the volatile history of British–Iranian relations; (2) the effects of the
growing transatlantic pressure on London’s effort to keep its Iran policy
harmonized with the E3/EU; (3) the potential impact of Brexit on the
process that has created and reinforced a distinctively European foreign
policy identity vis-à-vis the Iranian nuclear question.
Finally, the book concludes with Chapter 8: Afterword. This chapter
written by editors, looks ahead and offers final notes on how Brexit
might affect relations between the UK, the GCC and Iran. This
chapter acknowledges that Britain’s international standing will certainly
be damaged immediately post-Brexit, however, offers positive scenarios
for long-term perspectives. The final chapter argues and concludes that
by developing foreign policies under the ‘Global Britain’ idea, the post-
Brexit Britain might develop further relations with the US, still keep
relations with the EU states and strengthen its relations with the rest
of the world. Under these partnerships the post-Brexit UK, along with
challenges, also receives opportunities for further engagements with the
Middle East states, especially developing further historical relations with
the GCC states.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
References
BBC News. (2018, 12 July), Donald Trump UK visit: What is going to happen
during the trip?, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44786706 Accessed 14
September 2020.
Gov.uk, Website. (2016a, September 5), UK upgrades diplomatic relations
with Iran, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-upgrades-diplomatic-
relations-with-iran Accessed 30 October 2019.
Gov.uk, Website. (2016b, 7 December), PM: We are clear-eyed about the
threat from Iran, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-we-are-clear-
eyed-about-threat-from-iran Accessed 30 October 2019.
Gov.uk, Website. (2016c, 7 December), Prime Minister’s speech to the Gulf Co-
operation Council 2016. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-
ministers-speech-to-the-gulf-co-operation-council-2016 Accessed 30 October
2019.
Khan, Taimur. (2017, 1 May), German chancellor Merkel arrives in Abu Dhabi,
National, https://www.thenational.ae/uae/government/german-chancellor-
merkel-arrives-in-abu-dhabi-1.52396 Accessed 30 October 2019.
Storer, Jackie and Bateman, Tom. (2017, January 27), Theresa May in US, BBC
News, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-38761165 Accessed 30
October 2019.
CHAPTER 2
Converging Diversification Concerns: Why

Are the Europeans and Gulf States Looking
for a Deepening of Relations?
Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney and Vişne Korkmaz
2.1 Introduction
For the last couple of years, both European and Gulf states have felt the
need to diversify their relations for different reasons derived from current
geopolitical and geoeconomic fluctuations in the corresponding regions.
Diversification is a strategy for the Gulf states to manage the risks and
costs embedded in their traditional policies like bandwagoning to the
US agenda. Diversification strategy is in harmony with the strategy of
omni-enmeshment which is adopted by the GCC states to have contact
and relations to great powers in the system as many as possible. For the
European states, diversification is also important to manage increasing
geopolitical and geoeconomical risks. From the European point of view,
creating and promoting stable inter-regional interdependencies is a way of
having solid diversified relations. However, diversification, especially when
N. A. Güney (B) · V. Korkmaz

Nişantaşı Üniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
G. Edwards et al. (eds.), Post-Brexit Europe and UK, Contemporary
Gulf Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2874-0_2
14 N. A. GÜNEY AND V. KORKMAZ
it couples with bandwagoning and omni-enmeshment strategies and espe-

cially in an environment where inter-regional interdependencies are not
established extensively, may also carry its own risks. The most important
risk is the risk of reinforcing strategic competition to have relative advan-
tages and gain among the actors who have different priorities in the midst
of current geopolitical ambiguities in both Europe and the Gulf.
On the one side, Europe has been faced with the Russian assertive
policies both in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Brexit has led
to many other questions on the future of European security since the
capability gap between EU security apparatuses and NATO is widening
(Biscop 2020b). Even after Brexit, the EU27 has seemed to be divided
on important foreign and security issues, including the EU’s Mediter-
ranean strategy, relations with Turkey, and the future of Libya and
Lebanon (Biscop 2020b). This internal division coupled with global
ambitions of some European actors has led some EU members to rein-
force their appearance in the neighbouring regions. Trump’s policies of
ambiguity have also accelerated European concerns about the harmony in
the Trans-Atlantic/Western Alliance. Trump seems to be adopting more
protectionist and coercive economic policies—including in the fields of
energy and defence economy (Dueck 2020). Hence, new American poli-
cies challenge the special relationship between Russia and leading powers
of Europe like Germany, while also cracking inner-European harmony by
offering special relations with the new European states like Poland. At the
same time, Trump’s NATO rhetoric, his unilateralist tendency in decision
making even on the issues related to European security, like the future of
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Intermediate-
range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), or the future of American units in
Syria, and his diplomatic style based on a continuous and inconsistent
backwards–forwards approach has strengthened the European powers’
search for more independent manoeuvring space and room for strategic
existence in the Mediterranean- Middle East- Gulf Axis. Moreover, the
presence of real risks like a possible crisis in the Hormuz Strait or sudden
fluctuations in oil prices in the case of a Saudi Arabia- Iran confronta-
tion, also makes a strategic dialogue of European powers with the Gulf
states a necessity. The questions here are: (1) whether European states
will succeed in harmonizing their policies towards the Gulf states; and
(2) whether European states/the EU will succeed in balancing their
2 CONVERGING DIVERSIFICATION CONCERNS … 15
dialogue with Tehran and the Gulf states especially considering the inde-
pendent factors (like Trump’s policies or inner-Gulf crisis) which affect
this triangle.
On the other side, the Gulf states search for a New Carter Doctrine
or Gulf’s NATO, in which the US’s extended deterrence functions in
a more strengthened fashion ended unsuccessfully (Brands et al. 2019).
Although the US has good relations individually with Gulf capitals,
both its attempted balancing in the inner-Gulf crisis as well as Trump’s
ambiguous policies related to Iran, Syria and Yemen has led Gulf coun-
tries to think about diversification more seriously. And the Gulf states,
like everyone else, are faced with many unknowns, like the results of
upcoming US presidential elections in November 2020. In the case of
a Biden presidency Gulf countries could be faced with a reinvention
of Obama’s Middle Eastern policies including his legacy on Iran (Ibish
2020).
Also, during the last couple of years, some of the Gulf Coopera-
tion Council (GCC) states, such as the UAE, have found themselves
engaged—if not entrapped—at different levels of complex regional rival-
ries in not only the Middle East but also in the Mediterranean and Africa.
Hence the rise in defence purchases on the part of Gulf states. Indeed,
with their resources, money and energy, Gulf states have already started
to diversify their relations, for example forming a kind of special dialogue
with Moscow. Therefore, developing stronger relations with European
capitals who have technology, know-how and arms, keeps its impor-
tance. Besides gaining European support on certain geopolitical issues,
like restraining Iranian influence in the Gulf and Middle East and stability
of Hormuz, is valuable for the Gulf states.
The key question here is how the Gulf States will succeed in balancing
these diversified relations with European states without alienating Wash-
ington DC and Moscow, and without strengthening an intra- EU-27 or
EU-27 vs Britain rivalry (Stansfield et al. 2018) especially in the critical
sectors.
In this paper we will try to answer these questions after highlighting
possible cooperation areas between European powers and Gulf states. In
the first part of the paper we will focus on the question of why EU–
GCC relations have been described as complicated and, given the mixed
record since the 1988 Treaty despite of the fact that both sides have many
reasons to improve their mutual relationship. We aim to underline that
apart from existing structural difficulties in the EU–GCC relationship,
new post-2011 factors have continued to create more complications—if

not difficulties and obstacles—for the construction of inter-regional inter-
dependence. In the second part of the paper we will focus on how the
Trump era Gulf and Middle East policies and Brexit are affecting already
complex relations.
2.2 Back to the Origins of EU/European–GCC

Relations: A Complicated Story
For European states, especially EU members, GCC relations have been
described as complicated even before the Trump Administration’s Middle
East policy and Brexit, making the ground more complicated for inter-
regional cooperation between EU and GCC member states (Colombo
2019). This emphasis on complexity does, indeed, mirror the nature
of the EU–GCC relationship since it has both a positive and negative
element. The logic behind the positive dimension is clear: both Europe
and the Gulf are geopolitically important regions, and both have the
potential and actual capabilities to affect the geopolitical and geoeco-
nomical balance of power in the strategic landscape. Hence, it is not
surprising to see a flourishing cooperation between the two regions when
the economic and political needs of the respective parties are compatible.
This potential for cooperation was recognized in the 1988 Cooperation
Agreement which aimed to institutionalize cooperation in the fields of
energy, industry, trade, investment, agriculture, science, technology and
the environment. Over time, the energy sector has become the main
driver of the relations.
The Agreement, itself, was composed of interlocked economic and
normative (/political) components and aimed to construct an inter-
regional interdependence between Europe and the Gulf by strengthening
sectoral cooperation which was expected to be institutionalized one day
under a normative framework of the understanding of regional integration
(EU 2019). That is why one of the ambitious objectives of the Cooper-
ation Agreement was establishment of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA)
between the GCC and the EU. By offering a model of regional integra-
tion, eventually became a Custom and Economic and Monetary Union,
and with regional agencies like Euratom, it was also no secret that the EU
has seen its position as representing a kind of inspirational reference point
for both construction of intra and inter-regional interdependencies since
the Agreement was in force (Colombo and Committeri 2014). However,
this normative framework and socialization dynamic to the negotiations

tied the hands of the Europeans because—and as expected—their ability
to use conditionality to persuade their Gulf partners has been limited
because the GCC has a different existential logic from the EU (Ayadi
and Gadi 2014). That is why the European states had to first wait for
the emergence of the GCC Custom Union, which was only finalized
after long negotiations and covert rivalries between the powers of the
Gulf. Following this, in 2008, the GCC side suspended FTA negotia-
tions with the EU when they saw that the distribution of power was
changing to the benefit of the Gulf and there was therefore no need to
make concessions while the Eurozone crisis paralyzed European politics
(Ayadi and Gadi 2014). This short story of the failed FTA is enough to
understand the kind of complexities that exist within the GCC and EU as
well as in GCC–EU relations themselves. First and foremost, both regions
have been divided—covertly or overtly—into different interests among
the member states, as well as different interests of different sectors within
the member states (Ayadi and Gadi 2014). But this is not the only factor
which prevents GCC and EU members from realizing the actual potential
of mutual, inter-regional cooperation which might have strengthened and
made more symmetrical inter-regional interdependence that in turn might
have had a more constructive impact on geopolitical and geoeconomical
balances in the world.
Within this framework we believe that since 2011 new factors have
been added to the underlying structural factors which have led the two
regions to grow apart.
2.3 Existing Structural Difficulties

The most important structural hindrance to the deepening of European–
Gulf relations is related to the limited nature of constructed relations
in which EU does not emerge as the security provider for the Gulf.
The GCC, for a long time—more concretely until post-2011 differ-
ences reached a level that triggered the intra-GCC crisis (Köse and
Ulutaş 2017)—had maintained itself as a special security institution that
gave leverage to the monarchies which assured regime security at home,
balanced differences in the distribution of power among the small and big
states of the Gulf, and legitimized the preference of individual states to
rely on the US’ external deterrence against present and future threats.
Some scholars argue that depending on the US as the main security
provider of the Gulf is not even a choice among alternatives, since there
is no other external power intending to play such a role (Ulrichsen 2019)
This is not because of the neglect of importance of the security of the
region for the stability of Levant, Europe and global energy markets but
because of the limits in the capabilities—especially naval capabilities—to
do so (Sim and Fulton 2019). Accordingly, for most of the EU, “east
of Suez” is not known as one of the traditional areas of power projection
since the UK is not being a member of the EU and France as a member of
Union do see this region as an area of activity but only of a limited nature.
Like the GCC states, EU members also seem to rely on the continuation
of a US strategic presence in the region in order to insure the security of
the Strait of Hormuz and fossil fuel exporting states.
Bilateral relations between GCC/GCC states and some EU member
states who can show their flag in terms of military capabilities (the UK
has a military base in Bahrain, France has one in the UAE, and Germany
is one of the arm exporters to the GCC members along with UK and
France) seem to develop more strongly, and in some occasions at the
expense of EU–GCC relations (Baabood and Edwards 2007). Indeed,
preferring bilateral deals instead of deepening cooperation with the EU is
in harmony with one of the general strategies of the GCC states, what we
call “omni- enmeshment with bandwagoning”.
The term “omni-enmeshment” refers to a strategy, named by Evelyn
Goh, to describe East and South East Asian regional states’ strategy that
is based on engaging with as many big powers as possible through their
involvement in regional institutions and through bilateral arrangements
between them and individual states of the region (Goh 2007). However,
GCC states do not try to include all the various major external powers
in the region’s strategic affairs on an unconditional basis. The first condi-
tion is related to the fact that the Gulf states’ understanding of balance of
power has been based on complex calculations derived from the necessity
of bandwagoning on the US agenda. Hence, practices and discourses of
omni-enmeshment in the region have had to go hand in hand with depen-
dency on US security guarantees. The second condition demands that
the omni-enmeshed states should be prepared to be involved in the Gulf
states regional agenda based on more and more struggle for influence and
rivalry with others (for example with Iran) in the Greater Middle East. All
in all, the omni-enmeshment strategy adopted by the Gulf states serves
both to diversify and balance the needs of these states, and that is why,
even on a bilateral basis, relations between GCC members and European
states continue to be entangled, even during periods when Europe felt the
necessity to diverge from the GCC agenda—for example, decreasing their
dependency on Arab oil and gas and recognizing new investment oppor-
tunities in the new regional markets like Iran. In such circumstances GCC
states have turned to Moscow, Beijing and New Delhi—and of course
Washington, DC—for support.
Although these structural factors create difficulties for strengthening
inter-regional cooperation between the EU and the Gulf, there are other
factors that keep the EU–GCC train on the right track. Apart from the
importance of Gulf energy imports for the EU, albeit slightly reduced
because the EU’s energy policy has been based on the objective of
reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and the extent of the region’s energy
reserves (almost 1/3 of the world’s crude oil, and 1/5 of the natural
gas), the GCC continues to be an important market for European prod-
ucts. For example, EU–GCC total trade in goods in 2017 amounted
to e143.7 billion. In 2017, EU exports to the GCC amounted to
e99.8 billion. In the meantime, EU imports from the GCC accounted
for only e43.8 billion, generating a significant trade surplus for the EU
(Porcnik 2020). Therefore, keeping GCC as the trade partner of the EU
is important and profitable for Brussels. However, this is not a one-way
road. Europe’s green and nuclear technology market especially in clean
energy and digitization of economies of Arab states (Bianco 2020) is also
gaining importance for the GCC states while in recent years the energy
sector has been changing both globally and in the Gulf.
One of the important trends in the global energy market is the rise
in demand for alternative energy resources in energy mixes. Though the
continued importance of fossil fuel cannot be underestimated, mainly
because of the Asianization of energy demand and the impact of new
technologies and inventions like the shale oil and gas revolution in North
America, this new search for alternative energy resources has had reper-
cussions for both the demand and supply side of the energy market. Gulf
region countries, as important resource-rich countries on the supply side,
are not excluded from these consequences. In the past decade, intended
and unintended interruptions, the invention of new technologies, and
actors’ preferences to explore the connection between the economic
market and political impact of economic pressures together accelerated
the volatility of oil and gas prices in global and regional markets. Hence,
elites in the Gulf countries, where revenues depend on the export of
oil and natural gas, are aware of the increasing sensitivity of consumers
and of consumers’ new appetite for the diversification of energy resources

away from fossil fuel on the one hand, and on the other hand the diver-
sification of sources as an insurance mechanism. This awareness in the
Gulf countries, as supplier countries that are connected to changes in
the market and to the impact of these changes on prices, is amplified
by news related to the projected depletion of fossil fuels in the region,
as well as the trend for excessive energy consumption in the GCC soci-
eties. According to some scholars though fossil fuels are destined to be
depleted, there is no cause for hurry in the Gulf if we look at the region’s
reserve to production ratio (El-Katiri 2013 and Nematollahi et al. 2016).
The region’s aggregate reserve to production ratio for oil has remained
relatively constant for the past ten years, despite a slight downward trend.
With current estimates predicting that reserves will last for 80 years, the
region is expected to produce oil comfortably into the next century at
current rates of production. It is also estimated that known conventional
Gulf reserves of natural gas will last for at least 157 years at current rates
of production, and substantially longer for some of the region’s largest
reserve holders, such as Qatar (El-Katiri 2013 and Nematollahi et al.
2016). However as recently witnessed increased hydrocarbon supply in
the market and intensified competition among the producers has led to
falling oil/LNG prices, and has affected energy revenues of the oil and
gas producers of the Gulf region (Gavlak 2020). Indeed, the negative
impact of the coronavirus crisis on the global markets has amplified the
negative impact of the oil price shock in the Gulf economies and revived
unpleasant memories of the late 1980s- early 1990s in another word, “the
lost decade” (Cahill 2020).
All these factors rang alarm bells for future economic security, in other
words, the regime security of the GCC monarchies, prompting them
to start very ambitious energy diversification programmes themselves,
including a search for renewable and nuclear energy technology in the
early 2000s (Güney and Korkmaz 2017). The EU has already started
its energy security programme based on a diversification of sources,
the search of alternative energy technologies, a strengthening of energy
efficiency and the reduction of fossil fuel consumption and GHG emis-
sions (European Commission 2013). Therefore EU has become a useful
source of know-how not only of renewable but also nuclear technology
and policy experience for the energy diversification programme of the
GCC states. This convergence gave fruits within a short period of time
and, following the joint GCC–EU MC meeting in 2010, the EU-GCC
Network for Clean Energy (renamed as EU-GCC Clean Energy Tech-

nology Network in 2017) was established with the aim of “maintaining
and strengthening the cooperation between the European Union and the
GCC in the area of sustainable ‘clean’ energy and energy efficiency at
the technological and political levels” (EU–GCC Clean Energy Network
2019).
It is true that, most of the GCC countries have already favoured
diversification of their energy mix, and in this way they aim to reduce
their dependency on oil revenues. However, they continue to depend
heavily on exporting oil and natural gas for economic development. As
mentioned before, this situation naturally makes them vulnerable to the
fluctuation in prices. According to Gawdat Bahgat, since most of the GCC
states have created sovereign wealth funds/oil funds (SWF)—such as the
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority 1976, the Kuwait Investment Authority
1953, the Qatar Investment Authority 2005 and the Saudi Public Invest-
ment Fund 1971—these may prove lifesavers, in the short term financial
crises, to stimulate GCC economies (Bahgat 2020). Bahgat also thinks
that once Covid-19 is contained and when finally the economic activities
around the world start to resume, then market forces will again balance
supply and demand—which is expected to have a positive impact on oil
prices (Bahgat 2020).
Energy security has not been the only non-traditional security concerns
for the GCC states. As recognized in 2012 Naval Drills in the Gulf,
GCC states showed their readiness to strengthen maritime security capa-
bilities along with air and naval capabilities. EU states—especially those
exporting defence and security technologies—are the potential partners
in this regard and the list is not limited to Germany, France, UK and
Italy but also includes Netherland and Spain (SPRI 2019). Moreover
the EU’s maritime security policies (European Commission 2020) have
provided a good framework to initiate cooperation although the parties
are not always on the same page especially on some issues such as passage
rights (Ronzitti 2014). Without doubt, GCC states’ wish to show their
flags in the seas of the Gulf as demonstrated by their membership to the
US initiated Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the search for new
naval and air capabilities which are not only related to emerging concerns
about piracy, marine pollution, refugees, human and drug trafficking and
WMD terrorism. Balancing Iran, securing the Strait of Hormuz and guar-
anteeing an upper hand over the controversial islands like Abu Musa have
always been in the minds of the Gulf states. Hence, engaging with Euro-
pean states and the EU, to change Europe’s general attitude of a balanced
engagement with Iran and the GCC, and engaging with EU defence
markets to manage the risk of abandonment by the US has gained greater
importance especially after 2011.
2.4 New Complexities After 2011

Between 2011 and 2016, GCC states passed through five difficult years
in terms of the level of fear of abandonment by the US. US security guar-
antees have never been institutionalized for the Gulf but based on the
original golden deal between Saudi Arabia and US in the 1950s (oil for
arms) and security practices and military deployments by the US in the
Gulf since 1991. That is why the risk of abandonment has always been
a possibility for the GCC states. It has become a more critical issue for
discussion not only because of the Gulf’s continued dependence on the
US and Washington’s unchanged interests in the Middle East but also
because of the existing balance of power in the region. Hence when the
Arab Spring movements began to have an impact in the MENA, GCC
states felt that this created not only a risk to the regime security at home
but could also alter the regional balance of power, to the advantage of
their rivals. While Western reactions towards the Egyptian revolution were
ambiguous and there was little reaction at all from the US as Mubarak
was toppled, they decided to take the control over the developments in
the region by directly involving in geopolitical and geoeconomic power
struggles in the MENA.
The GCC states’ impact on the course of “Arab Spring” inspired street
movements, varied from economic coercion to the legitimization or dele-
gitimization of existing regimes, from direct military intervention to using
proxies to shape developments in the region. But overall the Gulf coun-
tries’ impact, which was highly effective over the course of the events in
Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, is obvious. Some GCC coun-
tries’ involvement to post-Arab Spring regional struggle proves that the
increase in the power capabilities of the GCC states in the beginning of
the 2000s was not a perception but a reality. Simultaneously, however,
this process has also shown that a strengthening of intra-GCC rivalry
as different states find different opportunities and risks in the changing
geopolitical landscape in the MENA.
The first signs of tension between UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar
appeared before the embargo crisis but neither the US nor the Euro-
peans contributed positively to any mediation efforts. The EU seemed
rather to concentrate on individualistic and sometimes controversial inter-
ests of its member states in specific cases like in Egypt and Libya. Hence,
while European states continued to function as omni-enmeshed powers,
they could not use this time period when US–GCC relations were rather
chilled to increase their space for manoeuvre and influence over the GCC.
As is well-known, the intra-GCC crisis is not only related to the diver-
gences among the GCC members towards the different Arab Spring
movements, but to their different attitudes towards Iran. US under the
Obama administration seems to have hopes related to a more moderate
Iran in the post-JCPOA environment. Washington’s this optimistic expec-
tation about reengagement of Iran after 2015 nuclear deal brought
divergent position between Abu Dhabi and Riyad on the one hand, and
Doha and Muscat on the other hand naturally deepened the intra-GCC
gap. That is why Obama’s legacy in the Middle East, with his emphasis
on off-shore balancing and engagement with Iran on nuclear issues,has
been remembered bitterly in the Gulf. Since the Syrian conflict continued
to provide opportunities for Iran, Tehran’s activities in Lebanon have
strengthened via Hezbollah, and Saudi Arabia and Iran have engaged in
an almost lose-lose conflict in Yemen. Within this atmosphere, in the eyes
of some GCC states, JCPOA represents a kind of reward given to Tehran
because of all her efforts to change the balance of power in the region
to her advantage whereas European states think that JCPOA is a great
opportunity to solve dispute on Iranian nuclear programme.
However, there are also other reasons for the discontent of the Gulf
states. It is known that the JCPOA, which was rejected by Trump, has
certain ambiguities. For example, Iran’s ballistic missile programme is not
part of the deal, so this issue has continued to be of concern for the
GCC states especially when Iran- GCC rivalry in the Gulf and Levant
has been intensifying and while Iranian ballistic missile capabilities are
increasing (Bahgat 2019). Besides, the Deal negates a zero-enrichment
option for Iran, while the ambiguity related to the future of Iranian
nuclear programme, when 10–15 years of the deal elapses, continues to
affect the strategic thought of GCC states, who have their own nuclear
ambitions. Hence, the GCC states, specifically the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia, started to demand from the P5 +1 —in other words the US—
what they have already offered to Iran -limited but 3.67 percentage of
indigenous enrichment right. At the same time, Riyad recognized that

it would be difficult to persuade US and her western friends anything
beyond the famous 1-2-3 deal with the UAE (Güney and Korkmaz
2017). While the Nuclear Weapons Free Zone idea in the Middle East
lost its attractiveness, and while Europeans were excited to have trade
relations with Iran (Fiedleri 2018) EU had few things to say to the GCC
and Riyad about these concerns. Therefore, the GCC states extended
their omni-enmeshment strategy to cover Russia who returned to the
Middle East/Mediterranean nexus through her military capabilities as in
Syria and her charm offensive based on her defence and energy know-how
market (foremost her air defence system and nuclear reactor technology).
Of course, Russia and the GCC states have many divergences related to
Russian support for the al-Assad Regime and Iran. Besides Russia, as one
of the important gas and oil exporters has emerged as a natural rival of
the GCC states, foremost for Riyad. But during the critical years, between
2015 and 2017, the GCC states that had difficulty with bandwagoning
onto the American agenda in the Middle East, especially on the issue of
Iran, chose to adapt a rather pragmatic approach to Moscow (Shumilin
and Shumilina 2017). This new GCC pragmatism underlines the impor-
tance of economic and financial factors to different degrees especially as
sometimes leverage in negotiations related to political disagreements, but
it has a limited nature since Russians have also developed warm relations
with Iran, Turkey and Israel. Nevertheless, during the last couple of years,
Russia has succeeded in becoming one of the new centres of attraction in
the GCC’s omni-enmeshment policy and so emerge as rivals of European
states to satisfy the GCC states’ diversification concerns.
2.5 Trump’s Era: Further

Complexities for EU–GCC Relations
As part of Trump’s anti-Iran strategy, new alignments were formed
between particular GCC countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE.
These alignments were converged with Israeli’s new periphery align-
ment schemes covering Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, (Southern) Cyprus
and Greece (Güney and Korkmaz 2020). Over time and dependent
on the level of US attention, the target of these axis-like- rapproche-
ment/partnership arrangements seemed to gain anti-Turkey colour espe-
cially in the Mediterranean (Güney and Korkmaz 2020), however, the
US focus has always related to the perception of the Iranian, and newly
emerged assertive Russian, threats in the region. However, US anti-

Iranian rhetoric and policies have not prevented the continuing divisions
among the six emirates of the Gulf on the Tehran issue. These divi-
sions reached their climax when the UAE and Saudi Arabia decided to
impose an embargo on Qatar, while criticizing not only Qatari-Iranian
ties but also Qatar’s involvement in the Levant and the instruments of this
involvement (Güney et al. 2021). In opposition to Washington’s newly
sponsored cooperation belt against Iran, Qatar maintained its close rela-
tions with Tehran along with Oman and Turkey. Doha has also so far
refused to ally with the Riyad-Abu Dhabi- Washington agenda in Syria.
The Qatari crisis in 2017 surely helped to sharpen intra-GCC divide
and until now this situation has not yet changed. Despite the Trump
administration’s efforts to return the GCC states relations back to normal,
many continue to believe that the deepening of the intra-Gulf crisis and
divergences within the GCC, which also negatively affects the GCC’s
functioning as well as its identity, is because of the Trump policies in the
Middle East. Although some member states of the EU notably Germany,
France and the UK are economically or militarily present in the GCC and
while the UK and France have military bases in the region “unlike USA
and Turkey” they failed to play an important role in both the eruption and
evolution of the last-intra-GCC, namely the Qatari, crisis (Baker and Cok
2020). More importantly the EU, although it has the institutional frame-
work and normative rhetoric related to peaceful resolution of conflicts,
did not make any positive contribution to the mediation efforts of some
regional states like Kuwait. Thus, the EU and important EU states seem
to be paralyzed while this crisis keeps creating new complexities for the
future of EU–GCC relations.
The unilateral withdrawal of the US from JCPOA on May 8, 2018
and the re-implementation of sanctions on Tehran has certainly been
welcomed by some of the GCC countries, most notably Saudi Arabia.
However, the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear Deal was met with
great concern by the EU. The EU High Commissioner, Mogherini, as
well as most of the big states of the EU—particularly Germany, France
and Great Britain, the so-called EU3—having felt the responsibility of
keeping the 2015 Nuclear Treaty intact, have sought to persuade Tehran
that they will do their best to maintain the sanctions relief that it has
gained with the JCPOA of 2015, as long as Iran abides with the deal.
They have launched certain measures in this regard to set up a trade
channel with Iran so that they can bypass US sanctions. At the meeting
of EU foreign and defence ministers in Bucharest, Romania in January

2019, the EU3 announced a “special purpose vehicle” (INSTEX). This
instrument has ended up being limited to use for providing only food,
medicine, and medical equipment from Europe to Iran (Divsallar and
Otte 2019). The Europeans, by the time they launched INSTEX, have
explained that they do not want Tehran to leave the 2015 Nuclear
Deal and return to uranium enrichment. Hence, INSTEX was planned
to be based in Paris and managed by a German banking expert with a
supervisory board expected to be run from the UK (Brzozowski 2020).
However, the planned INSTEX could not dissuade big European firms
from leaving the Iranian market due to the probability of facing US sanc-
tions and hence losing their share in the US market. Finally, the unwanted
reality has come true when Iran very recently proclaimed that Euro-
peans have not fulfilled their obligations related to the JCPOA whereas
Tehran continued to abide with the agreement. Hence, Iranian media
has reported recently that the Islamic Republic was seeking to pressure
European countries to come to terms with Tehran’s demands under the
JCPOA (Frantzman 2019). What is more interesting is that in mid-2019
Iran claimed that it is going to monitor European countries over the next
60 days to fulfil their commitments or Iran’s behaviour could become
unpredictable (Geranmayeh 2019). If EU and Iran could not come to a
point to satisfy each other soon the whole point of the agreement, that
was to prevent Iran from enriching its uranium above a limit of 3.67
per cent and to sell off any additional enriched uranium over 300 kg
together with other restrictions associated with 2015 Nuclear Deal, would
be missed and GCC states’ concerns related to nuclear Iran will erupt
again. As pointed out before, the GCC states concern regarding a nuclear
Iran contains the logic of “what Iran has, we should also have”, so we may
hear “nuclear dominos” rhetoric again in the Middle East.
Tehran has been under the maximum pressure economically since the
end of US waivers on the sale of its oil/petroleum to eight countries
together with other sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
Therefore, she has been trying to bring a wedge between the US and
EU, as well as remaining members of the UNSC, and hence force them
to act against Washington’s efforts to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero. It
is natural to expect countries on the producing side of oil/petroleum in
the GCC to support Trump’s decision so that the threat emanating from
Tehran and its proxies’ financial support would be curtailed. However, on
the European side, the preference of keeping Tehran within the JACPOA
does not match with some of the GCC countries’ concerns about the
present fate of the 2015 Nuclear Deal- which is linked with the sanctions’
relief to the Tehran regime. From the perspective of sharing the global
oil market it might be preferable for some GCC OPEC countries to see
Tehran’s exports going down to zero. But on the other hand, they cannot
be confident of Iran having after assuming the negative effects of Trump’s
maximum pressure policy-be it economically or militarily- would at the
end chose to leave the JCPOA, which in turn may have to bring nega-
tive security results for the Gulf region and even throughout the whole
Middle East. In fact, in September 2019, the seeds of further instability
could be seen in the Iranian/Houthi proxy attack on the Saudi Arabian
oil sector—the ARAMCO attacks—causing a temporary rise in oil prices
before business went back to normal. However, the concern of the Gulf
as well as the West has not withered away because Tehran’s determina-
tion to destabilize the region via its capabilities remains as a response
to the maximum pressure policy of the US. Even militarization of US
pressure—killing of Soleimani and al-Muhandis in Iraq—did not hinder
Iranian retaliation in the form of missile attacks to US bases in Iraq at the
early days of 2020. Whether Iranian missile attacks were successful or not,
which is still a debatable question, this escalation and Tehran’s muscle-
flexing has led to an increased level of concern in the Gulf states. That
is why additional American military personnel have been sent to Saudi
Arabia to prevent any future attack while the Europeans have remained
militarily side-lined (Gibbons-Nef 2019).
In dealing with Tehran’s situation, regarding the fate of JCPOA and
the imposition of new sanctions by the Trump administration, Brussels
and the GCC may now be seen to be on diverging sides. The EU seems to
be attached to its political engagement policy with Iran via various diplo-
matic initiatives beyond INSTEX,for example Macron’s latest ambitious
but failed attempt of bringing Trump and Rouhani to the negotiation
table- to save the death of the JCPOA Deal (Al Jazeera 2019). Likewise
throughout 2020, in both joint statements of several European states,
such as UK, France and Germany, and in the official statements of Borell,
the EU’s foreign policy chief, the Europeans have continued to reject
the possibility of the imposition of snapback sanctions on Tehran by the
US, since Washington is no longer party to the Deal (Al Jazeera 2020).
However, some GCC states—foremost the KSA—seem to be puzzled
by increasing American extended deterrence guarantees -especially after
the latest attacks to ARAMCO oil sites and Iran’s missile attack to the
American bases (Sofuoğlu 2020)—and have continued to seek additional

security assurances not only from the US but also from others. Hence
the present divergence between the EU and the GCC, over which instru-
ment (political/diplomatic vs military) should be used in dealing with
Iran, continues to blur the future cooperation between the two parties.
But, in the future we cannot be sure about how the two sides relations
regarding Iran may develop. This also depends on how the US and the
other nuclear haves in the UN as well as Iran may decide to act.
At the time of writing this paper, the Trump Administration continues
to back a policy of maximum pressure by containing partners and proxies
of the Tehran regime in the region. While the European states, and some-
times the EU, seem not to oppose Trump’s policies in this regard. For
example, the Syrian al-Assad regime complained about the EU’s exten-
sions of its unilateral coercive measures on Syria in parallel with the US
applying the Caesar Act (The Syrian Observer 2020). One of the objec-
tives of the US Caesar Act seems to weaken Hezbollah’s position—read
as Iran’s upper hand—in Lebanon and accordingly some experts argue
that the Trump and Macron Administrations are adopting the “bad cop-
good cop” approach to reshape political dynamics in Lebanon after the
Beirut blast (Abi-Habib and Chehayeb 2020). Although the EU remains
committed to the two state solution, a similar supportive approach is also
adapted by Europeans for Trump’s efforts to promote normalization of
relations between some Muslim countries including some GCC states—
like UAE—and Israel (Pollet 2020). However, this harmony between the
European and the American Administrations can be seen as an excep-
tion. In the time of writing this paper, many European leaders did not
hide that they are expecting a reset in Trans-Atlantic relations during the
Biden presidency (Balfor 2020). Besides, it is not a secret that Biden
emphasizes partnership and multilateralism in his foreign policy vision
(CFR 2020). Hence, one can argue that the Europeans are trying to
fill the vacuum in this transition period from one president to another
by proving that European friendship will be beneficial for the future US
Middle Eastern policy. It is also true that at the time of writing this paper
not only most of the Europeans but also Tehran hopes to see Trump
as a defeated party in the coming American elections. That is why Iran
is acting moderately in its maximum resistance policy in order not to
strengthen Trump’s hand. However, this moderate Iranian attitude just
before the November 2020 elections does not mean that Iran does or
will change her nuclear behaviour, or Tehran is or will be ready to rene-

gotiate the 2015 Deal. Besides, the EU-27 continue to be divided over
the European common security and foreign policy agenda, as one can
witness with the EU’s /Europeans unsuccessful mediation efforts in the
regional tensions of 2020 like between warring parties in Libya during
the Berlin Summit or like between Athens and Ankara on the issues of
maritime jurisdiction and de-militarization of islands in the Aegean Sea
and in the Mediterranean (Güney 2020). Unsuccessful efforts of France
and Greece to impose sanctions on Turkey because of her assertive poli-
cies in the Mediterranean as well as failure of European actors in deterring
Turkey from her drilling activities also prove that the EU-27, leading
states of the EU like France and Germany and the UK one of the actors
who has military bases and naval capacities in the region are divided in
terms of their Mediterranean /MENA policies (Güney 2020). Therefore,
this conjunctural, exceptional and may be temporal harmony between the
US and the EU rhetoric in the regional affairs can hardly satisfy security
concerns of the GCC states. Besides since any prospect of harmonious
western policy under Biden presidency indicates return to 2015 Nuclear
Deal and improvement of Western Iranian relations, some GCC states
have enough reason to worry.
Despite these shortcomings, what is important for the Europeans/EU–
GCC states relationship are oil prices. According to experts in energy,
the dynamics of oil prices in 2019 depended in large part on OPEC’s
effectiveness in implementing the cuts, balancing the market, and rein-
forcing the credibility of its signals (Ganti 2020). However, in efforts
to balance the market, the US’ role in maintaining oil production (and
prices?) is crucial. The world community witnessed a collective cut of
1.2 mb/d between OPEC and its allies, but with the high probability of
supply losses, for example because of Iranian crisis along with other crisis
in oil exporters, global oil demand then grew by 1.4 mb/d, therefore
the market seemed to achieve a balance in 2019. Of course, the Trump
Administration’s 6-month waiver for 8 countries who are importing oil
from Tehran will further help in the stabilization of the global markets.
Hence oil prices were expected to be between 60 and 70-dollar pb
throughout 2019. However, at the time that this forecast was made no
one was expecting the outbreak of Covid-19 virus to spread around the
globe and hence affect the global oil market going out of balance. It
is a reality that, at the beginning of 2020, one barrel of oil was sold
for over 60 Dollars. However, the world community in mid-April 2020
has witnessed how the price dropped to about 20 Dollars. Even though
the price of oil per barrel has now reached 41 Dollars (Paraskova 2020),
according to energy experts the future is still not certain.
Without doubt, the EU, now, has to manage its relations with the
GCC as usual but in a more complex and competitive environment.
Although the GCC states retain bitter memories of the Obama Admin-
istration and although the Trump Administration acted very quickly
to keep US–Qatari relations on good terms after the Qatar crisis and
although President Trump kept voicing withdrawing from the Middle
East the Trump era represents—showing American flag in the regional
balance of power in the Mediterranean and in the Middle East more
overtly (Güney and Korkmaz 2019). Of course many different political
cover stories (ranging from new Middle East peace plans to stopping the
Iranian threat) have been used to explain why the US is still in the Gulf
and the Mediterranean (after the Shale revolutions and despite recurring
complaints from Trump related to the cost of providing security for the
Gulf by the US), however, the real cause of the American strengthening
of its posture in the region seems to be the return of Russians to the
Middle East and the Mediterranean with their own military and paramil-
itary forces as well as defence and technology transfer contracts, like
S-400 and nuclear reactor deals with Riyad (Güney and Korkmaz 2019).
Hence, the Europeans are recognizing that others (like Russia, Israel,
Turkey etc.) also exist in the market to satisfy diversification concerns
of the GCC states and the complexities created by Trump’s Administra-
tion also ease cooperative schemes between certain parties like Israel and
some GCC states on the one hand, Turkey and Qatar; with UAE, Oman
and Russia on the other hand. On this much more competitive basis,
where parallel existence of omni-enmeshed regional and external powers
in the regional security can be used by different GCC states to overcome
unwanted political developments, like limitations on certain type of arm
sales because of the on-going Yemen conflict etc., Europeans are faced
with the bitter reality that they have to adopt a more pragmatic, less
normative/institutionalist framework to deal with GCC states, as many
European member states already do in their bilateral relations. However,
this turn to more pragmatic ground is not easy since Brexit is creating
enough problems for the EU in terms of its external relations.
2.6 The Impact of Three Conjunctural

Factors: Business as Usual in a Complex World
It is not surprising to see that diversification concerns have recently
increased both in the EU and in the GCC for different reasons. On the
one hand, the Europeans have faced assertive Russian policies both in the
Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Brexit has led to many other questions
on the future of European security since the capability gap between EU
security apparatuses and NATO is widening. As Sven Biscop says so, there
is no lack of initiatives like PESCO, E2I etc., to further defence coopera-
tion between European states, but there might be a lack of ambition. The
Europeans those focused mostly on territorial defence during the Cold
War now with the rise of the new security environment are facing the
need of maintaining expeditionary forces. However, in this regard they
are mostly challenging in the maintenance readiness, deployability and
sustainability of their forces. This is due to several factors, like the abol-
ished conscription in some EU states, reduced defence budgets and force
sizes. Most of the units in EU tend to be available for homeland security.
When it comes to expeditionary operations, only a few largest European
states can deploy as a brigade abroad-even only then this was done with
the US/NATO support (Biscop 2020a). Besides, Trump’s policies accel-
erated European concerns about harmony in the Trans-Atlantic/Western
Alliance. Trump adopted a more protectionist and coercive economic
policy, including in the fields of energy and defence economy, so the
Europeans must think about other alternatives like PESCO, E2I etc., to
promote a European security agenda in line with accomplishing 1999
Headline Goals as well as EU Global Strategy that aimed to achieve
strategic autonomy. However, while they are also struggling to realize
these new initiatives budgetary wise, while their commitments to NATO
and Post-Brexit Europe are continuing (Biscop 2020a). Within this envi-
ronment, thinking about a new version of ENP, diverting some resources
for such kind of projects to design the neighbourhood will be difficult
for the EU. That is why, although the EU needs diversification of her
relations as well as playing a global role and though it recognizes the
importance of GCC states’ potential, the EU seems to be stagnating in
the existing bilateral relations between selected EU and GCC states. Here,
bilateralism continues to be the preferred choice to bypass post-Brexit and
post-Qatar crisis dilemmas, both by the EU and GCC states.
On the other hand, although the US has maintained good individual

relations with Gulf capitals during the Trump era, Trump’s ambiguous
policies in relation to Iran, Syria and Yemen, and bitter memories of
Obama’s Middle Eastern policies, has led Gulf countries to think about
diversification more seriously. Europeans (both EU and European states)
have been the centre of attraction for a long time because of their
capacities, know-how, investment and technology in critical sectors such
as alternative energy, infrastructure and defence. That is why after the
1988 Cooperation Agreement initiatives, networks and summits have
been organized between the two sides. The major objective of these
is the construction of mutual interdependence, so as to strengthen
diversification for the EU (energy resource, economic diversification) as
well as the GCC (less dependence to the US’s ambiguous and not-
institutionalized protection). First structural difficulties, then post-2011
complexities created barriers for forging expected returns in EU–GCC
relations. However, both sides have continued to look at each other
for improving relations since the logic of diversification and omni-
enmeshment as well as European aspiration to play a global role drives
Europeans and Gulf states towards each other. Despite of this fact, the
EU–GCC relations are still bound to three major conjectural factors
which the EU has a limited capacity to affect:
The first one relates to how the US–Iranian relations will evolve and
how this will affect the EU’s and the GCC’s individual position towards
Iranian nuclear issue as well as intra-GCC rivalry. Much depends on the
result of the upcoming US presidential election in November 2020. The
situation of limbo during the election period is not very promising for
the GCC states since both Trump and Biden have quite different policy
positions on the Iranian issue. As has been mentioned before, Obama’s
Iran policy was one of the most problematic American policies for some
of the GCC states and that is why they are critical of Biden’s possible
thaw towards Iran, who proved that she has maximum resistance capacity
at least. However, Trump’s discourse of reducing American forces in the
Middle East—especially those forces in Iraq and Syria—is not satisfying
for the needs of those GCC states that have been used to looking for
strengthened security assurances from the US. Some observers argue that
the normalization of relations with Israel can be a remedy for some GCC
states’ security vulnerabilities and it is a balancing act in case of more
aggressive rivalry in the region (Guzansky and Heistein 2020). However,
normalization between Tel Aviv and the Gulf capitals still leaves a lack
of alliance commitment and positive security assurances. Besides, this

normalization has not yet provided the Gulf states with a free access to
some critical technologies, either in defence industry, or in nuclear tech-
nology. Hence Washington’s future policy on Iran, and the GCC states’
search for partnership to balance Iran’s impact in the region continues to
be the first key conjunctural factor in EU–GCC relations.
The second factor is related to the question of how power competition
among the great powers, the US, Russia and China, will evolve in the
future on the strategic level and how this will be reflected in the Gulf and
Levant region. Great power competition in the region is no longer similar
to Cold War rivalry. It is difficult to talk about solid and strong alliance
axes or rival ideological polarization. That is why the great power rivalry
is resembling much more the pre-World Wars competition in which great
power protection was not only the outcome of formal alliances but the
end result of proxy relations between great and regional powers (Güney
and Korkmaz 2020).
It is true that proxy wars and rivalry via proxy-hybrid conflicts are
realities in today’s Middle East, but, on the one hand, great power compe-
tition in the region is in a more controlled and restrained form, and
proxies are generally used as insurances to restrain great power compe-
tition instead of galvanizing it. On the other hand, great powers chose
to test each other’s sustainability via different forms of trade wars both
on a global and regional basis. In terms of GCC states, they are financial
centres, they are important consumers of global goods and services and
they are producers, consumers and transit countries of energy resources.
Hence it is not surprising to see that GCC capitals have been approached
as potential proxies. Without doubt this creates a boosting impact for
Gulf states’ bargaining power but at the same time great power overlay
via either proxy policy or tariffs wars can limit omni-enmeshment capacity
of the GCC states and accordingly can affect GCC–EU relations.
The third factor is related to what role the US will play in stabilizing
and destabilizing global oil markets. This is not only related to possible
Riyad/OPEC response to the America’s role in the global markets but it
is also linked to how OPEC-non-OPEC cooperation or competition (the
possibility of either a GCC–Russia re-rapprochement or rivalry) will affect
global markets and US interests in the region.
As mentioned before, the price of oil reflects the balance between
supply and demand. In the last year, the dramatic changes that came
about due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and hence its world-
wide spread around the globe naturally negatively affected social and
Another random document with
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These are the forces which have established the drift towards
democracy. When all sources of information are accessible to all
men alike, when the world’s thought and the world’s news are
scattered broadcast where the poorest may find them, the non-
democratic forms of government must find life a desperate venture.
Exclusive privilege needs privacy, but cannot have it. Kingship of the
elder patterns needs sanctity, but can find it nowhere obtainable in a
world of news items and satisfied curiosity. The many will no longer
receive submissively the thought of a ruling few, but insist upon
having opinions of their own. The reaches of public opinion have
been infinitely extended; the number of voices that must be heeded
in legislation and in executive policy has been infinitely multiplied.
Modern influences have inclined every man to clear his throat for a
word in the world’s debates. They have popularized everything they
have touched.
In the newspapers, it is true, there is very little concert between
the writers; little but piecemeal opinion is created by their comment
and argument; there is no common voice amidst their counsellings.
But the aggregate voice thunders with tremendous volume; and that
aggregate voice is ‘public opinion.’ Popular education and cheap
printing and travel vastly thicken the ranks of thinkers everywhere
that their influence is felt, and by rousing the multitude to take
knowledge of the affairs of government prepare the time when the
multitude will, so far as possible, take charge of the affairs of
government,—the time when, to repeat Carlyle’s phrase, democracy
will become palpably extant.
But, mighty as such forces are, democratic as they are, no one
can fail to perceive that they are inadequate to produce of
themselves such a government as ours. There is little in them of
constructive efficacy. They could not of themselves build any
government at all. They are critical, analytical, questioning, quizzing
forces; not architectural, not powers that devise and build. The
influences of popular education, of the press, of travel, of commerce,
of the innumerable agencies which nowadays send knowledge and
thought in quick pulsations through every part and member of
society, do not necessarily mould men for effective endeavor. They
may only confuse and paralyze the mind with their myriad stinging
lashes of excitement. They may only strengthen the impression that
“the world’s a stage,” and that no one need do more than sit and look
on through his ready glass, the newspaper. They overwhelm one
with impressions, but do they give stalwartness to his manhood? Do
they make his hand any steadier on the plough, or his purpose any
clearer with reference to the duties of the moment? They stream light
about him, it may be, but do they clear his vision? Is he better able to
see because they give him countless things to look at? Is he better
able to judge because they fill him with a delusive sense of knowing
everything? Activity of mind is not necessarily strength of mind. It
may manifest itself in mere dumb show; it may run into jigs as well
as into strenuous work at noble tasks. A man’s farm does not yield
its fruits the more abundantly in their season because he reads the
world’s news in the papers. A merchant’s shipments do not multiply
because he studies history. Banking is none the less hazardous to
the banker’s capital and taxing to his powers because the best
writing of the best essayists is to be bought cheap.
II.
Very different were the forces behind us. Nothing establishes the
republican state save trained capacity for self-government, practical
aptitude for public affairs, habitual soberness and temperateness of
united action. When we look back to the moderate sagacity and
steadfast, self-contained habit in self-government of the men to
whom we owe the establishment of our institutions in the United
States, we are at once made aware that there is no communion
between their democracy and the radical thought and restless spirit
called by that name in Europe. There is almost nothing in common
between popular outbreaks such as took place in France at her great
Revolution and the establishment of a government like our own. Our
memories of the year 1789 are as far as possible removed from the
memories which Europe retains of that pregnant year. We
manifested one hundred years ago what Europe lost, namely, self-
command, self-possession. Democracy in Europe, outside of
closeted Switzerland, has acted always in rebellion, as a destructive
force: it can scarcely be said to have had, even yet, any period of
organic development. It has built such temporary governments as it
has had opportunity to erect on the old foundations and out of the
discredited materials of centralized rule, elevating the people’s
representatives for a season to the throne, but securing almost as
little as ever of that every-day local self-government which lies so
near to the heart of liberty. Democracy in America, on the other
hand, and in the English colonies has had, almost from the first, a
truly organic growth. There was nothing revolutionary in its
movements; it had not to overthrow other polities; it had only to
organize itself. It had not to create, but only to expand, self-
government. It did not need to spread propaganda: it needed nothing
but to methodize its ways of living.
In brief, we were doing nothing essentially new a century ago.
Our strength and our facility alike inhered in our traditions; those
traditions made our character and shaped our institutions. Liberty is
not something that can be created by a document; neither is it
something which, when created, can be laid away in a document, a
completed work. It is an organic principle,—a principle of life,
renewing and being renewed. Democratic institutions are never
done; they are like living tissue, always a-making. It is a strenuous
thing, this of living the life of a free people; and our success in it
depends upon training, not upon clever invention.
Our democracy, plainly, was not a body of doctrine; it was a
stage of development. Our democratic state was not a piece of
developed theory, but a piece of developed habit. It was not created
by mere aspirations or by new faith; it was built up by slow custom.
Its process was experience, its basis old wont, its meaning national
organic oneness and effective life. It came, like manhood, as the fruit
of youth. An immature people could not have had it, and the maturity
to which it was vouchsafed was the maturity of freedom and self-
control. Such government as ours is a form of conduct, and its only
stable foundation is character. A particular form of government may
no more be adopted than a particular type of character maybe
adopted: both institutions and character must be developed by
conscious effort and through transmitted aptitudes.
Governments such as ours are founded upon discussion, and
government by discussion comes as late in political as scientific
thought in intellectual development. It is a habit of state life created
by long-established circumstance, and is possible for a nation only in
the adult age of its political life. The people who successfully
maintain such a government must have gone through a period of
political training which shall have prepared them by gradual steps of
acquired privilege for assuming the entire control of their affairs.
Long and slowly widening experience in local self-direction must
have prepared them for national self-direction. They must have
acquired adult self-reliance, self-knowledge, and self-control, adult
soberness and deliberateness of judgment, adult sagacity in self-
government, adult vigilance of thought and quickness of insight.
When practised, not by small communities, but by wide nations,
democracy, far from being a crude form of government, is possible
only amongst peoples of the highest and steadiest political habit. It is
the heritage of races purged alike of hasty barbaric passions and of
patient servility to rulers, and schooled in temperate common
counsel. It is an institution of political noonday, not of the half-light of
political dawn. It can never be made to sit easily or safely on first
generations, but strengthens through long heredity. It is poison to the
infant, but tonic to the man. Monarchies may be made, but
democracies must grow.
It is a deeply significant fact, therefore, again and again to be
called to mind, that only in the United States, in a few other
governments begotten of the English race, and in Switzerland, where
old Teutonic habit has had the same persistency as in England, have
examples yet been furnished of successful democracy of the modern
type. England herself is close upon democracy. Her backwardness in
entering upon its full practice is no less instructive as to the
conditions prerequisite to democracy than is the forwardness of her
offspring. She sent out to all her colonies which escaped the luckless
beginning of being made penal settlements, comparatively small,
homogeneous populations of pioneers, with strong instincts of self-
government, and with no social materials out of which to build
government otherwise than democratically. She herself, meanwhile,
retained masses of population never habituated to participation in
government, untaught in political principle either by the teachers of
the hustings or of the school house. She has had to approach
democracy, therefore, by slow and cautious extensions of the
franchise to those prepared for it; while her better colonies, born into
democracy, have had to receive all comers within their pale. She has
been paring down exclusive privileges and levelling classes; the
colonies have from the first been asylums of civil equality. They have
assimilated new while she has prepared old populations.
Erroneous as it is to represent government as only a
commonplace sort of business, little elevated in method above
merchandising, and to be regulated by counting-house principles,
the favor easily won for such views among our own people is very
significant. It means self-reliance in government. It gives voice to the
eminently modern democratic feeling that government is no hidden
cult, to be left to a few specially prepared individuals, but a common,
every-day concern of life, even if the biggest such concern. It is this
self-confidence, in many cases mistaken, no doubt, which is
gradually spreading among other peoples, less justified in it than are
our own.
One cannot help marvelling that facts so obvious as these
should have escaped the perception of some of the sagest thinkers
and most thorough historical scholars of our day. Yet so it is. Sir
Henry Maine, even, the great interpreter to Englishmen of the
historical forces operative in law and social institutions, has utterly
failed, in his plausible work on Popular Government, to distinguish
the democracy, or rather the popular government, of the English
race, which is bred by slow circumstance and founded upon habit,
from the democracy of other peoples, which is bred by discontent
and founded upon revolution. He has missed that most obvious
teaching of events, that successful democracy differs from
unsuccessful in being a product of history,—a product of forces not
suddenly become operative, but slowly working upon whole peoples
for generations together. The level of democracy is the level of
every-day habit, the level of common national experiences, and lies
far below the elevations of ecstasy to which the revolutionist climbs.
III.
While there can be no doubt about the derivation of our
government from habit rather than from doctrine, from English
experience rather than from European thought; while it is evident
that our institutions were originally but products of a long, unbroken,
unperverted constitutional history; and certain that we shall preserve
our institutions in their integrity and efficiency only so long as we
keep true in our practice to the traditions from which our first strength
was derived, there is, nevertheless, little doubt that the forces
peculiar to the new civilization of our day, and not only these, but
also the restless forces of European democratic thought and
anarchic turbulence brought to us in such alarming volume by
immigration, have deeply affected and may deeply modify the forms
and habits of our politics.
All vital governments—and by vital governments I mean those
which have life in their outlying members as well as life in their heads
—all systems in which self-government lives and retains its self-
possession, must be governments by neighbors, by peoples not only
homogeneous, but characterized within by the existence among their
members of a quick sympathy and an easy neighborly knowledge of
each other. Not foreseeing steam and electricity or the diffusion of
news and knowledge which we have witnessed, our fathers were
right in thinking it impossible for the government which they had
founded to spread without strain or break over the whole of the
continent. Were not California now as near neighbor to the Atlantic
States as Massachusetts then was to New York, national self-
government on our present scale would assuredly hardly be
possible, or conceivable even. Modern science, scarcely less than
our pliancy and steadiness in political habit, may be said to have
created the United States of to-day.
Upon some aspects of this growth it is very pleasant to dwell,
and very profitable. It is significant of a strength which it is inspiring
to contemplate. The advantages of bigness accompanied by
abounding life are many and invaluable. It is impossible among us to
hatch in a corner any plot which will affect more than a corner. With
life everywhere throughout the continent, it is impossible to seize
illicit power over the whole people by seizing any central offices. To
hold Washington would be as useless to a usurper as to hold Duluth.
Self-government cannot be usurped.
A French writer has said that the autocratic ascendency of
Andrew Jackson illustrated anew the long-credited tendency of
democracies to give themselves over to one hero. The country is
older now than it was when Andrew Jackson delighted in his power,
and few can believe that it would again approve or applaud childish
arrogance and ignorant arbitrariness like his; but even in his case,
striking and ominous as it was, it must not be overlooked that he was
suffered only to strain the Constitution, not to break it. He held his
office by orderly election; he exercised its functions within the letter
of the law; he could silence not one word of hostile criticism; and, his
second term expired, he passed into private life as harmlessly as did
James Monroe. A nation that can quietly reabsorb a vast victorious
army is no more safely free and healthy than is a nation that could
reabsorb such a President as Andrew Jackson, sending him into
seclusion at the Hermitage to live without power, and die almost
forgotten.
A huge, stalwart body politic like ours, with quick life in every
individual town and county, is apt, too, to have the strength of variety
of judgment. Thoughts which in one quarter kindle enthusiasm may
in another meet coolness or arouse antagonism. Events which are
fuel to the passions of one section may be but as a passing wind to
another section. No single moment of indiscretion, surely, can easily
betray the whole country at once. There will be entire populations
still cool, self-possessed, unaffected. Generous emotions sometimes
sweep whole peoples, but, happily, evil passions, sinister views,
base purposes, do not and cannot. Sedition cannot surge through
the hearts of a wakeful nation as patriotism can. In such organisms
poisons diffuse themselves slowly; only healthful life has unbroken
course. The sweep of agitations set afoot for purposes unfamiliar or
uncongenial to the customary popular thought is broken by a
thousand obstacles. It may be easy to reawaken old enthusiasms,
but it must be infinitely hard to create new ones, and impossible to
surprise a whole people into unpremeditated action.
It is well to give full weight to these great advantages of our big
and strenuous and yet familiar way of conducting affairs; but it is
imperative at the same time to make very plain the influences which
are pointing toward changes in our politics—changes which threaten
loss of organic wholeness and soundness. The union of strength
with bigness depends upon the maintenance of character, and it is
just the character of the nation which is being most deeply affected
and modified by the enormous immigration which, year after year,
pours into the country from Europe. Our own temperate blood,
schooled to self-possession and to the measured conduct of self-
government, is receiving a constant infusion and yearly experiencing
a partial corruption of foreign blood. Our own equable habits have
been crossed with the feverish humors of the restless Old World. We
are unquestionably facing an ever-increasing difficulty of self-
command with ever-deteriorating materials, possibly with
degenerating fibre. We have so far succeeded in retaining
“Some sense of duty, something of a faith,

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,
Some patient force to change them when we will,
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd;”
But we must reckon our power to continue to do so with a people

made up of “minds cast in every mould of race,—minds inheriting
every bias of environment, warped by the diverse histories of a score
of different nations, warmed or chilled, closed or expanded, by
almost every climate on the globe.”
What was true of our early circumstances is not true of our
present. We are not now simply carrying out under normal conditions
the principles and habits of English constitutional history. Our tasks
of construction are not done. We have not simply to conduct, but
also to preserve and freshly adjust our government. Europe has sent
her habits to us, and she has sent also her political philosophy, a
philosophy which has never been purged by the cold bath of
practical politics. The communion which we did not have at first with
her heated and mistaken ambitions, with her radical, speculative
habit in politics, with her readiness to experiment in forms of
government, we may possibly have to enter into now that we are
receiving her populations. Not only printing and steam and electricity
have gotten hold of us to expand our English civilization, but also
those general, and yet to us alien, forces of democracy of which
mention has already been made; and these are apt to tell
disastrously upon our Saxon habits in government.
IV.
It is thus that we are brought to our fourth and last point. We
have noted (1) the general forces of democracy which have been
sapping old forms of government in all parts of the world; (2) the
error of supposing ourselves indebted to those forces for the creation
of our government, or in any way connected with them in our origins;
and (3) the effect they have nevertheless had upon us as parts of the
general influences of the age, as well as by reason of our vast
immigration from Europe. What, now, are the new problems which
have been prepared for our solution by reason of our growth and of
the effects of immigration? They may require as much political
capacity for their proper solution as any that confronted the
architects of our government.
These problems are chiefly problems of organization and
leadership. Were the nation homogeneous, were it composed simply
of later generations of the same stock by which our institutions were
planted, few adjustments of the old machinery of our politics would,
perhaps, be necessary to meet the exigencies of growth. But every
added element of variety, particularly every added element of foreign
variety, complicates even the simpler questions of politics. The
dangers attending that variety which is heterogeneity in so vast an
organism as ours are, of course, the dangers of disintegration—
nothing less; and it is unwise to think these dangers remote and
merely contingent because they are not as yet very menacing. We
are conscious of oneness as a nation, of vitality, of strength, of
progress; but are we often conscious of common thought in the
concrete things of national policy? Does not our legislation wear the
features of a vast conglomerate? Are we conscious of any national
leadership? Are we not, rather, dimly aware of being pulled in a
score of directions by a score of crossing influences, a multitude of
contending forces?
This vast and miscellaneous democracy of ours must be led; its
giant faculties must be schooled and directed. Leadership cannot
belong to the multitude; masses of men cannot be self-directed,
neither can groups of communities. We speak of the sovereignty of
the people, but that sovereignty, we know very well, is of a peculiar
sort; quite unlike the sovereignty of a king or of a small, easily
concerting group of confident men. It is judicial merely, not creative.
It passes judgment or gives sanction, but it cannot direct or suggest.
It furnishes standards, not policies. Questions of government are
infinitely complex questions, and no multitude can of themselves
form clear-cut, comprehensive, consistent conclusions touching
them. Yet without such conclusions, without single and prompt
purposes, government cannot be carried on. Neither legislation nor
administration can be done at the ballot box. The people can only
accept the governing act of representatives. But the size of the
modern democracy necessitates the exercise of persuasive power
by dominant minds in the shaping of popular judgments in a very
different way from that in which it was exercised in former times. “It is
said by eminent censors of the press,” said Mr. Bright on one
occasion in the House of Commons, “that this debate will yield about
thirty hours of talk, and will end in no result. I have observed that all
great questions in this country require thirty hours of talk many times
repeated before they are settled. There is much shower and much
sunshine between the sowing of the seed and the reaping of the
harvest, but the harvest is generally reaped after all.” So it must be in
all self-governing nations of to-day. They are not a single audience
within sound of an orator’s voice, but a thousand audiences. Their
actions do not spring from a single thrill of feeling, but from slow
conclusions following upon much talk. The talk must gradually
percolate through the whole mass. It cannot be sent straight through
them so that they are electrified as the pulse is stirred by the call of a
trumpet. A score of platforms in every neighborhood must ring with
the insistent voice of controversy; and for a few hundreds who hear
what is said by the public speakers, many thousands must read of
the matter in the newspapers, discuss it interjectionally at the
breakfast-table, desultorily in the street-cars, laconically on the
streets, dogmatically at dinner; all this with a certain advantage, of
course. Through so many stages of consideration passion cannot
possibly hold out. It gets chilled by over-exposure. It finds the
modern popular state organized for giving and hearing counsel in
such a way that those who give it must be careful that it is such
counsel as will wear well. Those who hear it handle and examine it
enough to test its wearing qualities to the utmost. All this, however,
when looked at from another point of view, but illustrates an infinite
difficulty of achieving energy and organization. There is a certain
peril almost of disintegration attending such phenomena.
Every one now knows familiarly enough how we accomplished
the wide aggregations of self-government characteristic of the
modern time, how we have articulated governments as vast and yet
as whole as continents like our own. The instrumentality has been
representation, of which the ancient world knew nothing, and lacking
which it always lacked national integration. Because of
representation and the railroads to carry representatives to distant
capitals, we have been able to rear colossal structures like the
government of the United States as easily as the ancients gave
political organization to a city; and our great building is as stout as
was their little one.
But not until recently have we been able to see the full effects of
thus sending men to legislate for us at capitals distant the breadth of
a continent. It makes the leaders of our politics, many of them, mere
names to our consciousness instead of real persons whom we have
seen and heard, and whom we know. We have to accept rumors
concerning them, we have to know them through the variously
colored accounts of others; we can seldom test our impressions of
their sincerity by standing with them face to face. Here certainly the
ancient pocket republics had much the advantage of us: in them
citizens and leaders were always neighbors; they stood constantly in
each other’s presence. Every Athenian knew Themistocles’s
manner, and gait, and address, and felt directly the just influence of
Aristides. No Athenian of a later period needed to be told of the
vanities and fopperies of Alcibiades, any more than the elder
generation needed to have described to them the personality of
Pericles.
Our separation from our leaders is the greater peril, because
democratic government more than any other needs organization in
order to escape disintegration; and it can have organization only by
full knowledge of its leaders and full confidence in them. Just
because it is a vast body to be persuaded, it must know its
persuaders; in order to be effective, it must always have choice of
men who are impersonated policies. Just because none but the
finest mental batteries, with pure metals and unadulterated acids,
can send a current through so huge and yet so rare a medium as
democratic opinion, it is the more necessary to look to the excellence
of these instrumentalities. There is no permanent place in
democratic leadership except for him who “hath clean hands and a
pure heart.” If other men come temporarily into power among us, it is
because we cut our leadership up into so many small parts, and do
not subject any one man to the purifying influences of centred
responsibility. Never before was consistent leadership so necessary;
never before was it necessary to concert measures over areas so
vast, to adjust laws to so many interests, to make a compact and
intelligible unit out of so many fractions, to maintain a central and
dominant force where there are so many forces.
It is a noteworthy fact that the admiration for our institutions
which has during the past few years so suddenly grown to large
proportions among publicists abroad is almost all of it directed to the
restraints we have effected upon the action of government. Sir Henry
Maine thought our federal Constitution an admirable reservoir, in
which the mighty waters of democracy are held at rest, kept back
from free destructive course. Lord Rosebery has wondering praise
for the security of our Senate against usurpation of its functions by
the House of Representatives. Mr. Goldwin Smith supposes the
saving act of organization for a democracy to be the drafting and
adoption of a written constitution. Thus it is always the static, never
the dynamic, forces of our government which are praised. The
greater part of our foreign admirers find our success to consist in the
achievement of stable safeguards against hasty or retrogressive
action; we are asked to believe that we have succeeded because we
have taken Sir Archibald Alison’s advice, and have resisted the
infection of revolution by staying quite still.
But, after all, progress is motion, government is action. The
waters of democracy are useless in their reservoirs unless they may
be used to drive the wheels of policy and administration. Though we
be the most law-abiding and law-directed nation in the world, law has
not yet attained to such efficacy among us as to frame, or adjust, or
administer itself. It may restrain, but it cannot lead us; and I believe
that unless we concentrate legislative leadership—leadership, that
is, in progressive policy—unless we give leave to our nationality and
practice to it by such concentration, we shall sooner or later suffer
something like national paralysis in the face of emergencies. We
have no one in Congress who stands for the nation. Each man
stands but for his part of the nation; and so management and
combination, which may be effected in the dark, are given the place
that should be held by centred and responsible leadership, which
would of necessity work in the focus of the national gaze.
What is the valuable element in monarchy which causes men
constantly to turn to it as to an ideal form of government, could it but
be kept pure and wise? It is its cohesion, its readiness and power to
act, its abounding loyalty to certain concrete things, to certain visible
persons, its concerted organization, its perfect model of progressive
order. Democracy abounds with vitality; but how shall it combine with
its other elements of life and strength this power of the governments
that know their own minds and their own aims? We have not yet
reached the age when government may be made impersonal.
The only way in which we can preserve our nationality in its
integrity and its old-time originative force in the face of growth and
imported change is by concentrating it; by putting leaders forward,
vested with abundant authority in the conception and execution of
policy. There is plenty of the old vitality in our national character to
tell, if we will but give it leave. Give it leave, and it will the more
impress and mould those who come to us from abroad. I believe that
we have not made enough of leadership.
“A people is but the attempt of many

To rise to the completer life of one;
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than they all.”
We shall not again have a true national life until we compact it by

such legislative leadership as other nations have. But once thus
compacted and embodied, our nationality is safe. An acute English
historical scholar has said that “the Americans of the United States
are a nation because they once obeyed a king;” we shall remain a
nation only by obeying leaders.
“Keep but the model safe,

New men will rise to study it.”
V
GOVERNMENT UNDER THE CONSTITUTION
It is by no means wholly to our advantage that our constitutional

law is contained in definitive written documents. The fact that it is
thus formulated and rendered fixed and definite has seriously misled
us, it is to be feared, as to the true function and efficacy of
constitutional law. That law is not made more valid by being written,
but only more explicit; it is not rendered more sacred, but only more
definite and secure. Written constitutions are simply more or less
successful generalizations of political experience. Their tone of
authority does not at all alter the historical realities and imperative
practical conditions of government. They determine forms, utter
distinct purposes, set the powers of the State in definite hierarchy;
but they do not make the forms they originate workable, or the
purposes they utter feasible. All that must depend upon the men who
become governors and upon the people over whom they are set in
authority. Laws can have no other life than that which is given them
by the men who administer and the men who obey them.
Constitutional law affords no exception to the rule. The Constitution
of the United States, happily, was framed by exceptional men
thoroughly schooled in the realities of government. It consists,
accordingly, not of principles newly invented, to be put into operation
by means of devices originated for the occasion, but of sound pieces
of tested experience. It has served its purpose beneficently, not
because it was written, but because it has proved itself accordant in
every essential part with tried principles of government—principles
tested by the race for whose use it was intended, and therefore
already embedded in their lives and practices. Its strength will be
found, upon analysis, to lie in its definiteness and in its power to
restrain rather than in any unusual excellence of its energetic parts.
For the right operation of these it has had to depend, like other
constitutions, upon the virtue and discretion of the people and their
ministers. “The public powers are carefully defined; the mode in
which they are to be exercised is fixed; and the amplest securities
are taken that none of the more important constitutional
arrangements shall be altered without every guarantee of caution
and every opportunity for deliberation.... It would seem that, by a
wise constitution, democracy may be made nearly as calm as water
D
in a great artificial reservoir.”
D
Sir Henry Maine: Popular Government (Am.
ed.), pp. 110, 111.
We possess, therefore, not a more suitable constitution than

other countries, but a constitution which is perfectly definite and
which is preserved by very formidable difficulties of amendment
against inconsiderate change. The difference between our own case
and that of Great Britain upon which we have most reason to
congratulate ourselves is that here public opinion has definite criteria
for its conservatism; whereas in England it has only shifting and
uncertain precedent. In both countries there is the same respect for
law. But there is not in England the same certainty as to what the law
of the constitution is. We have a fundamental law which is written,
and which in its main points is read by all alike in a single accepted
sense. There is no more quarrel about its main intent than there is in
England about the meaning of Magna Charta. Much of the British
constitution, on the contrary, has not the support of even a common
statute. It may, in respect of many vital parts of it, be interpreted or
understood in half a dozen different ways, and amended by the
prevalent understanding. We are not more free than the English; we
are only more secure.
The definiteness of our Constitution, nevertheless, apart from its
outline of structural arrangements and of the division of functions
among the several departments of the government, is negative
rather than affirmative. Its very enumeration of the powers of
Congress is but a means of indicating very plainly what Congress
can not do. It is significant that one of the most important and most
highly esteemed of the many legal commentaries on our government
should be entitled ‘Constitutional Limitations.’ In expounding the
restrictions imposed by fundamental law upon state and federal
action, Judge Cooley is allowed to have laid bare the most essential
parts of our constitutional system. It was a prime necessity in so
complex a structure that bounds should be set to authority. The
‘may-nots’ and the ‘shall-nots’ of our constitutions, consequently,
give them their distinctive form and character. The strength which
preserves the system is the strength of self-restraint.
And yet here again it must be understood that mere definiteness
of legal provision has no saving efficacy of its own. These distinct
lines run between power and power will not of their own virtue
maintain themselves. It is not in having such a constitution but in
obeying it that our advantage lies. The vitality of such provisions
consists wholly in the fact that they receive our acquiescence. They
rest upon the legal conscience, upon what Mr. Grote would have
called the ‘constitutional morality,’ of our race. They are efficient
because we are above all things law-abiding. The prohibitions of the
law do not assert themselves as taskmasters set over us by some
external power. They are of our own devising. We are self-
restrained.
This legal conscience manifestly constitutes the only guarantee,
for example, of the division of powers between the state and federal
governments, that chief arrangement of our constitutional system.
The integrity of the powers possessed by the States has from the
first depended solely upon the conservatism of the federal courts.
State functions have certainly not decayed; but they have been
preserved, not by virtue of any forces of self-defence of their own,
but because the national government has been vouchsafed the
grace of self-restraint. What curtailment their province might suffer
has been illustrated in several notable cases in which the Supreme
Court of the United States has confirmed to the general government
extensive powers of punishing state judicial and executive officers
for disobedience to state laws. Although the federal courts have
generally held Congress back from aggressions upon the States,
they have nevertheless once and again countenanced serious
encroachments upon state powers; and their occasional laxity of
principle on such points is sufficiently significant of the fact that there
is no balance between the state and federal governments, but only
the safeguard of a customary ‘constitutional morality’ on the part of
the federal courts. The actual encroachments upon state rights
which those courts have permitted, under the pressure of strong
political interests at critical periods, were not, however, needed to
prove the potential supremacy of the federal government. They only
showed how that potential supremacy would on occasion become
actual supremacy. There is no guarantee but that of conscience that
justice will be accorded a suitor when his adversary is both court and
opposing litigant. So strong is the instinct of those who administer
our governments to keep within the sanction of the law, that even
when the last three amendments to the Constitution were being
forced upon the southern states by means which were revolutionary
the outward forms of the Constitution were observed. It was none the
less obvious, however, with what sovereign impunity the national
government might act in stripping those forms of their genuineness.
As there are times of sorrow or of peril which try men’s souls and lay
bare the inner secrets of their characters, so there are times of
revolution which act as fire in burning away all but the basic
elements of constitutions. It is then, too, that dormant powers awake
which are not afterward readily lulled to sleep again.
Such was certainly the effect of the civil war upon the
Constitution of the Union. The implying of powers, once cautious, is
now become bold and confident. In the discussions now going
forward with reference to federal regulation of great corporations,
and with reference to federal aid to education, there are scores of
writers and speakers who tacitly assume the power of the federal
government to act in such matters, for one that urges a constitutional
objection. Constitutional objections, before the war habitual, have, it
would seem, permanently lost their prominence.
The whole energy of origination under our system rests with
Congress. It stands at the front of all government among us; it is the
single affirmative voice in national policy. First or last, it determines
what is to be done. The President, indeed, appoints officers and
negotiates treaties, but he does so subject to the ‘yes’ of the Senate.
Congress organizes the executive departments, organizes the army,
organizes the navy. It audits, approves, and pays expenses. It
conceives and directs all comprehensive policy. All else is negation.
The President says ‘no’ in his vetoes; the Supreme Court says ‘no’ in
its restraining decisions. And it is as much the law of public opinion
as the law of the Constitution that restrains the action of Congress.
It is the habit both of English and American writers to speak of
the constitution of Great Britain as if it were ‘writ in water,’ because
nothing but the will of Parliament stands between it and revolutionary
change. But is there nothing back of the will of Parliament?
Parliament dare not go faster than the public thought. There are vast
barriers of conservative public opinion to be overrun before a ruinous
speed in revolutionary change can be attained. In the last analysis,
our own Constitution has no better safeguard. We have, as I have
already pointed out, the salient advantage of knowing just what the
standards of our Constitution are. They are formulated in a written
code, wherein all men may look and read; whereas many of the
designs of the British system are to be sought only in a cloud-land of
varying individual readings of affairs. From the constitutional
student’s point of view, there are, for instance, as many different
Houses of Lords as there are writers upon the historical functions of
that upper chamber. But the public opinion of Great Britain is no
more a juggler of precedents than is the public opinion of this
country. Perhaps the absence of a written constitution makes it even
less a fancier of logical refinements. The arrangements of the British
constitution have, for all their theoretical instability, a very firm and
definite standing in the political habit of Englishmen: and the greatest
of those arrangements can be done away with only by the
extraordinary force of conscious revolution.
It is wholesome to observe how much of our own institutions
rests upon the same basis, upon no other foundations than those
that are laid in the opinions of the people. It is within the undoubted
constitutional power of Congress, for example, to overwhelm the
opposition of the Supreme Court upon any question by increasing
the number of justices and refusing to confirm any appointments to
the new places which do not promise to change the opinion of the
court. Once, at least, it was believed that a plan of this sort had been
carried deliberately into effect. But we do not think of such a violation
of the spirit of the Constitution as possible, simply because we share
and contribute to that public opinion which makes such outrages
upon constitutional morality impossible by standing ready to curse
them. There is a close analogy between this virtual inviolability of the
Supreme Court and the integrity hitherto vouchsafed to the English
House of Lords. There may be an indefinite creation of peers at any
time that a strong ministry chooses to give the sovereign its
imperative advice in favor of such a course. It was, doubtless, fear of
the final impression that would be made upon public opinion by
action so extraordinary, as much as the timely yielding of the Lords
upon the question at issue, that held the ministry back from such a
measure, on one notable occasion. Hitherto that ancient upper
chamber has had in this regard the same protection that shields our
federal judiciary.
It is not essentially a different case as between Congress and
the Executive. Here, too, at the very centre of the Constitution,
Congress stands almost supreme, restrained by public opinion rather
than by law. What with the covetous admiration of the presidency
recently manifested by some alarmed theorists in England, and the
renewed prestige lately given that office by the prominence of the
question of civil service reform, it is just now particularly difficult to
apply political facts to an analysis of the President’s power. But a
clear conception of his real position is for that very reason all the
more desirable. While he is a dominant figure in politics would seem
to be the best time to scrutinize and understand him.
It is clearly misleading to use the ascendant influence of the
President in effecting the objects of civil service reform as an
illustration of the constitutional size and weight of his office. The
principal part in making administration pure, business-like, and

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Post-Brexit Europe and UK: Policy

Challenges Towards Iran and the GCC

Edited by Geoffrey Edwards ·

Aims and Scope:

Politics and political development

More information about this series at

ISSN 2662-320X ISSN 2662-3218 (electronic)

Cover image: Fernando Tatay, shutterstock.com

Britain’s unprecedented withdrawal from the EU presents a unique chal-

Oxford, UK Diana Galeeva

The publication is the result of a workshop held at the Tenth Gulf

Part I GCC and Post-Brexit Europe and UK

Part II Iran and Post-Brexit Europe and UK

7 Assessing the Potential Impact of Brexit

Yara Yehia Ahmed is the Managing Editor and Political Researcher at

include International Relations theory, Gulf Cooperation Council states’

(2002–2018), Consultant of the UN Department of Political and

GCC and Post-Brexit Europe and UK

Geoffrey Edwards, Abdullah Baabood, and Diana Galeeva

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

equipment through the European Defence Agency. If there is progress,

The JCPoA epitomizes especially strongly contemporary tensions. As a

us for centuries’ (Gov.uk 2016c). Clearly the UK will be seeking agree-

1.2 The Structure of the Book

have been dedicating efforts to establish regional security institutions. The

by Nicole Grajewski. This examines the evolution of Iran’s bilateral rela-

Converging Diversification Concerns: Why

Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney and Vişne Korkmaz

N. A. Güney (B) · V. Korkmaz

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

it couples with bandwagoning and omni-enmeshment strategies and espe-

new post-2011 factors have continued to create more complications—if

2.2 Back to the Origins of EU/European–GCC

this normative framework and socialization dynamic to the negotiations

2.3 Existing Structural Difficulties

and of consumers’ new appetite for the diversification of energy resources

Network for Clean Energy (renamed as EU-GCC Clean Energy Tech-

2.4 New Complexities After 2011

indigenous enrichment right. At the same time, Riyad recognized that

2.5 Trump’s Era: Further

emerged assertive Russian, threats in the region. However, US anti-

of EU foreign and defence ministers in Bucharest, Romania in January

American bases (Sofuoğlu 2020)—and have continued to seek additional

will change her nuclear behaviour, or Tehran is or will be ready to rene-

2.6 The Impact of Three Conjunctural

On the other hand, although the US has maintained good individual

of alliance commitment and positive security assurances. Besides, this

“Some sense of duty, something of a faith,

But we must reckon our power to continue to do so with a people

“A people is but the attempt of many

We shall not again have a true national life until we compact it by

“Keep but the model safe,

It is by no means wholly to our advantage that our constitutional

We possess, therefore, not a more suitable constitution than

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