Middle East Strategic Alliance To Remain Distant Prospect

Fitch Solutions / Country Risk & Sovereigns / Middle East / Mon 20 May, 2019

fs disclaimer

Key View:

  • US attempts to form a Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA, or colloquially an ‘Arab NATO’) are unlikely to be achieved for many years to come, if at all.
  • The main impediments include the putative participating countries’ differing attitudes towards Iran and regional political trends, and their unwillingness to be dominated by Saudi Arabia.
  • Thus, Middle Eastern security will remain reliant on bilateral ties between the US and individual states, rather than a multilateral framework.   
  • Over the long term, the differing attitudes among regional states towards Russia and China may also reduce the scope of MESA.

US efforts to establish a ‘Middle East Strategic Alliance’ (MESA), sometimes colloquially referred to as an ‘Arab NATO’, are unlikely to be achieved for many years to come, if at all. The initiative was proposed by US President Donald Trump and the Saudi leadership during Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 and envisaged the participation of Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the US. The Trump administration initially appeared to regard MESA as a military alliance to counteract the rising influence of Iran, a goal shared by Saudi Arabia, given that Riyadh and Tehran have been increasingly competing against each other geopolitically for many years. In addition, the US sees MESA as a means of sharing the 'burden' of maintaining regional security among its allies. Furthermore, the US views MESA as a means of countering the rising influence of Russia and China in the Gulf. Other objectives of MESA include promoting regional energy and economic ties. However, progress towards the establishment of MESA has been very slow, and in mid-April 2019, Egypt, the Arab country with the largest population and armed forces, withdrew from the proposed alliance, dealing it a major blow. Cairo was reportedly unenthusiastic about MESA’s anti-Iran stance and had doubts about its broader feasibility. Although the other states are nominally committed to MESA, we at Fitch Solutions do not envisage its establishment in any meaningful sense, due to differing worldviews of its putative members.

Country Population (mn) GDP (USD nominal) Military Personnel ('000) Defence Spending (USDbn nominal) Relations with USA Relations with Iran Geopolitical Significance
Bahrain 1.5 38.3 8.2 1.4 Ally Hostile HQ of US Fifth Fleet, Sunni-Shi'a tensions, adjacency to Saudi Eastern Province
Egypt* 97.6 249.6 438.5 3.11 Ally Cordial Most populous Arab state, key location between Europe, Middle East, Africa, guards Suez Canal
Jordan 9.7 42.4 100.5 1.96 Ally Cordial Friendly stance towards most regional states, including Israel
Kuwait 4.1 141.1 15.5 7.3 Ally Cordial Major oil producer
Oman 4.6 82.2 42.6 6.71 Ally Cordial Guards entrance to Gulf via Strait of Hormuz
Qatar 2.6 192.5 11.8 2.17 Ally Cordial Major oil and gas producer, hosts US air base
Saudi Arabia 32.9 782.5 227.0 67.56 Ally Hostile Major oil producer, dominates Arabian Peninsula, guards Islam's holiest places
UAE 9.4 424.6 63.0 24.6 Ally Strained Major oil producer, key location on Strait of Hormuz
Total 162.4 1,953.2 907.1 114.81      
Iran 81.2 452.3 523.0 13.19 Hostile N/A Major oil and gas producer, leading anti-US power in region, key location between Middle East and Central Asia
Turkey 80.7 766.4 355.2 18.97 Ally, strained Cordial Major regional power, key location between Europe, Middle East, Central Asia
Note: Egypt withdrew from MESA in April 2019.        
Data refers to 2018. Qatar defence spending figure refers to 2010, UAE to 2014      
Sources: UN, IMF, International Institute for Strategic Studies (personnel), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (spending), Fitch Solutions

MESA members’ disagreements over the ‘Iran threat’ will deprive the alliance of a common goal of containing Tehran. Among MESA members, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE (in addition to the US) are most concerned about Iran. Riyadh sees itself as leading a bloc of Sunni Muslim Arab countries in direct competition with the Tehran-led Shi’a Muslim bloc. For much of the past decade, this competition has been most pronounced in Syria and Yemen (where there is actual fighting between their proxy forces), with Bahrain, Iraq, and Lebanon also affected by Saudi-Iranian geopolitical rivalry to lesser degrees. For its part, Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy regards anti-regime protests by its Shi’a majority since 2011 as being backed by Iran, which is why it allowed Saudi and UAE troops to deploy in Bahrain in 2011 to restore order. Meanwhile, the UAE’s alignment with Saudi Arabia and the US places it in the anti-Iran camp, even though the UAE has considerable trade ties with Iran.

However, other MESA states are less concerned about Tehran. For example, Oman has long been an interlocutor between Iran, the Gulf Arab states, and the West, while Qatar, having fallen out with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in 2017, has recalibrated its foreign policy towards closer alignment with Turkey and more practical engagement with Iran. Elsewhere, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait are less exposed to Saudi-Iran tensions, and thus less interested in viewing Tehran as an antagonist. Egypt is much more concerned about instability in the Sinai Peninsula, Libya, and Sudan than the Gulf. In that sense, Iran is unable to play the role of the USSR in Western Europe in the late 1940s as a unifying threat that led to the formation of NATO.

A Theoretically Formidable Bloc...

Middle East Strategic Alliance And Foreign Military Bases

Sources: Fitch Solutions, international media. Egypt withdrew from MESA in April 2019.

MESA members are also unlikely to wish to subordinate their foreign policies to Saudi Arabia, which some states view as seeking excessive influence. Especially in the absence of Egypt, Saudi Arabia would most likely seek to present itself as the leading regional MESA member state, due to its large population, economy, and defence budget, and its highly assertive foreign policy under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. However, most other MESA states are unlikely to want to be dragged into regional conflicts initiated by Saudi Arabia, such as the war in Yemen.

MESA states also differ in how they view Turkey, which is becoming a more active player in the Middle East. Although Turkey, a Sunni Muslim country, is not an Arab nation, it has a major stake in the evolution of the Middle East, especially neighbouring Syria and Iraq, both of which have Kurdish populations with separatist tendencies which Turkey is determined to thwart. Turkey also has a military base in Qatar and has become closely aligned with the latter, potentially putting Ankara at odds with Riyadh. Furthermore, Turkey’s support for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and its various local offshoots puts it at odds with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which see the Brotherhood as a threat to domestic political stability.   

MESA states are also unlikely to be able to craft a regional response to moderate and radical Islamism and terrorism. Egypt is a staunchly secular state and shares with Saudi Arabia and several other countries a robust stance against the Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has long been viewed as an unofficial incubator of radical Islamism through its ultra-conservative Wahhabi socio-political culture and its financing of ‘extremist’ mosques abroad. In addition, the Kingdom’s critics argue that it overlooks the radical Islamist sentiments of some of its proxies, since it is perceived to be excessively focused on countering Iran. Meanwhile, Qatar has received Saudi ire for allegedly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. As a result of these divisions, Arab states proved unable or unwilling to mount a large-scale military offensive to defeat Islamic State militants in the mid-2010s, when they took over parts of Iraq and Syria. The task of defeating IS was instead left to the US and Russia.

Disagreements between MESA states suggest that the US will remain the main guarantor of regional security, acting through bilateral ties rather than a multinational alliance. The US has maintained close diplomatic, military and commercial ties with individual Middle Eastern states for decades, which are a legacy of Washington’s determination to keep Soviet influence out of the region during the Cold War. Indeed, in 1980, then-US President Jimmy Carter declared that any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Gulf could be met by military force. In the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, the US navy kept the Gulf secure for international shipping, and in 1991, the US used overwhelming military force to restore Kuwait’s sovereignty after its annexation by Iraq the previous year. The US retains a substantial military presence in Bahrain (headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet), Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. Furthermore, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait are officially designated Major Non-NATO Allies (MNNA) of the US, conferring upon them a high degree of defence co-operation with Washington. Finally, it was the US that took the lead in the military campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria over the course of 2014-2018. In our view, despite President Trump’s supposedly ‘isolationist’ stance, the US will remain engaged in Middle Eastern security for the foreseeable future (see ‘US Unlikely To Withdraw From Gulf Over Next Decade’, April 20, 2016).

A Complex Web Of Alliances And Rivals

Geopolitical Relationships In The Greater Middle East

Source: Fitch Solutions

Over the long term, differing attitudes among regional states towards Russia and China could further undermine the cohesion of the putative MESA. Moscow is clearly seeking to bolster its position in the Middle East, as evidenced by its intervention in Syria, which demonstrated that it is willing to use military force to defend its close ally (the Assad regime) from being overthrown. Russia also has close ties with Iran and Iraq, and improving ties with Egypt. Even Jordan and Saudi Arabia, two long-standing allies of the US, have been boosting ties with Russia. Although most Arab states value their relations with the US more than their relations with Russia, their ties with Moscow could become sufficiently cordial to reduce the scope for MESA to act as a means of ‘containing’ Russia.

Meanwhile, China’s establishment of a military base in Djibouti in 2016 demonstrated Beijing’s long-term ambition of becoming a player in the Middle East. Indeed, parts of the region lie along routes of China’s Belt And Road Initiative, suggesting that Beijing will become more interested in the Middle East’s security and evolution. That being the case, MESA is unlikely to wish to develop into an alliance that would seek to contain China.

Overall, even if MESA is officially launched in the near term, it is likely to be a largely symbolic organisation for many years. Disagreements between its members would delay or even preclude the establishment of a NATO-like command structure or collective defence clause modelled on NATO’s Article 5.




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