Stability from Disorder in the Middle East: Comparing the Perspectives of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar

Abstract

The 2010s were a decade of transformation and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Throughout, most global and regional powers declared stability to be one of their main objectives in the region. This included Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar, the three Arab states with the most ambitious and influential regional policies during the decade. Yet, observation of these policies suggests that instead of serving as a common denominator, the seemingly shared objective of stability obscured the differences between their competing agendas. Without a universally accepted definition of stability, the thesis develops an original analytical framework. It holds that states understand stability as a condition in their strategic environment, emerging from systems of order, that they consider favourable; and that their conceptions of this order derive from their perceptions of themselves and of what constitutes and drives instability. Drawing on qualitative data, the thesis analyses and compares Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar’s perceptions of political developments in the MENA during the 2010s, and their conceptions of what constituted stability. The thesis finds that the three Gulf monarchies concurred that the region descended into unprecedented and dangerous instability following the 2010/11 Arab Uprisings. Yet, their assessments of what characterised and drove this instability diverged. This led them to formulate different — and, in some areas, contradictory — views of how the politics in and between regional states had to be organised, and what role external powers could play, in order to yield stability. The thesis concludes that examining states’ conceptions of stability provides a useful lens to understand their foreign policy behaviour. It further establishes that the joint declaratory commitments to stability, often evoked by European and North American governments to frame relations with partners in the region, are insufficient as a basis for strategic alignments.