CIAO DATE: 02/2015
December 2014
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The thirty-fifth annual Gulf Cooperation Council summit, held December 10 in Qatar, was probably the most efficient meeting the group has ever held. With the diplomatic schism between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain papered over three weeks earlier, Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani hosted the rulers of Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as senior substitutes for the ailing leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman. The meeting was purposefully brief, with delegations in and out of Doha in a day. The unity message of fighting terrorism -- via support for military rule in Egypt -- served to cement Qatar's reentry into the brotherhood of Gulf monarchies, while leaving the more pressing matters of economic integration, labor market reform, and political reform off the agenda. As a relatively new regional organization, the GCC has its share of policy coordination problems, some of which are understandable in historical context. In the European Union's case, for example, gradual coordination of trade issues began in 1957, while member states took over thirty years to include immigration policy, monetary policy, and common parliamentary representation; widespread security and military cooperation emerged only recently.
Resource link: The GCC in 2015: Domestic Security Trumps Regional Integration [PDF] - 54K