It is hard to foresee the future, especially when the present is this fluid. The Gulf Cooperation Council today stands at a genuine fork in its history, pulled simultaneously towards deeper unity and deeper fracture. To understand which path is more likely, one must resist the temptation of a single narrative and integrate, however uncomfortably, both narratives: convergence or further fragmentation.
THE CASE FOR CONVERGENCE
The forces pushing the GCC towards greater integration are not trivial, as a shared threat perception has a way of concentrating minds. Iran’s regional ambitions, the slow unravelling of Yemen and Sudan, Turkey’s assertive posture, and an Israel whose reach now extends into Gulf diplomacy—these are pressures no single Gulf state can confidently absorb alone. Defence cooperation, joint procurement, and the early architecture of a unified deterrent posture are no longer merely aspirational; they are increasingly strategic imperatives.
Economics reinforces the argument. The post-oil transition has been adopted, at varying speeds, by every GCC government. Yet the scale of investment required to achieve economic diversification—in clean energy, technology, and financial services—demands a regional market, not six competing nations. A unified Gulf financial architecture, long discussed and long deferred, would give individual states leverage they cannot generate in isolation.
History, too, makes integration worthy of consideration. The GCC has survived crises—including the Qatar blockade and varying bilateral tensions—and emerged, however awkwardly at times, intact. The institutional scaffolding exists; the question is whether the political will can be summoned to give it weight.
THE CASE FOR FRAGMENTATION
Although the union has been proposed before, it was twice rejected. Sultan Qaboos of Oman raised it in the wake of the first Gulf War and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia raised it again after the Arab Spring. Both times, the idea quietly died, so what would make this moment different?
The honest answer is: not much has changed at the structural level. The Gulf states are, at their core, dynastic polities rooted in tribal networks, family rivalries, and histories of mutual suspicion that predate the discovery of oil. These are not minor cultural footnotes; they are the operating system beneath the institutional surface.
More consequential still is the divergence in grand strategy. The member states do not agree on how to navigate great-power competition in the Middle East. The UAE has moved decisively towards the United States and, through the Abraham Accords, towards Israel. Oman maintains its historical independence, preserving back-channels to Tehran (that its neighbours find uncomfortable, if not impossible) but cannot entirely dismiss such ambitions as useless. Saudi Arabia remains genuinely unclear in its posture, wary of the limits of American guarantees after a generation of disappointed expectations, yet equally uncertain that China, despite its economic footprint, is willing to bear genuine security responsibilities in the region. Riyadh’s short-term answer, a strategic partnership with Pakistan, suggests improvisation more than doctrine.
These are not merely tactical differences. They reflect fundamentally different theories of how a small-to-medium power survives in a contested neighbourhood. States that disagree on the diagnosis rarely agree on the prescription.
THE LEGITIMACY PROBLEM
Beneath the geopolitical debate lies a more corrosive issue: the domestic legitimacy of the Gulf states themselves. Integration requires a degree of popular sanction, or at least the absence of popular resistance. Yet several GCC governments have spent recent years narrowing their own political bases. The UAE’s systematic exclusion of Islamist movements has alienated a significant portion of the society that once provided social ballast. Kuwait has stripped large segments of its population of citizenship, a measure whose long-term political costs are only beginning to be felt. Saudi Arabia followed the UAE’s lead against Islamists, though recent gestures by the Crown Prince towards Islamic symbolism suggest a recognition that the pendulum has swung too far.
A union built on states whose internal compacts are under strain is a union built on uncertain foundations. As the theorist Ann-Marie Slaughter argues, durable security cooperation requires more than shared interests: it requires shared norms, shared institutions, and a common understanding of the problems at hand. The GCC does not yet possess these in sufficient depth.
THE THIRD PATH
What is likely to emerge, then, is neither the integrated bloc of the optimists nor the total fragmentation of the pessimists but something messier and more interesting. Expect deeper bilateral security arrangements between individual Gulf states and external powers: Japan deepening its energy-security ties, India formalizing its labour and logistics relationships into strategic partnerships, the European Union seeking influence through investment agreements. The United States will remain the dominant security guarantor, but its monopoly is eroding. Still, it is unlikely to be replaced by China, which cannot provide the same guarantees and does not have similar capability to project power.
Iran, for its part, will not be a passive observer. Any durable security architecture in the Gulf will require, at minimum, its tacit acquiescence, and more likely its active participation in some form.
The GCC’s future, in other words, will be written not by the Gulf states alone. The region is becoming a stage on which a far larger cast is asserting its interests. Whether the Gulf states can act collectively enough to shape that process, rather than simply respond to it, is the question that will define the next decade. For the time being, however, Iran could be the catalyst that finally makes the notion of a PanGCC alliance possible.
- Daniel Wagner is CEO of Country Risk Solutions. Hamed S. Al Ghaithi is a Senior Research Associate with CRS.
