Non-Alignment And Regional Coexistence: Arab Gulf Perspectives Amid Regional War

It has now been just over a year since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which kicked off a growing conflagration currently reshaping the Middle East. The Arab Gulf states have largely been out of the geopolitical spotlight as the regional conflict has grown, but they remain quiet power players in the region, and are ushering in a new era of below the radar economic power projection. At the same time, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman) have cemented their foreign policies of non-alignment, remaining friends to all and enemies to none on the global stage. Both of these positions – back-seat diplomacy in the Middle East, and subdued non-alignment with global power players - represents a shift from the last several decades, during which regional leaders Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) trialed a more confrontational foreign policy in their regional spheres of influence.