The Diplomatic Strategy of GCC States: A Case Study of Saudi Arabia’s Recent Changing Diplomacy

Abstract

As an important regional organization in the Middle East, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) faces many challenges in its current development. Today, trapped in intensified internal and external problems, as well as caught in increasingly crises, the GCC is standing at a difficult crossroad. The diplomatic strategies of the GCC in general since its establishment have always been looking towards the West, especially towards the United States (the US). All member states of the GCC maintain close ties with the US and their diplomatic strategies are heavily dependent on it. However, in recent years, the drastic changes in the Middle East and of the international political patterns have posed severe challenges to the GCC states' diplomatic strategies, which have also brought some opportunities with which the GCC states begin to change their diplomatic strategies significantly. Under the new circumstances, the GCC states, especially Saudi Arabia, are extricating themselves from the diplomatic tradition of looking westwards while beginning to make remarkable changes towards looking and going eastwards instead, gradually showing their trend of diversification and autonomy in diplomacy and trying to balance their diplomacy among regional and world powers, also between the East and the West. Therefore, any development on diplomatic orientation of the GCC states, especially Saudi Arabia, along with the accompanying impact on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, deserves sustained attention. Indeed, it is really a problem for the GCC states to go eastwards or go westwards.