The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in crisis. Now is certainly not its first experience in disunity, but today is perhaps its gravest—as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, along with regional power Egypt, seek to isolate Qatar from both the GCC’s economic union and their vehemently anti-Islamist Arab security bloc. As such, analysis of trends in the foreign policies of the Gulf states is increasingly vital to unpack differences in threat perception, understand capacity in policy formulation and execution, find threads of interdependence and discover potential areas for cooperation.

AGSIW co-sponsored the Autumn 2017 Gulf Affairs journal special issue on “Foreign Policy Trends in the GCC States.” The issue was edited by Senior Resident Scholar Karen E. Young and includes an overview by Young and commentary by Ambassador Marcelle M. Wahba, AGSIW president.

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