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Sealing the STRAIT
105
to add to the deterrent power of the GCC defence structure. Indeed,
emphasising its coordination with an ally will be a strategic imperative:
even the threat of US intervention will act as a deterrent for military
belligerence from Iran. Thus, it will be necessary for the GCC to host
foreign forces and accept foreign strategic advisors. 134
4. Consensus-based decision making and collective security action. Unlike
some security regimes, the GCC should not embrace the principle that
‘an attack on one state constitutes an attack on all’. Instead, member
states should respond to particular provocations on the basis of a
consensus decision to act collectively. Noll argues this would allow
for broader possibilities of action and would not compromise ideas of
individual sovereignty. 135
If the GCC can successfully ground itself as an organised and practical force through
the above steps, it will have greater potential as a deterrent and as a major power in
the Gulf.
Notes
1
Frederic Wehrey, et al, Dangerous but not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of
Iranian Power in the Middle East, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2009, p. 155.
2
John Bruni, ‘The Future of US Policy in the Arabian Gulf’, paper presented to the Royal
United Services Institute of South Australia, Adelaide, 7 September 2009, (1 April 2010).
3
As noted by Caitlin Talmadge, ‘Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of
Hormuz’, International Security, vol. 33, no. 1, 2008, p. 84.
4
As defined by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), chokepoints are ‘narrow channels
along widely used global sea routes. They are a critical part of global energy security due to
the high volume of oil traded through their narrow straits’, see US EIA, ‘World Oil Transit
Chokepoints’
(24 April 2010).
5
RK Ramazani, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, Sijthoff & Noordhoff, Netherlands,
1979, p. 7.
6
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Security and Territoriality in the Persian Gulf, Curzon Press, Surrey,
1999, p. 27; Fariborz Haghshenass, Iran’s Asymmetric Naval Warfare, Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, Policy Focus No. 87, September 2008, p. 2.