The Iranian nuclear standoff raises the larger issue of what future Persian Gulf security may look like. One can envision numerous potential Gulf security arrangements, but for the purposes of our argument, we assume that the United States and the other countries of the Gulf region retain a strong interest in limiting Iran's influence. (18) Among these options, it is important to analyze one that relies on the existing regional security organization--the GCC. Our analysis suggests, however, that there is little hope of constructing a multilateral containment regime through existing alliance structures in the Gulf. This is because the political dynamics of the region and impediments to further American investment there will make meaningful integration of the six countries' security postures into a coherent defense structure very difficult.
The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. We begin with a brief history of the role of containment in U.S. grand strategy, and argue that containment, as currently discussed in the public debates over Iran, differs in important respects from the policy that George Kennan articulated in 1947. We contend that there are several scenarios in which U.S. policymakers need not make a decision to 'live with" a nuclear Iran, but may nonetheless want to consider a regime for containing Iran that includes the Gulf states. We argue that the current popular discourse, which implies a binary choice between preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability on the one hand, and "containing" a nuclear Iran on the other is, in fact, a false dichotomy.
We then demonstrate why it is unlikely that the United States will be able to establish an effective containment regime that relies upon the GCC. To do so, we analyze two historical examples of containment regimes--The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO)--and assess why the former thrived despite early obstacles while the latter was incontrovertibly ineffective. These two cases reveal important insights on the conditions necessary for the establishment of an effective multilateral containment regime in the Gulf. We then turn to an assessment of the Gulf itself, evaluating the prospects for enhanced cooperation among the six GCC states, and find that there are significant obstacles to further integration in the region. In particular, intra-regional rivalries and differences in how each state perceives the threat posed by Iran present serious obstacles to the creation of an integrated defense architecture for the region. This is a sharp departure from the paradigm for an effective containment regime, exemplified by NATO during the Cold War, which drew its cohesive force from the common perception of the threat posed by an external power. Whatever Iran's nuclear trajectory, if the United States intends to continue to stem its influence, containment efforts must acknowledge that there are serious limits on the prospects for intra-Gulf cooperation.