The Gulf Across East and West

Relations between the two shores of the Gulf and the countries of the Asia Pacific have received a good deal of attention in policy and media circles in recent years. Yet there continues to be a dearth of rigorous scholarship on the character and significance of these ties, particularly in the fields of international political economy and strategic studies. Even though trade between the Gulf, both the GCC states and Iran, and the People's Republic of China has increased ten-fold over the last decade, this crucial shift in geo-economic activity remains to be properly investigated. In the security sphere, the prospect that China might constitute a counterweight to the United States in the eyes of Gulf governments is often intimated but rarely scrutinized. The chapters juxtapose and interrogate these two lines of scholarly inquiry by exploring alternative explanations for current trends in economic and security relations between the Gulf and the Asia Pacific. Contributors tackle the fundamental question of how these commercial, financial and strategic connections are likely to transform or rearrange the Gulf's long-standing partnerships with the United States and the European Union.