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F. Gregory Gause, III is the John H. Lindsey '44 Chair, professor of international affairs and head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. He also is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. He is the author of three books and numerous articles on the politics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. He was previously on the faculties of the University of Vermont (1995-2014) and Columbia University (1987-1995) and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-1994). During the 2009-10 academic year he was Kuwait Foundation Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In spring 2009 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the American University in Kuwait. In spring 2010 he was a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Studies and Research in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
THE REVIEW
"The International Relations of the Persian Gulf" written by distinguished professor F.Gregory Gause, III of international affairs and head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, is a book that will appeal to both laymen as well as scholars. It will appeal to the layman because it is well written and contains a lot of facts and it will be read by scholars because what the book reveals is only ten percent of the huge undisclosed "iceberg of knowledge" that is needed to create such a brilliant gem of wisdom.
Professor Gause takes the reader on a guided tour where he explains the Persian Gulf as a security region; he continues to broaden the picture by explaining the emergence of the Gulf regional system from 1971-1978; the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq-Iran war. The reader will get detailed insight into the Gulf War and the following years, the impact of 9/11 and the Iraq War as well as thoughts about the future of the Persian Gulf. Professor Gause sums up his book by explaining American decision making with regards to the Iraq War and concludes with some "scratches on the surface" about war and alliances in the Persian Gulf.
The book's title "The International Relations of the Persian Gulf" seems to reveal that the author has knowingly chosen to emphasize the historic correct labeling of the area. Historically the Gulf is called the Persian Gulf, but as seen from the Arab side of the Gulf today it is always named the Arabian Gulf. A minor detail perhaps, but one that brings together two completely different point of views with regards to this particular geographical and political area. The Gulf, that is all the water from Iraq in the North to the Oman Sea in the South, means different things to different people. Point of view and perspective are two guide-lines when reading this book.
Undoubtedly being one of the sharpest written and thematically condensed literary works on the subject today from a writer that I understand has also traveled extensively in the Gulf-area, the reader ought to bear in mind the revealing words of the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, Ali Ibn-Abu-Talib, the fourth Caliph of the Muslims: "He who has Thousand Friends has not a Friend to Spare." Ali ruled over the Rashidun Caliphate from 656AD to 661AD. Anyone can look up in Google and see for himself how wast geographically that "friendship based" Caliphate was. Am I implying something here? Yes, in fact there has been Empires who on several times in the history have understood more about how to "govern" the Gulf area than what modern-day politicians has; the Ancient Persian Sassanian culture, for instance, which lasted from 224BC till 636AD covered both sides of the Gulf of what is today Oman, United Arabic Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and a portion of Western India. Not to forget the birth of Islam 500AD. It stretched through Egypt, Libya and Algeria to Spain.
Although our times are the most technical advanced in the history of mankind, our reasoning can sometimes be questioned; was it right to go to war on Iraq on totally falsified premises? Is it right and proper that Iran might very well suffer the same fate? And what country will be next in line? Shouldn't the United States start to make more friends in the region, including Iran, or will war-mongering remain as the highest expression of the Western Culture?
The book surprisingly enough does not concern itself with good or bad,right or wrong, moral or immoral, lawful or not lawful. It is nowhere written that an historian cannot have an opinion about these subjects. The U.S. Military operated Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the scandal that followed expose a darker, dehumanizing side within the military system. I therefore view the absence of initiative to address these issues as the book's weakest structural point.
Many people today are of the opinion that the United States should, instead of criticizing other countries and punish them with sanctions, look into its own, domestic problems first. In 1961 Erich Fromm, the German Jewish social psychologist who lived and worked as a psychologist, philosopher and writer in Mexico and in the United Sates, published "May man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy" in which he analyzed the Cold War noting that "both countries, the United Sates and the Soviet Union, used the same projections to experience the other as an enemy and arguing for an end to this dangerous confrontation. It is in many ways analog to the situation in the Gulf-region of today, and the ongoing escalating confrontation between NATO and Russia over Ukraine.
To be quite honest, I had expected from a man the caliber of professor Gregory Gause to have included at least some of the same thoughts in his other-vice excellent book. Also I would have preferred to read a bit more "temperament" towards the end. The book is well written, no doubt about that, but academically "dry" and somewhat "lifeless". A much stronger emphasis on ethnic "values" would be desirable, and open up a chapter dedicated to creating "dialog and common ground" in the area would cap the theme like a roof on a house. A sharper search-light on "the international responsibility for" and pointing out a "call to action", to paraphrase President Barack Obama's Nobel lecture in Oslo in 2009. Understandably, there is a limit to how much material the author and the publisher deem relevant to put between two covers. Distinguished Professor Gregory Gauss's five star book is highly recommendable reading.
Four detailed Geographical maps are supportive to the text and three Tables explains the Oil Revenues of the Gulf states, 1969-1978; nominal and real oil prices, 1974-1981 and the result of the Iraqi election of 2005.
THE BOOK REVIEWER
The writer of this review was employed by IBM in the early 1970'ies. He continued to work for Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) which is an American oil company with operations in the United States as well as in Indonesia, the North Sea, and the South China Sea. The writer has his own company working as consultant to large energy companies. He spent five years, from 1998-2003 in the Persian Gulf creating dialog and common ground on the highest level with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Peoples Republic of China and Norway on behalf of the three-national consortium mapping the entire seabed of the Gulf on the Iranian side. The project was called Persian Carpet 2000 (PC2000) and stretched from north of the Persian Gulf from the sea border with Iraq, all the way to the Oman Sea. At the time it was the world's largest 2D seismic project.
He worked in Tehran and traveled by car from the refinery city Abadan, Bandar-e Imam Khomeini, Mah-Shahr in Khuzestan province. Then further on to Hendyjan and finally to Busher at the coast. Dubai, with it's huge deep water Jebel Ali Port, was also the operational center for this part of the Gulf, though the neighboring state Sharjah also played an important role. He flew to the Iranian island of Kish, forty minutes flying time from Dubai. There he visited the supply base of the French oil giant TOTAL and made filmed interview. He attended two conferences held at the University of Kish. Late, the writer stayed on board, for shorter or longer period of time, the three Chinese, two Norwegian and one Iranian vessel, thus monitoring progress of deep water seismic shooting, shallow water seismic shooting and shooting in the Transition Zone One, directly on the beach at Hendyjan. There was top performances of all the seismic vessels, trawling the Iranian waters in a 2Km by 2Km dense grid, North to South and east to West.
The project was a huge success with respect to the quality of the seismic data, which, after test processing on board the Chinese mother ship Bin Hai 504, would be further finalized in the CRAY number cruncher at the Imperial College, Royal School of Mines in London were clients would come and view the data as maps on computer screens. The seismic data were then sold to oil companies. They in turn, would need them if they were to drill on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf after Iran had released new search "blocks". Please see the pictures.
