The Fragmentation of Gulf Security Doctrine amid Prolonged U.S.–Iran Strategic Rivalry

Abstract

Conventional alliance and hierarchical security approaches suggest that shared external threats and reliance on a common security provider should encourage strategic coordination among aligned states. Yet the Gulf experience under prolonged U.S.–Iran strategic rivalry reveals a different pattern: states embedded within a broadly shared U.S.-anchored security architecture have maintained institutional alignment while developing distinct security doctrines. This article asks why Gulf states exposed to comparable regional pressures and sustained U.S. security relationships develop divergent approaches to threat, vulnerability, deterrence, external security dependence, and strategic autonomy. It argues that external pressures do not translate directly into convergent security policies; instead, they are filtered through nationally specific political, institutional, material, and historical contexts. These interpretive differences shape assessments of vulnerability and external security reliability, which in turn guide differentiated strategic adaptation. Through repetition, organizational learning, and institutional reinforcement, these adaptations can become relatively durable security doctrines. The study uses a theory-driven most-similar systems design to compare Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman, combining structured, focused comparison, qualitative documentary analysis, and process tracing of developments from 1979 to 2025. The analysis identifies four dominant doctrinal orientations: managed dependence in Saudi Arabia, strategic redundancy in the UAE, networked mediation in Qatar, and institutionalized balancing diplomacy in Oman. The article conceptualizes persistent doctrinal divergence alongside continued institutional alignment as a form of security fragmentation. This concept captures an outcome pattern rather than a causal mechanism and complements existing approaches to alliance heterogeneity, strategic culture, hedging, diversification, and strategic autonomy. The article also examines the ongoing 2026 Iran–U.S. conflict as a time-bounded, provisional stress test of these historically reconstructed doctrines rather than as evidence of completed doctrinal change. The findings suggest that hierarchical security architectures can sustain institutional alignment without producing strategic convergence, because states may interpret and institutionalize common external pressures differently.