Executive Summary

As the wave of Arab Spring protest movements challenged governments across the Middle East and North Africa, the Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar emerged as key sponsors of proxy warfare across the region. These states’ efforts to shape the politics of other countries reveal profound shifts in the character of proxy warfare in the Greater Middle East since 2011.

The Gulf monarchies’ interventions have reshaped conflicts from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa to Syria, competing not only against their regional rival Iran but also amongst themselves for political influence and economic access. In doing so, they illustrate the complexity and dynamic nature of the multipolar proxy war environment, where conflicts between the United States and Russia, and the United States and Iran, are layered over multiple axes of regional and sub-state competition.

However, since 2011, all three Gulf monarchies have shifted their approach to proxy warfare. Their initial aims of reshaping the regional balance of power in their favor—by supporting revisionist proxy actors in arenas like Libya and Syria while working to shore up allies like Bahrain— ran into the challenges that sponsors of proxies often face. As a result of this, as well as their perceptions of the United States’ policy orientation in the region, the Gulf monarchies adopted more conservative goals in their use of proxy warfare, aiming to protect their interests and manage threats to the status quo across the region rather than reshape it.

In addition to this shift, diplomatic divisions among the three monarchies have intensified due to differences in their proxy war strategies and their perceptions of the Arab Spring. These divisions hold the potential to spark further conflict in areas where proxy sponsors’ interests collide. The shift to status quo maintenance-driven strategies has not ended Gulf state sponsorship of proxy forces. Instead, it has led to ongoing warfare in the name of crisis management, and in many cases, the virtual absence of efforts to end wars through negotiations, political settlements, and the provision of reconstruction aid and other forms of assistance.

• In the early years of the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar sought to use proxy warfare to re-order the Middle East in their favor. The rise of these Gulf states as sponsors of proxy warfare increased the complexity of U.S. efforts to stabilize the region.
• The proxy strategies of these three Gulf monarchies have shifted since the 2011 Arab Spring from seeking revisionist and opportunistic aims to efforts at crisis management:
  • Revisionist/opportunistic: From 2011 through about 2014, the Arab Gulf monarchies saw the instability wrought by the Arab Spring as an opportunity to revise the existing regional balance of power in their favor by replacing opponents with friendly regimes, as in Libya and Syria (with the notable exception of Bahrain, where a regional coalition intervened to shore up the regime).
  • Crisis management/status quo maintenance: By about 2014, the Arab Gulf regimes no longer believed that they could win a decisive victory in the region’s conflicts. At the same time, the proximate costs of regional instability resulting from these unresolved conflicts became too high a cost to bear. These three Arab Gulf states’ proxy strategies therefore largely shifted to a crisis containment mode. While they continued to engage in proxy conflicts, notably launching an intervention in Yemen’s civil war in March 2015, the Gulf monarchies’ proxy strategies were increasingly oriented towards upholding the status quo rather than overturning existing regimes.
• By 2014, the Gulf monarchies changed their proxy warfare strategy as it became increasingly clear that their proxies could not achieve decisive victory but more often fragmented and extended civil wars that gave their opponents an opportunity to gain regional influence.
• Growing divisions among these three Gulf states exacerbated competition among the proxies they supported, thereby prolonging conflict. Different approaches to regional policy, including their choices of proxy affiliates, sharpened long-standing diplomatic divisions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand and Qatar on the other.
• The monarchies’ shift towards status quo maintenance has not meant an end to proxy war. In the absence of U.S. pressure on regional actors to resolve regional disputes and investment in demobilization and the creation of alternative livelihood opportunities, proxy wars will continue where the leadership of the Arab Gulf monarchies perceive a conflict party as a threat to their regional interests or when crises spark new conflicts.
• Despite the shift towards status quo maintenance, splits among the three monarchies over their threat perceptions and willingness to support different kinds of proxy forces persist and could fuel further conflict. Qatar, in particular, has supported Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated and other Islamist proxies, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE see these groups as dangerous to their own regional interests, and have supported Salafists, more “moderate” groups, autocratic regimes, and others who oppose Muslim Brotherhood affiliates. This split continues to shape conflicts in which the three monarchies are involved.
• When the Obama administration began to signal that it was looking to disengage from the Middle East and would not support Gulf state revisionist strategies with direct military force, Gulf states adopted more conservative, status quo maintenance aims.
• Gulf proxy strategies have also been shaped by intra-Gulf competition, local conflict dynamics, and regional politics more broadly.
• The most important step that U.S. policymakers can take to increase stability in the Middle East—a core U.S. strategic goal—is to end civil wars and other forms of sub-state conflict, and therefore close off opportunities for regional proxy intervention. Sustained diplomatic attention and investment in development will be necessary, if not sufficient, to end these deeply complex and intractable conflicts.