Battle for the Gulf tomorrow: between a Hobbesian and a Kantian world

Their investments in integrated air defence, critical infrastructure protection and diversified diplomatic relationships have enhanced resilience. At the same time, recent conflicts have demonstrated that military capability alone cannot guarantee peace if the surrounding political architecture remains fragile.

A durable regional order is therefore most likely to emerge from a layered approach: preserving strong partnerships with the United States, China and Europe while strengthening GCC institutions, expanding practical cooperation with regional partners, developing indigenous defence industries and maintaining channels for dialogue with adversaries. Progress on the Palestinian question, maritime security and confidence-building measures with Iran will remain central to any sustainable settlement.

Overall, the evidence from leading strategic institutions broadly supports the idea that the Gulf is moving from dependence towards greater strategic agency. However, this transition should be viewed as an evolution rather than a completed transformation. The region's future stability will depend less on replacing external security guarantees than on complementing them with credible regional institutions, economic resilience and inclusive diplomacy.

The Gulf region stands at a strategic crossroads. Recent regional conflicts have exposed the limitations of a security system based predominantly on external guarantees while highlighting the growing need for a regionally owned framework capable of preventing crises, managing disputes and promoting long-term stability.

What the Gulf therefore requires is not another externally designed security arrangement, but a process through which regional states themselves can gradually develop the habits, mechanisms and institutions of cooperative security.

The proposed Muscat Process – in circulation as a proposal since June by the Group of Friends inspired by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), if facilitated by the Sultanate of Oman, offers an opportunity to establish an inclusive multilateral security dialogue for the Gulf and West Asia. Rather than replacing existing bilateral partnerships or military alliances, the initiative would complement them by creating permanent mechanisms for political consultation, confidence-building and practical cooperation among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Iraq and Iran, and even beyond.

The objective is not to resolve all regional disputes immediately, but to institutionalise dialogue, reduce strategic mistrust and gradually develop a cooperative regional security architecture.

The experience of the CSCE is instructive precisely because it did not begin with a peace treaty or a comprehensive settlement. It began with the recognition that sustained dialogue, agreed principles, confidence-building and practical cooperation could gradually transform relations among states whose political and security interests remained deeply divided.

The lesson of Helsinki was therefore not simply the text agreed in 1975, but the process that followed it. The CSCE demonstrated that states deeply divided by ideology, security interests and geopolitical rivalry could nevertheless begin with principles, regular dialogue and practical confidence-building, allowing a broader cooperative framework to develop gradually. The relevance of that experience for the Gulf lies precisely in this evolutionary character: the objective need not be a comprehensive settlement at the outset, but the creation of a process through which such a settlement may eventually become possible.

A further lesson is that such a process should not necessarily await the end of hostilities. On the contrary, dialogue is often most valuable when relations are at their most difficult. Establishing channels of communication, confidence-building measures and practical cooperation during a period of confrontation can help reduce miscalculation and create conditions for de-escalation. The Muscat Process should therefore be conceived not as a mechanism to be activated only after a political settlement, but as an instrument capable of contributing to the emergence of that settlement.

II. Why the Muscat Process Matters

For more than five decades, Gulf security has largely depended on external powers. While this model contributed to regional stability, recent developments have demonstrated that external security guarantees alone cannot prevent regional escalation or protect regional interests from broader geopolitical competition.

The Gulf now faces a historic opportunity to become an active producer rather than a passive consumer of regional security.