Christopher Davidson

The Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia and its five smaller neighbours: the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain) have long been governed by highly autocratic and seemingly anachronistic regimes. Yet despite bloody conflicts on their doorsteps, fast-growing populations, and powerful modernising and globalising forces impacting on their largely conservative societies, they have demonstrated remarkable resilience. Obituaries for these traditional monarchies have frequently been penned, but even now these absolutist, almost medieval, entities still appear to pose the same conundrum as before: in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring and the fall of incumbent presidents in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, the apparently steadfast Gulf monarchies have, at first glance, re-affirmed their status as the Middle East s only real bastions of stability. In this book, however, noted Gulf expert Christopher Davidson contends that the collapse of these kings, emirs, and sultans is going to happen, and was always going to. While the revolutionary movements in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen will undeniably serve as important, if indirect, catalysts for the coming upheaval, many of the same socio-economic pressures that were building up in the Arab republics are now also very much present in the Gulf monarchies. It is now no longer a matter of if but when the West s steadfast allies fall. This is a bold claim to make but Davidson, who accurately forecast the economic turmoil that afflicted Dubai in 2009, has an enviable record in diagnosing social and political changes afoot in the region.

The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

After the Sheikhs

For more than a century successive US and UK governments have sought to thwart nationalist, socialist and pro-democracy movements in the Middle East. Through the Cold War, the ‘War on Terror’ and the present era defined by the Islamic State, the Western powers have repeatedly manipulated the region’s most powerful actors to ensure the security of their own interests and, in doing so, have given rise to religious politics, sectarian war, bloody counter-revolutions and now one of the most brutal incarnations of Islamic extremism ever seen. This is the utterly compelling, systematic dissection of Western interference in the Middle East. Christopher Davidson exposes the dark side of our foreign policy – dragging many disturbing facts out into the light for the first time. Most shocking for us today is his assertion that US intelligence agencies continue to regard the Islamic State, like al-Qaeda before it, as a strategic but volatile asset to be wielded against their enemies. Provocative, alarming and unrelenting, Shadow Wars demands to be read – now.

The Secret Struggle for the Middle East

Shadow Wars

Peter Mackenzie

Nowhere in the world is university education expanding as rapidly as in the six-member state of the Gulf Cooperation Council. In two generations the region has gone from having the Middle East's least educated population to boasting a younger generation whose educational achievements are approaching Oraginisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standards. This unique study, with contributions by key decision makers, charts this dramatic development, exploring the challenges faced and placing accomplishments within the social, economic and political context of the region.

Christopher Davidson

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