GCC and NATO have plenty to offer each other

The NATO Regional Centre in Kuwait organized a high-level meeting last month to discuss ways to enhance NATO’s cooperation with the Gulf. The organization’s efforts to further engage the region come as its Istanbul Cooperation Initiative offers seemingly limited benefits to members, with its open-ended membership possibly explaining the lukewarm interest of some GCC countries. NATO could improve those perceptions by engaging more and understanding better the Gulf’s needs and priorities. 
The meeting, which was attended by representatives of the 29 NATO members and six GCC states, had two main objectives: To agree on further cooperation under the ICI, and to search for additional ways to engage with the region. A year ago, NATO had opened the centre in Kuwait in order to focus on cooperation with GCC countries, especially those who are members of the ICI. Besides conventional military cooperation, NATO’s key objectives in the region include countering terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The ICI was launched in 2004, focusing on security cooperation between NATO and the GCC member states. To date, four — Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE — have joined, while Saudi Arabia and Oman have not. In principle, however, ICI is open to all interested countries of the broader Middle East region, subject to NATO’s approval.
The ICI initiative offers a selection of bilateral activities that countries can choose from, including advice on defense transformation, defense budgeting, defense planning and civil-military relations, as well as military education and training. They also include military cooperation and facilitating interoperability through participation in selected military exercises, such as NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) drills. 
Besides these conventional military activities, the ICI also offers cooperation in other non-conventional areas: Fighting terrorism, including through intelligence-sharing; countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery; cooperation regarding border security in connection with terrorism, small arms and light weapons and the fight against illegal trafficking; and civil emergency planning, including participating in training courses and exercises on disaster assistance.
The ICI appears similar to NATO’s PfP arrangements with 22 non-NATO countries, including Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Belarus. Once a country joins PfP, an Individual Partnership Programme is jointly developed and agreed with NATO. These two-year programmes are drawn up from an extensive menu of activities according to each country’s specific interests and needs. All PfP partners have access to the Partnership and Cooperation Menu, which comprises some 2800 activities.

There is great scope for cooperation between the two organizations that has not been fully utilized, despite the establishment of a Gulf Regional Centre in Kuwait and the opportunities available through the ICI.

Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg 

However, it is perceived in the region that the ICI offers only limited practical benefits to its members. The Kuwait-based NATO Regional Centre was opened in 2017 to deal with those doubts and make the ICI more useful to its members and the region at large. 
There is a larger menu that ICI members can tap into if they access the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme (IPCP), which is available for PfP members and allows interested ICI countries and NATO to frame their practical cooperation in a more focused way. This enables interested countries to outline the main short and long-term objectives of their cooperation with NATO.
However, there is a great scope that has not been fully utilized for collective cooperation between the two organizations. While the ICI is essentially a bilateral arrangement between NATO and each member, there are wider possibilities for GCC-NATO political and technical cooperation. NATO is a political and security organization with interests in maintaining peace and security globally, including in the Gulf region, while the GCC is a political, security and economic organization that is focused on preserving peace, security and prosperity in the Gulf. As such, the two organizations have overlapping aims, which could be served by greater cooperation. 
Several areas could be explored to decide whether there exists value in developing cooperation around them. First is political dialogue, to discuss regional crises in the region that are of great concern to both organizations, including Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa.
Second is counterterrorism, where the two organizations could cooperate and exchange knowledge on the political, operational and ideological aspects of terrorism. In particular, they could focus on countering the radicalization of young people and their recruitment by terror groups. The GCC has developed very effective tools to deal with this aspect of countering terrorism, which could be shared for implementation elsewhere.
Third is sharing knowledge and best practises about the operation of a joint military command. As the GCC moves toward completing the establishment of a unified military command in the near future, NATO will naturally serve as a model as the most successful joint command organization.
Fourth is sharing experiences about the establishment and operation of a regional strategic military academy. The GCC is setting up such an academy, with a focus on regional strategic and defense instruction and research. Preparations are at an advanced stage and this project could benefit from NATO’s experience of setting up similar entities.
Fifth is cooperation in civil emergency planning between the GCC Emergency Management Centre in Kuwait and NATO, including participating in training courses and exercises in that area.
Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is a columnist for Arab News. He can be reached by email: [email protected] Twitter: @abuhamad1