Can the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states play a leadership role across the Middle East without major political change? Can Saudi Arabia and a selected number of GCC states become regional arbiters of Arab affairs without serious political transformations of their own? This chapter engages with debates about the recent rise of GCC countries, with the notable exception of Bahrain, as seemingly secure cultural and political islands of tranquillity in the middle of a turbulent Arab sea. I highlight the controversy surrounding the gradual but assertive Gulf interventions in the Middle East in the context of both historical and contemporary transnational connections that tied the region to both the Arab world and beyond. I also map Gulf responses to this two-way transnationalism that has always penetrated local societies but remains deliberately excluded from the national narratives.

I invoke three concepts to highlight Gulf internal transformations: nationalism, hyper-nationalism and political dynamism. The first refers to the Gulf ’s initial and early attempts to define their young nations in strictly Arab, tribal and Islamic terms. This is followed by recent narratives especially in places like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar where a nascent hyper-nationalism emerged in the context of greater military, diplomatic and financial interventions in the Arab world, for example in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant. Finally, the chapter points to contradictory trajectories that have resulted from Gulf interventions in the wider region and interrogates the prospects for the success of such adventures without political dynamism, a concept invoked by local Gulf commentators. Political dynamism remains ambiguous but it encompasses a quest for a transparent political system, respect for human and civil rights, equality between citizens and immigrants and representative government. It seems that many Gulf commentators and activists invoke the term to avoid calling for ‘democracy’ with its free elections, political parties, elected government and other political reforms. Such open calls have often been met with repression especially during the Arab uprisings. Other commentators in the Arab world take this dynamism to mean a culture and a public sphere open to free speech and debate, akin to the dynamism of old Arab centres such as Beirut in its 1960s heyday.