The Gulf built a modern marvel out of sand. To protect it, the region must now think for itself — because the old guarantees can no longer be trusted. In a single lifetime, a coast that had barely changed for centuries became one of the most striking places on earth. The cities of the Gulf are filled with world-class architecture. Their ports, airports and markets are tied into every route of global trade. Their festivals, sports tournaments and museums now bring the world to a region that, two generations ago, most of the world could not find on a map. I write as an admirer. But admiration is not flattery, and a region’s friends owe it honesty, not applause.
The Gulf was built by the whole world. A Brazilian engineer, a stonemason from Upper Egypt, a young lawyer from Beirut, a truck driver from Kerala — the list circles the globe many times over, and many who came went home wealthy. Around 200 nationalities now live and work around the old oil wells, while the Gulf Arab who stood beside them turned a stroke of geological luck into a leap forward for his society. By any cold measure, it is one of the great development stories of our time.
The strength behind the spectacle is real. The Gulf’s sovereign-wealth funds together hold close to $5tn — by most estimates, around two-fifths of all the money the world’s governments have saved. Dubai’s DP World moves roughly a tenth of the world’s container traffic through terminals in some 70 countries. The region has bought into global football, hosted world tournaments, and turned the visa, the online government service and the airport into tools of statecraft. This is not a mirage. It is real and solid.
All of this required a bold gamble that few societies dare to make: to change a traditional way of life almost overnight, while trying to protect its faith, its values and its heritage. That the Gulf has mostly kept that balance — modern, yet not cut off from itself — is one of its quieter achievements. It is also one of its most fragile.
Of course, none of it came cheap, and much money was wasted. But waste follows every windfall. Any society made suddenly rich by what it did not earn will throw away part of it, from the oil fields of Texas to the careful economies of northern Europe. That is a footnote, not the real problem.
The real problem is the present. Having leapt from the edge of the world to its centre, the Gulf must now ask a hard question: is that achievement to be lost, and to whom? Since late February, when American and Israeli strikes opened a war on Iran, the region has learned how exposed it really is. Iran’s missiles and drones fell on Gulf soil, aimed at the American bases that the region hosts. A war meant to be fought between others was being fought, in part, on Gulf ground — and the very bases built to keep the Gulf safe had helped to make it a target. The danger is no longer theoretical.
Here lies the most painful lesson. For fifty years, the United States was the foundation of Gulf security. Every base, every arms deal, every quiet understanding rested on one belief: that when the moment came, Washington would protect its Gulf partners. That belief can no longer be taken for granted. Under a president who follows Israel’s lead too closely, American policy now bends first to Israeli priorities. When the missiles flew, it was Israel’s skies that were shielded first, even as Gulf cities absorbed their own share of the attacks. The patron, it turns out, has a favourite — and it is not the Gulf.
The Abraham Accords were sold as the start of a new partnership and shared security. But when tested, the promises proved convenient rather than firm. They served Israel’s interest far more than the Gulf’s. This is not an argument for turning toward Tehran, whose republic swings endlessly between fear and the dream of empire, and which remains a real threat. It is an argument for a simple truth the Gulf can no longer avoid: no one will guarantee your survival except yourself.
That demands fresh and creative thinking, and the Gulf is not short of the means to do it. But honesty also requires looking inward. The region’s success was won despite the jealousy and mistrust of its ruling families, not because of their unity. Those jealousies are old — the remains of tribal quarrels from an age that has passed. The dangers of today, by contrast, are new, and they are shared; they cannot be met with the instincts of a vanished era. New realities require new rules, and the kind of concessions that old rivalries once made unthinkable, but that survival now makes necessary.
Oil paid for the comfort of going it alone. The result is six electricity policies where one shared grid would serve better, six defence systems that do not connect, a common market still half-built, and schools, roads and hospitals that more cooperation would have made far stronger. The storm now breaking was predicted years ago, by anyone willing to look up.
Worse, the habit in every crisis has been to reach for money — to throw dollars at problems instead of solving them, and to fund proxies who fought one another in places wrongly thought to be far away. This has now proved what should never have needed proving: money buys time, not safety. Fire spreads faster than money can put it out. A cheque is not a foreign policy, and a windfall is not a strategy.
The anxiety now felt in every majlis, boardroom and family home is understandable. It is not an excuse. The Gulf deserves better than panic. Rulers do not need to love one another, or even like one another, to do the duty their people have trusted them with across generations. A customs union that truly works, an air-defence network that is genuinely shared, sovereign wealth spent on resilience instead of show — none of this requires friendship. It requires sense.
And here is the reason for hope, which is also the reason for urgency. The Gulf has the means to reinvent itself a second time. It has the money — those same trillions.
More importantly, it has the people: a generation of Gulf men and women educated at the world’s best universities and experienced in running real businesses, alongside the large skilled community the region drew to itself. The engine that raised the skylines can be made to protect them. What is missing is not money or talent. It is the decision to combine them.
The other path leads to one end: the slow loss of an extraordinary achievement, and the long regret of a people who watched a promising thing left half-finished, because their leaders could not bring themselves to build it together. The Gulf has done the impossible once. It would be an unforgivable irony to fail now at the merely difficult.
Jamil K Mroue is Lebanese writer and previous editor of Al Hayat newspaper in London and The Daily Star in Beirut