“The fight against AQAP will continue to be dynamic: AQAP’s tribal coalitions against Yemen’s equivalents, AQAP’s civil-military operations against the government’s version. On May 17, AQAP signaled its chagrin at the U.A.E. role in southern Yemen by issuing a video directly threatening the Emiratis to cease involvement in the area. This is probably as good a signal as any that the Gulf coalition is doing something right against AQAP. In this fight the coalition, especially the United Arab Emirates, has shown itself to have certain characteristics, ideas, and experiences that have allowed it to be effective at fighting AQAP, at least so far. The Gulf States share language, culture, and religion with the Yemenis -- they have a similar mindset, and this matters a lot when undertaking tribal engagement and building coalitions. The United Arab Emirates has a particularly tight societal connection to the southern Yemenis and carries less historical baggage than the strained Saudi-Yemeni relationship. The coalition builds rough-and-ready proxy forces that are “good enough” to do the simple military tasks set for them. These forces are not over-engineered; they are built to be ready roughly on time and to do roughly what they’re told. After the fighting, they are put in charge of liberated areas. It remains to be seen how sustainable such solutions are, but they have proven effective at clearance and could be good enough for holding terrain.”
“The Arab Gulf states are engaging a regional political landscape without a clear ideological or security center of Arab politics. The post-Arab Spring disorder has diminished Egypt’s traditional claim to that role, while the civil war in Syria has permeated Turkish domestic politics and security, weakening President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ability to project an alternative model of (participatory) political Islam to the wider region. The environment is providing a sense of legitimization of the particular Arab Gulf model of political economy: authoritarian governance with liberal economies, often dominated by state-related entities that invest in infrastructure and real estate, subsidized with imported labor and cheap energy costs. This is the logic behind a rising, or emerging, Gulf model of political economy, or at least one that Gulf leaders are keen to project. However, this model is being challenged by the prolonged decline in the price of oil, driven by higher supply from non-OPEC producers and a slowdown by Asian consumers, mainly a decrease in Chinese demand for oil. As much as 70 percent of Gulf countries’ fiscal revenue derives from oil exports, as prices are down from $52 per barrel in 2015 (a low from the boom times of over $100 per barrel in 2013) with forecasts by Moody’s and other energy analysts to remain below $40 per barrel through 2017. This drastic decline in revenue, after a decade of hyper economic and population growth, is creating major structural challenges to government outlays in public services, subsidies, and employment. Some analysts describe this period in Gulf domestic politics as a renegotiation of the existing social contract. At the least, it is a reconsideration of the appropriate role of the state in the economy, including the provision of social welfare to citizens combined with a forward vision of the appropriate economic and social integration of noncitizens.”