ABSTRACT
During the 1980-8 Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf Cooperation Council (Gcc) frequently articulated one of its most basic principles, that is, the territorial integrity of the eight riparian states of the Gulf was inviolable, a situation which was to be upheld at a11 costs.2 The principle was, of course, shattered completely by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990. Iraq's aggression posed a grave challenge to the very heart of the system of territoriallydefined states established during Britain' s stay as colonial power in the Gulf up until 1971. Immediately questions were raised about the origins of the ti ny emirates of the western Gulf littoral. How had this territorial framework evolved? What was its raison d'ftre? How capable was this framework of withstanding serious internal and external challenges such as the Iraqi invasion? Iraqi President Saddam Husain's move on Kuwait also served as a potent reminder of the vulnerability of the smaller Gulf states to the territorial acquisitiveness of their larger, more powerful neighbours. This was no new phenomenon. Had it not been for Britain's decisive intervention at the turn of the 1920s at the height of the Jahrah crisis, Kuwait (or at least its southern reaches) would probably have been subsumed into Ibn Saud's expanding Najdi domain.
