ABSTRACT
The Gulf has long been considered a bastion of United States (US) hegemony, with no contenders in waiting to assume the role. Since the withdrawal of British forces in the 1970s, the Gulf has been militarily dominated by the United States, with what would eventually become the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) firmly within the US sphere of influence. This chapter aims to reveal the effects of the Barack Obama administration's "retrenchment" foreign policy towards the Middle East by examining the GCC-US partnership that has defined the regional power structure since the 1970s. The Obama Doctrine can be better described as a combination of "containment and offshore balancing instead of primacy". In the case of the GCC, the offshore balancing element of the Obama Doctrine is clearly more applicable than containment. Though the GCC countries are dependent on the military umbrella of the United States, the United States does not have a similarly dependent relationship with the GCC countries.
