ABSTRACT
The international relations of the Gulf present a number of broad analytic issues that pertain to the politics of this region and to wider questions of Third World international relations as a whole. 1 One is that of establishing in some general way the weight of history, i.e. of events, conflicts, issues that pre-date the contemporary era. The Iranian-Arab conflict is one, the place of the Arabian peninsula in Egyptian foreign policy is another, the strategic concerns of Russia and its western rivals is a third. The polar temptations of historical reductionism, that is reducing the politics of the region to past or ancient issues, and contemporary determination, that is ignoring the influence of older problems, need to be avoided if some measured estimation of the impact of history is to be arrived at. If behind current conflicts and links it is important to see where older forces are to work, it is equally important to ask why particular and supposedly ‘traditional’ conflicts have re-arisen and which political or social forces have seen it to be worth while to revive them. All traditions, including those of enmity and suspicion, need to be sustained and reproduced. 2
