Trusting Relationships in Unexpected Places: A Study of Norms and Betrayal in the Gulf Cooperation Council

1. Trusting Relationships in Unexpected Places: A Study of Norms and Betrayal in the Gulf Cooperation Council Dr. Vincent Charles Keating Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark Dr. Lucy Abbott Department of Politics International Relations, University of Oxford

2. Overview of the Research Agenda • Is it possible to use trust as a variable to understand outcomes within international politics/security? • Two issues in the trust scholarship in international relations • Too focused on either rational or psychological explanations to the determent of social explanations • Insufficient focus on how to determine a trusting relationship exists

3. Overview of the Research Agenda • Previous Research • Keating, Vincent Charles and Jan Ruzicka (2014) “Trusting Relationships in International Politics: No need to hedge” Review of International Studies 40 (4), 753-770. • Ruzicka, Jan and Vincent Charles Keating (2015) “Going Global: Trust research and international relations” Journal of Trust Research 5 (1), 8-26. • Keating, Vincent Charles and Erla Thrandardottir (2017) “NGOs, Trust, and the Accountability Agenda” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19 (1), 134-151.

4. The Importance of Social Trust • Confidence (rational trust) • The expectation that another actor will behave according to a predetermined agreement or social norm • Determined through a Bayesian approach • Trust (social trust) • A phenomenon that allows actors to cognitively set aside the risk inherent in the actions of the other • Influenced by social factors – common cause, mutual identity

5. The Importance of Social Trust • In international politics, and particularly international security, it is important to theoretically open up the possibility of a habitual trusting relationship • Problem of defection in international security (state death) • For trust to occur as • Reflects phenomenological experience • Most states have no expectation of armed invasion from each other (nor do they plan for it)

6. Existing Methods to Determine Confidence or Trust • There are three ways in the IR literature to make claims of confidence or trust • Where there is cooperation • Where there are trusting discourses • Where an agent voluntarily accepts vulnerability • Our proposal: Trusting relationships can be identified by actors declining to adopt or removing hedging strategies over a long period of time. • Hedging is the behavioural manifestation of distrust

7. Existing Methods to Determine Confidence or Trust • Hedging is the behavioral manifestation of distrust • Trust and hedging have the same function, but are antithetical • The presence of a trusting relationship reduces the need to hedge • Must consider • Material ability to hedge • Social meaning of the hedge • Long-term behaviour • Focus on hedging not a magic bullet, but centres the analysis around behaviour, not discourse/personal claims

8. Introduction and Research Problem to Paper • How to study trust in international relations? • Possible options • Realism: No/limited trust • Psychology: Trust as intervening first-level variable • Contribution of the paper • Importance of social trust models • Case study where trust is seemingly absent (GCC)

9. Previous GCC IR Literature • Realism • Alliance to counter influence/threat of Iran/Iraq • Social Constructivism (security communities) • Limited defense cooperation • History of internal interference • On the face of things, limited possibilities for trust from a security perspective

10. Our Argument • Trusting relationships exist, but require a focus on • Internal security • Social norms • Internal security • Security of regime from insurrection at least as much of a threat as external invasion • Social norms • Face-saving – consensus, informal mediation

11. Identifying Trusting Relationships • Rooted in social trust theory based on two criteria • Changes in hedging relationships • Evidence of betrayal • Problems with trust as type of emotion/emotional state • Conflates the characteristics of an independent causal variable with the characteristics of the phenomenon itself • Removes possibility of habituality? • Focuses on an intermediary variable less important than the causes of that variable • Fx: identity – emotion – trust • Distinct one-sided bias in opposite casual pattern: betrayal

12. GCC Crisis Over the Arab Spring • Falling out between Qatar and Saudi Arabia • Arab Spring brings possibility of internal instability to the Gulf region • GCC states clamp down on potential domestic threats • Qatar breaks from the pack in supporting anti-regime revolts in Libya, Syria, and Egypt • Saudi sees Muslim Brotherhood as ideological competition

13. The Trusting Relationship • Strong social norm of maintaining face in the GCC • Supported by norms of informal mediation, advice-making, and particularly consensus • Almost no hedging strategies employed against defection • GCC has very low levels of institutionalization, relying instead on these norms • States had relative freedom to pursue goals even with Saudi hegemony

14. The Betrayal • Qatar supports Islamist forces in the Arab spring, particularly Muslim Brotherhood • Saudi Arabia sees this as a betrayal of the core values of preserving internal security and face-saving • Evidence of betrayal: ‘shocking’ moves by Saudi in responding publically to defection • In coalition with UAE and Bahrain, withdraws ambassadors

15. Rebuilding Trust • Move from habitual to calculative trust • Importance of betrayer to demonstrate trustworthiness • Saudi aggrieved party: incumbent on Qatar to make amends • Does not retaliate in recalling diplomats • Engages in confidence-building measures such as recalling Egyptian ambassadors • Follows Saudi in recalling envoy to Iran

16. Summary • Potential of linking trusting relationships to particular social norms • Moves it beyond ‘norms of reciprocity’ • Potential of identifying security concerns that IR might otherwise ignore: internal security • Shows that trusting relationships can exist in an area not commonly considered to be trusting of each other