Christopher Davidson's book is a concise review of the increasingly interdependent and variegated relationship between the Persian Gulf and Pacific Asia. The book outlines the emergence of flourishing hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon trade relations between China, Japan, and South Korea and the six Persian Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. In the span of merely 100 pages, Davidson effectively communicates a highly detailed history of economic and diplomatic interactions between the two regions. The book offers a primarily descriptive narrative, which—while abundant in empirical evidence—seldom moves past description to analysis or discussion.
Central to the book is the notion of an Eastwards reorientation of the Persian Gulf monarchies, enabled by the global shift in economic weight from the West to the East. To further this narrative, Davidson contrasts Western states’ explicit pro-diversification positions and their proactive promotion of oil production outside the Middle East with the Pacific Asian states’ apathy towards dependency on hydrocarbon imports from the Persian Gulf. Davidson then chronicles the effects of 9/11, arguing that it instilled Western mistrust towards Gulf sovereign wealth funds and led to the propagation of anti-Gulf sentiment and xenophobia by political commentators and mass media.
Davidson's contribution is more timely than he could have likely predicted at the time of writing. Mere months after the publication of this book, the Arab Spring reverberated throughout the region, rekindling the anxieties about regional stability of which Davidson takes stock. In tandem, environmental movements gained traction with campaigns for renewable energy, increasing pressure on Western governments already scrambling to diversify and reduce oil import dependency. The ensuing events of Libya, Syria, Iraq and, more recently, Yemen, exacerbated said existing anxieties.
Despite the somewhat accidental topicality of the book, Davidson nonetheless neglected to account for the effects of Iran's re-entry into global markets. While the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between P5 + 1 and Iran was reached only in 2015, negotiations had been underway since 2003. The UN Security Council had levied sanctions on Iran for years prior to the writing of this book, rendering Iran financially vulnerable and thereby facilitating leverage for Pacific Asian economies. Sanctions notwithstanding, Iran has historically had a larger oil supply and greater crude oil exports than five of the six Gulf monarchies.
No discussion of the Persian Gulf is complete without a discussion of present-day Persia—Iran—especially not a discussion that takes hydrocarbon trade as its starting point. Davidson justifies limiting the scope of his analysis to Gulf monarchies, instead of the Gulf as a whole, by arguing that existing literature lacks a middle ground between narrow bilateral analyses and broad studies of the entire Middle East. Putting aside, for the moment, the absence in his literature review of any discussion of existing findings, save a list of relevant titles, he does not justify limiting his analysis of the Gulf to monarchies, nor does he suggest that regime type may play a role in trade or diplomacy. Conversely, he justifies his cases in Pacific Asia, suggesting that the choice is intuitive because they are the “three most advanced economies” in the region. The choice of case studies in the Gulf is far from intuitive, however.
A significant section of the book is devoted to documenting early interactions between China, Japan, and South Korea and the Gulf monarchies, from broad events such as initial points of contact and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations, to specific ones, such as Japanese development assistance to the Gulf, and Saudi Arabia's allowance of Chinese Muslims pilgrimage to Mecca. The section is misleadingly detailed, and records dates and events that suggest Gulf monarchies were uniquely positioned to take advantage of hydrocarbon trade with Pacific Asia. The omission of Iran is especially curious, given a small paragraph in Chapter 7 that evidences China's ambitions to export weapons to Iran in 1997. The reality of Iran's relationship with China and Japan (and to a lesser extent, with South Korea) is much more remarkable than Davidson implies.
Davidson claims, for example, Japan's demand to fuel post-industrialization came at a time when Bahrain, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi were under British imperial control, leading Japan to seek Saudi Arabia's oil and to establish formal diplomatic relations with Riyadh. Davidson ignores that Iran had a democratically elected government at that time, and that diplomatic relationships between Tokyo and Tehran dated back to 1929—decades before they were established with any of the six Gulf monarchies. Diplomatic relations were suspended when the allies invaded Persia in World War II, but they were restored in 1953, a full two years before they were established (for the first time) with Saudi Arabia. At present, Japanese–Iranian trade exceeds eleven billion dollars. Iran is Japan's third-largest oil supplier, and in turn, Japan is developing Iran's largest oil field.
China shares a similarly strong relationship with Iran, having negotiated a seventy-billion-dollar agreement in 2004. Iran established diplomatic relations with China in the same year as Kuwait, the first of all Gulf monarchies. South Korea is no different—at the time when Davidson was writing, Iran was South Korea's fourth largest source of crude oil. This year alone, South Korea tripled oil imports and invested upwards of fifteen billion dollars into the post-sanctions Iranian economy.
Davidson unapologetically shies away from making connections between political events and theoretical explanations common to political science. In the third chapter on hydrocarbon trade, Davidson's description of Pacific Asian economies and their willingness to enter a mutually dependent relationship with Persian Gulf hydrocarbon suppliers evidences archetypal balancing behavior. In Chapter 7 a whole paragraph (pp. 70–71) is devoted to exploring rudimentary explanations for the absence of a diversified security relationship between the two regions.
Davidson's omission of Iran from a discussion on oil-exporting Gulf countries was problematic at the time of publication. Economic, political and diplomatic developments between the West and Iran in the 5 years since this book was written have further problematized the omission. Davidson's partial representation of the Gulf leaves the reader yearning for a follow-up that extends the meticulous analysis of Persian Gulf monarchies to present-day Persia.
