Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 981677 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kristian Coates Ulrichsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kristian Coates |
| FAMILY NAME | Ulrichsen |
| SIGNATURE | ULRICHSEN K C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rice University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3482-5273 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Sports Mega-Event Hosting in Gulf States Prior to 2022
The 2022 FIFA men’s World Cup drew worldwide attention to Qatar as the event was held in the Middle East for the first time. While a rich literature examines why cities and states bid for, and host, SMEs, there is comparatively little on the Gulf itself, and such studies which have been published have mostly focused on Qatar and the World Cup. However, the trend of organizing sporting events in the Gulf States long predates their growth on the in…
America's Middle East
Transactional Politics
This article analyses the shifts in security and defence policies across the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and disentangles political and geopolitical strains in the U.S.-Gulf relationship from practical measures to boost cooperation and deepen interoperability. In examining the trajectory of security and defence relationships, the article assesses the stability and durability of the underlying components of U.S.-Gulf partnersh…
The Abraham Accords
Centers of Power in the Arab Gulf States
How are authority and influence accumulated and wielded across the six Gulf states? Mixing theoretical and empirical insights, and utilising both historical and contemporary examples, this book offers a comparative analysis of military, political, economic and religious power in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as of the power of narrative. While many volumes examine each of these states indi…
The Gulf and its foreign policies
The nine states of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula – Iran, Iraq, Yemen and the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – are bound together in a regional system but not a security community. Four major conflicts in the region since 1980 have contributed to a volatile set of relationships which feed into perceptions of risk, threat and interest, and have shaped the conduct of foreign, defence and security policy-making accordingly…
The changing role of Gulf-based non-state actors in foreign aid
This article examines how non-state actors in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have engaged in foreign aid historically and against the backdrop of tightening national regulations in each of the four countries. While scholarship has focused on state-linked development funds and aid modalities, the analysis explores the spaces within which Gulf-based non-state actors have operated. The September 11 attacks in 2001 and the A…
Qatar
Inventing the Middle East
Moscow believed in universal freedoms or perhaps, more cynically, it needed more allies in the Cold War.Either way, that support is now fondly remembered in many African countries, most notably in South Africa where the ruling party, the African National Congress, has often provided diplomatic cover for Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.Russia is happy to play up these old ties, even as its present-day commitment amounts to very little.Current…
Kuwait as a Mediator in Regional Affairs
Kuwait has developed and earned a reputation as a mediator in regional affairs as leadership-level conceptions of ‘national’ and ‘regime’ security have intersected with pragmatic assessments of the benefits any such mediation would bring to Kuwait’s regional interests. As a small state in a volatile neighbourhood, such calculations have been accorded greater policymaking priority than any ideational attachment to mediation. Kuwait’s experience is…
Between the Domestic and the International
This Special Issue examines post-2011 dynamics and the plethora of changes in the regional and domestic order in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. It argues that ideational factors are instrumental in both the building of peace and the construction of threats. Consequently, ideational factors are constitutive in inciting or pacifying cases of tension and conflict. Departing from the inherent connection between the domestic and the internation…
Qatar and the Gulf Crisis
Qatar and the Gulf Crisis examines the attempt by four states – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt – to isolate and blockade Qatar. The book explores in detail the policy responses taken in Qatar since early-2017 by a small state, cut off by its neighbors and subject to a regional power-play designed to appeal to the baser instincts of a U.S. presidency that had taken office lacking any real sense of a foreign policy and v…
The Regional Implications of the Gulf Crisis
This article assesses how the decisions taken in and after 2011 in Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh strained and shattered the lingering consensus and common threat perception that had, since 1981, provided a baseline for regional cooperation within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It explores how the rifts after 2011 have hit on weak-points within the GCC in ways that complicate any potential recoherence or “coming-back-together” in anything close…
Desert Kingdoms to Global Powers
The startling rise of the Arab Gulf states to positions of prominence in regional and international affairs has been the object of numerous monographs and articles in recent years, but none has qui
Lessons and Legacies of the Blockade of Qatar
The Changing Security Dynamics of the Persian Gulf
The contradictory trends of the ‘post-Arab Spring’ landscape form both the backdrop to, and the focus of, this volume on the changing security dynamics of the Persian Gulf, defined as the six GCC states plus Iraq and Iran. The political and economic upheaval triggered by the uprisings of 2011, and the rapid emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in 2014, have underscored the vulnerability of regional states to an intersection of domesti…
Palestinians Sidelined in Saudi-Emirati Rapprochement with Israel
This essay examines how and why Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have pursued policies that have aligned closer to Israel since 2011. The disruptive impact of the Arab Spring and its turbulent aftermath altered threat perceptions in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which increasingly saw Islamism and Iran as the major sources of regional instability. For Saudi and Emirati leaders committed to adopting a more forceful approach to shaping the p…
The Naqab Bedouins
Mansour Nasasra has written a detailed account of the indigenous Palestinian Bedouin from the late Ottoman era to the opening decades after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The Naqab Bedouins examines how the Bedouin groups of the Naqab and Bir al-Saba actively responded to the changing geopolitical contours of power. Nasasra sets out to challenge ‘the customary notion of Bedouin docility under military rule’ (p. 2) and shows instead …
Yemen endures
In Yemen endures, Ginny Hill presents a compelling and detailed account of a convoluted half-century of Yemeni history that culminated in the ‘descent into chaos’ and the current plight of a nation devastated by conflict and famine, on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. Published before the November 2017 killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh by his one-time foes and erstwhile Houthi partners, Hill's analysis of Saleh's rise and fall …
Qatar's Maverick Streak Leaves It Friendless in the Gulf
Years of anger at Doha's brash regional policies may have made the opportunity to put Qatar back in its place too tempting to pass up
Post-rentier Economic Challenges
The rentier states of the Middle East face a combination of political and economic challenges as they seek to reduce their reliance on volatile oil and gas revenues and diversify their economies. This article examines how the political economy of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states remains heavily dependent on the hydrocarbon sector and analyses the policy responses to the fall in world oil prices since 2014. Sections in the article exa…
Gateways to the world
Recent years have seen an explosion in the academic literature on the Gulf states, driven in part by the creation of branch campuses in the region by international universities and the inflow of Gulf funding to western universities. Very few of the studies, however, have focused on conditions on both sides of the waterway that separates the Arabian peninsula from Iran. Political sensitivities and surging tensions have complicated the conduct of g…
The Gulf States in International Political Economy
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen documents the startling rise of the Arab Gulf States as regional powers with international reach and provides a definitive account of how they have become embedded in the glo
Britain and the formation of the Gulf states
Britain and the formation of the Gulf states: embers of empire. By Shohei Sato. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2016. 178pp. £55.00. ISBN 978 0 71909 968 7. In recent years, a rich body of literature has emerged rigorously examining the final years of Britain's long ‘imperial’ moment in the Gulf in historical and comparative perspective. This culminated in Prime Minister Harold Wilson's announcement, on 16 January 1968, that Britain woul…
Foreign policy in Iran and Saudi Arabia
At first glance, a reader might be forgiven for thinking that Robert Mason's book on foreign policy in Saudi Arabia and Iran holds great topicality and relevance, given the marked deterioration in ties between Riyadh and Tehran since 2015. Moreover, the rapid changes both in Saudi foreign policy, which has become far more assertive and unilateralist, and in the Iranian relationship with the international community following the election of Hassan…
I nternal and E xternal S ecurity in the A rab G ulf S tates
The Geopolitics of Insecurity in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula
Palestinians Sidelined in Saudi-Emirati Rapprochement with Israel
This essay examines how and why Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have pursued policies that have aligned closer to Israel since 2011. The disruptive impact of the Arab Spring and its turbulent aftermath altered threat perceptions in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which increasingly saw Islamism and Iran as the major sources of regional instability. For Saudi and Emirati leaders committed to adopting a more forceful approach to shaping the p…
The changing role of Gulf-based non-state actors in foreign aid
This article examines how non-state actors in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have engaged in foreign aid historically and against the backdrop of tightening national regulations in each of the four countries. While scholarship has focused on state-linked development funds and aid modalities, the analysis explores the spaces within which Gulf-based non-state actors have operated. The September 11 attacks in 2001 and the A…
Gateways to the world
Recent years have seen an explosion in the academic literature on the Gulf states, driven in part by the creation of branch campuses in the region by international universities and the inflow of Gulf funding to western universities. Very few of the studies, however, have focused on conditions on both sides of the waterway that separates the Arabian peninsula from Iran. Political sensitivities and surging tensions have complicated the conduct of g…
The British occupation of Mesopotamia, 1914–1922
During World War I the military campaign in Mesopotamia placed enormous demands on local man- and animal power to provide the logistical resources vital to its conduct. This required the British civil and military authorities to construct a wartime state apparatus that filled the administrative vacuum left by the retreating Ottomans and made possible its downward penetration and mobilisation of local resources for the war effort. This article exa…
The British occupation of Mesopotamia, 1914–1922
During World War I the military campaign in Mesopotamia placed enormous demands on local man- and animal power to provide the logistical resources vital to its conduct. This required the British civil and military authorities to construct a wartime state apparatus that filled the administrative vacuum left by the retreating Ottomans and made possible its downward penetration and mobilisation of local resources for the war effort. This article exa…
I nternal and E xternal S ecurity in the A rab G ulf S tates
Deepening the Colonial State
During the course of the First World War a new form of colonial governance developed in response to the need to mobilise and extract local resources for the military effort. This involved a deeper penetration of local societies and a re-working of state-society relations in each region. It occurred as the civil and military authorities embedded themselves within existing local social organisation and interfered with indigenous structures and hier…
Extraction of Agricultural Resources
The logistical requirements of industrial warfare required combatant states to out-produce as well as out-fight their enemy. In Britain, the penetrative reach of the wartime state expanded as grand strategy came to encompass the mobilisation of the nation’s economic, commercial and human resources for the war effort. This also had an extra-European dimension as India and Egypt became the principal supply bases for the campaigns in Palestine and M…
Mobilisation of Labour for Logistical Units
Meeting the logistical requirements of large-scale industrial warfare in Sinai, Palestine and Mesopotamia required the mass mobilisation of peasant labour. An uneasy symbiosis developed between the tools of ‘modern’ industrial conflict and the ‘traditional’ reserves of man- and animal-power that serviced them. This was particularly pronounced in the campaigns undertaken by the Egyptian and Mesopotamian Expeditionary Forces, where the absence of e…
The Political Economy of Empire before 1914
This book is about the logistical challenges involved in the mobilisation and maintenance of large armies of combatants and non-combatants in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian campaigns during and immediately after the First World War. It examines the methods of state control that arose from participation in the lengthy and intensive fighting. This required all belligerents and sub-belligerents to extend state control over every facet of political, e…
The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914–22
During the First World War the British and imperial armies conducted large-scale campaigns in Palestine and Mesopotamia that made enormous demands on Egypt and India. Meeting the logistical requirements of the campaigns was a formidable achievement that required the imposition of a closer and more authoritarian form of imperial control. This led to the deepening of imperial rule in Egypt and India and its introduction in the occupied territories …
Stability and Change in the Modern Middle East
KJETIL SELVIK and STIG STENSLIE, Stability and Change in the Modern Middle East (London: I.B. Taurus, 2011), 292 pages; £15.99 paperback. Reviewed by KRISTIAN COATES ULRICHSEN, Kuwait Research Prog
Repositioning the GCC States in the Changing Global Order
This article examines the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states' changing position within a global order itself in a state of flux following the global financial and economic crisis and a regional order facing the participatory pressures of the Arab Spring. It explores the nature of their engagement in reshaping international institutions and assesses the implications for structures of global governance. The paper investigates the internationalis…
The Geopolitics of Insecurity in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula
The Political Economy of Arab Gulf States
This insightful research review examines the internal and external transformation of the Arab Gulf states and their repositioning within the global order. It explores the interlocking challenges of transition toward post-rentier structures of governance and assesses the domestic, regional and global implications. A multi-level approach begins with sections on domestic political and economic reform and the reformulation of domestic agendas to refl…
The New Middle East
The New Middle East is one of the first comprehensive books to critically examine the Arab popular uprisings of 2011–12. While these uprisings prompted a number of cursory publications, this volume contains meticulous and thoughtful reflections on the causes, drivers and effects of these seminal events on the internal, regional and international politics of the Middle East and North Africa. Although specific conditions in individual countries tha…
Qatar and the Arab Spring
In recent weeks, the Gulf state of Qatar has emerged as a leading advocate of international intervention on the side of the anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya. It organised the politically-crucial Arab support for the No-Fly Zone, was one of the first countries to recognise the Interim Transitional National Council (ITNC) in Benghazi, and offered to market oil on behalf of the ITNC. Simultaneously, Qatar-based Al Jazeera played an instrumental role in …
Politics and Opposition in Kuwait
This article examines the post-2006 political instability in Kuwait in light of the historical processes of political development in the emirate. It illustrates how recurring patterns of political contestation have resulted in a hybrid system divided uneasily between an elected assembly and an appointed government. The article identifies the tensions in Kuwait's political system resulting from the steady rise in the bar of political opposition ov…
The Siege of Kut-al-Amara
The Siege of Kut-al-Amara: At War in Mesopotamia, 1915–1916." Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 26(4), pp. 524–525
Recent Book
Recent Book." Journal of Palestine Studies, 44(2), pp. 65–66 Additional informationNotes on contributorsKristian Coates UlrichsenKristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, is the author of The First World War in the Middle East (London: Hurst & Co., 2014)
The wages of oil
The wages of oil is an absorbing book, rich in detail and nuance, that should become required reading for students and scholars of the Gulf oil states. As in his 1999 study, All in the family (State University of New York Press), of the nature of dynastic rule in the Arab monarchies, Michael Herb has produced a pioneering work that adds considerable depth to our understanding of the Gulf monarchies. Eschewing any deterministic causality of the im…
Enemy on the Euphrates
The centenary of the start of the First World War has been marked by an outpouring of publications analysing nearly every dimension of what was a truly global conflict. This has filled many of the lacunae in the literature, such as the paucity of works addressing the tangled legacy of the first western military intervention into Mesopotamia in 1914 and the subsequent creation of the modern state of Iraq in 1921. Ian Rutledge steps into this void …
Saudi Arabia in transition
The United States and Jordan
Journal Article The United States and Jordan: Middle East diplomacy during the Cold War. By Clea Lutz Hupp Get access The United States and Jordan: Middle East diplomacy during the Cold War. By Clea Lutz Hupp. London: I. B. Tauris. 2014. 255pp. £59.50. ISBN 978 1 78076 470 2. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen Kristian Coates Ulrichsen 1Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Googl…
The Gulf States in International Political Economy
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen documents the startling rise of the Arab Gulf States as regional powers with international reach and provides a definitive account of how they have become embedded in the glo
Britain and the formation of the Gulf states
Britain and the formation of the Gulf states: embers of empire. By Shohei Sato. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2016. 178pp. £55.00. ISBN 978 0 71909 968 7. In recent years, a rich body of literature has emerged rigorously examining the final years of Britain's long ‘imperial’ moment in the Gulf in historical and comparative perspective. This culminated in Prime Minister Harold Wilson's announcement, on 16 January 1968, that Britain woul…
Foreign policy in Iran and Saudi Arabia
At first glance, a reader might be forgiven for thinking that Robert Mason's book on foreign policy in Saudi Arabia and Iran holds great topicality and relevance, given the marked deterioration in ties between Riyadh and Tehran since 2015. Moreover, the rapid changes both in Saudi foreign policy, which has become far more assertive and unilateralist, and in the Iranian relationship with the international community following the election of Hassan…
Las dinámicas de seguridad internas y externas de la política de Catar frente al levantamiento sirio
Catar jugó un papel fundamental en apoyar la oposición a Bashar al-Assad desde el comienzo del levantamiento sirio en 2011. Mientras que Kuwait emergió como un conducto clave (extraoficial) para las transferencias financieras de los estados del Golfo a Siria y como apoyo de Arabia Saudí, al inicio tomó forma de flujo ilícito de militantes y armas para grupos de combatientes de la oposición, Catar adoptó desde el inicio una posición política para …
Qatar's Maverick Streak Leaves It Friendless in the Gulf
Years of anger at Doha's brash regional policies may have made the opportunity to put Qatar back in its place too tempting to pass up
Political science (42 works) · Law (32 works) · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts (28 works) · Politics (28 works) · Socioeconomic Development in MENA (24 works) · History (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Ancient history (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Middle East (16 works)