British RUSI Institute Calls for Restoring Empire "East of Suez"

April 30, 2013 • 9:31AM

In a special press release, Britain's Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) announced on Monday its new 16-page report, which calls for restoring the Empire's strategic positions in the Arab Gulf region: "The paper highlights the U.K.'s 'return east of Suez' is more evolutionary than revolutionary and only partially related to the U.S. pivot towards the Pacific. [Authors] Stansfield and Kelly also suggest the U.K. 'is giving renewed emphasis to its position in the Gulf in order to maintain the special relationship with the U.S.' as well as engagement with the defence task in hand - namely deterring Iran."

"'Just as the U.K.'s withdrawal in 1971 created a security vacuum that drew the U.S., somewhat unwillingly, further into the affairs of the Gulf, the U.S.'s cooling of its engagement seems to be drawing the U.K. back in,' write Stansfield and Kelly. 'With the only remaining significant operation in which the U.S. and U.K. work closely together coming to an unceremonious end in 2014, there is a clear need to 'do something' if the strategy of being close to the Americans — in terms of political norms, military interconnectivities and global influence — is to be maintained.'" says the press release.

"We seem to be witnessing the slow transformation in the U.K. military posture towards a tentative return (at this early stage) to the pre-1971 strategy of rooting Britain's presence in the southern Gulf through agreements with its traditional allies in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, with outlying anchors in Bahrain and Oman, and with close political and economic ties with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that could be upgraded to the military level if necessary," the press release says.

"With regard to Arabia and the Gulf, the formal withdrawal from major bases east of Suez did not signal the end of British military involvement there — far from it," the RUSI report itself, as quoted by the BBC, stated, "it is of considerable economic benefit to the U.K. to be the leading European — and indeed, Western — player in the Gulf."