While under its strategic partnership aspiration, the EU can devise policy and action plans on emerging insecurities in the GCC states. Biden’s recent travel to Israel and Saudi Arabia may suggest a transatlantic approach could also work in this context. As the Russo-Ukrainian War has generated food and energy insecurities, a substantial fraction of the U.S. president’s Middle East tour devoted to forming a coalition and finding solutions for these insecurities. The joint statement of the leaders of India, Israel, UAE, and the United States (I2U2) raised initiatives vis-à-vis food and energy security, and the U.S.-GCC summit’s joint statement has affirmed their commitment to ensuring the security of food and energy supplies. These U.S.-initiated statements show how the United States is determined to find solutions for these emerging difficulties. The EU can bring these and other soft insecurities in the Persian Gulf and across the Middle East to the transatlantic fore and mobilize the American and European public and private sectors’ resources. This strategy gives the transatlantic partnership fresh blood for its reinvigoration, provides the EU with a strong incentive to pursue its quest for geopolitical power and sustained leverage to challenge the Russian and Chinese presence in the Gulf and allows the United States to keep focusing on more significant challenges arising from Beijing and Moscow. The looming existential threats the GCC, and the wider Middle East, would face come largely from non-military threats, which China and Russia cannot tackle. Under a rejuvenated transatlantic partnership with credible long-term agenda and sufficient resources, the EU essentially can.

Mahmoud Javadi is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. His research focuses on EU grand strategy and European powers' Middle East policies. Twitter: @mahmoudjavadi2

Image: Reuters.