The End of the Era of Containment and the Reconstruction of the Concept of Collective Security
The regional order in the Middle East has long relied, to a large extent, on the principle of containment as one of the main tools for preventing crises from escalating. This approach has been evident over the past decades in how various regional tensions have been managed. Although it has achieved relative success in mitigating the effects of some crises, the rapid transformations the region has witnessed in recent years—which have intensified since 2023—have highlighted a state of uncertainty regarding this approach and its effectiveness. These changes have resulted in a complex and intertwined regional system, which limits the ability of containment policies to regulate interactions among regional actors or prevent the region from sliding toward higher levels of escalation.
In this context, the Middle East—particularly the Arabian Gulf—has emerged as a key focus of attention for multiple regional and international powers, each of which has sought to put forward its own vision of collective security. Since the early 1990s, Russia has presented multiple visions for collective security in the Gulf, which were updated in stages until reaching their latest version in 2022. Iran, meanwhile, presented the “Hormuz Peace Initiative” in 2019. As for China, in 2021 it put forward its five-point initiative to enhance security and stability in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states announced their joint vision for regional security in 2024, making it the most recent initiative in this regard; however, none of these initiatives has translated into practical steps on the ground.
Given the recent escalation in the region since February 28, and with GCC states being directly affected by its consequences through direct Iranian attacks targeting their vital facilities and infrastructure, it has become clear that conventional containment policies are no longer sufficient to manage interactions in the region in a way that preserves its security and stability, as they have demonstrated clear shortcomings in de-escalation efforts. It has become imperative to focus on creating or adopting a common framework for collective security in the region, particularly in light of the recently announced ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran, which is supposed to last for two weeks and is hoped to continue for a longer period.
In this context, it is worth noting the expected resurgence of proposals regarding collective security initiatives in the region. On March 28, Vladimir Safronkov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s envoy for Middle East affairs, stated: “The Russian initiative for collective security in the Gulf remains on the table, and the current war necessitates its implementation” . This proposal may be appropriately countered by Gulf efforts to bring the regional security vision put forward in 2024 back to the forefront, serving as a starting point for any measures aimed at providing a practical framework for reordering security priorities and preserving regional stability based on a policy of good neighborliness and adherence to international legitimacy.
The recent escalation has revealed a profound intertwining of politics and geography. Given the severe disruption it has caused to the structure of the regional system in the Middle East in general, and in the Arabian Gulf region in particular, the most viable solution for the coming phase lies in developing regional understandings that preserve the security and stability of the region, prevent a recurrence of what has happened, and ultimately achieve comprehensive and sustainable security in the Middle East.
Note: This article has been automatically translated, the full article is available in Arabic.
Abdulrahman Ebrahim Alfezea, Senior Analyst
