Regional and International Strategy for Arabian Gulf Security: A Perspective on the Driving Forces of Strategic Conflict and the Local Response

The Gulf countries face various economic challenges, the most important of which is the lack of economic diversification in general – and in government revenues in particular – in addition to an unsustainable path of government expenditure. These challenges are distinctive compared to what arises in advanced and developing economics; for example, the Eurozone unemployment rate in 2013 was 11%, compared to 5.1% in the Gulf countries, and Japanese public debt exceeds 200% of GDP, compared to 12.2% in the GCC countries.