Number: RS20831
Title: GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL DEFENSE AGREEMENT
Authors: Gordon S. Brown and Kenneth Katzman, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division 
Abstract: A summit meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), held in Bahrain at the end of 2000, saw the attending heads of state and government take a number of modest measures in the areas of economic and security cooperation which are the organization's objectives. The most important of those measures, in terms of U.S. interest, was the signing of a mutual defense treaty which would, if ratified, formally commit the members of the organization to consider an external aggression against one member as an attack on all. The United States currently provides the security umbrella for those states as part of its Persian Gulf deployment, and has an interest in the defense agreement, to the degree that its mutual defense provisions might enable the GCC states to shoulder more of their future defense burden.
Pages: 6
Date: Updated February 28, 2001