Brent Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow Robert Manning writes for The National on how the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act can provide a model for the future of US-Gulf relations:
The Camp David summit with Gulf Cooperation Council leaders has the Obama administration casting about for ways to enhance security assurances. Fearful that a probable nuclear accord with Iran would mark a strategic shift towards Tehran as regional guarantor, the GCC is speculating on a worst-case scenario.
America abandoning its security ties to the GCC, however, is highly unlikely. Even if negotiators reach agreement with Iran, there is no linkage to any wider US-Middle East policy. In fact, the divorce of the Iran deal from any larger US strategy was one of the criticisms that former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz made of the administration in The Wall Street Journal.