BAHRAIN -- The wolf is no longer at the door of the wealthy Arab kingdoms and emirates of the Persian Gulf. It is now in their midst, threatening to devour these plump, slow-moving gazelles of states from inside their fragile defense lines.
That was the consensus I heard expressed by Gulf Arab leaders, intellectuals, senior military officers and national security officials who gathered here last weekend to compare notes with each other and their Western counterparts. They quickly agreed that both the severity and proximity of the existential threat they face have changed dramatically.
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They could hardly do otherwise. The bomb blasts in nearby Iraq reverberated through two days of speeches and informal exchanges organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Regional security in the Gulf is now a daily concern to be lived and breathed, not an abstract concept left to policymakers to debate.
Even a decade or so ago, their deep (and deeply justified) distrust of each other would have prevented such a collection of Bahrainis, Kuwaitis, Omanis, Saudis, Yemenis and others from gathering to seek common ground on military and counterterrorist strateg
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