NATO Istanbul Cooperation Initiative in the Gulf: Who is doing whom a favor?

This article explores the current and future role of NATO in enacting Security Sector Reform (SSR) in the Gulf through the three-year-old Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. The article is grounded in recent scholarship on military reform, democrati- zation and collective security. Enough time has elapsed since the inauguration of the initiative that an initial balance sheet can be drawn. The article aims at starting to fill the gap between theoretical literature elaborated by authors who have focused on other regions of the world and the reality of SSR experiments in the Gulf and the Broader Middle East. Further, from a policypointofview,itexploresthepossibil- ity of NATO’s playing a role in any field of SSR in the Gulf and the Broader Middle East. The main argument is that the new initiative is bound to lay bare a significant gap between policy commitment and actual implementation for a host of political, military and historical reasons.