Editors

Over the past several years, it has become impossible to ignore the role of the Gulf Cooperation Council in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). References to petrodollars, petro-power, and Gulf-peddled sectarianism are constant, yet somehow simultaneously elusive. It is increasingly common knowledge that the GCC and the United States work in lockstep, but the mechanisms for that cooperation can be unclear, and that lack of clarity can be extremely damaging. So one rationale for this section was to address that lacuna in the wider left literature on the region, particularly as the weight of the GCC in global capitalism becomes heavier and heavier.