| Summary/Abstract |
The 2017–21 blockade of Qatar has frequently been depicted as the largest obstacle to further cooperation within the Gulf Cooperation Council. However, this narrative overestimates the impact of the dispute and underestimates the historical limitations of the GCC and its multilateral projects prior to the crisis. GCC initiatives rarely produced tangible results, even before 2017, because their primary function was at the rhetorical level for Gulf Arab rulers, providing them with narratives of apparent regional unity rather than with concrete instruments of cooperation.
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