Constructing Oman’s Regional Role

Sultan Qaboos’ pursuit of domestic legitimation, especially in the early 1970s, went hand in hand with the quest for regional recognition and legitimation. Oman’s foreign policy discourse, and especially its discursive alignments and identifications with the Arab world, needs to be contextualised within the wider regional developments and ideological debates of the period. This chapter looks at how Oman’s foreign policy discourse between 1971 and 2019 supported the governmental efforts to seek recognition by the Arab world, so to further legitimise the government both at the domestic and international level. It looks at the evolving use of discursive strategies on regional issues, and at how the supranational identification with the Arab nation, with Islam, and with a Gulf identity supported them.