How global power is quietly shifting to the GCC

Today, the patterns that signal shifts in global power point toward a new center: the Gulf Cooperation Council. These shifts appear first in the changing of trade routes, in where new infrastructure projects are located, in the redirection of financial flows, and in where foreign investors concentrate their capital. As Hegel observed, the history of the world is the record of the rise and fall of states, and with each transition the world order adapts to new centers of power and the methods they introduce. During the 19th century, similar patterns placed Europe at the center of the global system, as industrialization, colonial expansion, and maritime dominance redirected trade, capital, and production toward European powers

Centrality in the global system has historically been expressed through control over production, capital, and the infrastructure that moves goods and money. During the nineteenth century, Europe occupied that position through its dominance of industrial manufacturing. By 1900, Europe accounted for roughly 60 to 65 percent of global industrial output, with Britain and Germany alone producing more manufactured goods than the rest of the world combined earlier in the century.

European financial centers, particularly London, became the core of the global capital system: by the late nineteenth century, the United Kingdom was responsible for nearly half of global foreign investment, financing railways, ports, and utilities across multiple continents. Trade routes and shipping networks were similarly concentrated, with European merchant fleets controlling a majority of global maritime trade and insurance markets. Railways, ports, and telegraph cables were oriented toward European markets, embedding this dominance physically into the global economy.

If industrial manufacturing anchored Europe’s nineteenth-century centrality, twenty-first-century power is defined by the ability to integrate energy, capital, technology, and infrastructure into functioning systems. And no region has demonstrated this capacity more clearly than the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The Gulf continues to account for a decisive share of global oil exports, representing roughly 28 % of total global crude oil exports, and virtually all of the world’s spare production capacity, granting it an unmatched role in stabilizing energy markets. Crucially, these revenues have been converted into long-term capital, through sovereign wealth funds that reinvest energy income into diversified global and domestic assets.

That capital has become one of the Gulf’s most consequential instruments of influence. Sovereign wealth funds and state-linked investment vehicles in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar now collectively manage trillions of dollars in assets. As of 2025, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund manages upward of $925 billion in assets, ranging from minority stakes in digital services and video-game studios such as Electronic Arts to global infrastructure assets, including a 15% stake in Heathrow Airport.

Another good example would be the acquisition of a significant parts of Barclays’ property empire, by an Abu Dhabi-backed fund, following an unsuccessful bid for The Telegraph newspapers, highlighting the adaptability of Gulf investment strategies across sectors. A similar pattern is visible in France. Qatari investors now own roughly 20 percent of commercial property along the Champs-Élysées in Paris, echoing earlier periods when European powers exercised influence abroad through concentrated ownership of key commercial and urban spaces

Taken together, these investments mark a clear shift in the direction of Gulf capital. That change is most evident in the growing role of Gulf-based investors in sensitive and high-value sectors. A recent example is the restructuring of TikTok’s U.S. operations, in which a consortium including major American firms and Abu Dhabi-based MGX took a significant stake in the platform’s American entity. Such deals illustrate how Gulf capital is now embedded in decisions shaping global digital infrastructure.

This financial reach is reinforced by an infrastructure ecosystem designed for execution at scale. Gulf states have built world-class ports, airports, logistics hubs, data centers, and digital government platforms with a speed and reliability that has become an economic advantage in itself. The digital government platforms, UAE Pass, launched in 2018, is nowadays used by over 11 million people to access thousands of services online, with many transactions completed up to 80 % faster than through traditional paperwork and in-person visits. Moreover, Infrastructure in the Gulf moves not only goods, but also capital, data, and services, integrating physical and digital systems into a coherent whole.

Alongside capital and infrastructure, the Gulf has invested heavily in the production of knowledge as a long-term pillar of economic and political weight. GCC states now spend between 3 and 6 percent of GDP on education, with Saudi Arabia alone allocates over $60 billion annually to education. In Qatar, Education City hosts branch campuses of eight leading international universities, forming one of the world’s most concentrated academic hubs per capita. Across the region, government-funded scholarship programs have sent hundreds of thousands of students abroad over the past two decades, while research and development spending has risen steadily. These investments signal a strategic effort to anchor talent, research, and innovation locally while remaining deeply integrated into global academic and scientific networks.

At a moment when capital, talent, and strategic investment are searching for stability, scale, and speed, it is hardly surprising that attention has increasingly turned toward the Gulf Cooperation Council. Over the past two decades, the region has emerged as a magnet for global finance, technology firms, infrastructure capital, and skilled professionals. This convergence is not accidental, but reflects deeper shifts in how global power is accumulated, organized, and exercised. Power, as Hegel observed, records itself through change. The wheel has turned before, and it is turning again, with the forces shaping the modern global order, increasingly, running through the Gulf.