The profuse literature on Gulf security mostly analyses regional issues through the lens of Western interests and sensitivities rather than through a focus on the Arab Gulf States’ own perception of their strategic environment and on the specific strategies they deploy accordingly. Yet, foreign and defense policies of Gulf States, particularly the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and, more recently, Saudi Arabia, have greatly evolved in the past decades – along the lines of what the author calls “Small Princes-States” Defense Strategies. As a result of new regional and international incentives meeting with new internal priorities, they have gradually moved from survival strategies based on external security guarantors to an exceptional form of relative autonomy given the traditional status of small states in international relations. In particular, they have diversified their defense cooperation and military procurement partnerships, in order to be less dependent on one given ally. Since 2011, they have also demonstrated a new assertiveness on the regional stage and beyond to suppress perceived threats to their security and stability, but also to defend their interests by projecting their forces and influence on many external theaters. Now, in a context where the three states do not always defend the same interests, this sometimes leads to additional tensions in the environment they are engaging in. These issues are crucial to explore today as the stato- or ego-centric approaches of these Princes-States’ leaders run counter to internal and external incentives to move towards unity and cooperation rather than towards more individual strategies leading to increased regional and global insecurity. This paper presents the general dynamics of the Emirati, Qatari and Saudi recent move from survival strategies, to relative autonomy, to assertive power plays on the regional stage and beyond. It explores how their new policies play out in a shifting regional and international environment, against the backdrop of persisting tensions within the Gulf Cooperation Council and of increased rivalry with Iran, which also benefited from the power vacuum associated with the unfolding of regional events since 2011. Finally, the paper will confront these realities to critical approaches of Gulf security by deconstructing the idea that individual political and military dimensions of security matter more than non-traditional (economic, societal and environmental) dimensions of security or transnational issues such as terrorism which could all lead to increased unity and cooperation.