After the Arab uprisings, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia floated the idea of a loose union among Gulf Cooperation Council states in December 2011. And earlier in the year, Saudi Arabia deployed several thousand troops into Bahrain on the grounds of precluding Iranian influence on the domestic situation of a Gulf state. Attention to these events has primarily been focused on the sway that Saudi Arabia, as the preeminent power in the region, holds over the region. It is equally instructive to examine how non-leading states in the Gulf have advanced and preserved their interests, and have not passively accepted Saudi Arabian hegemony. Political science accounts frame responses to primacy of power within the framework of balancing and bandwagoning. However, when looking at how Gulf states respond to preponderant Saudi Arabian power, the balancing-bandwagoning framework is inadequate. Gulf states, in particular Qatar and the UAE, do not automatically balance against a Riyadh-led order, nor do they simply join forces with Saudi Arabia in hopes of benefitting from its umbrella of security. This fixation on balancing, and its counterpart, bandwagoning, appears to lie in the almost unquestioned assumption that these two strategies represent the two main, if not exclusive, approaches to state security in world politics. Instead, the response of Gulf states has been a departure from this conventional model. Qatar and the UAE have pursued a sophisticated slate of approaches to advancing and defending their interests that may have an impact on the nature and even duration of Saudi Arabia’s regional power preponderance. Geopolitically, Riyadh has become accustomed to leading not only the Gulf region, but arguably the wider Middle East for decades. In its efforts to engender a united front among GCC members towards Iran, Saudi Arabia has encountered significant resistance. The UAE and Qatar have frequently challenged Saudi Arabian attempts at asserting its vision of hierarchy through foreign policy leadership. Instead, the UAE and Qatar have carved out niches in diplomatic settings and pursued less overtly confrontational policies that contest the hierarchy in regional politics. relationship, carved out niches in diplomatic settings, and have contested hierarchy in regional politics.