Between 1919 and 1932, Kuwait sat as the frontier for the expanding British Empire and Saudi state. These forces, manifested in British political agents and Ikhwan raids from the Arabian Peninsula threatened Kuwaiti sovereignty and security. This research focuses on the non-urban arid landscapes of the eastern Arabia as a site of international conflict and political intersection. Overlapping and competing conceptions of spheres of influence over the loosely controlled desert region created logistic and jurisdictional confusion. Drawing on sources from the British India Office Records and secondary scholarship, this paper argues that the overlapping frontiers of these growing political superstructures created ambiguity, confusion, and a disjointed political response which led to future territorial disputes. To achieve this argument, “Placing the Frontier“ details how the concept of the frontier changed the opinion of Kuwait’s neighbors toward the small coastal country. Aside from the British India Office Records, this research draws from scholarship on the nature of the Kuwait “frontier” by Frederick Anscombe, Anthony Toth, and Peter Sluglett, as well as material on the nature of space, place, and national identity formation in non-urban localities. The implementation of space and place theory in non-urban areas embraces the challenge of orienting the arid landscapes as the location of historic cultural and political interactions. Between the World Wars, Kuwait experienced the brunt of the political ambiguity surroundings its borders. As the frontier of two political systems expanding their territory in the region, the rural landscapes of east Arabia developed a fluid sense of place. Both professional and casual smugglers benefited from this jurisdictional unclarity which contributed to the concept of the unmonitored frontier. Through this research, “Placing the Frontier” explores the causes and ramifications of the “frontier” nature of southern Iraq and Kuwait during the early 20th century. The uncertainty over the border during this period later escalates into debates over the annexation of Kuwait by Iraq and the eventual invasion by Saddam Hussein.