5. Western Reticence
There is an international consensus that the GCC crisis should be resolved through dialogue, but few international actors have done much to facilitate this. Indeed, the current rift highlights the reluctance of most international powers to press the GCC governments to resolve their differences. This has resulted in some cynicism in the region, where there is a widespread narrative that Western powers want to ‘divide and rule’ the Arab world – and where Western profits from arms sales are noted.
Rivalries between Gulf powers are not new. They have a long history of territorial disputes, as well as of political and personal differences. But two factors make the current crisis different. First, the GCC countries now have an unprecedented international reach because of their critical place in global energy and investment flows, as well as greater foreign policy ambitions. Second, from the 19th century until their withdrawal in 1971, rivalries within the Gulf were largely managed by the British, in the chief interest of preventing disruption to trade.
European countries, including the UK, doubt their political leverage over the new leaders of the region, especially in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. For the most part, European governments judge that the main protagonists are not in any mood to sit down together, and that those in Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not inclined to listen to foreign advice. They also fear that putting pressure on GCC leaders will backfire in terms of trade and investment. Thus, they reserve what political capital they have for ‘hard’ discussions on Iran and Yemen, while continuing to compete among themselves for Gulf business and investment.
The US – the key external actor – has taken a confused and inconsistent approach from the onset of the crisis. President Trump tweeted his strong support for the Arab Quartet, and speculated that its actions against Qatar could be the beginning of the end of terrorism.74 However, this did not translate into a policy change, especially on the part of the defence establishment. As already noted, the US air force’s main Middle East base is in Qatar (there are unverified claims among US policy experts that Trump did not recall that Qatar hosts the base when he tweeted his support for the Quartet), and less than two weeks after the boycott began the two countries reached a $12 billion deal for Qatar to buy F-15 fighter jets from the US.75 As the embargo began, the then US ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, tweeted examples of its counterterrorism cooperation; she resigned her post shortly afterwards.
The mixed messages from the Trump administration reflected the wider disarray in its foreign policy. Trump stated in September 2017 that he would mediate, but so far this effort has not materialized. The then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pushed for a summit to discuss the issues with GCC leaders, but made no progress before being dismissed in March 2018. His successor, Mike Pompeo, has also called for the GCC states to resolve their dispute, in the context of the US desire for the bloc to take a tougher line against Iran. The US proposed to bring the GCC leaders together in the US in September 2018, and to convene them with Egypt and Jordan to discuss a proposed Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) in October 2018. MESA, sometimes hyperbolically dubbed an ‘Arab NATO’, is a US initiative that is intended to bring together the militaries of the Gulf, Egypt and Jordan for joint cooperation. This is largely meant to send a political signal to Iran, although it does not appear that Iran takes it very seriously. MESA has also been mooted as a possible avenue for eventually strengthening cooperation between Gulf countries and Israel, but this is a distant prospect. The US has managed to convene senior military officials from the six GCC countries, but not the high-level political meetings that were envisaged.
US diplomats express concern that the rift in the GCC is an impediment to their aim of building a more united Arab front against Iran – the containment of which is a preoccupation of the US administration (and, as noted above, a major driver of the proposed MESA). In October 2017 the US suspended its participation in the planned ‘Iron Falcon’ military exercise with GCC allies, hosted by the UAE, from which Qatar was excluded. The GCC crisis is also a central obstacle to advancing an integrated missile defence system for the Gulf states.76 There were reports in October 2018, as the US prepared to start implementing international sanctions on Iran’s oil trade, that US officials were pressing Saudi Arabia to end the boycott of Qatar; and Secretary of State Pompeo visited Qatar in January 2019 and called for an end to the rift.
The US may not see GCC divisions as a serious threat to its own strategic interests. Oil, gas and arms continue to flow regardless. There are even some potential benefits.
Yet the US may not see GCC divisions as a serious threat to its own strategic interests. Oil, gas and arms continue to flow regardless. There are even some potential benefits: most notably, the US has seen the crisis as an opportunity to enhance counterterrorism cooperation with Qatar, while keeping up pressure on other GCC states to do more to combat terrorist financing. To demonstrate its own good behaviour, Qatar has also relaxed restrictions on foreign investment and has promised reforms to workers’ rights. And it is widely held in the region that the US is happy for Gulf countries to squabble as long as it continues to profit from arms sales there – a perception that is reinforced by President Trump’s frequent (exaggerated) references to the revenue and jobs generated in the US by arms deals with Saudi Arabia.
In terms of business priorities, in 2017 the Arab Quartet countries formally assured the US that its companies would not suffer discrimination for doing business with Qatar; they also reportedly made similar verbal assurances to the EU.
Similar interests are shared by other international powers. They do not buy into the Arab Quartet’s contention that Qatar is being isolated for its support of extremism. Rather, they want to work with Doha on counterterrorism. At the same time, they do not want to jeopardize their relations with the Quartet. Virtually every major external power involved in the Gulf has thus remained neutral in the dispute, and has called for it to be resolved.
Some GCC states (especially Oman and Kuwait) have expected the UK to play a greater role, given its history and expertise in the region. The crisis illustrates how greatly the British role has changed. As an imperial power, the UK demarcated the borders of present Gulf states and prevented them from advancing various disputes, and some of the older generation in the smaller GCC states remember the period of British protection and influence. Generational change in the Gulf, and the rapid enrichment of its elites (who have leveraged oil wealth for financial capital and consequent economic power) have meant that the UK’s political weight has been diminished for some time.77 It is notable, too, that some GCC observers see Brexit as intensifying this diminution.
Western – especially US – support remains vital for all the GCC members across a wide spectrum of security concerns, above all against conventional military threats that might emanate from larger neighbours and against cyberattacks, as well as for developing the capacity of their own militaries. But the threat perceptions of the GCC states seriously diverge from those of their Western allies when it comes to the role of domestic opposition movements. In the Gulf, concepts of security threats often blur the lines between domestic and foreign, and between violent and non-violent. Domestic opposition movements are portrayed as a ‘Trojan horse’ for external enemies, while critical media reports or statements by foreign governments on human rights are depicted as violations of sovereignty. The Arab Quartet’s grievances against Qatar range from the country’s support for certain violent non-state armed groups in Syria and Iraq to its allowing Gulf dissidents on Al Jazeera. For Western governments that tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood, give asylum to political refugees from many countries globally and promote freedom of speech, the security calculations are very different.
74 Wintour, P. (2017) ‘Donald Trump tweets support for blockade imposed on Qatar’, Guardian, 6 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/06/qatar-panic-buying-as-shoppers-stockpile-food-due-to-saudi-blockade (accessed 5 Mar. 2019).
75 Telegraph (2017), ‘Qatar signs $12bn deal to buy US fighter jets days after Trump accused it of sponsoring terrorism’, 15 June 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/15/qatar-signs-12-billion-deal-buy-fighter-jets-us-frayed-diplomatic/ (accessed 5 Mar. 2019).
76 Rose, F. (2018), ‘If Trump is serious about addressing the Iranian ballistic missile threat, he should enhance multilateral missile defense cooperation with Gulf states‘, Brookings Institute, 20 June 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/06/20/if-trump-is-serious-about-addressing-the-iranian-ballistic-missile-threat-he-should-enhance-multilateral-missile-defense-cooperation-with-gulf-states/ (accessed 8 Jul. 2018).
77 Among their tools are sovereign wealth funds, which have their origin in a Kuwaiti account at the Bank of England. This became the Kuwait Investment Authority, the world’s first sovereign wealth fund.