Proofs the Gulf Crisis & Qatar's Pursuit Of

King’s Research Portal Document Version Version created as part of publication process; publisher's layout; not normally made publicly available Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Krieg, A. (2021). The Gulf Crisis and Qatar’s Pursuit ofSelf-Sufficiency in the Military Domain. In M. Zweiri (Ed.), Contemporary Qatar: Examining State and Society (Vol. 4, pp. 978). Springer. Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections. 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Sep. 2021 27/04/2021 e.Proofing | Springer The Gulf Crisis and Qatar’s Pursuit of Self-Sufficiency in the Military Domain Andreas Krieg 1✉ Email [email protected] 1 King’s College London, London, UK Abstract The 2017 Gulf Crisis ignited security paranoia within Qatar and reinforced the need for a more self-sufficient military lever of power to be used strategically in homeland security and defence. This chapters sheds light on Qatar’s military transformation in terms of both capacity and capability since the summer of 2017 in an effort to create a more independent and self-sufficient military lever of power. While traditionally, Qatar has relied on its soft power tools to ensure its security, the radical actions taken by its neighbors against the backdrop of relative American silence imposingly made a case for balancing Qatar’s levers of soft power with a significant lever of military power. Since 2017, Qatar has devoted significant resources to acquiring the new capability for its air, land, and naval forces while investing in capacity building to attract more young Qataris to join the armed forces. As this chapter shows, the Qatar Armed Forces (QAF) now have a strategic purpose of patriotic defence, that resonated with large parts of Qatari society, allowing meaningful transformative changes to be made to the military—although a lot more work needs to be done. AQ1 1. Introduction In a press conference in Washington in September 2017, Kuwait’s Emir Sabah Al Sabah stated that the threat of war between Qatar and its neighbors blockading it had been neutralized.1 This statement raised many eyebrows in Western and Arab capitals, not least on Doha, showcasing how close the latest episode of the Gulf Crisis, which now extends into its fourth year, had come to military escalation. Much more than a diplomatic crisis, the 2017 Gulf Crisis had developed into an international conflict transcending the political, societal, economic, and information domain. https://eproofing.springer.com/books_v3/printpage.php?token=IAiFOOetFORXs65J5gmQokcyi2xPRU_GGmuXteECQs1YOyOE6OYcQPLK-I6Y… 1/22 27/04/2021 e.Proofing | Springer AQ2 Following the events of summer 2017, Qatar could no longer rest assured that its national security could be maintained through an integrated web of hedging and balancing between a diverse range of allies, partners, and neighbors. Most importantly, apart from its neighbors’ repeated willingness to use all levers of power to achieve their strategic objectives at the expense of Qatar’s standing in the region, the United States under President Trump had played an essential role in escalating tensions in the Gulf. For many in Doha, it became clear that had it not been for the interference of then US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, the White House would have likely endorsed a UAE/Saudi-led military intervention into Qatar.2 It is therefore not surprising that in the aftermath of these turbulent events in 2017, security paranoia in Qatar was on the rise: military self-sufficiency was no longer a matter of choice but necessity. This chapter looks at how Qatar has addressed its security paranoia following on from the 2017 Gulf Crisis, highlighting how the emirate has embarked on a strategic path of military transformation in terms of both capacity and capability building to create an effective military lever of power. While traditionally, Qatar has relied on its soft power tools to ensure its security, the radical actions taken by its neighbors against the backdrop of relative American silence imposingly made a case for balancing Qatar’s levers of soft power with a significant lever of military power. Since 2017, Qatar has devoted significant resources to acquiring the new capability for its air, land, and naval forces while investing in capacity building to attract more young Qataris to join the armed forces. For the first time, the Qatar Armed Forces (QAF) appeared to have a strategic purpose of patriotic defense that resonated with large parts of Qatari society. This chapter commences by outlining Qatar’s traditional approach to national security, highlighting how hedging and bandwagoning via soft power tools had taken precedence over hard military power. The chapter continues by showing how Qatar’s strategic calculus has changed in response to the events of the Gulf Crisis before breaking down how Qatar’s military transformation has taken shape across its services. The chapter concludes by looking at the various challenges Qatar is facing as it is building one of the largest militaries in the region per capita across various platforms and with limited capacity available. 2. Securing Qatar as a City-State From a conventional point of view, the small state’s literature would identify Qatar as the quintessential small state based on metrics of population size, https://eproofing.springer.com/books_v3/printpage.php?token=IAiFOOetFORXs65J5gmQokcyi2xPRU_GGmuXteECQs1YOyOE6OYcQPLK-I6Y… 2/22 27/04/2021 e.Proofing | Springer territory, and access to material resources. As a city-state with an indigenous population of merely 350,000 and urban areas all linked to the Doha conurbation, Qatar’s most important asset remains its LNG infrastructure. The hydrocarbon wealth has been transformational, providing Doha with a currency that could be exchanged to create other levers of soft power—an asset that helped Qatar bypass the traditional insecurity dilemma of other small states. The literature makes the argument that conventionally small states suffer from an insecurity dilemma in an anarchic international system revolving around a trade-off between autonomy and influence. The argument goes that small states, because of their lack of power, measured often exclusively in realist terms, have only two choices when it comes to securing their population: either choosing autonomy by remaining neutral in a regional context at the risk of becoming subject to external power meddling, or choosing influence by joining an alliance or coalition at the expense of autonomy.3 Qatar, sandwiched between regional powers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, traditionally had few options but chose one over the other. In its modern history, Qatar’s leaders always attempted to retain some degree of autonomy while balancing regional and international relationships in exchange for a degree of security.4 Nevertheless, often these alliances would be temporary and far from sustainable as continually shifting alliances between tribes on the Arabian Peninsula indicate. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Al Thani found a way to juggle relations between the Ottomans, the Al Khalifas in Bahrain, and the British, who formally signed a deal in 1868 with Sheikh Mohammad bin Thani residing on the Qatari peninsula under formal Al Khalifa rule. Not only did this treaty provide Sheikh Mohammad bin Thani with local legitimacy but also laid the foundation for a security partnership between the House of Thani and the British Empire—an arrangement further expanded with the signature of the Trucial Agreements in 1916 between Britain and Qatar. The idea of an external protector providing security in exchange for tribute payments remained the foundation of Qatari security considerations until Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez in 1971. Small and vulnerable, choosing to remain outside the tribal alliance that would become the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar emerged as a sovereign state in the context of middle and great power rivalries in its direct vicinity. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Qatar chose to trade autonomy for some form of influence bandwagoning along with its bigger brother, Saudi Arabia. Most foreign and security policy decisions made in Doha at the time were coordinated with Riyadh or merely followed the Saudi lead. https://eproofing.springer.com/books_v3/printpage.php?token=IAiFOOetFORXs65J5gmQokcyi2xPRU_GGmuXteECQs1YOyOE6OYcQPLK-I6Y… 3/22 27/04/2021 e.Proofing | Springer All began to change with the emergence of Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani as the new, dynamic man at the helm towards the end of the 1980s, taking over many government portfolios from his father as Heir Apparent. With his revolutionary vision for a reformed, liberalized, and empowered Qatari society, Sheikh Hamad considered it to be imperative for Qatar to leave the long shadow of the Saudi kingdom and develop itself as an independent, non-aligned country.

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