Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (33 page)

100
. Sheikh Jabor bin Yusef bin Jassim al-Thani, former chief of staff in the offices of the prime minister and foreign minister, quoted in Clifford Krauss, “For Qatar, Libyan Intervention May Be a Turning Point,”
New York Times
, 4 April 2011, p. 9.

101
. A number of studies have empirically demonstrated that the size of SWFs have often been grossly exaggerated. See, for example, Jean-Francois Seznec, “The Gulf Sovereign Wealth Funds,”
Middle East Policy
15, no. 2 (Summer 2008), 97–110; Jean-Francois Seznec. “The Sovereign Wealth Funds of the Persian Gulf,” in Mehran Kamrava, ed.,
The Political Economy of the Persian Gulf
(New York, 2012), 69–93; and Christopher Balding, “A Portfolio Analysis of Sovereign Wealth Funds,” in Renee Fry, Warwick J. McKibbin, and Justin O’Brien, eds.,
Sovereign Wealth
(London, 2011), 43–70.

102
. In the aftermath of the global economic recession of 2008–2009, in fact, most SWFs were estimated to have lost substantial sums of money—according to one estimate, altogether in excess of $66 billion by 2009—thus lessening their luster as lucrative investment instruments and as potential sources of power and influence. Bernardo Bertolotti, et al., “Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment Patterns and Performance,” 1. I am grateful to William Megginson for sharing a draft of this unpublished paper with me.

103
. Nye,
The Future of Power
, 212.

104
. Cheng-Chwee, “The Essence of Hedging,” 172–179.

105
. The sponsorship of major football teams is a favorite branding tool for these three Persian Gulf emirates. Arsenal and Manchester City Football Clubs are sponsored by Emirates and Etihad Airlines, respectively, while Barcelona FC is sponsored by the Qatar Foundation.

106
. Hugh Eakin, “The Strange Power of Qatar,”
New York Review of Books
, 27 October 2011, 43–45.

107
. Waltz,
Theory of International Politics
, 111.

108
. Because of economies of scale, according to Nye, larger countries will still benefit more from the information revolution for example, as they are better positioned to benefit from “network effects.” Nye,
The Future of Power
, 116–117.

109
. Fareed Zakaria,
The Post-American World
(New York, 2008).

110
. Lebow,
A Cultural Theory of International Relations
, 442.

111
. Nye,
Soft Power
, 14.

112
. On quasi-democracies, see Mehran Kamrava, “Conceptualising Third World Politics,”
Third World Quarterly
14, no. 4 (November 1993), 710–711. On Kuwait’s tug of war with democracy, see, Mehran Kamrava. “Preserving Non-Democracies: Leaders and Institutions in the Middle East,”
Middle Eastern Studies
46, no. 2 (March 2010), 251–270.

3. Foreign Policy and Power Projection

1
. Christopher Davidson, “The United Arab Emirates,” in Joshua Teitelbaum, ed.,
Political Liberalization in the Persian Gulf
(New York, 2009), 223–248.

2
. William Rugh, “The Foreign Policy of the United Arab Emirates,”
Middle East Journal
50, no. 1 (Winter 1996), 58.

3
. In 2007 and 2008, for example, President Bush informed the Congress of over $19.4 billion in potential arm sales to the UAE, including what was at the time the most sophisticated air defense system in the US arsenal. This close security relationship culminated in the signing of a nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries in December 2009. For background, see Christopher Blanchard and Paul Kerr, “The United Arab Emirates Nuclear Program and Proposed U.S. Nuclear Cooperation,”
Congressional Research Service
(March 10, 2009), 1–14.

4
. US diplomatic correspondences released by Wikileaks present insights into the inner-workings of American diplomacy on the ground, in this instance in relation to Bahrain and Qatar. For instance, in a confidential 2010 embassy cable drafted by the US ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa is said to have complained bitterly about Qatar’s seemingly warm relations with both Iran and Al Qaeda, allegedly though Al Jazeera. According to the ambassador, the king was “looking to the United States, as Bahrain’s most important ally, to help him manage (various) challenges, which [the US] should keep in mind as we plan our engagement with regional leaders in the coming months.” The king is quoted as having told the ambassador that “as allies, we should deal with these issues together.” (Wikileaks, “Bahrain’s King Hamad Concerned about Qatar, GCC Unity,” 18 January 2010, 10MANAMA26.) Both the tenor and substance of the exchange are in marked contrast to liaisons between American and Qatari diplomats.

5
. “Kuwait Foreign Assets Soar to 277 Billion Dollars,” 5 June 2010,
www.zawya.com
.

6
. Majid Al-Khalili,
Oman’s Foreign Policy
(Westport, CT, 2009); Jeffrey Lefebvre, “Oman’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century.”
Middle East Policy
27, no. 1 (Spring 2010), 99–114.

7
. Sultan Qaboos’s vision for Oman is laid out in his annual state of the Sultanate speeches in which he covers an array of domestic and international issues. See Joseph Kechichian, “A Vision of Oman,”
Middle East Policy
15, no. 3 (Fall 2008), 112–133.

8
. Jill Crystal,
Oil and Politics in the Gulf
(Cambridge, 1995), 164–165.

9
. Al Udaid is one of the largest pre-positioned airbases in the world and in terms of war reserve material, but not actually largest in terms of active equipment or personnel. Both bases and the city of Doha are covered under the protection of US Patriot missile batteries that are meant to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles, cold comfort, no doubt, to Qatari policymakers weary that the animus between Washington and Tehran erupt into warfare.

10
. Joe Bolger, “A War against Iran ‘Could Drive Oil Price above $200 a Barrel,’”
Times
, 22 June 2006, 48.

11
. F. Gregory Gause, III.
The International Relations of the Persian Gulf
(Cambridge, 2010), 9.

12
. Vali Nasr, “Regional Implications of Shi’a Revival in Iraq,”
Washington Quarterly
27, no. 3 (Summer 2004), 17.

13
. For the predicament of the Shi‘a in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain see, Yitzhak Nakash.
Reaching for Power
(Princeton, NJ, 2006), ch. 2. Of all the GCC states, the situation of Qatari Shi‘a most closely resembles that of the Shi‘a in Oman. See Marc Valeri, “High Visibility, Low Profile,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies
42, no. 2 (May 2010), 257–261.

14
. Laurence Louer,
Transnational Shia Politics
(New York, 2008), 10. For more on the Arab Shi‘a see Graham Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke,
The Arab Shi’a
(New York, 1999).

15
. Other notable Shi‘a families in Qatar include the Darwish and the Fakhru.

16
. This misperception about the Shi‘a necessarily having Iranian roots is not unique to Qatar. As Fuller and Francke argue in
The Arab Shi’a
, “there is a widespread sense in the Arab world that Arab culture is somehow ‘inherently’ Sunni, that Sunnism is the natural state of the Arabs. From this perspective, the Shi’a are by definition schismatic who have willingly taken themselves out of the Arab fold by espousing Shi’ism, perhaps even with some Persian connivance” (34).

17
. Martin Walker, “The Revenge of the Shia,”
Wilson Quarterl
y 30, no. 4 (Autumn 2006), 16.

18
. See, for example, Qatar Statistics Authority,
Qatar in Figures
(Doha, 2008).

19
. According to the constitution, legislative authority is to be vested in a Consultative Assembly, thirty of whose forty-five members are to be elected through direct ballot (Articles 76–116). For additional reasons underlying the absence of parliamentary politics in Qatar so far, see Mehran Kamrava, “Royal Factionalism and Political Liberalization in Qatar,”
Middle East Journal
63, no. 3 (Summer 2009), 401–420.

20
. According to a 2010 cable sent to Washington by US diplomats in Jerusalem, for example, the salaries of employees at Hamas’s Ministry of Education in Gaza were all covered by Qatari donations. Wikileaks, “Does Hamas Have a Cash Flow Problem in Gaza,” 12 February 2010, 10JERUSALEM276.

21
. Anoushiravan Ehteshami, “The Middle East’s New Power Dynamics,”
Current History
(December 2009), 399–400.

22
. Wikileaks, “The Move toward an Interagency Synchronization,” n.d., 07DOHA677.

23
. Ibid.

24
. Wikileaks, “Crown Prince on Qatar’s Relations with Iran,” 15 July 2009, 09DOHA454. In the same meeting, the heir apparent insisted that President Obama “would benefit from the Amir’s realistic point of view from our work on the ground with several parties.”

25
. On a trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah in June 2011, I discovered that one of the few issues on which both my Israeli and Palestinian informants agreed was their certainty that Al Jazeera was a tool of Qatari foreign policy. This sentiment was shared by Doha-based US diplomats, who in 2009 reported that Qatar used the network as a “bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries.” “We expect,” the cable continued, “the trend in favor of using Al Jazeera as an informal tool of GOQ foreign policy to continue undiminished.” Wikileaks, “The Move Toward an Interagency Synchronization.” In another cable, the US ambassador to Qatar Joseph LeBaron calls Al Jazeera “one of Qatar’s most valuable political and diplomatic tools.” Wikileaks, 1 July 2009, 09DOHA225. This view is shared by many journalists. Referring to the network’s coverage of Bahrain following its dispute with Qatar over Hawar Islands in the early 2000s, one UAE-based journalist and academic argued that “unable to vent its anger in any other form, Doha used Al Jazeera in retaliation.” N. Janardhan,
Boom amid Gloom
(Reading, UK, 2011), 149.

26
. Wikileaks, “Ambassador Untermeyer’s 14 October 2005 Meeting with Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani,” 17 October 2005, 05DOHA1744.

27
. Ibid.

28
. Wikileaks, “PAO Meeting with Al Jazeera Managing Director,” 20 October 2005, 05DOHA1765.

29
. Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, “How Saudi Arabia and Qatar Became Friends Again.” 21 July 2011,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com
.

30
. “Saudi Arabia/Qatar: Saudis Reportedly Bar Al-Jazeera TV from Covering Hajj,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 2 February 2004.

31
. Worth, “Al Jazeera No Longer a Hammer to Saudis; Qatar Presses Network to Lighten Up,”
International Herald Tribune
, 5 January 2008, p. 8.