In my last letter, I talked about why Qatar can be considered the Switzerland of the Desert.
In this one, I’ll break down how they went about doing this.
To pull off being a steadfastly neutral state in the famously unstable Middle East, Qatar needed an image - a brand that would make it feel unique and indispensable.
This has manifested in an assortment of institutions ranging from pretty standard alliance-building in establishing Al-Udeid Air Base and being a founding member of the Gulf Cooperation Council to align regional, economic, political and defence goals to the more creative - hosting increasingly prestigious sporting events.
From the Asia Games in 2006 to the World Cup in 2022 and funding one of the world's largest news networks in Al-Jazeera.
Growing alongside the news network in size and prestige since the mid-1990s is the nation's airline - Qatar Airways which has won Skytrax’s World Best Airline Award seven separate times since 2010!
Fully owned by the state, Qatar Airways simply executes - they're on time, safe, clean, modern and incentivized to maintain a high level of excellence because it doesn't just represent the brand, but the country.
The list of institutions goes on, there’s PSG – the Parisian football giant that the country purchased and has pushed to the heights of Europe through investment in players.
There’s Heathrow Airport, the Shard and thousands of real estate projects from high-rises, and castles to industrial parks that the country has bought out and built out across Britain.
Qatar Airways Heathrow Premium Lounge
From media and entertainment to real estate and travel, Qatar has popped up everywhere for services that people have come to rely on and hopefully associate with the tiny nation making it in the world eye – irreplaceable, indispensable and therefore, untouchable.
This brand-building made meaningful strides towards cementing Qatar’s status but to truly counteract its natural fragility and vulnerability to subservience, it needed to enter the political realm.
When it developed its foreign policy of neutrality, distinguishing itself from its regional neighbours, that’s when things got tricky.
Neutrality in itself is a tricky thing, to those on opposing sides, anything less than staunch support can be perceived as opposition and the conflict that Qatar is caught most between is that of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
It is the one with which Qatar has struggled the most to maintain a stance perceived by all as neutral.
For much of modern history, Qatar acted in the way one would expect a small state with a single land border with one of the region's great powers to act.
It was deeply influenced by Saudi Arabia.
It was essentially an appendage economically and politically and Qatari foreign policy was essentially Saudi foreign policy.
That changed with the rule of Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani.
Bolstered by the newfound oil and gas reserves, he steered the country towards their perception of neutrality.
Qatar already had a legacy of a more neutral stance towards Iran compared to Saudi Arabia but the discovery and development of the north oil field drew the two countries closer since to Iran, that same oil field is called the South Pars - the two countries share the same field.
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Meanwhile, after Saudi Arabia's refusal to allow the US military to base its Iraq War operations in the country, Qatar got the coveted US military presence which pragmatically made it untouchable.
With both money and security, they no longer had much to worry about in angering the Saudis.
Al Jazeera was ascending in both global and regional prominence, in part due to its exceptional access to the countries in which the US was launching wars in the early 2000s and in part due to its uniquely rigorous and comparatively politically independent coverage of regional issues.
The channel frequently criticized the Saudi regime and platformed dissidents in much the same way that a western outlet would yet with the frequency of a regional specific one.
This led Saudi Arabia to recall their ambassador to Qatar in 2002 - a foreign relations manoeuvre often used to send a strong disapproving message which was perceived by many as not just a reaction to Al-Jazeera coverage but to increasing Qatari independence.
In 2017, it all blew up.
With no notice and to the surprise of most, a succession of announcements unfolded on June 5th from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain and other Saudi allies outlining that they were completely severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, enclosing their airspace to Qatari planes, their waters to Qatari ships and Qatar's land border entirely.
This was effectively an economic blockade with deep implications for the nation.
The blockading group had 13 key demands but the core components were Qatar reducing their relations with Iran, completely shuttering Al Jazeera and just generally getting in line with the group's foreign policy.
Qatar rejected the demands and then also rejected the softer second round of demands.
They just kept refusing and refusing for years, so the blockade stretched on.
Perversely, the blockade and Qatar's refusal to concede led to the reverse of the effect that the Gulf block desired.
They were worried about Qatar's growing independence yet through isolation pressured Qatar to become more independent.
In particular, the nation developed deeper economic ties with Iran and Turkey meaning they were doing the opposite of what the blockading group demanded and also made accelerated strides towards self-sufficiency.
Analysts agree - if anyone won the blockade, it was Qatar.
They didn't bend to really any of the blockading group's demands.
Essentially its only concession was to drop the WTO and IKO lawsuits it had initiated in response to Saudi Arabia's airspace restrictions, which of course were only started due to the blockade.
This means Qatar successfully navigated to the exact position it sought.
It is self-sufficient, geopolitically independent and through that, it is increasingly indispensable to others.
I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of Qatar’s journey to become increasingly indispensable on the world map!