From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Thu Jul 24 2008 - 15:47:36 EDT
Qatar is a diplomatic heavy-hitter
Monday, July 22, 2008
By George Abraham, international affairs analyst
For a thumb-sized nation, Qatar packs an unlikely diplomatic punch.
Western observers see the geographically tiny nation as an example of
diplomatic leverage without the "hard" or "soft" power that normally
provide ballast for such international ventures.
"Hard power" is determined by military assets and the ability of a
nation to project its protective umbrella abroad, while its "soft"
equivalent is a measure of a country's normative influence.
Joseph Nye, an international relations expert who coined the concept of
hard and soft power and author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in
World Politics (2004), sees a distinctive niche for Qatar on the global
stage.
Nye, who is also Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at
the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says
Qatar's stature was given a boost particularly in the wake of its
successful mediation to end a protracted political stalemate in Lebanon.
That achievement was crowned at a four-way summit with France, Syria and
Lebanon in Paris a few days ago.
"Qatar has managed to find an important diplomatic niche between the
West and the Arab nationalist mainstream, which it backs up with its
considerable financial resources," Nye told Al Jazeera from Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Mediating difficult crises
The Harvard academic is not alone in his recognition of Qatar's ability
to mediate difficult crises in a perennially fraught region, but an
important question does pose itself - how did Qatar become a diplomatic
player in the Middle East?
It is definitely not for want of other regional heavy hitters - Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey have for years tried to mediate crises
in the region.
More importantly, success in Lebanon came after much greater global
players had tried and washed their hands of what they saw as an
impossible situation with irreconcilable egos and interests.
Last May, Western nations were priming themselves for yet another
evacuation of their nationals from Lebanon, similar to the exodus in the
summer of 2006 when Lebanon fought an all-out war with Israel.
(Canada had evacuated 15,000 of its citizens in 2006, and had a similar
number registered with its mission in Beirut even as the Lebanese power
vacuum played out on Beirut's streets.)
Writing about the Qatari leader's role, a commentator recently wrote in
the Beirut-based Daily Star: "Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani enjoys
the trust of the different parties in the Middle East because of his
willingness to talk to the Syrians, Iranians, Israelis, Hamas and
Hezbollah."
Analysts in Washington and Ottawa agree, generally, but there is much
more to diplomacy than just a felicity with dialogue and talking to all
sides.
Diplomatic assets
While lacking in conventional hard and soft diplomatic assets, Qatar
brought all that it has to bear while rolling out its hard-knuckled
initiative in Lebanon.
Part of its standing, of course, is the reality of its military alliance
with the US, manifested through the largest American pre-positioning
base, the largest air base in the Middle East, and the headquarters of
the US Central Command.
While the strength of an economy is not ordinarily seen as hard power,
hard currency definitely helps.
In this case, the tiny Gulf nation has compensated for its limited
footprint by investing billions in Lebanon's reconstruction, especially
in South Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds immediately after the
2006 war.
As one diplomatic observer pointed out, this brought Hezbollah onside,
but also established an independent benign beachhead for Qatar in
Lebanon's political landscape.
Sense of the dramatic
Patrick Theros, a former US ambassador to Qatar and currently president
of the US-Qatar Business Council, also credits the Gulf nation with
possessing a "sense of the dramatic".
He points to the fact that it was a Qatar Airways aircraft that made the
first landing at Beirut airport during the 2006 war, amid the fighting.
Similarly, he points to the Qatari invitation extended to Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad, the Iranian president, at a summit of Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) leaders.
Theros says that Doha has had a keen ear to the ground by paying heed to
popular movements in its neighbourhood and also listening closely to the
views of expatriates who live in the country.
"Qatar definitely practises the maxim of holding your friends close, and
your enemies even closer," the retired US diplomat said.
So, what might be a sequel? A possible intervention to end the
brinkmanship over Iran's nuclear programme?
That would be nothing short of a diplomatic coup.
George Abraham is Contributing Editor of Diplomat and International
Canada, published from Ottawa.
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