Foreign Policy: Discourse, Tools, and Implications

Abstract

This chapter will examine the dynamics that have shaped the conduct of Qatari foreign policy since 1995, the year of the leadership change that ushered into power Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, father of the current Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The chapter will begin by arguing that while Qatari foreign policy certainly evolved in distinctive directions after 1995 there was no sudden or disruptive break, as regional critics of Qatar claim; rather, changes in policy toward the internationalization of Qatari foreign policy were a pragmatic response to changes in the regional environment that began in the early 1990s: these included the regional impact of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent multinational liberation of Kuwait, the longstanding threat Qatar perceived to come from Saudi Arabia, and the decision to develop Qatar into a global gas giant with energy linkages spread across the world. Subsequent sections in the chapter will analyze how Qatar internationalized in the 1990s and 2000s, why significant aspects of Qatari foreign policy came to focus on diplomacy and mediation, and the impact of the political upheaval of 2011 which prompted Qatari foreign policymaking to assume more of an assertive, even interventionist, nature. The analytical question throughout will be the ways in which personalized aspects of policymaking interacted with the institutional structures of foreign policy conduct and the tensions that oftentimes resulted. A secondary question will explore the degree to which policymaking was short- or long-term in nature at the time it was made and whether there was a gap between policy formulation and implementation that mapped onto the tension between the personalized and institutionalized aspects of policymaking noted earlier. The chapter will end by examining how Qatari foreign policy has evolved again since Emir Tamim came to power in 2013 and in the aftermath of the two bouts of regional backlash against Qatar in 2014 and 2017. Whereas Qatari leaders engaged in dialogue with regional critics and made concessions during the nine-month withdrawal of Ambassadors by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2014, the maximalist nature of the 2017 blockade and subsequent demands imposed on Qatar by the same three states, plus Egypt, left very little room for diplomacy and negotiation. Instead, Qatari foreign policy continued to evolve, against allegations by critics that it was something fundamentally different and more divisive, as pragmatic lessons were learned from the 2011–2013 period, and changes were made to further increase the institutional capacity of the foreign policy apparatus and reorient Qatar as an international actor with an increasing role in global conversations and institutions.