The Gulf Crisis and Qatar’s Pursuit of Self-Sufficiency in the Military Domain

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.