Qatar & The Arab Spring

by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

Qatar and the Arab Spring offers a frank examination of Qatar's startling rise to regional and international prominence, describing how its distinctive policy stance toward the Arab Spring emerged. In only a decade, Qatari policy-makers led by the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and his prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani catapulted Qatar from a sleepy backwater to a regional power with truly international reach. In addition to pursuing an aggressive state-branding strategy with its successful bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar forged a reputation for diplomatic mediation that combined intensely personalised engagement with financial backing and favourable media coverage through the Al-Jazeera. These factors converged in early 2011 with the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolts in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen, which Qatari leaders saw as an opportunity to seal their regional and international influence, rather than as a challenge to their authority, and this guided their support of the rebellions against the Gaddafi and Assad regimes in Libya and Syria. From the high watermark of Qatari influence after the toppling of Gaddafi in 2011, that rapidly gave way to policy overreach in Syria in 2012, Coates Ulrichsen analyses Qatari ambition and capabilities as the tiny emirate sought to shape the transitions in the Arab world.

Genres: Middle East, Politics

176 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2014

About the author

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is the Fellow for the Middle East at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Reviews

[Bruce Reiter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for anyone trying to get a handle on the Middle East. It is about a small country with huge resources and a good marketing strategy that became a major player on the international scene. Ulrichsen does a great job of bringing the history of the area into focus and the geographical, tribal, political and theocratic elements that compare and contrast Qatar to its neighbors. The rise and fall of the fortunes of Qatar are well documented by the author. Success breeds the contempt of your fellows and Heaven help you if you should suffer failure. It is nigh impossible for a handful of people to run the external and internal affairs of a country, particularly in the volatile environment that is the Middle East. The author presents the triumphs and tragedies and repercussions in a very readable manner.

[Yas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book can help you understand how Qatar was able to circumvent its insecurities and fears of hegemony in a hostile neighborhood by employing a wide reaching strategy termed as "state-branding", examples of such are its news broadcasting channel(AlJazeera), Qatar airways, the World word cup 2022, the many meditations and agreements brokered between opposing parties in different countries and most importantly, its LNG(Liquefied Natural Gas) exports. The author explains while Qatar's security issues is behind many of its state branding schemes including its "support" for the Arab Spring. Their strategy backfires and the country's security becomes more compromised and exposed.

3.5/5