Impact of The Qatar Crisis on European Union, Russia, and The United States of America

The Qatar crisis undoubtfully had critical consequences at the local scale, it also reverberated all over the planet. There are mainly three parties to consider at the global level, that is European Union and its members, the challenger Russia, and of course the United States of America.

European countries import a huge amount of natural resources from this area of the world, both oil and natural gaz, and are therefore very interested with the political stability of Middle-East countries. They built strong bilateral relationship with Gulf Cooperation Council countries – in which Qatar and Saudi Arabia are full members – through Cooperation Agreements. As Europe grew concerned for its interests in the region, Europe tried to act as mediator in this crisis in order to resolve it diplomatically. Actually, it encouraged de-escalation but decided to fully support Kuwait in its attempt to facilitate negotiation towards a peaceful solution and a crisis containment. Indeed, the EU strongly believe that participation of global powers like USA and Russia or even themselves would be noxious. Europe chose this positionning because it doesn’t trust the US administration to efficiently understand and tackle this crisis. Besides, the UE is traumatized with recent consequences from the West interventions in this region, it deduced that only a local state, ideally part of the GCC, could truely perceive interests and concerns from both parties. According to Europe, Kuwait is therefore a key success factor for a quick but sustainable resolution of the crisis. The EU is "ready to help, assist and accompany these mediation efforts in all ways that might be requested, " said Frederica Mogherini, the foreign policy representative for the EU.

Europe is nevertheless limited in its diplomatic capability and stronger actions could be taken by single states from the Union like France, Germany or UK. The latter usually aligns on US foreign policy and this time again sticked to it and proposed a common roadmap with the US. Actually the UK is so focused on Brexit that British can barely dedicate active resources to deal with this crisis, even if their government is concerned by the Qatari not to sell assets they own in the UK. Besides this fear, in this Brexit context, the UK was seeking new partners with whom sign trade agreement and planned to organize a roundtable with GCC nations to achieve an agreement. These efforts have been stopped because of the crisis, what is not to reassure British people. Considering Germany, its first priority in foreign policy being counter terrorism, the country took the opportunity for the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) to be granted access to Qatar’s books. Except that point, even if Germany pleads for peaceful dialogue, it is totally reluctant to involve deeply in the crisis. It has neverless expressed its solid disagreement with the US stance right when the dispute started. In this situation France faces a complex situation since it is highly linked to both Qatar and United Arab Emirates which is on Saudi Arabia’s side. That is the reason why France didn’t and will not take a clear positionning except backing Kuwait for a peaceful resolution, in order not to vex any GCC. One see that Europe considers this issue as a strong risk for its interests in the region but want to avoid repeating mistakes of deep intervention, and rather support local players to diplomatically solve the disagreement.

Unlike Europe, Russia saw in the crisis an opportunity to increase its influence in the region. The Russian Federation and Qatar obtained good results in trade these last years, mainly because of the work of a intergovernmental commission in trade, science and cooperation. The two countries even signed an agreement for military cooperation. Russia and Qatar relationship’s recent renewal started with a heavy background as Russia accused Qatar in the early 2000’s to host men funding Tchetchen terrorists and rebels, then commanditated their assassination on Qatari’s soil. It even worsened with Syrian crisis, Russia tried to reinforce its influence in the area by backing Bachar’s regime while Qatar supported the Muslim Brotherhood who funded Syrian rebels. Since then, Doha understood the stranglehold Russia had on the area and decided to narrow the diplomatical gap. Therefore Russia seized the dispute in Gulf as the occasion to enlarge even more its influence by getting closer to an ancient ally of the United States. It met Qatar expectations as it was desperately seeking allies since the crisis started and had already stradled towards Iran, a Russian ally. Besides this search for new support, Qatar had understood that it couldn’t deliver any gaz to Europe without Moscow’s approval as Russia strengthened its position with Turkey on that matter. The Kremlin nevertheless continued to maintain its good relationship with other GCC nations. Overall, Russia appears to Qatari to be the key player for its national security against Saudi Arabia, even if it doesn’t frankly take a side for now not to loose the rest of the Arab world. Moscow wants to improve its image in the Arab world to be a credible alternative to Americans and also wants to be present in this key area for national security in the new world landscape. Again, the rivalry for influence between the US and Russia found a new playing field with a better perspective for Tsars country than for Uncle Sam.

Indeed the crisis led the United States to be stuck between two allies. This is the reason why the US remained neutral in the crisis so far in order not to vex neither Saudi Arabia nor Qatar. Therefore there is a risk for the dispute to last for long as far as the statu quo is maintained, namely by US neutrality. On the one hand, the US has many military contracts and oil interest in Saudia Arabia, its historical ally in the region. On the other hand Qatar has always been the perfect intermediary for discussions with Iran due to their diplomatical network and positionning in the region. Besides Qatar continued their diversification strategy and started recently to invest a huge amount in assets in the US. In the meantime, Washington doesn’t want to leave space for Russia or China, who are lurking around, to step in by supporting Qatar. Thereby it is vigilant about Qatar relationship effort towards these two superpowers and might have to abandon this neutrality in a near future. Talking about Russia, US investigators believe that Russian hackers are the responsible for the broadcast of the fake Qatari’s Emir comments that launched the rift. The underlying objective would be to divide US allies in the area. Gulf countries are key for the US-led coalition against ISIS, therefore in short term, the White House don’t want to loose their Qatari military base Udeid since it is used for daily air mission and coordination. Yet Qatar recent and rapid rapprochement with Oman, Turkey and mostly Iran, helped the US to switch from neutral to a germinal support. They already found an agreement about a common memorandum to struggle against terrorism and to obtain Qatar Airways books financial disclosure that US airlines used to accuse of unfair aid from governments. A Qatari investment in America has also been negotiated for 100bn$, in which 10bn$ are dedicated to infrastructure. Despite its good willingness and the geopolitical constraints, Washington faces a dilema because it doesn’t like Qatar supposed support to Muslim Brotherhood which is considered terrorist groups. It will probably insists on qatari’s connection with the Brotherhood to cease.

Lately, the new US State administration lost significant consistency and has no clear direction, but even though the United States of America remain the key factor in this crisis settlement.