[MUSIC] In this video, we're going to start looking at a tiny state, a really small power in the Middle East, Qatar. Qatar, a population of barely 3 million people, most of whom are actually expatriates, immigrants from outside, very small land mass, a peninsula jutting out of the Arabian land mass and into the Persian Gulf. A really small country by most yardsticks, but not in terms of importance. Qatar, despite being small, has always punched above its weight, so to say. And this is a remarkable story. And to understand this, we really need to understand how Qatar made alliances. Because when you're a small state and a small power, remember, you cannot really run the show or manage foreign relations entirely independently. Qatar has tried to be independent. Qatar has been successful in being a fairly independent power despite its smallness and its location. But nonetheless, it has had to rely on one central ally. And this goes back, if you take a historical view, since the evolution of the Qatari state or the Emirate. Going back 200 years, they've always looked for one major protector or benefactor. So, the Al Thani, the dynasty that's been ruling Qatar for ages, they, and their forefathers, and their linked tribal chiefs, have always looked for external protection against rivals. And this is inherent to the very nature of Qatar because of its smallness. We call this bandwagoning. Bandwagoning is when a small country has no chance of directly challenging bigger countries, therefore, it looks to seek protection and some kind of subordinate status under that bigger country, which may be benignly disposed to it and which may help preserve its independence. Because that big country has its own geopolitical need to maintain the independence and sovereignty of this small country. So, bandwagoning to a series of regional suzerains, this Qatar has done. First, it began with the Wahhabi state, which became ultimately Saudi Arabia, next door neighbor of Qatar. For a while, the Qatari rulers have sought shelter under the umbrella of the Muscat kingdom, which later became Oman. They have also in modern times sought to be under the protective umbrella of the Ottoman Empire, of what is today Turkey. And then they became a protectorate of Britain. And after independence from Britain, 1970s, you find that there was again a return back to Saudi Arabia for bandwagoning and to be under Saudi tutelage or suzerainty, so to say. But something changed from the 1980s onwards. You had the Crown Prince Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who wanted to move out of the Saudi stranglehold. He was much more ambitious. Because the belief was that as long as they remain like a vassal state or an appendix to Saudi Arabia, then Qatar cannot assert itself on the world stage or really make its own choices. So, there is that push for independence, but at the same time, a need for one big external ally. This is the dilemma or the predicament of small states, as we know. Qatar is no exception to it. So, the watershed moment, the really big change happened in 1991 when Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait, another Sunni Gulf monarchy not very far away from Qatar. And it created a mass panic among all these Gulf monarchies as to who would protect them if a country like Iraq or Iran decided to use force and invaded them. These are the two Republics, Iraq and Iran, which could be seen to be challenging the very model of existence of these monarchies like Qatar. So, what does Qatar do? It turns to the one and only one benefactor that was on the horizon at the time. The Cold War was ending, 1991. A unipolar world was dawning, so look for protection from the United States. So, Qatar quickly moved to befriend the US and signed a major military agreement, defense cooperation agreement, and set up some very important bases for the US military. You see those planes in this image. These are the US Air Force planes at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The largest military base for the US military in the entire world at times has been Qatar. And Qatar also set up the As Sayliyah Army Base for the US military. The close linkages, this image you see is of Qatari generals with the US military peers and commanders, jointly celebrating events. Now this kind of close coordination between the militaries of the US and Qatar became a very central pillar for defining not just Qatar's own identity as a state, as a pro-Western or a Western ally, or as a pro-US state, but also, the entire dynamics of the region. Because this is the Persian Gulf we're talking about, if the US military has a huge footprint and a base there, it has implications for other powers in the region, some of which see the US as threatening to them. And this has implications for Qatar for its own survival. So always a delicate dance, this kind of seeking external suzerains, and Qatar has walked the tightrope. Qatar used the Gulf War as a shift, to make a major shift. Because before that, it was largely relying on Saudi protection and the Saudi umbrella for its security, but no more. And the fact that, of course, Saudi Arabia is also an ally of the US made it easier. But it also gave Qatar a sense of space for itself, so as not to blindly obey or follow whatever Saudi Arabia asked it to do. This streak of independence of Qatar has really, really irritated Saudi Arabia and some of the other Gulf monarchies, and we are going to come to that. But here the important point is this bandwagoning process towards the US is a defining feature of modern Qatar's foreign relations. Without bandwagoning to the US, you cannot imagine Qatar the way it has come up as a force to be reckoned with. Even though it's a small power, it's a force to be reckoned with and that's a reality. And a lot of it owes to these smart strategic alliances that they have formed with external powers. Now, the whole idea is that the US military is not only there and using Qatar as a base for its own operations and its own influence in the Middle East, which has always historically been very important for the US for a variety of reasons, but Qatar is also, in the process, benefiting from US security guarantees and the alliance system. And this helps Qatar to also project itself especially in the Western world as a moderate country, not as a fundamentalist country, “like Saudi Arabia,” and as a country that's open to foreigners, much more open to Westerners, and of course, has a large immigrant community from South Asia and other regions of the world, and to promote itself as a much more cosmopolitan country than their cousins next door. So, this kind of astute alliance building has been very, very central for Qatar and for Qatar's survival and existence. And most people argue that had it not been for these key benefactor type relationships with external powers, by now, Qatar would have been occupied or taken over by one of the larger players in the region. Historically, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, all of them have had designs on Qatar, and have challenged Qatar's claims both on its land and on the maritime spaces. So, what do you do when you're in this kind of neighborhood? You look for an external protector. That's exactly what Qatar has done. So, to conclude, small powers always need some kind of assurance or a guarantee, if not a protector, from outside. So, they have looked for these. And Qatar has done that with the US since the watershed moment of the Gulf War of 1990-1991. [MUSIC]
