Crisis Not Averted: Why the Rift Between Gulf Countries Endangers America's Security

Jeffrey Stacey, Bassima Al-Ghussein

Politics, Middle East

The U.S. relationship with Qatar offers a non-unique benefit to the United States, which could easily be replaced or replicated by other Gulf Cooperation Council governments.

As the region careens toward twin crises related to Trump’s Jerusalem decision and the sectarian conflict whose latest round is playing out in Lebanon, one crisis the Middle East and Western allies could do without is the needless internal imbroglio in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that pits Qatar against Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC. This avoidable sideshow is continuing apace, just as Iran and Saudi Arabia are both ramping up and raising the regional stakes and the new U.S. administration needlessly roils the whole region. A resolution would help the West and the Sunni states to focus more squarely on the chess moves being played out of Tehran.

While Qatar is important to U.S. interests in the region (mainly because of the critical American bases located there), time is not on Qatar’s side. If ultimately forced to choose, the United States will side with the Saudi-led countries and with good reason—the economic and security interests of the Saudi-led coalition and the United States are inextricably linked. While it is true that Qatar presently assists with strategically important military objectives of the United States, with ISIS at the top of the list, it has also repeatedly engaged in endeavors that harm western and regional interests.

Were this behavior to persist, the conditions are ripe for a shift. For the Emiratis have long wanted to provide the Americans with similar military basing opportunities within their own border. The Emirati ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, has continually lobbied for the United States to move its bases to the UAE for quite some time. To this end, the U.S. relationship with Qatar, while important, essentially offers a non-unique benefit to the United States, which could easily be replaced or replicated by other GCC governments. Thus, it would be wise of the Qataris to attempt to settle this dispute before the United States is forced to pick sides.

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