12 June 2017 12:00 am
Qatari crisis is the clearest representation of a world that is going into a serious spin with the gradual recession of American leadership
Further delaying Brexit negotiations with just 22 months left for Britain to leave the European Union would mean significant challenges for businesses, governments across Europe where the most feasible outcome was for Britain to go into a series of free trade agreements post-Brexit. Thus such swift outcomes seem impossible since the election which also projects a total fragmentation of how much British politics is in disarray at the moment. Thus for European leaders who were looking for some solace once Britain left the Union to craft a path of further European integration with Britain hanging in limbo will become an obstacle and a political headache.
What this means for Britain in terms of economy and security are what worries analysts.
The coordinated attacks and the frequency of them clearly signalled a strategic move by Islamic State (ISIS) affiliates to undermine British security. Thus to have a hung parliament may not be in the best security interests of Britain. Tories opting to forge an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which has won ten seats from Northern Ireland would force it to revisit the British government position on Northern Ireland. It will certainly make the republican Sinn Fein and related parties and groups very uneasy. Thus the last thing Britain needs is a resumption of the troubles or tensions in Northern Ireland.
While May’s debacle was the June elections, Qatar’s diplomatic crisis came in the month of May, and since then, seems to be shaping a new political constellation in Middle East. News outlets have been discussing about possible causes of the Saudi-led diplomatic assault on Qatar. Many analysts seem to be focusing on the security dimension of the problem as the key allegation coming from Saudi Arabia towards Qatar is that it has sponsored terror organizations and sustained groups like the Muslim Brotherhood which has drawn ire from Egypt.
Qatar has seamlessly blended with the global capital circuit; it holds massive chucks of debt of North America and Western European States. Qatar has successfully diversified its economy; it is home to some key American University campuses and has tried to maintain a neutral position when it came to dealing with regional powers, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The US relies heavily on the massive American Air base at Al Udeid in Qatar. It is home to both, the American Central Command and the British Royal Air Force (RAF), providing the RAF operational capability in many parts of the region.
Qatari crisis is the clearest representation of a world that is going into a serious spin with the gradual recession of American leadership and accelerated by comments and convulsions of the current US presidency. With no real geo-political centre of gravity the ME is accelerating towards a serious power struggle among three major entities. The Sunni Saudi Arabia, semi autocratic Turkey, and Shi’a Iran. The most recent conflicts in the region which includes the wars in Syria and Yemen and disturbances in Iraq and Egypt in the mineral-rich Sinai province are all products of this regional power struggles fought through proxies.
Yet the attempt by Saudi Arabia to isolate Qatar is a level up from these below-surface skirmishes, if the Saudi aim was for a quick subjugation of Qatar it may not be working. Qatar with its massive dependencies of imports, especially food through Saudi land links and the limited airspace it has eclipsed by the Bahrain air space still is far from capitulating as the Saudis expect. Qatar has been getting reassurances from countries like Turkey, Pakistan, and even the German administration has clearly taken the position that undermining Qatar or engineering a regime change is not in the best interest of regional stability or at a global level.
There is a global concern about the ongoing diplomatic row as escalations of tensions would be decisive in affecting global energy prices, disrupting global trade and finance. Securitywise it is creating a more conducive environment for terror activities of all sorts to flourish. The terror attacks in Tehran, Kabul heightened terror watches across Europe, and a bloody siege in Philippines have security experts worried. Qatar with its best soft power attribute Al Jazeera has been able to muster global support on its behalf and is undermining Saudi led efforts and has warmed up even to Iran.
While the UK election and the Qatari Quagmire may seem totally different and unconnected set of events, the increasing global shocks in such forms are of a sign of a world in a rudderless status as a previous column in this series attempted to explain. Yet it seems that more chaotic and more frequent the chaos there will be a global need to r-establish institutions, frameworks, norms to stabilize the global systems, what maybe the positive outcome of such events is that it would also set in motion attempts to order the world in a more egalitarian form.