• policy
• qatar

Qatar is a tiny Gulf state that plays an outsized international role, activist in both its diplomatic
and commercial dealing with Middle East region and the wide world, and audacious in its use of
soft power, especially Al-Jazeera media network but also its airline, major sporting and cultural
events, and suchlike. Qatar’s activist and quite unique foreign policy has been both motivated
and funded by the enormous hydrocarbon wealth that is possesses: in 2016, Qatar produced
almost 693 million barrels of crude oil and 181 billion cubic meters of natural gaz.
Qatar is now the wealthiest country in the world per capita, and its government has enormous
resources to devote to its domestic survival and consolidation, and to that end, to engagement in
the international arena. This has enable it to play strong role in peace-making, support an array of
political forces in the region, enhanced its international image, and even commit military forces
abroad.
Analyzing of Qatar’s foreign policy, and particularly its ambition since the mid-1990s of being a
major regional power. It addresses and explains the overarching foreign policy imperatives,
drives, setting, and dynamics that seen the tiny state become an important regional and
international actor under Emirs Hamad (1995-2013) and then Tamim (2013- till date). The
argument propounded is that Qatar has developed a sophisticated foreign policy that mixes
depolmatic, military, and economic components, each reinforcing the other in the ultimate goal
of regime maintenance and consolidation.
It is impossible to separate its rentier and state capitalist economic structure from its ambitious,
soft power-driven foreign policy , it is argued, while foreign policy actions that sometimes seen
enigmatic are, in fact, a manifestation of the same dynamic; an attempt to use diplomacy and
international economic engagement to ensure the survival of both the regime and the country,
and to build the regime’s and state’s wealth through an incorporation of key state and
commercial actors into its political and economic system.