Qatar and the Gulf Crisis: A Study of Resilience by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (review)

In the early months of 2020, although devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, the people of Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England had hope. The deeply unpopular owner of their soccer team, Newcastle United, Mike Ashley, had finally agreed to sell their club to a consortium led by Amanda Staveley yet backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which would make it the richest team in the world. The deal was to be ratified by the Premier League, which only had to conduct due diligence on the perspective new owners before the deal could be finalized.

Ultimately though, months after news of the impending deal broke, it fell through amid concerns at the ambiguous structure of the PIF. An additional issue, however, concerned issues of copyright stemming from the creation of beoutQ, a pirate website set up to simulcast Qatar's beIN Sports, which had been banned since the 2017 blockade of that country. BeIN Sports held exclusive rights to broadcast high-profile soccer games across the Middle East, leaving fans unable to watch games due to the blockade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) later ruled that Saudi officials had publicly promoted beoutQ, further complicating the Saudisupported Staveley bid.

The establishment of beoutQ demonstrates the holistic and vitriolic nature of relations between Qatar and its neighbors after the 2017 blockade, which saw Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain take a hard line on Qatar; withdrawing ambassadors from Doha; closing land, air, and sea borders; and recalling citizens from Qatar in a move that had a dramatic impact on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

A list of 13 demands was drawn up by the blockading states to be met by Qatar before the blockade could be lifted, reflecting regional actions in the years after the 2011 Arab uprisings, notably a support for political Islamist groups and Iran. Yet the roots of the crisis run far deeper than the aftermath of the uprisings and reflect long-standing tensions between Qatar and its neighbors.

In Qatar and the Gulf Crisis, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen offers a detailed account of the roots of the crisis—perhaps better understood as a series of ongoing crises—and Doha's efforts to circumvent the challenges that quickly followed. Spanning nine chapters, Ulrichsen's study reflects on the historical factors shaping long-standing as well as contemporary tensions between the Gulf states and their implications for the future. It offers intriguing insight into the role of actors within the GCC and the institutional failings within the organization that facilitated such developments.

One of Ulrichsen's strengths as a scholar is his ability to position contemporary events within their historical context. For someone trained at the University of Cambridge, this ability is hardly surprising, but locating the events of 2017 within the longue durée of Gulf politics—and their multifarious fractures—helps to shed light on the stakes involved. Ulrichsen's choice to use and the Gulf Crisis in the title represents the broader crisis that goes beyond the immediate blockade and reflects broader issues pertaining to questions around politics and security. Indeed, long-standing structural issues between Qatar and neighboring powers are central to understanding the crisis, with the events of 2017 echoing earlier episodes.

In a meticulous account of Qatar's response, Ulrichsen dives deep into the mechanisms, processes, and decisions that shaped Doha's behavior in response to the blockade. For Ulrichsen, Qatar had embarked on efforts to ensure self-sufficiency before the events of 2017, which positioned it well to address the challenges of the blockade. Exploration of the transformation of logistical processes and infrastructural development offers fascinating insight into the scope of the challenge, perhaps best highlighted in the development of Hamad Port—around 14 times larger than Doha Port—which allowed Qatar to transition away from a reliance on the port of Jebel Ali in neighboring Dubai mere months after the blockade.

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