The aim of the S R Nathan Distinguished Lecture is to provide greater awareness and understanding of the modern Middle East.

This lecture provides a forum for statesmen, internationally prominent scholars and public intellectuals to express their views on key issues. The lecture series is named in honour of Singapore’s late former president, Mr S R Nathan, who encouraged a deeper understanding of the Middle East region in Singapore.

Abstract

In an increasingly multipolar world, small states are facing many dilemmas.  Can small states prosper while they are continuously facing threats to their existence? How can small states navigate their way through questions of development, globalisation, security and multilateralism while preserving and defending their autonomy and identity?

The Qatari Assistant Foreign Minister will discuss how her country is thriving despite a land, sea and air blockade that its neighbours illegally imposed three years ago, and how small countries can navigate their geopolitical positions in this contested era. Qatar is notably present in the international arena, being the world-leading exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the mediator of the peace agreement between the US and Taliban, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup host. Qatar achieved this despite active efforts from its neighbours to sideline it.

Drawing from the many similarities and shared interests between Qatar and Singapore, Her Excellency Lolwah Alkhater’s lecture will examine such questions: what are the most effective tools for small states to navigate their way and define their position? How can small states learn from history and create a prosperous future? Finally, what are the mechanisms and areas for small states to collaborate?

Due to the Covid-19 social distancing measures, this year’s lecture will be held online via Zoom. The event is free and all are welcome. Sign up online now and details will be sent to you upon successful registration.

Listen to the full event here:

Watch the full event here:

Edited Transcript of Lecture by Her Excellency Lolwah Al-Khater, assistant foreign minister and spokesperson, Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs

My speech today is titled “Small States in a Contested Era: A Qatari Perspective”. I will start with the end of the statement and, that is: what is a contested era and how different is it from what we have experienced, historically?

The global order is between two wars — First World War and the War on Terror — and everything else in between them. The question of peace and war has always been central to politics and international relations, and it seems that the answer – in the 20th century – has been revolving around notions such as having more global collaboration and multilateralism. After the First World War, we saw the foundation of the League of Nations, but this served its objectives, or perhaps failed to serve its objectives, so it was replaced by the United Nations (UN), and, of course, the discourse of the UN has developed over the years.

This year, we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the UN Charter and there are many questions around multilateralism and fixing the global order or possibly, disorder, in this case – as a matter of fact, the Doha Forum is working on a report around the UN Charter. We then witnessed the Cold War, decades after the Second World War.

No matter how complicated the situation was back then, there was some sort of clarity – we had two main camps: the United States on one hand and the Soviet Union on the other. Of course, there was the Non-Alignment Movement, which was formally a non-alignment movement. Realistically speaking, de facto, many of the members of that movement were actually leaning towards one camp or the other. In other words, we had a bipolar global order.

However, in the 1990s, George H. W. Bush announced the new global order once the Soviet Union was out of the picture. Francis Fukuyama talked about the end of history which meant the end of the struggle. It meant a liberal global order – one that was revolving around notions such as democracy, human rights, multilateralism, the general agreement on tariffs and trade and the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. But suddenly, in the midst of all of that, we realised it was not the end of history as it was not the liberal global order that everyone had anticipated back then. We entered a new era and there were many structural changes that happened.

We went from bipolarity to multipolarity, and in between, there was the dominance of one pole at one point of time but the one element that was unprecedented in our human history is the complete fragmentation of almost everything – ideas, policies, and vision. This, in a way, is paradoxical in the sense that on one hand – possibly thanks to technology and many other notions – we are more interconnected than ever and yet, with unprecedented interconnectedness, we also see unprecedented fragmentation. We have passed the world of big ideas — we no longer have big ideas that we revolve around as a global community. There are sub ideas and sub-sub ideas. This is not just a theoretical assessment of the situation but has many practical implications on all policies, in general. Today, if we are asked to describe the policy of almost any country in the international community, it becomes nearly impossible to describe a consistent policy. I remember a term that I would like to borrow from an Italian colleague — he said it is the world of “a la carte” policies and [depending on which] part of the world, situation and portfolio, there will always be a different policy.

The implications of this for small states such as Qatar and Singapore could be partially and tactically good – small countries can navigate through the cracks of this international and sometimes inconsistent system.

Strategically and collectively speaking though, the fragmentation is leading us to a very chaotic situation. There is the decline of multilateralism, and one of the most important yet overlooked structural change is the shift from human rights-centric discourse and policy to the anti-terrorism ones. This change is not rhetorical; in my opinion at least, it is a paradigm shift. We are shifting everything – from liberal notions to human rights ones. At one point in time, that was just a rhetorical commitment. Today, we are giving up on that rhetorical commitment and as we shift to the anti-terrorism approach, we see many notions and policies that were not tolerated in the past being tolerated today. Does this mean that we do not have the challenge of violent extremism and terrorism? Of course we do, but the question here is: what is the impact and implications of those policies on our other policies, in general?

Now, to focus the discussion on small states: what are the challenges facing small states? I am going to touch on Qatar specifically. If we look at the Commonwealth as an example, we have 53 members and 31 of them are considered small states.

The difficulties they face include limited global influence, weak technical capacity, limited access to affordable finance, disproportionate impact of natural disasters and climate change. If we think about those challenges, are we trying to draw an analogy between the state of Qatar and some other small states in the Gulf? The challenges are a bit different but there is somewhat of an overlap when it comes to climate change. For example, limited global influence – again, it depends on which portfolio but there definitely is a difference there. If we look at Qatar’s unique position, I would say that it is its small size and massive natural resources – compared to other small Gulf states even. When it comes to energy and liquefied natural gas, Qatar contributes to more than 33 per cent of the global production and the northern field of Qatar is one of the biggest reservoirs in the world. At the same time, the country exists in a very heightened zone and suffers from drought.

Qatar, Singapore, Norway and the Caribbean countries have certain commonalities — Qatar and Singapore, for example – they are small countries in terms of population sizes but a main difference between them is that Qatar has natural resources whereas Singapore does not. Yet, one of the common denominators between us is having unfriendly surroundings. If we look at Norway, it has very friendly surroundings and natural resources as well – this is one of the main differences between Norway and Singapore. We had a session with some ministers of the Caribbean countries to understand the commonalities and challenges and climate change seemed to be a common concern. We are, in one way or another, on two different ends of the spectrum – they suffer from hurricanes whereas we suffer from drought. One of the main differences is that Qatar has natural resources, but these countries do not possess that. The exceptionalism of the small Gulf states, compared to many other small states, is their financial surpluses and overall ambitions.

If I am to be more specific about Qatar, we went through an experience in 2017 – the blockade of our country. It was a complete one covering land, sky and sea. To put this into perspective, the blockade caused Qatar to have one land border that was fully closed, and Qatar is a country that used to import 90 per cent of its food and medical supplies from its neighbours. In the first few weeks of the blockade, it was very difficult as the supplies were totally cut off.

However, the blockade was a multi-dimensional one – it was coupled with an orchestrated media campaign against Qatar, accusing it of all sorts of charges. There is the attack on Qatari currency – we now have a number of cases in a few European countries where we believe that the blockading countries used some agencies to manipulate the Qatari riyal. There are also measures against Qataris individuals, causing thousands of families to be separated and affecting citizens of the blockading countries too.

Part of our diversification of supply chains depended heavily on them [blockading countries] as well. Measures against Qataris included expelling them from hospitals, universities and even holy places. Businesses had to close down too — Qatar Airways, for example, and private businesses also. Many Qatari businessmen, till this very day, cannot access their businesses and properties in some of the blockading countries. Blocking Qatar-based media meant that people living in Bahrain or UAE cannot access Qatari newspapers and websites. BeIn Sports, a giant sports media company that has exclusive rights for broadcasting many championships and the FIFA World Cup as well, had its channels listed as pirated and we just won a case at the World Trade Organisation against this piracy.

I would like to make clear that the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is not blockading Qatar – in fact, we enjoy excellent relations with countries like Kuwait and Oman.

Now, if we are to look at this experience, what did Qatar do right? During the time of the blockade, I was in the United Kingdom and many of my colleagues were telling me how Qatar is done for because of the blockade. I remember attending a session at Chatham House and the panellists said Qatar will surrender in two or three weeks. We are in 2020 now and this has not happened. Hence, the question is: how did Qatar, as a small state surrounded by an unfriendly environment, overcome and diffuse many of those measures [against it]?

I don’t believe that one size fits all — there are elements that will be beneficial to other small states and then there are those that are Qatar- specific, in one way or another. However, if you look at the pyramid, it has a number of elements: military prevention, food and medical security, medical needs, media and communication, sovereign wealth fund, investment, the legal movement, public diplomacy and energy expansion. It might sound paradoxical that Qatar is facing a blockade yet it has expanded – there is a philosophy behind this as well. We made three crucial moves correctly in the first three weeks.

First, military prevention and this has two layers. One, through the American military base in Qatar, we communicated with the Department of Defense in the United States and that played a huge role in deterring the possibility of invasion. Second, we had signed an agreement with Turkey prior to the blockade and it was accelerated during the blockade. Hence, within days, we received some support on that front. The late emir of Kuwait, Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, said that Kuwait’s mediation too, was able to stop a military invasion of Qatar.

Political resilience is important as well. In the first few days of the blockade, our foreign minister went to three different countries in a day to explain our narrative because in the beginning, we were receiving a lot of questions. The campaign against us was massive and unexpected, causing us to have to do a lot to clarify our position to our allies.

The foreign minister of Germany was the first top official in the international community to comment on the measures that were taken against Qatar. That played a huge role in shifting the diplomatic dynamics as after that, we saw a number of countries condemning the measures. By December 2017, we even saw the French president in Doha requesting for some of the measures against us Qataris, to be dropped.

We had to immediately look into securing alternative supply chains after the blockade and we received help from most countries, including Iran and ironically enough, at that time, we had no diplomatic ties with Iran. We had cut Iran off, in solidarity with Saudi Arabia, a year before the blockade. Apart from Iran, we managed to establish passages through others like Oman, Kuwait and Iraq as well. We have also launched our new port, which constitutes around 30 per cent of trade in the Middle East, though opened only in 2017.

I started my lecture with the challenges that are facing international organisations and how multilateralism, in general, is declining. Yet, interestingly enough, when it comes to international law, international organisations and the UN agencies, we found that pursuing those paths still has impact and authority, to a certain extent. If we see this vis-a-vis the undermining of international law and the approach of the blockading countries, I will say that much of what we have achieved is not due to our brilliance. For instance, we have achieved just as much because of the mistakes of the other countries which thought they could pursue informal ways and bypass international law altogether. Listing our sports channels as pirated ones and the manipulation of our currency are just some examples.

It was interesting to see the communications strategy that the blockading countries followed. At the very beginning, we had no idea that they were resorting to third-tier media and orchestrated campaigns on social media through bots and this became clear to us only later on. I admit that tactically, it was influential. Strategically though, I think it became problematic for them because they were being portrayed in a certain way. For example, Twitter has suspended (and only two weeks ago, continued suspending) more accounts. Many fake accounts that are owned by state agencies or affiliated with state agencies, including individuals’ Twitter accounts are suspended because of their relationship to some of those countries.

It is true that we could be living in a post-truth era – fake news is all over the place and we saw that with the pandemic, for example. Yet, it seems like factual and rational approaches still resonate in the long run and that is why, when you go to first-tier media, there is hardly any presence of the many narratives that are in third-tier media propagated through agencies and agents of the blockading countries. Turns out, pursuing rational and facts-based approaches is not a bad choice.

The hidden factor, of course, is the unity in the internal front. Many were hoping for a disintegration within the Qatari society but thankfully this did not happen and we remained strong. If we talk about resilience and the multi-dimensional approach, once again, as I’ve mentioned, we have about

18 international cases against the blockading countries — at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO and the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Cerd) at the UN, just to give you a few examples.

Relating to air disputes, we have proceedings under the Convention on the International Civil Aviation and the International Air Services Transit Agreement. On the human rights front, we have the proceedings before the ICJ and under the Cerd committee within the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Trade wise, there is a case against two of the blockading countries before the WTO for postal services disputes as we have interstate arbitrations instituted under the framework of the Universal Postal Union. For currency manipulation, we have cases in London and elsewhere because unfortunately, some blockading countries tried to invoke the systems there using certain agencies and institutions.

So, beyond the multi-dimensional approach, there is an important lesson there for all small states: diversifying dependencies is very important. There’s a proverb “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” so diversifying economic dependencies through diversifying supply chains is vital. The mistake we made in the past was to depend on one or two supply chains, with no alternatives. If we look at political dependencies, it’s very important for small states to remain neutral, as much as possible, in disputes and at the same time, try to be useful.

Diversifying political dependencies – security dependencies, military- wise and food security also, for example, is extremely important. Qatar currently ranks as the first country in the Middle East and the 13th in the world for food security, according to the Global Food Security Index in 2019. Interestingly, in 2017–when the blockade was imposed–Qatar’s GDP increased. Today, we outnumber the other GCC countries in these indicators, as well as in terms of our expansion in the energy sector.

Qatar Petroleum (QP) is raising its energy production capacity to 121 million tonnes per annum by 2027 and QP continues to expand its projects and agreements. QP has signed an agreement with ExxonMobil for a project in the Texas Gulf Coast. QP actually participated in establishing a company in Egypt and that was announced in 2019 – Egypt Refinery Company.

Egypt, of course, is one of the blockading countries. Qatar is considered one of the leaders in the energy sector and it has chosen not to politicise the energy sector because if it does, it will become problematic for everyone.

Since the industry is not politicised, Qatar continues to support and supply the UAE with its energy needs — around 40 per cent of the UAE’s energy consumption comes from Qatar, through a joint venture between Qatar and the UAE called Dolphin.

It is important for small states to be relevant and useful and I will give two examples on that – one relating to the current Covid-19 crisis and one outside of it. In the global order that we’re living in, small countries are especially relevant because we could be expendable.

Since Covid-19 hit, Qatar Airways has been one of the very few airlines that is still operating and connecting to different global destinations. We have received unlimited requests from different countries, companies, institutions and the UN even, to provide support in repatriating citizens or employees back to their home countries or bring them to places they are needed at for certain operations. Thus far, Qatar Airways has repatriated about two million global citizens and in addition to that, we’re partnering with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to airlift medical and humanitarian aid to several countries. Furthermore, Qatar Airways provides 30 per cent discount on medical and Covid-19 related cargo. Many of these projects — specifically the repatriation of citizens — are supported by the Qatari government. In other words, the government paid Qatar Airways to get these done because it is a private company.

At the political level, in 2017, Qatar mediated a ceasefire agreement between the then-Yemeni president and the Houthis. In 2018, the Lebanese factions — Lebanon went into a presidential vacuum for 18 months — and Qatar helped to bridge the gap and resolve the situation. I remember some of our diplomats, who experienced it firsthand, saying that at one point, they had to lock down all the politicians in a certain place in Qatar as that was the only way to reach an agreement.

In 2009, in Sudan and Chad, there was a mediation as well and it ended with the signing of the Doha Accord. In 2010, regarding the Djibouti and Eritrea border conflict, there was a ceasefire and an agreement reached – in fact, at one point in time, we had Qatari personnel at the border. In 2011, as Qatar was the Arab League representative at that time, there were a number of rounds of mediation involving the Sudanese government and the rebel factions which ended with Sudan and Eritrea signing an agreement. For Fatah and Hamas, though an agreement was signed, unfortunately, the situation there is very much complicated.

Yet, my point here is that the positioning of Qatar – unlike many other parties that have alienated themselves in one way or another when it comes to the issue of the Palestinians – gives it somewhat of an advantage to be able to mediate not only within the Palestinian factions but across the board as well, between Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, recently, we helped de- escalate the situation in Gaza between Hamas and Israel so once again, Qatar is in a position where it can talk to all parties with absolute neutrality and it is perceived as such.

In 2015, between the Taureg and Tebu tribes in Libya, there was mediation involved and an agreement was reached too. In addition to the Taliban–US agreement signed on 29 Februray 2020, the intra-Afghan negotiations are going on as well, with the two main parties in Afghanistan. Those efforts did not happen overnight or appear out of the blue. It took Qatar, the United States and other countries like Norway and Germany a number of years to facilitate and help with talks and we are glad there is some success – we are hoping that all parties will maintain their part of the agreement. One of the successful stories that we have here is the fact that in the negotiation team that the government sent, we have a number of women representing not only their government, but all of Afghanistan as well. We are seeing changes in the dynamics — I was very surprised to see some of the Taliban negotiation team members showing so much respect and almost standing up when they saw some of the Afghan women passing by. There is a breakthrough there so we need to build on that and wish them the best of luck. The issues can only be resolved by the Afghans themselves and we are only facilitators there.

Small states can play a role in diffusing polarisation. We saw the tensions at the beginning of 2020, between Iran and the United States after the attack on the embassy in Iraq and then the attack that killed General Qasem Suleimani. Qatar, alongside other countries, played a role in defusing the tensions. Small states should receive the role of de-escalation and avoid polarisation – we should not fall prey to it and take sides.

Identity is one of the main questions when it comes to small states – beyond politics and all the other hard elements. A friend of mine who is an architect keeps complaining about identity and asking where it is. I was clueless until recently, when I had a discussion with some colleagues who studied history and they were talking about the formations of identities in the Arab region in the late 19th century when we had colonial powers on one hand and the Ottoman Empire on the other. Are we Arabs or Ottomans or Muslims or Christians? It’s a combination of identities and as they were discussing and describing this, it suddenly made absolute sense – this is the actual representation of the current formation of the Qatari identity. It is a mix of different timelines belonging to various traditions but also being modern, having a cosmopolitan city with over 120 nationalities, but belonging to the Arabic language, for example, or drawing certain elements from the traditional Qatari culture.

Globalisation and all of these elements are being put together and reflected as a diverse landscape – we see a mix of timelines, cultures, architecture and views of the world. Now, the question: is this specific to small states, to Qatar or to Muslim or Arab countries in the Middle East? Definitely not. Samuel Huntington wrote a book, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, and he talked about the influence of Mexican culture and globalisation. It seems like all countries are going through this struggle and I know from talking to many friends in Singapore, the question of identity is present in Singapore as well.

I will conclude with this point: there are many lessons to draw from Singapore’s experience, not least from its model of human capital development as it is one of the things that I think, here in Qatar, and in many other countries, we need to learn a lot about.

Question & Answer Session

Mr Bilahari Kausikan (BK): As you know, Your Excellency, I was in Qatar just about a year ago, in Doha, and the blockade had been going on for two years. Let me tell you what struck me most: what struck me most was that nothing struck me. Life was normal and I thought that was a major achievement, and from that, I’m going to exercise the moderator’s privilege and ask the first question. You talked about building an internal front and unity, and I want you to perhaps expand a little bit on that. As I said, what impressed me most was life going on normally. Obviously, you took certain steps to make sure that you have supplies of food and other things continued, but beyond that, was there something you did to shore up the psychological resilience of your people or is this something that grew organically,  because you are under pressure from outside?

Her Excellency Lolwah Al-Khatar (LK): That’s a very good point. I think the short answer would be we were all surprised by the reaction. I think it grew just organically. The people felt that this attack was an attack on them, not on the government, and let me just draw a comparison here. So we had a diplomatic dispute in 2014 with the same countries and they did recall their ambassadors. Back then, the reaction from the internal front of Qatar, the society of Qatar, was not as strong because they didn’t feel like there was something that was attacking them. And if you do a content analysis of the social media, the discourse was: this is a state-to-state dispute between the politicians, keep it between the politicians.

But then, in this very blockade, it was a different case because the regular individual felt it. Many of them, as I mentioned, were expelled. For example, it was during the holy month of Ramadan, so many of them were actually performing umrah in Mecca. They were expelled so, of course, they felt it. Not only that, they had no route to go back to Qatar because flights were suspended.

Another element was actually what the residents, not only the citizens, felt; this is a very important point, because Qatar, at the end of the day, is made up of different constitutes, we have citizens and we have residents, but the citizens are only maybe 12 per cent of the population or 15 per cent, which meant that the reaction was a collective reaction by everyone. And once again, I think the main reason was that the individuals felt it. People couldn’t find milk for example, so for mothers, that was something they could relate to. It’s very simple and straightforward, it’s not some political issue happening somewhere.

But then the question is how did Qatar change this course based on that? Immediately after that, in every single speech of His Highness, for example, he always addressed citizens and residents. So once again, there was something that happened organically, but then the government of Qatar realised that this is something to capitalise on, and indeed, this was what happened.

BK: As you had mentioned, you are one of the largest and most important suppliers of natural gas in the world, with one of the largest reserves in the world. Has the experience you have undergone through in the last three years, plus the looming threat of climate, in any way changed how you look at your plans for securing your own energy needs in the future? What are your energy security plans, in other words, or do you need one?

AK: Yes absolutely, that’s a very good question. Now there is definitely a shift from oil to natural gas. To start talking about a shift from natural gas to something else is still at a very early stage, very theoretical indeed. The reality of the situation is, if we might have a discourse about the decline for need for oil, this has been the rhetoric since the 1970s and the demand has only increased. Now we think that with natural gas, there will be a demand at least for the coming 20 to 30 years. Does this mean that we’re not looking beyond that? Of course not.

Qatar and its 2030 vision talked a lot about diversifying the economy but after the blockade, this became an urgent need for a number of reasons. What if the supply chains are cut off for one reason or the other, or the [situation in the] Strait of Hormuz erupted for one reason or the other, what are the alternatives? What are the alternatives for exporting natural gas, and what are the alternatives of natural gas?

Currently we’re undergoing a serious exercise that is basically revisiting everything about what we have been doing to diversify our economy. Some steps were taken in the past, and we realised that it was not at the right pace and that it was not necessarily always in the right direction. To give you an example, Qatar, at the end of the day, is living within certain realities: realities of the climate, realities of its surrounding — the fact that it’s in a very heightened zone — and so on and so forth. So we need to rethink our options.

For example, when we talk about tourism, what do we mean by that? We don’t have the natural elements for that so what are the alternatives? Can we talk about capitalising on some of the options that we have? We have education city in Qatar with seven American branch campuses of some of the top universities. Can we capitalise on this? In terms of turning this into a hub for education, and so on and so forth. But it’s too early to talk about concrete achievements on that front.

Ambassador Chan Heng Chee: Given the recent UAE–Israel agreement and the fact that other Middle East countries and Gulf states are signing on, it seems, including some of your present allies — I gather Oman is interested and so is Kuwait — do you feel Qatar’s strategic space is further narrowed and I guess it comes back to the question of the small state. How does a small state maintain a singular position against all surrounding states?

AK: That’s actually an excellent question and a question that we keep asking ourselves. Now if I am to be very specific about the peace agreements or the agreements that were signed between some of the GCC countries and Israel, our position was clear and we communicated this publicly. I’ll clarify the position and then come to your question specifically. We were very clear that this was a bilateral matter in the sense that this does not have any impact, if you think about it, on the path of the peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and that’s why we don’t think this is the answer.

The core of the struggle was between two main parties: one of those two main parties, ie, the Palestinians, were completely kept out of the picture, so talking about resolving the currently 70 plus year conflict through agreements that excluded one of the parties, I don’t think that we can see a relationship or a causality there.

The core of the conflict is that there was a peace agreement that was signed in Oslo — it was not fulfilled — and ironically enough, if you think about it, the two leaders who signed that agreement, one of them was assassinated, not by the Palestinians; the other one died under siege, not by the Palestinians. Settlements continue to be built and of course, the violations continue. So once again, a peace agreement needs to be inclusive — it needs to be just, and needs to be long lasting.

Now to your question, how can Qatar hold onto its position when the surrounding is changing? We don’t think that those agreements that were signed did actually impact Qatar’s strategic relevance to what’s happening for a reason: Qatar now is in a better position in the sense that it can talk to all parties, whereas some of its neighbours have alienated themselves from the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority, as you can imagine, is not satisfied with many of those steps and hence, their willingness — this is an assessment from our side but of course, they can speak for themselves — their willingness to work with some of those countries is probably less than what it used to be.

How can Qatar hold onto its positions in general, not specific to this case, that’s an important question, and I think it depends on what case we are talking about, what position we are talking about. Is it strategic, is it a position that pertains to our core values, or is it something that is subject to multiplicity of opinions and interpretations and acquisitions and geopolitical dynamics and changes? If it’s something that is related to our core values, our position is, once again, going to the point of diversifying dependencies and this is important for all small states. It’s important that any small state, to hold onto its very core and basic positions to find allies, to find friends, to find like-minded people, countries, institutions, and in the collage of opinions and positions and ideas that we have today in the global arena; I think it’s always possible to find that. I hope I was able to answer at least part of the question.

BK: In little under three weeks, we are going to have a presidential election in the United States, and presidential elections are always important and perhaps, this one is more than usually important. If we are to believe the polls, Joe Biden will be the next president — and that’s a fairly big ‘if’ these days — but if that is so, what kind of changes in the American approach to the Middle East would you expect, and in particular, would you expect a different approach towards Iran, and finally, would you see a role for Qatar in bringing some kind of — perhaps reconciliation is too strong a word — some kind of mediating role between the US and Iran. Okay, just to summarise, if there is a new president, how will US policy in the Middle East change, how will those changes specifically impact Qatar’s relations with its neighbours, and finally, how would it impact US relations with Iran, and can Qatar play a role in stabilising that relationship?

AK: That’s definitely a complicated question, as you can imagine. It depends on just too many variables here. Now it’s very difficult to speculate and it’s always, in this case, helpful to go back to the individuals themselves and the statements that they have made.

So, in the case of basically Joe Biden, he has made some public statements. Now whether, of course, if he becomes the next president, whether this is going to be fulfilled completely, changed slightly, is always subject to many variables. Yes, what I can talk about, instead of trying to talk on behalf of the American side, is to try to talk about the Qatari side and how we perceive it and how we hope the region in general should look like, regardless of who comes, because this has been our consistent message with the current administration and it will be our message to the next administration.

We don’t need further polarisation in our region — we have our own differences with a number of countries in the region when it comes to the foreign policy, when it comes to many other things. Yet, we came to realise after all these conflicts that our region went through, that we need to find an equation for coexistence. And I don’t want to let go of our agency as a Gulf as well. We have a huge responsibility upon our shoulders and we said that several times. Regardless of the changes in other countries, we should have our own clear policy. What’s our policy towards Iran, what’s our policy towards other countries in the region? Unless we answer this question for ourselves, no one else will be able to figure it out for us. So once again, I think claiming more leadership from the side of the GCC is going to be helpful, but of course to do that, we need to organise ourselves and resolve the current conflicts that are currently there keeping us busy with, I would say, marginal conflicts.

Mr Fazlur Rahman: As we have seen the leadership renewal in Kuwait and Oman, do you see the two new rulers playing the same active rule?

AK: Regarding Oman and Kuwait, in fact, we see a continuation of their foreign policy. We haven’t seen yet any sign that there is a drastic change in terms of the role of Kuwait in mediating the conflict. Only recently, His Excellency, the foreign minister of Qatar, was in Kuwait and there were messages coming back and forth which means that the role continues and will continue.

We wish both countries stability, I mean, the transition of power that we saw in Kuwait is to be lauded on how smooth it was, and everyone was, as much as we were sad and shocked as a matter of fact, and despite his age, at the demise of the late emir of Kuwait, we were still shocked when we received the news. My point is this man had such a huge role in the region in general, so losing him was a loss for all of us and that’s why now that we see Kuwait continuing on the same path, we are actually very glad and comfortable.

BK: There are a couple of questions on climate change and I’ll cluster them together. First of all, you mentioned it briefly in your opening remarks when you talked about drought, but beyond drought, how would you see the impact of climate on the Gulf as a whole? And the Gulf is not a very large region — it’s a fairly compact region, and obviously, it would be more effective if countries in the Gulf, whatever their differences of opinion, could somehow coordinate efforts to deal with climate change. Do you see any prospect of that, and what are Qatar’s own plans to deal with climate change?

AK: Once again, that’s an important question. I think for us in the GCC, there is a lot that is yet to be done. The concept of climate change came to us and became part of the decision making and the awareness of decision makers recently. We should recognise this fact. Now, there’s this fact and then the fact that the GCC countries depend heavily on hydrocarbon resources that are not necessarily the cleanest source of energy. On the other hand, we have our other challenges — countries like Qatar or even Kuwait or the UAE have the same problem of drought. In the case of Oman, it’s a little bit different, maybe; in the case of Saudi Arabia, because it’s bigger in terms of its landscape, once again, it can be a little bit different. Yet food security is a common problem for all of us, so the point here is that, yes, there is a possibility to have technical coordination.

There are many technical committees that are still operating and working despite all the political tensions. Yet, as you know, climate change is a question that is very much intertwined with politics and decision making and economics and so, unless there is a common understanding at the leadership level, it becomes very difficult to achieve concrete results. Just to give you an example of how this has affected some of our clients, Qatar established or helped establish the Dry Land Alliance, a global alliance under the UN. The point is in 2018, we were supposed to have some sort of announcement, some sort of a common agreement, some sort of a plan, for the Dry Land Alliance and, in order to do that under the UN regulations, we needed a certain number of members. Unfortunately, for purely political reasons, the blockading countries decided to withdraw their support and also influenced some other countries. The result was that this plan was not endorsed at a global level and instead, became an agreement that was endorsed by a number of countries. So once again, there is only this much that we can achieve with technical cooperation if the political will does not exist.

BK: With the fragmentation on the global scene, what role do you envisage for the UN in the Middle East and in Gulf reconciliation in particular?

AK: As you can imagine, the question is a complicated one and a broad one. In general, I think that there are many agreements, many channels that can be invoked in order to facilitate some sort of dialogue not only at the GCC level but also in the Arab region in general. Now practically speaking, I think that despite all the criticism against the UN and its role and disintegration etc, there are two main elements that the UN has helped maintain: resilience of vulnerable populations such as refugees — this is a reality.

I mean the umbrella of the UN, once again despite all the criticism, has helped us at least maintain the minimum standards of living for many vulnerable populations, so that’s an important element. The other element is that the UN is at least one of the very few umbrellas that is not contested yet. They’re contested but at least many countries are willing to come under the UN umbrella to do and to have concerted efforts, especially in areas of crises. We see this very clearly with Syrian refugees, with Palestinian refugees, in the case of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).

We know that many countries, including the United States, withdrew their support for UNRWA, but then other countries such as Germany, Qatar, other countries jumped in. But all of this could have not happened if it wasn’t for that umbrella that is UNRWA. But of course there is a lot that should be fixed.

BK: Technology matters in order to survive difficult times. How is Qatar going to develop or introduce cutting-edge technologies, and if so, which ones? For example there is a new technology to extract hydrogen and store carbon dioxide out of LNG or crude oil. If you adopt such a technology, Qatar can continue to make the most of the resources for a long time to come. I think you need not answer the specific question but just the general one: how do you see the role of technology in Qatar’s future?

AK: It’s an important role that we realised more and more during the pandemic. The way we operate now at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is very different from the way we used to operate. The way we operate when it comes to education, with our universities and schools — if it wasn’t for technology many things could have not been possible. Now Qatar is investing in that: we have Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) that is attracting a number of small to medium businesses as well. We have — when it comes to the energy under the umbrella of the Qatar Foundation — the Energy, Water and Environment institute, and they’ve been doing some fairly good research around alternative energy like solar systems, etc. Yet once again there is a lot to be done.

On the other front, when it comes to the extracting hydrogen, for example, Qatar now is exploring that. There aren’t concrete projects as far as I know, the last time I checked with Qatar Petroleum, but i know that they’re exploring that area and those technologies. In addition to that, we have the Qatar Investment Authority — that is our sovereign fund, and they recently started looking at Asia as a market. In the past, it was mostly focused on Europe and the United States, now Asia, and specifically in Asia, they’re looking into those kinds of investments: technology-related investments, green investments, and the question of extracting hydrogen was one of the points. Once again, no concrete steps yet, but it’s definitely in the pipeline.

BK: A very simple question: Your Excellency, do you see the blockade being lifted soon?

AK: There could be hope for that, but if it’s going to happen, it’s going to be gradual, and I mentioned this one time before: it doesn’t necessarily have to include all countries at once.

Mr Ong Keng Yong: I wanted to follow up on the earlier question about internal unity which you asked our esteemed speaker because in RSIS, here, we talk a lot about social resilience and national resilience and how Singapore and many of the Southeast Asian countries, with all our diversity, stick together. So looking at Qatar, definitely, there will be different opinions with regard to where the foreign policy or even the domestic policy of Qatar should be heading. How is it that the Qatari government is able to maintain this solidarity among its people? Of course, everything is well provided for, but as a modern society with more well-educated young people, shouldn’t there be more diversity of opinion, and how can this energy from a different segment of the population in Qatar be harnessed towards the national goal of doing all these things that the assistant minister has been expounding in the last one hour or so? So I thought I just want to have our esteemed speaker drill a bit further into some of the strategic ways or strategy approaches the Qatari authorities have been coalescing the citizens of Qatar for the national purpose?

AK: Now, the makeup of the population of Qatar is obviously very different from Singapore, so there might be some parallels, but we also need to recognise some of the major differences. That said, I think one of the lessons learnt for us, especially after the blockade, is to keep this open channel with the grassroots level. And in the context of Qatar, which is a monarchy, it does not happen through elections or electing the prime minister, so the alternative to this is the following. Of course, there is the Shura Council elections, which is the parliament-like elections, but then the other way to keep this communication with the grassroots level is actually through social media, and as awkward as it might sound, it actually worked out.

To give you one example from the pandemic, and I have firsthand experience with that because I’m leading the committee that’s looking after communications during the Covid-19 pandemic, we reached a point, especially in the first few months, where we had, on daily basis, to analyse more than 20,000 tweets. Twitter is very popular here in Qatar, more than Facebook, more than anything else, and I’ll come to Facebook in a minute. And through doing this, we saw the trends, what are the main complaints, how are people perceiving the policies and many times, policies have changed based on that.

So in public policy terms, this is the policy cycle and this is the policy feedback. Of course there are many other channels, given the size of the population, decision makers are normally within easy access to individuals, especially citizens. So it’s not awkward for the citizen to ask for an appointment, for example, to meet a minister or even higher up. But once again, this is maybe very Qatar-specific due to the size of the population but definitely, media and social media as a representation of how people feel is one important element.

That said, it’s also easy to manipulate social media. I’ll give you an example, and this is one of the main challenges we’re facing as we are analysing the social trends of Qatar is the fact that we are also subjected to many media campaigns by the blockade countries through bots, etc. And that’s why it becomes problematic for us to discern the genuine complaints, the genuine trends, from those that are manufactured in a way, and it becomes a technology question, because the technology does, you know, the filtering. Is this a bot, is this a real account, and so on. This not only exclusive to citizens, it’s actually everyone who lives in Qatar. So many people were stranded outside of Qatar, like residents and sometimes they don’t have access to reach out to government authorities saying: “I’m stranded within this country.”

So one way to do this is simply to write on social media, mention the entities, and then we go there analyse whether this is a genuine account, reach out to them, call them directly to make sure it’s a real person, and then we look into the complaint and then of course, once again, there is a capacity for this and how much, and to what extent, but those details, this last example is very specific to times of crises. We cannot generalise this.

Now speaking of fragmentation in general, of policies and ideas, and we see this fragmentation also across the virtual circles. So Twitter is popular among citizens but then Facebook among some other Arab communities, so if we want to analyse the needs of the Arab communities, we go to Facebook, and many of them started even gathering themselves and having some sort of an official account to organise their presence in Qatar. The question needs a lot of thinking, honestly. Maybe I’ll have more thoughts about this and if you allow me to send them maybe in writing, because it’s definitely a question with multiple layers.

BK: What are the core competencies and capabilities that you would like the Qatari population to develop in the future to be more rigorous, robust and to be able to lead the region?

AK: That’s even more complicated than the previous question. All sorts of skills honestly, all sorts of skills but specifically for the needs of Qatar, I think we should just go to the traditional needs — it’s a small population, at the end of the day — education, medical sector and the oil and gas. Those are the three main areas that are very crucial for our very existence, so having more people in those areas, definitely, with the required skills. But then this does not mean, of course, that we don’t look into arts and culture and media, and we need people in all areas, but I mean if we are to set priorities. In terms of traits in general and characteristics, rather than hard core skills, I think the one thing that we need to keep in mind is not to take things for granted, and not to take natural resources for granted. As they say, good things and great things come out of necessity. There is an Arab sociologist, an Iraqi, Ali Al-Wardi, he’s considered one of the first Arab sociologists if you wish.  So he’s written about what he called an akhlaq or the traits or the morals or the ethics — that’s more specific, the ethics — of luxury and the ethics of  need. And he said that each time this region thrived, it was out of the ethics of need, and each time it has declined it was out of the ethics of luxury. Maybe this is something to keep in mind.

Dr Ameem Lutfi: I have thoughts specifically about a couple of points that you made in your presentation. You started off by talking about how we’re in this new age of declining multilateralism international law and human rights, but then when you started talking about how Qatar has responded to the blockade, you mentioned about a range of involvement in international law and how Qatar has really instigated a lot of these multilateral organisations and so on. So what you say then is that, rather than these being declining, multilateralism and international law might actually be given a new life by the small states?

AK: Now, if we talk about the situation as it should be, for sure multilateralism is for the good of all of us, the collective good of all of us. Now, we might, as human beings, figure out something else in the future but until we do that, this is the best system we could come up with. Small states like Qatar find refuge in invoking some of those mechanisms, and I’m pretty sure that this is applicable to many other countries, especially small states. I think one of the main challenges we’re facing is that some of the big players in the global arena are giving up on multilateralism. The other challenge would be that many small countries would follow that, so absolutely, I totally agree. I mentioned a report that we’re working on, on the 75th anniversary of the UN, and this report is actually in the defense of multilateralism, but through problematising the previous practices and experiences, not through blind faith of multilateralism. There are many things that need to be reconsidered, many things that need to be restructured, but the core idea, I don’t think yet we should give up on.