Wednesday, April 13, 2011

'Punching Above Its Weight'


"... So what on Earth is a tiny country the size of Connecticut doing waging war on a much bigger fellow Arab state thousands of miles away? Has Qatar gone crazy?...  Qatar's intervention makes perfect sense, for three broad reasons. First, Qatar loves the limelight....  Second, and as unfashionable as it may be to say so, there are genuine humanitarian concerns afoot.... 
 
Third and crucially, on this occasion a number of unusual international factors coalesced, including Western and -- most importantly -- Arab support for action. The Arab League's call for a no-fly zone effectively allowed Qatar to send its Mirage jets. Without this explicit political cover, had Qatar intervened unilaterally, breaking one of the key tenets of international relations -- noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states -- it would have been deeply isolated and unpopular at a governmental level...  What's next? How about: sending in ground forces?......  Qatar clearly thinks that such a role is currently vacant. Gen. Mubarak al-Khayanin, the Qatari Air Force chief of staff, recently noted that traditional leaders of the region "like Saudi Arabia and Egypt haven't taken leadership for the last three years" -- a comment that no doubt raised a few eyebrows in Riyadh. The risks involved in such a deployment would be huge, not only in terms of the unprecedented notion of body bags returning to Doha or the difficulties of planning such an operation amid the highly fluid situation on the ground in Libya, but also in terms of how the likely reaction of traditional regional powers to yet another example of Qatar seeking to "rise above its station" could severely complicate intraregional relations..."

3 comments:

LJansen said...

At first glance, I thought you were saying Qatar and Connecticut WERE at war. :)

Anonymous said...

Qatar is the new Roman empire .

Anonymous said...

btw are they going to shoot down planes with those guns?