Lack of harmony in U.S. Hierarchy is damaging a Qatari reconciliation

CAIRO – 14 August 2017: The Qatar Crisis intensified when a quartet of powerful Arab states, on June 22, issued a list of

13 demands

to be met unconditionally for their boycott of Qatar to be lifted.

The response of U.S. officials to the Qatar Crisis has been befuddled – a replication of the current governing hierarchy. The Qatar Crisis arose as the first major Middle Eastern challenge for the new U.S. administration, yet the government’s response has been conflicting. With this, Trump’s public support levels are at their lowest ever. The latest Quinnipiac University survey showed that just 33 percent of Americans approved of his performance, meaning an effective response to the crisis is vital.

Previous ambitions of the U.S. to establish a plethora of alliances across the region may be coming back to haunt. Donald Trump has been cautious of diverging from the Saudi-led position and upsetting the arguably hegemonic player in the region. However, Qatar remains a strategically significant ally of the U.S. and is the home of the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, hosting an estimated 10,000 U.S. military personnel.

However, Trump made his position clear in the Rose Garden at the White House, where he helped to isolate Qatar and portray them as the villain in this complex chapter in the great story of power-politics. The president called out Qatar, stating that it has “historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.” In this avocation of the principal demand issued by the Saudi Arabia-led Arab quartet, Trump was able to appease the majority of U.S. allies in the region.

Yet Trump’s comments continue to polarize states within the region. According to the New York Times, “Analysts said Mr Trump’s public support for Saudi Arabia…sent a chill through other Gulf states, including Oman and Kuwait, for fear that any country that defies the Saudis or United Arab Emirates could face ostracism as Qatar has.”

Whereas President Trump weighed in heavily in favor of the Saudi-led campaign against Qatar, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has taken an alternate direction and was left in the dark by Trump’s statement. Tillerson has previously called for the Arab quartet to ease the boycott of Qatar, while citing its humanitarian consequences.

Mr. Tillerson embarked on a neutral course of shuttle diplomacy to help find a resolution and avoid abandoning the small Gulf state in a well of isolation. Although Mr. Tillerson was successful in facilitating Qatar’s signature to a memorandum of understanding with Washington, this was deemed insufficient by the Arab quartet.

In a statement, Tillerson stated that the lack of success was a result of the U.S. government being “largely not a highly disciplined organization, decision making is fragmented, and sometimes people do not want to take decisions, coordination is difficult through the interagency — has been for every administration.”

Mr. Tillerson has a great deal of experience in the region having been the Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, however he has been largely kept out of the fray in place of Trumps senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

A close associate of Mr. Tillerson spoke of how he was “absolutely enraged that the White House and State Department were not on the same page.” U.A.E. ambassador to the U.S., Yousef al-Otaiba, is a close friend of Mr. Kushner and the alleged author of Trump’s statement. “Rex put two-and-two together,” his close associate says, “and concluded that this absolutely vacuous kid was running a second foreign policy out of the White House family quarters.

Mr. Kushner and White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon have encouraged Trump’s course of action, while former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice have implored Mr. Tillerson to ignore the disjointed White House.
Many significant U.S. individuals, whether ex-intelligence personnel or scholars, have spoken out in criticism of Qatar, and found them culpable of directly sponsoring terrorist organizations.

Former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Morell, publically spoke against Qatar, stating that “international terrorist organizations; Hamas and the Taliban, have offices in Doha”. He continues to note how Qatar sponsors these terror organizations with “money and arms,” and highlights Qatar’s support for Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra, an influential terrorist group in Syria that dominates the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham terrorist organization.

The advisory role played by scholars is vital in any political system, and in the Qatari case the general consensus finds Qatar guilty of sponsoring terrorism. The director of Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Matthew Levitt, along with fellow Katherine Bauer have

challenged

Qatar’s innocence and their ineffective counter-terrorism policy.

Although there is agreement over Qatar’s sponsorship of terrorism, the U.S. approach has been disorganized and ineffective by far. The White House consensus has developed separate from the State Department which has hindered Mr. Tillerson’s attempts at conciliation. To achieve the desired results a dialogue between the Arab quartet and Qatar is needed, and if the U.S. desires to play any role in this dialogue, cooperation is needed at home.