FormalPara By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

  • Understand the motivation behind writing this book

  • Learn about different questions about the role of Qatar in the region

  • Learn about our analytical perspective throughout the study

  • Know about the content of different chapters of the book

From the outburst of the crisis with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates in May 2017, Qatar’s diplomacy was identified as calm, confidence, and balance (Al-Tamimi & Amin, 2019). The observer cannot understand the diplomatic approach of Qatar in dealing with all stages of the crisis, from explosion to siege without realizing the behind the scenes facts (Al-Tamimi & Amin, 2019). Blockading countries planned to blow the crisis up under the cover of darkness, before the dawn of May 24. Nevertheless, Qatar could absorb the shock and awe of the first strike unsurprisingly. Scholars believe that the country’s diplomatic performance was characterized by five main factors that helped Qatar to deal with the crisis successfully. These factors include the failure of the element of surprise, years of building Qatar’s nation brand, Qatar’s arsenal of soft power, international alliances, and the opponents’ quandary. In this book, we discuss how nation branding and creating a national brand assisted Qatar in absorbing the shock and awe. In this chapter, we first present a brief note about Qatar and its role in the region. Then, we briefly describe the content of various chapters of the book.

1.1 Qatar and Its Role in the Region

The role of Qatar in the political landscape at regional and international levels has been a controversial topic for politicians, journalists, and people interested in world politics in general and the Middle East in particular. Specifically, these debates and controversies raise whenever political activities escalate in the Arab region. This preoccupation with the Qatari case is not restricted to Arab, regional, political, or media circles. The corresponding circles in other contexts such as the United States, Europe, and the Far East follow the Qatari case with much attention. Since 2011, popular revolutions and events have taken place during this period of time, which were unprecedented in the Arab region in terms of their quantity and quality. Along with these changes, politicians and specialists have questioned the role of Qatar in the region. The examination of the role of Qatar is no longer confined to politicians and elites engaged in public affairs and has gone beyond the political, cultural, and media forums and platforms. It is now an issue discussed in public forums and a topic for talk among ordinary citizens.

1.2 Our Analytical Perspective

The present study was done to address two main problems/objectives. As noted earlier, the first objective of this study was to present the new forms of the questions and answers about the role of Qatar in the recent period. Additionally, the second objective of this study is to provide a different approach that views the Qatari case from the perspective of the science and the art of nation branding. Here, it would be useful to recount the most important ongoing debates in political and cultural circles first. In so doing, we do not aim to go into the details about the truth or accuracy of these debates and we do not purport to examine the depth or superficiality of these arguments. These four types of arguments (or debates) are as follows.

1.2.1 The First Argument

Those who hold this view argue that since the 1980s, the international superpowers (e.g., the United States), as the most influential power in the region, have developed a new strategy based on the idea of establishing and strengthening the power of new countries in the region to replace the traditional powers (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Algeria). This was mainly done to let emerging powers play a strategic role in protecting the interests of the United States as well as in influencing the general atmosphere in the region by using the tools of soft power. This Western-American idea was reinforced after events such as the decline of the Egyptian role, the international powers’ concern over the ineffectiveness of the Saudi role, the absence of the Iraqi role, the declining role of Algeria, and the disputed role of Syria. Supporters of this idea argue that the US administration deems it necessary for the emerging powers to play their role through soft power, away from the traditional hard power approach that may raise the concerns of Israel and other countries in the region. Also, there is an idea that the US administration experienced “when they got the taste of their own medicine” as they armed Saddam Hussein’s regime. The lessons that the US administration learned from this experience made it more in favor of the soft power choice. Therefore, supporters of this theory argue that this atmosphere paved the way for the emergence of the role of Qatar. They refer to Qatar’s employment of public diplomacy and public relations tools reinforced with the superpowers’ military and political support as the arguments for this claim.

1.2.2 The Second Argument

This second argument is probably driven from political references including theoretical, academic references. It interprets the role of Qatar as a state engaging in self-defense. Since the early 1990s, Qatar has had major concerns about its stability as an independent state. As such, this analysis argues that Qatar was prompted to search for a regional role to protect itself from the risk of being devoured unexpectedly without the attention of the world that does not care about small states and entities, especially when they pay the price of any conflict between regional and external powers (e.g., United States and Iraq—United States and Iran).

1.2.3 The Third Argument

The third line of argument accepts that a rich country such as Qatar could have some role in the regional situation. The small Gulf state currently occupies third place worldwide in terms of proven reserves of natural gas after Russia and Iran. In 2020, natural gas production in Qatar amounted to around 171.3 billion cubic meters. Qatar has about 63% of the total gas reserves in the Gulf. This analysis argues that there is no doubt that money is capable of making a role for Qatar, enhancing its influence and adding it to the list of regional players, whether by using money as carrot or as a tool of pressure. All these attempts seek to provide answers to questions revolving around the role of Qatar.

In this volume, this book aims to examine Qatar’s role in the region and all questions related to this role through the lenses of the nation brand. We also aim to provide explanations for the success of Qatar in absorbing the “shock and awe” in the early stage of the last Gulf crises. In so doing, we present various arguments how establishing a nation brand helped Qatar to deal with the crisis successfully.

1.3 Structure of the Book

This book has been planned in several chapters. Chapter 1 presents the statement of the problem and the authors’ theoretical stance. In this chapter, diverse views and analyses held by different parties about the role of Qatar in the region and in the international arena are presented.

Chapter 2 presents the theoretical frameworks and scientific underpinnings of the study. Specifically, this chapter starts with the notion of soft power and explanation of different types of power. To this end, the authors provided their theoretical and operational definitions of soft power and clarify different resources and tool that states employ to create soft power. Building on the notion of soft power, the authors introduce the concept of nation branding. Different definitions for nation branding are given in this chapter, and a historical overview of how nation branding developed in the past three decades is presented. Moreover, the differences between product brands and nation brands are described in detail, the reasons for creating nation brands are discussed, and the parties that are involved in nation brands are mentioned. Chapter 2 also presents the notion of public diplomacy and different theoretical issues related to public diplomacy and nation branding. The second chapter also states the theory of small states and the importance of nation branding for small states. Throughout the chapter, the authors present theoretical frameworks so as to help the reader to gain a better understanding of the notion of nation branding. This is done to pave the way for different profiles through which Qatar established its nation brand.

Chapter 3 presents a description of Qatar, its geopolitical background, and presents the Qatar Vision 2030 in detail. This chapter describes Qatar in terms of geography, financial status, etc. Next, Chap. 4 also describes the process of building a nation brand for Qatar. In other words, this chapter discusses what made Qatar think in building a shield of smart power (hard and soft). In the rest of the chapter, we describe different tools that Qatar used to build its smart power. In this regard, we first explain Qatar’s political profile. Then, we go through Qatar’s economic profile and how elements such as natural resources, development of economic infrastructure, Qatar’s economically beneficial relationships, and foreign investment portfolio helped with establishing a nation brand. Next, we discuss the media profile of Qatar and how the Al Jazeera network played an important role as a tool in the arsenal of defense for keeping stability and steadfastness of the state of Qatar against conflicts in the region. Next, we describe Qatar’s sport, educational and cultural as well as humanitarian profiles, and their role in establishing a nation brand and gaining soft power. We explain how hosting different sport competitions and development of cultural and educational institutions such as Qatar Foundation and Education City contributed to the development of Qatari nation brand. We also review Qatar’s civil society initiatives and charities and how taking part in humanitarian activities produced a brand of legitimacy for Qatar and the ways in which it helped support Qatar’s foreign policy which is mainly to consolidate peace and stability.

Chapter 5 views the blockade of Qatar from a new angle and examines its effects on the psychological states of Qatari people. In this chapter, we review recent studies on the effect of blockade on national identity and well-being of Qatari citizens. Moreover, we examine the use of social media in Qatar, and we examine how social media were used during the blockade.

Finally, in our last chapter, we explain how Qatar was, unsurprisingly, able to absorb the shock and awe first strike after the political issues that raised in 2017. We elaborate on the various reasons for Qatar’s successful management of the crisis and explain how establishing a nation brand functioned as a shield to protect Qatar from the damages caused by external powers and blockading counties.