1. Introduction

This paper discusses European policies towards the shifting and intertwined landscapes in the Gulf and in the US. It starts with a discussion of historical pattern of relations between Europe and the Gulf, before sketching the major changes in the regional environment after the Second World War, starting with the US supplanting the UK as the dominant hegemon, through to the changes wrought by Trump’s elevation to the US Presidency. It then turns to a discussion of the effects of these changes for the Gulf and other regional states and their policy postures, before going on to examine the ways in which European states and the EU have interpreted and reacted to this changing environment. These reactions are often at one and the same time a reaction to the changes and uncertainties in US policy under Trump, since this changing US role is also a crucial ingredient both in the region and for Europe’s room for manoeuvre. Against this background, the paper will outline European policies towards the Gulf theatre in particular, focusing on Iran and the JCPOA, and the GCC (or Qatar) crisis. Most recently, the Khashoggi affair has added an additional dimension to this.

2. The Historical Pattern of Relations between Europe and the Gulf

European states do, of course, have a long history of close relations with the Gulf and the wider Middle East – some colonial, some more indirect, such as Britain’s role in the Gulf until 1971, where it became part of the history of state formation and boundary drawing through its exclusive treaties with Oman and the littoral sheikhdoms of the Gulf. For Saudi Arabia, too, Britain was an important player since 1902 – when the Al Saud’s re-conquest of its ancestral domains began: in common with most of the other sheikhs of the Gulf littoral, these leaders generally found it important to attract the attention and, where possible, recognition, subsidies and, at least in the case of the smaller sheikhdoms and Oman, the protection, of Britain, even at the expense of having to compromise on some of their dynastic or territorial ambitions. While focusing most of this effort at the recognised hegemon – Great Britain, and, after the Second World War, increasingly the US – their policy was also always characterised by a pattern of seeking out (or at least hinting at an interest in) complementary relationships, from Russia to France and Germany, and in the case of Saudi Arabia, the US: the decision to grant the major oil concessions there to a US company rather than a British one, was at least in part the result of a conscious desire to balance British influence. Britain’s own interest in the region was both strategic and, increasingly, economic.[1]

This pattern in the foreign policies of all the Arab Gulf states has persisted, mutatis mutandis, to this day. As the US eclipsed Britain as the regional – and indeed global – hegemon, and especially when Britain decided to withdraw from the Gulf by 1971, the smaller Gulf states followed the lead of Saudi Arabia in anchoring their security in string bonds with Washington – while still cultivating important complementary relationships with states such as Britain itself and France – and gradually also others. Throughout, these leaders, before and after achieving full statehood, were intent on sending signals to their domestic and regional audiences, and indeed to the hegemon in question, that they were not to be taken wholly for granted. They worked to maintain varying degrees of room for manoeuvre, by avoiding ‘mono-dependence’, actively seeking relative autonomy.[2]
 

3. Ten major shifts in the Regional Environment since World War II

The period since the second World War has brought ten major shifts or inflection points in the regional environment that had implications for relations between regional states on the one hand, and major European states and the US on the other.

The first is the above-mentioned relative shift between the influence of the US and the UK relative shift. The war brought the US physically into the region. Together with the unfolding importance of Gulf oil and Britain’s increasingly evident economic exhaustion, this led, especially from the 1950s, after the British withdrawal from India in 1947, to a recognition of a new reality – viz. that the US was becoming the new hegemon in the region. This led to a firming up of the US-Saudi security relationship first and foremost, even as the other sheikhdoms and Oman remained under British protection. Kuwait’s independence in 1961 extended the change, but the really major second shift came with the British withdrawal from “East of Suez” in 1971 – announced in 1968 – that completed the hand-over of the role of hegemonic security guarantor to the US, now in relationships with the newly fully-independent states of Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the newly formed UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia.

Third, the Iranian revolution changed the regional landscape fundamentally, and with it the role and perceptions of Western powers – in particular the US, which lost one of its erstwhile ‘pillars’ for containing regional threats and hence was left leaning even more heavily on the Arab Gulf states.

The revolution also set in motion the fourth group of change events – in the shape of three Gulf wars, beginning with the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88), which ultimately, combined with the political, economic and decision-making dynamics of Saddam’s Iraq, led to the invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent US-led war to liberate the emirate. The latter also brought the US military to the Gulf in unprecedented numbers – operating largely from bases in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – in ways which created a political backlash in the Kingdom, ultimately leading to the decision to relocate the main US base for air force operations throughout the CENTCOM area to Qatar in 2003. The third Gulf war – the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein – was in part a result of the outcome of the second war, and through its comprehensive mishandling of the post-invasion aftermath in turn set in motion the events that would bring prolonged instability in Iraq and provide fertile soil for the emergence of the Islamic State.

It was in the context of the Iraq-Iran war, that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was created: this saw the six monarchical Arab Gulf states come together in an attempt to help guard against the perceived threat from the Iranian revolution: while Iraq had long objected to the creation of such a separate bloc excluding itself, it now was dependent on these states for logistical and financial support in the war against Iran.

A fifth significant change had helped determine the fate of the second Gulf war to expel Saddam’s forces from Kuwait – indeed arguably had made the operation possible: this was
the end of the Cold War. It meant that, for the first time, the international community could come together to reverse the annexation of a sovereign state, using the authority of the UN Security Council. It also meant that Russia became a potential complementary partner for the Gulf states for the first time since the 1930s. Russia’s resurgence as a player in the wider region and, more tentatively, in the Gulf, however, would only really emerge from the 2010s, when, ironically, relations with the West had soured again.

The sixth change has been the relative and on-going shift between US on the one hand and Asia, in the foreign policy environment of the Gulf states, with Asia very gradually accumulating greater importance. This shift was economic first, and distantly strategic second. In economic terms the shift in relative importance would indeed become very significant, not least in terms of energy. In strategic and diplomatic terms, it never exceeded the character of complementarity to the US relationship, reflecting the pattern established since the end of the 19th Century.

The seventh inflection point was the 2008 financial crisis. For the region, this had two main consequences. The first was a certain power rebalancing between Europe and the GCC states. Until this point, for instance, the question of transparency in the management of the Gulf’s sovereign wealth funds remained a frequent irritant. Come the global financial crisis, this swiftly disappeared from view. Instead, there was the spectacle of European leaders and financial institutions reaching out to the richer Gulf states for investment and assistance. The second consequence was local: the nature of politics and foreign policy in the UAE changed by virtue of the virtual bankruptcy of Dubai – the one sheikhdom that was directly affected by the indirect effects of the crisis, due to being over-leveraged. Being effectively bailed out by Abu Dhabi for some $20 bn, this would soon prove to have undermined the smaller emirate’s autonomy, leaving Abu Dhabi increasingly in sole control of the UAE’s foreign and security policy – something that would in the end also have regional consequences.

The eighth shift worth mentioning for the purposes of this article, is the relative shift in the US’s position and level of interest in the Gulf – as it underwent a partial ‘pivot to Asia’ under President Obama. This pivot was subtle, and by no means reflected any intention to leave the region to its own devices or pull out from the US presence in the Gulf: indeed the US bases continued to play a crucial role in the wider power projection of the US; and the secure supply of oil and gas to world energy markets remained a key interest, even if direct US dependence on energy imports from the Gulf dwindled. Together with the perception among some Gulf leaders that the US was going soft on Iran and was not consistently keeping them in the loop over its Iran policy, this sense created real anxiety and irritation especially in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Manama. The clashing perceptions over what became the “Iran nuclear deal” or JCPOA – of which more below – epitomised this new perceptual divergence.

Contemporaneously, a ninth inflection point was the Arab Spring, erupting in 2011, and its aftermath. This opened up the possibility of political change, and, with it, a range of responses regionally and internationally. Outside the region, Western states especially, after a careful beginning, sided against the ancien regimes – further exacerbating the worries of many of the regional regimes about their own safety and their traditional security guarantors’ approach. Within the region, it saw, on the one hand, a gradual reassertion of autocratic control – with the tentative exception of Tunisia – and on the other, one state – Qatar – intent on riding the wave of change, through supporting or at least giving room for the popular forces, not least via the platform of A-Jazeera (Arabic). In turn, of course, this brought further tension between it and the key authoritarian states (chiefly Saudi Arabia, the Abu Dhabi, Egypt and Bahrain) whose leaderships saw the Arab Spring and the enabling of social movements with social traction as an existential threat.

The final inflection point was the election in 2017 of Donald Trump as US President. Whether for the US itself, for Europe and the traditional Western alliance, or for the states and leaders of the Middle East, this represented a major and unprecedented change – or at the very least imponderable, given the extent of uncertainty about his real policy convictions. His attitude, too, to international agreements, whether alliances, international treaties or institutions, was in question; in particular his view of the value or even desirability of organisations such as NATO and the EU, was open to question. And with regard to the Middle East, it was always plausible that he would reorient US policy away from democracy support towards traditional-style support for autocratic stability – as indeed he did by leaning towards the policy views (both domestic and regional) of the increasingly autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Egypt.

4. Effects in the Gulf and the region

The effects of the above environment and its shifts on the policies of states in the Gulf and the wider region in recent times have been manifold, but for the purposes of this article we can focus on three features.

The first is that these states’ traditional room for manoeuvre, or ‘relative autonomy’, has persisted – albeit more effectively exploited by some than by others.[3] This has built on their historical experience and trajectory as discussed earlier, but it also was reinforced by the end of the unipolar phase in the international system, with the increasing emergence of China and Russia, especially, as economic and diplomatic players and potential partial counterweights to the US and the West. As before, of course, European states remained available as complementary resources for regional states. The latter was reinforced especially when the ‘Trump effect’ began to prise apart aspects of the Western alliance.

The second theme is that a sharp divergence emerged in how states shaped their policies in response to their changing environment. On the one hand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt under Sisi opted for a strategy of autocratic counter-revolution at home and in the region, and a forceful anti-Iran policy, in close alliance with the Trump administration. On the other side was, first and foremost, Qatar, whose leadership actively engaged Arab spring actors across the region, aiming to ‘ride the wave’ of a movement they saw as inevitable, including maintaining links with various Islamist groups as they judged political Islam to be a likely major strand of the future Arab political landscape. Oman, Kuwait and Morocco, while also evincing some concern over the potential of popular protest, opted neither for a proactive regional strategy of countering the Arab Spring, nor did they wish to be forced into an anti-Qatari cordon. Similarly, with the exception of Morocco, these states also adopted a much more pragmatic position vis-à-vis Iran, accepting that while its policies in Syria, especially, needed to be fought, it was still both possible and necessary to craft a modus vivendi in the Gulf itself.

The third theme is one of the increased assertiveness displayed by several of these states – in particular Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar – with the important rider that this assertiveness, exerted in quite different directions, often came with relative failure.

Qatar’s foreign policy of course already took a more assertive direction ever since the early 1990s, as Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa – first as hands-on Crown Prince, then as Amir from 1995 – shaped the country’s direction. Initially aimed at raising Qatar’s international profile and escaping Saudi Arabia’s orbit, it also quickly adopted a policy of engaging pragmatically with a wider range of regional actors than was the custom among regional regimes – from Islamist movements to Israel and Iran – and at the same time transformed the Arab media landscape by launching the Aljazeera TV network and allowing a multiplicity of views to be aired. While this caused severe unease among many regional governments, in other ways Qatar crafted an image as a mediator, also offering itself as a location for parties to meet publicly or secretly to explore conflict management or resolution. Yet with the Arab Spring, the Qatari leadership shifted into a different gear, as indicated above, and became a proactive supporter of various groups engaged in protests against what they saw as ‘ancien regimes’ that had failed to deliver in any respect of governance. While they by no means solely supported Islamist movements, the latter became especially prominent after the fall of Mubarak in Egypt – when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was elected - and as part of the anti-Assad resistance in Syria, as well as in Tunisia and Libya. While this could be seen as a reasonable bet, the regional political landscape eventually shifted against Qatar’s stance: the military coup in Egypt, on the back of popular disillusion with the Morsi government; the fact that several of the individuals and groups that had received Qatari support in the end proved problematic or beyond real influence; and the concerted counter-revolutionary campaigns of Saudi Arabia and the UAE – all this meant that Qatar was left without many of the results in the field that had been aimed for, while at the same time suffering a degree of reputational damage internationally, some of it purposely fanned by PR campaigns from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. This did lead to a gradual recalibration of policy in Doha in a more cautious direction, especially from 2013 (even if it still remained insufficient to avoid the withdrawal of the Saudi, UAE and Bahraini ambassadors that year, or indeed the 2017 boycott).[4]

The adventurism and resultant failings were, however, at least as dramatic on the other side of the Gulf divide – something which must be linked to a significant extent to the emergence of Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) as sole strongman in Saudi Arabia, in concert with Abu Dhabi’s Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ). Saudi adventurism under MbS included the ill-conceived Yemen war, intended as a brief affair to contain the Houthi movement, but quickly turning into a military quagmire and a reputational disaster; the effective kidnapping of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and forcing him to read a resignation letter from Riyadh – only to be countered by international (especially French) intervention; the Qatar boycott – swiftly exposed and internationally perceived as a vast and counter-productive overreaction to policy disagreements, as well as damaging the GCC perhaps beyond repair; and the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. To this can be added, on the part of the UAE, the much-publicized 7-month detention of British PhD student Matthew Hedges. In all cases, the common denominators were ill-informed and hasty decision-making by a very narrow group; failure to achieve presumed or declared aims; and significant costs both material and in reputation.
 

5. Effects on European policy

What, then, were the effects on European policy of these trends and events? Since the advent of the Trump era, in particular, and the effect this had for Middle East diplomacy, in tandem (and connected) with the shifting policies of Middle Eastern actors themselves, European states both individually and collectively have been scrambling for responses. The many uncertainties attached to the policy direction of the Trump administration, and specific concerns about its attachment to longstanding international agreements and even NATO, alongside the President’s seemingly fundamental dislike of the European project, made this both more needed and more difficult.

European actors have, certainly, been determined to find ways to achieve three sets of policy aims. The first has been to maintain their Middle East-centred interests vs what is seen as a US wrecking strategy. The second has been to do so collectively where possible, as this is viewed both as lending additional strength to their position, and as necessary to defend the EU’s coherence. The third aim has been to safeguard European interests on the different sides of the region’s major splits – in particular that between Iran and the GCC; and that between the two sides of the Qatar crisis.

Specific stances on particular issues have included a combination of EU-level and bilateral positions, with attempted coordination.

On Syria, European states were initially broadly in sync with the US, withdrawing recognition from the Asad regime. As it became clear that Russian and Iranian help was not going to be overcome by limited Western (alongside Gulf states’) support for a divided opposition, there was little European actors could do to counter the apparent lack of grip which even the US appeared to have on the situation. Yet the sudden announcement by President Trump in December 2018 that the US would withdraw its remaining 2000 troops from Syria came as a shock for European leaders – especially those directly involved in stabilisation efforts and diplomatic attempts to safeguard civilians in the remaining areas of conflict – as much as to the US military leadership itself. As of early 2019, the EU position remained that it would not become in reconstruction efforts until there was a credible political process, because they opposed the “creeping normalisation” of the Asad regime, such as the gradual re-establishment of diplomatic relations by a number of Arab states.[5]

On the Palestine conflict, European states and the EU as a collective continued to uphold their long-established policy of support for the two-state solution, diverging from the US in a much more rigorous pursuit of the non-recognition of Israeli settlements and insisting against Israeli protests on distinguishing between exports from Israel proper and from settlements in the Occupied Territories. It also maintained its humanitarian and development support for the territories. With the dramatic change in US policy on Palestine – including the cutting off of funds both to the Palestinians directly (such as the mid-year halting of funding to Palestinian students in early 2019) and indirectly by its withdrawal of funding for UNWRA in 2018 – the chasm between its and Europe’s stance widened. While European leaders and diplomats reiterated their principled position, privately decried the US turn on this as on other matters, and harboured increased fears that facts on the ground were destroying the chances of a two-state solution, they still clung to the hope both publicly and in private that it was not too late to reverse the trend and rescue that solution.[6]

The remainder of this article will look at some greater length at the cases of the JCPOA or Iran nuclear agreement; the Yemen crisis; the Qatar crisis; and the impact of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

5.1. Iran and the JCPOA

Whatever the policy differences with Iran, the concerns about the country’s support for regional players at odds with European aims and values, and the worries about suspected involvement of operations on European soil against Iranian opposition members, management of the relationship has been and remains important for European governments, both in terms of regional and wider security questions – especially with regard to the nuclear file - and because of actual and potential economic opportunities. Yet, while European states have this in common, attitudes have nevertheless varied significantly.

Since the Islamic revolution, European states have shown a pattern of swinging between sanctioning – or being sanctioned by – Iran, and engagement, with an underlying conviction that the latter was ultimately the preferred option.[7]

European states, individually and under the EU umbrella, were of one mind with the US administration under Obama, that there was both an opportunity and a need to address Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons ambitions as part of a wider attempt to engage – with the hope that at the least any risk of Iran’s acquisition of such weapons could be delayed by years and oversight dramatically strengthened, and that with this set aside, it might even be possible gradually to build confidence to address other issues of concern. The final agreement on the so-called JCPOA followed from this judgement and aim, and was an exceptional coming together of the US, the EU, China, and Russia – with the final blessing of the UN Security Council – on an issue of such importance and sensitivity. The Europeans were wholly invested in making the agreement work both because of their conviction that it demonstrably had achieved the first aim and still held out the possibility of the second, while at the same time opening the doors for re-engaging with Iran’s market: indeed, economic interaction was seen not only as beneficial for Europe in itself, but as a crucial part in sustaining the agreement and the pragmatic policy faction in Iran under President Rouhani.

Trump’s disavowal of the Agreement threatened the interests that all other signatories had in its survival. The transatlantic rift over the JCPOA & the Iran nuclear file is arguably the starkest illustration of the changed landscape in US foreign policy regarding the Middle East and more widely, as it exemplifies not only the US’s new “America-first” unilateralism, but also a willingness to try and force third parties to fall in line regardless of their own interests, of international treaties, or of any shared history as allies.

In turn, European governments both individually as under the EU umbrella, have embarked on a fledgling effort to secure their interests as well as the principle of their own sovereignty and the value of international treaties, by rhetorical and practical moves that clash head-on and publicly with US positions.

The US’s leverage over Europe in attempting to force it to align itself with US sanctions on Iran – reintroduced and further tightened upon the US exit from the JCPOA – stemmed from three sources: first, the size and importance of the US market for European companies; second, the dominance of the US dollar in international payments, and third, the fact that even the Belgium-based SWIFT international payments system is exposed to the US banking system.

In response, EU leaders led by France and Germany, decided to move towards an alternative payments system to carve out the possibility to circumvent this US grip on their options. While This was always unlikely to be effective soon enough to avert serious damage on Iranian economy and hence prospects for JCPOA. Moreover, European businesses, and Europe’s economic interests as a whole, cannot easily escape their broader exposure to the fact they are intertwined with the US market and the US’s political power to counterpunch. But, contrary to the expectations of many, the formal start to the process of registering a European “Special Purpose Vehicle” (SPV) to enable financial and commercial interaction with Iran in January 2019, was nevertheless a telling indicator of the determination to begin carving out a basis for autonomous options to circumvent US pressure when it is deemed essential – and more generally of a European unwillingness to accept US diktats in areas of vital European interests. The UK, Germany and France announced on 31 January the creation of INSTEX SAS (Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges), with the explicit expectation that other countries would join. At the time of writing, in February 2019, it remains up to Iran to create a similar institution of its own – something that is likely to face its own domestic hurdles – but the very fact of the instrument’s creation both sends an important signal and may prepare the ground for similar tools being created by Europe or elsewhere in future.[8] One intriguing question will be whether the EU will be able and willing to work with China and Russia in this respect, regardless of other disagreements: a question that is far from straightforward but that also signals that Europe’s own foreign policy behaviour might just end up mirroring Trump’s feared unreliability with respect to the NATO alliance.

Meanwhile, Iran – by the actions and pronouncements of more radical factions of the fractured Iranian decision-making system, continued to be its own worst enemy. Yet even in the face of diametrically opposed positions on other matters, and of measures to counter them, European policy makers appear determined to protect the JCPOA, based on a firm conviction that it is both effective in its narrow remit, and a ratified international agreement in which the only party in breach thus far has been the US.

Alongside the JCPOA developments came the Qatar boycott, the Yemen crisis and the Khashoggi murder, all intertwining in European perceptions and reactions. Below, a brief look at the latter two precedes a more detailed review of European policies on the Qatar crisis.
 

5.2. The Yemen crisis, Hariri, Khashoggi, and the Hedges case: a toxic PR mix for Saudi Arabia and the UAE

The Yemen crisis, in which a Saudi-led alliance has since 2015 been battling the Houthi rebels who have taken over much of northern Yemen, was Mohammed bin Salman’s first major foreign policy adventure, in a joint initiative with Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, officially at the request of Yemen’s president Hadi. Meant to produce a swift victory, it instead quickly and predictably became a quagmire, in the process creating the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and as well as a major image problem for Saudi Arabia in particular. Other than aiming to shore up the new Crown Prince’s credentials, it was also based on the unfounded view – or at least propaganda claim – that the Houthis are proxies for Iran, an overestimate of the Saudi military’s capabilities, and a misreading of Yemen’s politics. For the UAE it offered an opportunity to carve out influence and a presence on the other side of the peninsula as part of its broader regional aims – not least getting a foothold in Mahra and perhaps Socotra. The alliance, and more particularly the Saudi military, were supported by, in descending order of importance, US, British and French advice, refuelling, arms and equipment. For all three, the strategic and lucrative economic relationship with Saudi Arabia was a key part of the calculation for this support. Such support was also publicly defended by US and British politicians and officials as useful in ensuring influence on the precision of air strikes and limiting of civilian casualties.

Yet by 2018, consistent reports by human rights NGOs, UN bodies, and the Red Cross, about the high number of such casualties and even more importantly, the rapidly increasing rate of disease and risk of starvation as a result of the destruction of infrastructure and the economy, and the blockading of Yemeni ports, achieved such high profile coverage and generated such public and official concern throughout the West, that pressure built even within the US, British and French legislatures to halt support or at least arms supplies to the coalition, and even to sanction Saudi Arabia. Alongside the US, the British and French governments continued to deflect such pressure, although in British and French statements, concerns were increasingly expressed over the human rights impact, and efforts were intensified at finding a diplomatic solution – starting with attempts at bringing about a cease-fire in the crucial port city of Hodeida. The UK, France and Italy joined with fellow EU member states in supporting UN efforts towards this end. The official collective position of the EU remains one that prioritises the humanitarian point of view and lends all support to these UN efforts. Within those parameters, there remain deep differences between those supplying weapons and support to the coalition’s campaign, and those emphatically criticising it and cutting weapons supplies, but without clashing on this lowest common denominator.

Yet the impact of the crisis on Saudi Arabia’s image in European political circles and amongst the public was highly negative. Even though UK, France, Spain and Italy refused to halt arms supplies to the Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland all announced the suspension of such supplies – the latter also including the UAE in its ban. Norway had already suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia but in 2018 added the UAE to the ban. In all six, the sanction was stated to be linked to concerns with the coalition’s behaviour in Yemen – but in Germany’s and Denmark’s case, the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was also explicitly given as a reason – clearly the straw that broke the camel’s back. Belgium’s top court in 2018 also invalidated a number of earlier weapons export licences over human rights concerns about the Yemen campaign.[9] In October 2018, the EU Parliament, moreover, called on all member states to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, adding further to the pressure.[10]

All this came, in the perception of European policy makers and public alike, against the earlier background of MbS’s detention, in November 2017, of Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri in Riyadh, and the latter’s forced resignation (later rescinded). The extraordinary and brazen nature of this intervention by the Saudi Crown Prince was greeted with public concern and private dismay and derision among European diplomats and political leaders, confirming the impression that he was indeed quite as impetuous, ill-advised and risk-prone as had long been rumoured and as the Yemen intervention had suggested. On this occasion, it was French President Macron, whose country had long had especially close relations with Lebanon, who was able to engineer a solution by inviting Hariri to Paris, after first having made an emergency trip to Riyadh and enabled his family to travel to France and receiving them at the Elysee palace. Both Macron and a number of other European leaders, as well as the US Secretary of State Tillerson, had preceded this with private discussions with the Saudi leadership, pressing them to desist.[11]

Yet it is clear that it was the Khashoggi murder on 2 October 2018, that brought public and official sentiment against Saudi Arabia to an unprecedented high, and indeed drew renewed and deeper attention to the horrors of the Yemen crisis and the Saudi and UAE role in it.

The speech on Khashoggi’s killing, given to the European parliament on 23 October 2018 by EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Affairs Mogherini, sums up the feelings of the European political establishment on the matter as well as setting out the agreed common policy position: insisting on a transparent, credible investigation; noting that the Saudi answers given thus far were (and at the time of writing in February 2019 remain) unsatisfactory, and that the EU would persist in following the matter. But it also explicitly praises Khashoggi as a valuable voice in discussions on regional politics – indeed noting that EU diplomats had engaged with him directly several times in such discussions.[12] Indeed, just as many in the media, academia and the think tank world had known the murdered journalist personally and felt accordingly aggrieved, so, too, did many European diplomats, including in the EEAS, know him personally and had engaged with him over several years.[13] The EU’s position remains that they insist on a proper investigation, and proper accounting for the murder. As a result, even among those political leaders or official in Europe desirous of maintaining economic and intelligence exchange links with Riyadh, it is hard to find anyone for whom MbS isn’t now severely ‘damaged goods’, or who believes MbS doesn’t carry responsibility.

This is merely the culmination and confirmation of the worst fears many had for some time about the Crown Prince’s unpredictability and destabilising potential – but it is now translating into politically significant weight, not least because the view has spread among intel agencies, politicians, the media and the wider public.

While the UAE had long escaped similar scrutiny and reputational damage, 2018 and early 2019 brought a number of media revelations that began to change this equation. They concerned extensive UAE lobbying activity; cyber- attacks and secret surveillance of dissidents and foreigners both in and outside the UAE. The 7-month arrest for clearly unfounded “spying” charges of British PhD student Matthew Hedges in 2018, which again drew huge international media attention, was a PR-nadir for the UAE. None of these matters cancelled out the economic attraction for European states of maintaining good relations with Abu Dhabi; indeed for some, such as the UK and France, military and intelligence cooperation also remained important. Nor is the UAE leadership viewed in quite the same way as MbS and his court. Nevertheless, many European officials have come to harbour some similar worries about the direction of travel under UAE strongman Mohammed bin Zayed, in terms of the development of the UAE into a hyper-security state and its limited decision-making circle, potentially leading to ill-advised and counter-productive decisions: illustrations, in the view of many such observers, would include the Yemen war, the ‘paranoia’ about the Muslim Brotherhood and its labelling as a “terrorist” organisation, and, indeed, a wholly unnecessary and counterproductive own-goal such as the Hedges case. The Qatar boycott is viewed by most European diplomats and officials concerned with the region as one striking example of this concerning trend. It is, moreover, seen not only as an instance of destabilising unpredictability, but as unnecessarily damaging for the UAE’s own brand and economy, just as the Saudi Crown Prince’s domestic and regional impulsiveness and risk-taking is viewed as a threat to the success of his own urgently needed economic reform programme.[14]

5.3. The Qatar crisis

On the Qatar crisis, a transatlantic rift was in evidence for only a short period after the Qatar boycott was imposed. The expression of this rift was another striking illustration of the changed policy-making environment in Washington, given the US President’s extraordinary ignorance about his country’s key military asset in the region, in the form of Qatar’s Al-Udhaid base – an ignorance which, together with a vulnerability to the skilful diplomacy of flattery employed by Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, helps explain his original tilt towards the Quartet. When this information gap was plugged by the Secretaries of Defence and State, the US position became more coherent, and largely in line with European attitudes: both now combined, for the most part, a studied neutrality with an insistence that the conflict should be de-escalated and resolved: in effect, therefore, countering the Quartet’s diplomatic and propaganda attacks on Qatar, while at the same time preserving relations with the Quartet countries.

In Europe, the EU’s collective position as well as that of individual countries was based on a mix of security and economic interests. Concern with stability in the Gulf was combined with concern for the stable supply of energy, and the importance of two-way trade and investment between the GCC states and Europe. But this also meant that, even while fulsome demonstrations of friendship and collaboration with Qatar were publicly given, and de-escalation and lifting of the boycott counselled, the majority of European actors remained careful not to damage relations with the Quartet. Generally, they expressed support for the Kuwaiti mediation efforts, as part of this balancing effort. However, there were interesting differences between individual countries. France seemed keenest to portray itself as a mediator (always alongside or in the service of Kuwaiti efforts). The UK was relatively absent due to its preoccupation with Brexit. And Germany became the most vocal in criticizing the boycott, but also Saudi Arabia more generally.

The growing difficulty for the Saudi and Emirati position in this regard was also the result of growing criticism of their war in Yemen, and the unprecedented detention in Riyadh of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hariri. Added into this mix was the increasingly harsh political clamp-down in Saudi Arabia, with the notorious detention of senior princes and businessmen in the Ritz hotel without any due process, and a large number of activists well known in the West being arrested.

The Khashoggi murder proved the crowning moment in this respect: it destroyed virtually all of the goodwill that the previous year’s PR efforts by MbS and others had built up, and put the earlier criticisms in a new spotlight both among the public and among politicians, on both sides of the Atlantic.

However, while it weakened Saudi Arabia’s (and to an extent the UAE’s) diplomatic clout very considerably, the extent to which it threatened US and European economic interests in these states remained limited. It also failed to diminish US alignment with Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi over the need to contain Iran – and hence also failed to close the transatlantic rift in this regard.

5.3.1. The EU

The collective EU position, expressed in formal statements and positions adopted and usually put forward by the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy – and labelled “constructive neutrality” by one senior EU diplomat – has stressed the importance of mediation, evinced support for the Kuwaiti role in that respect, and repeatedly featured demonstrations of warmth towards Qatari leading figures, including during the March 2018 visit of Qatar’s Amir to Brussels – without adopting explicitly pro-Qatari or anti-Quartet positions.[15]

The interests at stake for the EU in crafting responses to the crisis include regional stability; trade (in 2017, the EU was the GCC’s largest trade partner, accounting for $163 bn, while the GCC was the EU’s 4th largest export market);[16] secure energy supplies; and – especially since the 2008 financial crisis – financial injections from the Gulf Sovereign Wealth funds into European economies. These interests link the EU to both sides of the Qatar dispute: for instance, Saudi Arabia represents about four times as large a share as Qatar in the EU’s exports. On the other hand, Qatari gas has become increasingly important for Europe, and is already the EU’s largest LNG supplier.[1] In light of concerns over dependence on Russia, this importance can only grow.[18]

The difficulty of balancing these interests in positions taken towards the conflict is not the only part of the picture. On the one hand, the EU and its member states derive some measure of potential leverage from being the GCC’s most important economic partner. European goodwill is also a diplomatic resource regional states have not generally dismissed, given its importance in their broader long-term pattern of valuing complementary relationships alongside their security dependence on the United States. That helps explain why, for instance, after Abu Dhabi and Riyadh initially tried to persuade key European capitals to side with them against Qatar following the imposition of the boycott, by suggesting business with the Quartet states could be made conditional on halting business with Qatar, they eventually acquiesced in European governments’ determination not to accept such demands.

However, the proven capacity of the Gulf states to maintain a measure of autonomy from their main protector also was clearly in evidence in the Qatar crisis: blandishments by senior US figures to settle or at least de-escalate the dispute were left without response, and Mohammed bin Zayed even in effect refused an invitation to come to the White House as part of a belated attempt by the US president to contain the conflict. European leverage on these states is inevitably even less.

There are two other problems that militate against an effective concerted European approach. The first is that the GCC is not an “area of common policy” for the EU, beyond the 1988 EC-GCC cooperation agreement. The many years of negotiation over a Free Trade Agreement have come to nothing. In sum, and in part because of different types and levels of interest in the Gulf within Europe, recognition of GCC’s importance has not been translated into a common policy towards it.

Secondly, from the GCC states’ point of view, even though the EU is important economically and diplomatically for each GCC state, it is not, collectively, very important for the GCC’s ‘hard’ security. It is true that especially UK and French arms and cooperation are important components of GCC states’ armoury – often more for signalling purposes as part of the ‘complementary relationships strategy. But this creates a two-way street, given these defence industries’ own interests in Gulf markets; it also does not translate into anything like a broader EU-wide interest or leverage.

Yet there have nevertheless been factors that, without risking a breach in relations with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, brought EU states together in shared concern about these states and their policies. Among European diplomats, intelligence officers and policymakers concerned with the Gulf, concerns had gradually built up about Mohammed bin Salman’s penchant for action with little forethought, and without the benefit of broad consultation – indeed, concern over the very change in the Saudi decision-making system, which eliminated the plurality of voices – such as the previous Crown Prince and Minister of Interior, Mohammed bin Nayef, that could have brought perspective and experience.[19] Secondly, there had long been an awareness among similar circles, of the “securitised” lenses through which Abu Dhabi’s strongman, Mohammed bin Zayed, tended to see all developments domestic or regional, as well as of his tendency to reject views that conflicted with his own, including on his increased conviction that any ideas or organisation associated with the Muslim Brotherhood constituted an unacceptable threat – a view which few shared.

The coming together of these two single-minded policymakers, as decision-making in foreign and security policy became increasingly centralised in the hands of these two men, and the effects in undesirable adventures such as the Yemen War, the detention of Lebanese president Hariri, the Qatar boycott, or the heavy-handed crack-down on any sign of dissent, all gave pause to those in European governments who followed regional affairs. Together, and added to their own familiarity with the realities of Qatari politics and policies, this meant that EU states were unreceptive to the Quartet’s accusations against Doha; viewed the Qatar boycott as unjustified and indeed damaging; and that relations with Qatar were further strengthened – even if not at the immediate expense of relations with the Quartet.

The High Representative for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy repeatedly called for the conflict to be resolved through negotiation, supporting Kuwaiti mediation and urging de-escalation. Repeated high-level meetings accompanied these attempts but simultaneously offered a public show of warmth and collaboration.[20] Indeed, Mogherini met with Qatar’s Amir, Sheikh Tamim, on 7 March 2018 to sign a new EU-Qatar Cooperation Agreement, further cementing relations, alongside discussions on counterterrorism collaboration[21] - a development in turn followed up by subsequent meetings, including with Qatar’s Foreign Minister.[22] And in February 2019, the Director of the EU’s Transport Directorate stated, during an international aviation meeting in Doha: “The blockade of Qatar was unthinkable to us. We cannot tolerate countries using civil aviation for political movements [sic] like that.”[23] The prevalent private view among European officials is clearly that, as one senior EU diplomat put it, “Qatar has won the PR battle hands-down, and continues to win.”[24]

5.3.2. Individual EU member states: Germany, France and the UK

Just as with the JCPOA, the key EU states also with respect to the Qatar crisis have been Germany, France and the UK.[25] Germany, among EU states, came to adopt the strongest pro-Qatar (and anti-Trump) position, growing increasingly critical of Saudi Arabia & the Qatar boycott. Foreign Minister Gabriel called for lifting the blockade shortly after it was imposed, pointing to Donald Trump as an ingredient in the Crisis, and labelling the Quartet’s 13 demands “very provocative”.[24] In part this was inspired by the strong concerns over the Yemen war. Germany remains a major trading partner for Saudi Arabia, but the latter imposed some constraints in retaliation, in 2018. As of late 2018, there were attempts on both sides to protect mutual interest in economic relations (after all, Germany is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner in the EU), but this remains potentially subject to further diplomatic and economic disruption. At the same time, there are growing economic interests also linking Germany and Qatar. But the fundamental driver of Germany’s fairly pronounced pro-Qatari position in the dispute – even while it maintains strong relations with the Quartet states – appears to have been a genuine concern about the direction of policy in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

France, while also consistently calling for an end to the boycott, rejecting Quartet demands to side against Qatar, and simultaneously maintaining strong economic and military links with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has attempted to pursue a more pronounced mediation role – initially involving extensive personal involvement by President Macron in phone diplomacy and otherwise, followed by the appointment of a special envoy for the conflict. France’s interests are significant on both sides of the Gulf crisis: Qatar and its ruling family have long had a special relationship with France, privileging French arms suppliers over others, as part of their hedging strategy, and with some officers having trained at the military school at St Cyr. French arms sales to both Saudi Arabia and Qatar in recent years have run into the tens of billions of dollars each. France also established a naval base in Abu Dhabi in 2009. Civilian commercial relations, too, are strong with both – clearly one reason why France, even while trying to achieve de-escalation and a lifting of the blockade, remains unwilling to choose sides in other ways.[27] Yet France under President Macron has also been firm in rejecting the Saudi and UAE line on ran and the JCPOA, indeed acting as one of the strongest defenders of the agreement. Similarly, it was also Macron who intervened to bring about the end of MbS’s de facto ‘hijacking’ of the Lebanese President Hariri, inviting the latter to France.

The UK, with the longest record of relations with the Gulf states, and very extensive military and civilian trade links, has paradoxically been the least visible in European states’ responses to the Qatar crisis. To an extent this reflects the UK’s relative decline as a world power, but in addition, the UK government has been consumed with the Brexit process ever since the referendum in 2016. This has been palpable also in the civil service – especially the Foreign & Commonwealth Office – as well as among political leaders. Relatively little time and energy appears to have been left for other matters – something that has been remarked in the Gulf, too. One exception has been the strategically important JCPOA, where the UK did, as discussed, adopted a forceful stance. In the case of the Qatar crisis, both publicly and otherwise, UK politicians, diplomats and senior officials did call for urgent de-escalation and a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and noted that a united GCC was seen as too valuable to lose, but beyond that have been rather hands-off. Strong relations with Qatar have continued to be highlighted, and in July 2017, the British Foreign Secretary commended Qatar’s “commitment to fighting terrorism in all its manifestations”[28] – thus in effect countering the Quartet’s central accusations. Yet after an early attempt to coordinate with US Secretary of State Tillerson’s fruitless efforts at mediation, little further diplomatic activity has been in evidence.

Britain’s extensive economic interests on both sides of this conflict form one part of the explanation, too. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia and the UAE represent a very significant market for the UK, both for arms and continued maintenance and training, and for civil exports; Brexit and the UK’s hope to conclude new trade agreements outside Europe has only reinforced that importance. Hence British efforts in 2019 to secure opportunities in the UAE[29] and to counter the EU Commission’s inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a list of countries posing money-laundering and terrorism financing threats.[30] By contrast, Qatar, while significant, is much smaller in those terms. On the other hand, the UK is now dependent on Qatar for one third of its gas imports, and Qatari investment in the UK economy by 2017 stood at over $40 billion.

In military terms, the UK is clearly invested in a greater presence in the region – if not in terms of diplomatic activity during the Brexit malaise, then certainly in terms of building its footprint in local bases: a long-established presence in Oman is being expanded with a base in Duqm; a new base in Kuwait is being contemplated; and in addition to the long tradition of military engagement with the UAE’s military and security forces, Britain also has an air base there.[31] Aside from Brexit-paralysis, therefore, it seems inevitable that the UK will remain neutral – beyond sticking with its calls for crisis to be resolved through mediation and the boycott to be lifted. Indeed, while British diplomats in the region have no doubt about that desire, they equally have received clear signals not to let that aim cross those of the hefty commercial and security interests to be served in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain.

In all of this, however, the Saudi leadership especially may have made its own task – and that of its allies – much more difficult by indulging in the very public atrocity that was Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.