President Donald Trump‘s executive order providing Qatar with a de facto U.S. security guarantee is absurd when assessed against U.S. interests. Qatar is a U.S. ally, but only a nominal one. It circulates tens of billions of dollars a year to malevolent Sunni-Salafist political organizations. It allows too many Qatari citizens to fund terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. It also hosts terrorists from Hamas and other groups.
Trump’s order, issued this week, declares that “The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States… In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”
Qatar has not earned this special privilege. Not by a long shot.
Although not a treaty of the kind that formally situates America’s defensive alliances with NATO, Australia, Japan, and South Korea, for example, this executive order is a de facto grant of American protection for Qatar. It will encourage Qatar to behave in ways that are sometimes antithetical to U.S. and allied interests (most notably, Israeli interests) in the belief that doing so will result in no serious countermeasures. Qatar’s comfortable relationship with Iran already underlines how it is willing to act against U.S. interests.
True defensive alliances must be centered on shared values and foreign policy agendas. Most allies offer that centering foundation. Qatar’s support for Salafi extremism means it does not.
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Yes, the U.S. has an interest in retaining its Al-Udeid military base in Qatar, which serves as the headquarters for U.S. military forces in the Middle East. Yes, Qatar sometimes provides important cooperation in terms of intelligence sharing. And of course, the U.S. wants to see the Sunni Arab kingdom continue to invest vast amounts of money in the U.S. economy. Yet, a U.S. security guarantee is a massive unearned prize for Qatar, which is nowhere near as good a U.S. ally as Jordan or Saudi Arabia.
Still, Trump acting this way is entirely predictable. Israel’s recent attack on a Hamas compound in Qatar was deeply foolish. That attack, ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, missed its key targets while killing a Qatari security official. Giving the U.S. the barest notice before attacking, Israel deliberately complicated the Trump administration’s ability to demand it hold back. Netanyahu thus both publicly embarrassed Trump and undermined one of his prized relationships without the strikes actually succeeding. Netanyahu should have known Trump would prioritize Qatar’s retained American friendship following this incident.
It’s the economy, stupid.
During his visit to Qatar in May, the kingdom announced $243 billion in new investments with U.S. companies. This vast financial power earns Qatar significant interest with Trump, whose foreign policy is shaped heavily through the prism of business transactions. Indeed, the ability of the Sunni Arab monarchies both to fete Trump with royal treatment and simultaneously offer vast investments underlines why Trump so treasures these relationships. They allow him to feel like the ultimate statesman and the ultimate businessman all at once. This influence also fuels Trump’s desire to end the Israeli conflict with Hamas in Gaza, for example, a key priority for America’s Arab allies.
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Netanyahu has now left Israel in a position where even covert action against Qatar or the terrorists it hosts might lead to outsize U.S. retaliation against Israeli interests. This is a very bad position to be in. You can bet that the worst elements in Qatar will bank on taking advantage of this concern by escalating their anti-Israeli efforts — a notion Trump should publicly disabuse them of.
That said, the real tragedy here is that Trump has again proved his disdain for shared values and loyalty as the key elements of any alliance. He rewards Denmark, a great ally that has lost an outsize number of its sons and daughters fighting with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, by threatening to steal its sovereign territory. At the same time, Qatar’s golden purse has earned not just Trump’s tolerance for its support of terrorist daggers, but his implicit defense of them.