Aspiring to become a major global player, miniscule Qatar has a stack of work to do if it is to mollify the fears of its Arab and Middle Eastern neighbours at new plans to develop its armed forces. The pint-sized oil and gas rich Arab Gulf state has plenty of assets and cash at its disposal, having already metamorphosed into a disproportionately famous power because of the Doha-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera, launched in November 1996. Is Qatar pulling up the stakes politically speaking, distancing itself from its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) milieu? First it was Al-Jazeera, and then there was Qatar's funding of the Muslim Brotherhood and other militant Islamist movements such as Hamas in Gaza. Now it is aiming to increase its military capabilities. The head of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, was offered a safe haven in Qatar after his expulsion from Damascus by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and Qatar has carved out a stake as the key financial benefactor of Hamas in Gaza. As a result, Qatar's regional policy has done nothing to assuage Arab fears of Doha's widely perceived Machiavellian machinations. Today, Qatar's Arab and Middle Eastern neighbours are wondering why the country needs to acquire so many arms. Cars bearing the logos of the Islamic State (IS), formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, are a commonplace spectacle in the Qatari capital. The only official overseas mission of the Taliban is in Qatar. Yet, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron this week signed a security agreement with Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani to the chagrin of other GCC member states and key Arab countries, including Algeria and Egypt. In the face of the growing menace of militant Islamist terrorism in the region, Qatar may need to patch things up, particularly since many Arab states suspect that Doha is directly or indirectly funding some of the most militant Islamist movements. Qatar is intent on acquiring new high-tech military equipment from Britain and it signed contracts worth about $23 billion on Thursday to buy attack helicopters, guided missiles, tankers and other weapons. At the same time, it was not surprising that France's Defence Ministry announced recently that Qatar had agreed to buy 22 NH90 military helicopters from a unit of European aerospace group Airbus worth $2.76 billion. Qatar is home to one of the most important US military regional hubs, the Combined Air Operations Centre. The Pentagon approved the sale to Qatar of $9.9 billion worth of Patriot fire units, radar and various Raytheon and Lockheed missiles in November 2012. This week, the Pentagon approved the sale of Patriot missile batteries and Apache attack helicopters in an arms deal worth about $11 billion, the biggest US arms sale in 2014. Stockpiling arms has serious political implications for Qatar's Arab neighbours. Admittedly, several oil-rich Arab Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have also been stepping up their defence spending in recent years. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of acrimony has escalated to such an extent that according to the London-based daily Al-Hayat, the GCC is considering transferring the venue of the regional grouping's scheduled summit on 10 December in Doha, the Qatari capital, to another GCC city, perhaps Kuwait. Qatar, a nation of barely 500,000 the size of the US state of Maine, also wants 24 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and three Boeing 737 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft from the United States. Qatar is the world's most important liquified natural gas (LNG) exporter, its main competitor being Russia. It has also inadvertently been embroiled in the ruckus between Russia and the West over Ukraine, with Western sanctions over the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea and Moscow's presumed meddling in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern region catapulting Qatar into a tit-for-tat Russian roulette long shot with the West. Qatar may thus have been involved in outdated Cold War rhetoric in order to boost its LNG exports. Meanwhile, 85 per cent of LNG imports to Britain are sourced from Qatar, making the tiny Gulf state jubilant because Russian gas has now become the most expensive worldwide. Europe still buys around 30 per cent of its gas from Russia, and hence Qatar has everything to gain in seeking to undermine Russian LNG supplies. The Western deference to Qatar is reprehensible, if comprehensible, even if the shale gas revolution in the US has freed up American LNG destined for Europe. Nevertheless, transport costs across the Atlantic Ocean mean the price of American LNG is more expensive than Russian gas. Perhaps this is the key to Qatar's bids to move closer to the West. Qatar and Russia, still part of the Soviet Union at the time, established diplomatic relations in August 1988. Relations were strained when Qatar objected to the vetoing by Russia and China of a UN Security Council draft resolution in February 2012 concerning Syria. Qatar has also not yet followed in Saudi Arabia's footsteps and dangled a proposal of $15 billion in weapons contracts with Russia, something that the Kremlin has so far politely spurned.
