The Strange Power of Qatar
Keep an eye out on Qatar:
In the end, Sheikh Hamad’s particular genius, it seems, has been to promote Qatar as one of the most sophisticated and open societies in the Arab Gulf, all the while being careful to keep its own closed political and social system—and its status in the Islamic world and among the traditional Gulf monarchies—largely intact. Indeed, for all its activist foreign policy, Qatar’s concerns, like those of other Gulf nations, are essentially parochial: military security, food security, social stability, and an economic system that can be sustained, in a hostile climate, over the very long term—even beyond the era of gas and oil.