It Was the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt who said “A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships”, indeed this statement was valid during the WWII era, acknowledging the fact that books were probably the most prominent tools in the war of ideas at those times.
Nowadays, however, the war of ideas is taking an entirely new shape, since propaganda and publicity tools and pursuits witnessed rapid developments, it is these developments that shifted the war of ideas towards a more sophisticated atmosphere.
In fact, the war of ideas significance reached the point where it matches or even exceeds the weight of the traditional warfare, markedly with the rise of the “Soft Power” concept as a vital determinant of the international spheres of influence.
The American political scientist Joseph Nye described “Soft power” as a concept: « The ability to shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction, rather than by coercion (hard power), using force or giving money as a means of persuasion »i.
Moving to the Middle East, an observation of the recent Gulf crises indicates that « war of ideas » took a major place in the conflict. Indeed, the conflicting parties went way far beyond Roosevelt’s tools, showing a strange level of confrontation through which they choose to bend the rules of the game, this untraditional confrontation included the facilitation of Cyber attacks, leaks, scandals, propaganda activities, religious institutions, scholars, and lobbying groups.
The 13-Points List of Demands:
The most relevant episode of this crisis happened when Kuwait the neutral mediator handed Qatar a list of 13-demands to be compliance with, as a prerequisite for the restoring diplomatic ties and ending the major Gulf crises.ii
However, the nature of these demands represented further evidence that the « War of Ideas » is one of the core dimensions of the conflict, as the demands expressed real concerns and even fears of the boycotting countries (especially Saudi Arabia and UAE), both countries are seeing a real threat to their national security in Qatar’s soft power, especially when considering the totalitarian nature of their regimes.
In response to what they saw as a Qatari threat, the boycotting countries formulated their demands in such a way as to ensure the ultimate elimination of
the Qatari influence, thus they did not only intervene in Qatari internal sovereignty (shutting down the Al Jazeera network, and closing the Turkish military base) but went further to involve in Qatar’s foreign relations and affairs (scaling down ties with Iran and sever all alleged ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and with other groups).
A senior fellow at TIMEP Mr Hassan Hassan wrote in the FP that the list of demands “did not leave any space for Qatar to save face”, arguing that Qatar compliance with these demands is impossible because it means abandoning the twenty years efforts of building its unique model of soft poweriii.
In the light of all the above, it can be predicted that Qatar will not accept these demands, but rather will use its soft power to evade this impasse.
The Importance of Qatar’s soft power:
Undoubtedly, choosing soft power did not come to Qatari’s minds by coincidence. It is most likely that Qatar’s desire to increase its influence has been met by many strategic obstacles, regarding its small size and geographical position at the heart of the conflict between two of the largest regional players, namely Saudi Arabia and Iran. Accordingly, choosing soft power was an excellent solution to this geostrategic dilemma.
Thus this 13-points list of demands appears to be a frank attempt to remove the Qatari strategic advantage as a start, in order to isolate it from its non-Arab environment to place it in a weaker position.
Therefore the boycotting countries decided to put more pressure on Qatar using diversified methods ranged from soft power to economic power, accepting that taking any military action against Qatar is relatively hard for several reasons.
Bending The Rules:
Following several unsuccessful attempts to counterbalancing Qatar’s soft power, the boycotting countries found themselves running out of options, and they decided that a deep, large-scale attack could be the ideal solution for neutralizing Qatar’s soft power.
As a matter of fact, Qatar has been able to win the support of Arabian public opinion at an early stage during the period between the late 90’s and the early 2000’s, taking advantage of Al-Jazeera network to « win the hearts and minds of Arabs » according to the strategic communication expert in the British army Steve Tathamiv.
Additionally, Qatar did not stop at that point but worked further to support its media superiority and strengthen its position through developing a trustworthy « New Age Media » outlets (Such as blogs, and similar news websites) to secure its dominant media influence in the Arab world.
Moreover, Qatar has not only built a strong media influence But also went further to invest in thinkers, researchers and analysts with specific orientations, to support its distinguished ideological orientation (supporting public movements starting with the Palestinian Intifada and ending up with the uprisings of the so-called Arab Spring).
Surprisingly, Saudi Arabia’s attempts to outperform Qatar have been unsuccessful; similarly, the UAE has not been able to take advantage of its excellence in commercial marketing and public relations.
In fact, UAE had a good opportunity to make a quantum leap from commercial marketing to strategic communication, they could copy the paradigm of the United States who was the pioneer to make a similar shift (using commercialization for military and political purposes).
Hence, the two countries lack of ability to equate this Qatari supremacy, led them to use more severe methods, this was translated with the first boycott which came in (2014), but it had not happily accepted by Obama’s administration, therefore the project was postponed until the opportunity came with tramp’s visit, and at that point the policy of « bending the rules » appeared to be the ideal decision to ensure that damage come quickly and effectively on Qatar.
The obvious evidence that confirms the earlier intentions for boycotting is the way in which the conflict began.
The fuse that ignited the crisis was a (cyber attack) in which an anonymous body hacked the Qatari News Agency website and falsified statements by the Ruler of Qatar regarding Qatar’s attitude towards Iran. The statement was invested by the media of the boycotted countries at an unprecedented pace, despite the denial of the Qatari authorities for all those statements.
A few days later another cyber attack targeted the e-mail of United Arab Emirates Ambassador to Washington Yousef Al Otaiba. The attack exposed a series of leaks displaying another sort of attacks against Qatar that had already established months before the Gulf crisis, a collaboration between the ambassador and a pro-Israel think tank aiming to disseminate an anti-Qatar propaganda targeting U.S. publics and decision-makers.
It is important to realize that the significance of think tanks, and research centers comes from their role in propagating ideas, values, and narratives.
In fact, think tanks operate similarly to the media outlet, but with different segments of targeted audiences, it aims to influence researchers and consultants surrounding the decision makers.
Despite the facts that the think tanks working methodologies are ruled by strict professional standards and research norms, they might be able to modify,
reshape, and represent facts in a professional approach to serve the propaganda of the funding or allied establishments.
Here, it should be noted that the legitimacy of investment in research centers remains questionable, however, such an investment remains imperative because it increases the defensive-offensive capabilities in the war of ideas.
In the same context, investing in media has no less importance than investing in research centers because the scale of research centers remains limited compared to the traditional media and the new age media, which enables its sponsors to broadcast for a wide audience, additionally it supports the feature of transforming the written facts into audio or video formats, which aim to make these facts more influential.
In the end, it must be noted that the war of ideas that emerged in this crisis, is too deep and will not end up easily, even after taking the possibility of reaching a middle way compromise into consideration.
Because, although such a compromise might reduce the diplomatic tension between the conflicting parties, it will never be enough to bridge the deep Ideological gap that caused this war of ideas.
i Nye, J. S. (2004). Soft power: The means to success in world politics. New York: Public Affairs. ii Al-Jazeera English. (2017). Arab states issue list of demands to end Qatar crisis. Retrieved from http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/arab-states-issue-list-demands-qatar-crisis-170623022133024.html iii Hassan, H. (2017). There’s No Space for Qatar to Save Face. Foreign Policy. Retrieved from http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/29/theres-no-space-for-qatar-to-save-face/ iv Tatham, S. (2006). Losing Arab Hearts and minds. London: Hurst.
Written by: Tarek Albitar
A specialist in Middle Eastern and International affairs, currently pursuing his Ph.D. in International Relations at Kocaeli University in Turkey.