The stand-off that began in June 2017 between Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, supported by Egypt, on the one hand, and Qatar, on the other, developed into the most serious rupture in Gulf politics since Kuwait was invaded and occupied by Iraqi forces in 1990. While the ‘Qatar crisis’ did not escalate into military conflict, as some, including the emir of Kuwait, initially feared, and ultimately was resolved at a ‘reconciliation’ summit that took place at the Saudi heritage site of Al-Ula in January 2021, its impact reverberated across the political, economic, institutional and social fabric of Gulf societies. The rancour and mutual recrimination that became a fixture of the crisis inflicted just as much damage on ties of trust and the formerly close-knit extended familial links that extend across borders as the more tangible political and economic measures imposed on Qatar in 2017 by the ‘Anti-Terror Quartet’. The blockade of Qatar also hit heavily on raw nerves and points of weakness within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that left the six-member organisation struggling to regain its relevance amid the rise of a more assertive set of leaders focused more heavily on national rather than regional priorities.

This chapter examines the range of implications – immediate and longer term, tangible as well as intangible – for the conduct of regional politics among the Arab Gulf states. It begins from the assumption that while the ‘rise’ of the Gulf states as a regional centre of gravity began in the 2000s and therefore predated the Arab Spring, it was the shock of the 2011 uprisings that heralded the transition of three GCC countries – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – into assertive and even interventionist regional actors. The impact of this shift in regional posture was magnified significantly by the rivalry that developed in and after 2011 as the perceived Qatari willingness to embrace political transitions that included Islamist groups in North Africa (and Syria) spurred the UAE, led by Abu Dhabi and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia to back counter-groups.

There are five sections to this chapter. It begins by charting how the Gulf states became prominent in regional and international affairs during the decade preceding the Arab Spring, through a combination of the assumption of positions of leadership by a more assertive newer generation of decision-makers in Qatar and the UAE as well as the sustained boom in oil prices and government revenues after 2003.