US supports Kuwait emir’s role in mediating Qatar crisis

The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, will be the first Gulf state monarch to meet Donald Trump at the White House. Their meeting on Thursday will focus on the US-Kuwait relationship, but also on efforts to resolve the crisis that erupted on June 5 when Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE severed diplomatic relations with Qatar. 
The dispute, the most significant of its kind since the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981, is not only about dueling narratives relating to Qatar’s foreign policy, but also about the role of political Islam and regional rivalry for prestige and influence.
For Saudi Arabia and its partners, the crisis is also about Qatar’s failure to live up to the 2014 Riyadh agreement. This narrative alleges that Doha has through its foreign policy contributed to exacerbating regional instability, especially during the post-Arab Spring environment, by supporting regional Islamist groups. 
From a Qatari perspective, the crisis was never about terrorism financing allegations but about its independent foreign policy. Doha also feared that the initial 13 demands presented by the Anti-Terror Quartet were not a negotiation gambit but an imposition meant to curtail its sovereignty. Qatar has maintained that it is open to negotiations but the parties remain deadlocked over how to proceed. 
How can these two narratives be reconciled?
Given that the GCC as a bloc is a US strategic partner, Washington has not only sought to support Kuwaiti mediation efforts to help resolve the crisis but also developed its own sets of principles that all parties can agree to. These were presented by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to the disputing parties during his visit to the region in June 
They include a roadmap to settle the dispute, with steps each side could take and an “aggressive” time-line. Tillerson also presented a paper on principles that unite the GCC, which include non-interference, protection of sovereignty, and state-funded media not attacking other countries.
Given that the parties to the conflict are key US allies — who each play critical roles in supporting Washington’s regional agenda, which centers on implementing President Trump’s Riyadh address, and in its strategic objective to defeat Daesh and contain Iran — the State Department is tracking unintended consequences and has developed “red lines.” These include assessing whether the GCC crisis is affecting operations by the US-led coalition against Daesh, and assessing impacts on the open and receptive environment in the GCC for US commercial engagement.

A meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday may offer clues to the next stage in the diplomatic process.

Sigurd Neubauer

From a Kuwaiti perspective, Iran is the only entity to benefit from the GCC crisis; Kuwait also believes that the region cannot afford more instability, which is why its emir is spearheading mediation efforts to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible.
“The emir’s visit is a positive development in order to move forward with solving the GCC crisis, and it also signals continued US support from the highest office for Kuwait’s mediation efforts,” said Hamad Al-Thunayyan, a Kuwaiti national and a graduate student at the University of Maryland. “Kuwait is determined to help resolve the crisis to preserve the GCC structure, which is essential to US regional interests,” he said. 
While it is premature to assess whether the emir’s visit to Washington will be a game changer in resolving the crisis, observers in Washington, across the GCC and beyond will inevitably scrutinize a White House statement after the meeting for clues to what the next steps in the diplomatic process will be.
From a US perspective, the GCC is not only a strategic partner, but as a bloc it has significant potential when it comes to strengthening both economic and security cooperation. Together, the six nations can also strengthen counter-terrorism cooperation and help to raise funds for the strategic effort to stabilize Iraq in the post-Daesh environment. This would also be consistent with Saudi Arabia’s landmark decision to improve relations with Iraq and its various Shiite groups, including Moqtada Al-Sadr, who last month made historic visits to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
Despite the opportunity for a GCC-reset after Sheikh Sabah’s talks with Trump, it is important to remember that it took nine months to resolve the 2014 GCC crisis, and given the severity of this one — as illustrated by the diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar — it is unclear if it will be any shorter. 
Regardless, Kuwait will have another opportunity to resolve the crisis when it hosts the GCC summit in December. It will also be taking over the GCC Secretariat and will be uniquely positioned to use either of the two mechanisms to solve the crisis, if it has not been resolved before that.
Another variable to help accelerate the reconciliation process could be the UK-GCC summit in Bahrain in November. 
Depending on the outcome of the Trump-Sabah meeting, it can be argued that the Kuwaiti emir’s principal contribution so far has been to prevent the crisis from deteriorating. With US support, the emir is well positioned to help devise a strategy in which all parties can agree to move forward with the GCC reconciliation process. 
• Sigurd Neubauer is a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, where he specializes in US policy on the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf region