The World Cup means Qatar’s global influence will only get stronger

After 12 long years of arguments, the Qatar World Cup is finally upon us.

On Sunday, the football begins – but for those who think they just have to get through the next month and never again hear about Qatar, think again. The Gulf state is only just getting warmed up.

Since being awarded the World Cup in 2010, Doha has vigorously extended its policy of national security through securing ever-deepening relationships with various countries, which has proved enormously successful. Trade, diplomacy, peace talks, economic influence, military agreements as well as sport have all served to give the tiny state an outsized role in global affairs, while at the same time securing its own fragile sovereignty.

Qatar has a US army base on its soil, maintains a good relationship with Iran and China, tolerates Russia and has supported Ukraine in the United Nations. It has a strong bond with Turkey, was the site for peace talks between the US and the Taliban, is one of the few nations that can talk to the new rulers in Kabul, sends money to Gaza, has ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, yet, at the same time, has been designated a “major non-Nato ally” by the US.

It has good relations with India and Pakistan, and all the while the noise has grown over its human rights record ahead of the World Cup, Doha has been able to deepen ties with Western countries such as the UK, Germany and France.

It owns a bit of Camden Market, Paris Saint-Germain football club and the Plaza Hotel in New York where Donald Trump met Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2. It owns Miramax, is the official airline of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and a Volkswagen shareholder.

The ties it has helped foster were never more strongly tested than in 2017 when Qatar was under the very real threat of invasion from near neighbours, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – in part, it was claimed, because of its foreign policy independence and because it was going to host the World Cup. Those ties helped ensure the dispute remained a diplomatic and trade one, not a military one.

And they will deepen after the World Cup because Qatar owes its unimaginable wealth to gas, which is about the most important currency in the world right now.

All those stadiums and facilities you will see over the next few weeks won’t go to waste. Qatar wants to host a summer Olympics, possibly in 2036. And what Qatar wants, it usually gets.

Yours,

David Harding

International editor