Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (10 page)

The transformation of the nature of power is taking place alongside with its diffusion. By nature soft power is diffuse and has an impact on the general goals of a country and is not focused and targeted in nature, and depends also on the receiver and interpreter.
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At the same time, this diffusion is being reinforced by the development of broader trends, including economic interdependence, transnational actors, nationalism in weak states, and changing political issues.
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The spread of information technology is making power even more diffuse. Through making information more accessible and affordable, revolutions in information technology are changing the nature of power and increasing its diffusion.
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Nye argues that in today’s world it is becoming increasingly less feasible to use military power because of the impracticality of nuclear weapons, rise of communications technology and nationalism, and the growing concern of postindustrial democracies with welfare rather than military glory.
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Nevertheless, despite the increasing costs of military conflict, and the dangers of nuclear escalation, military power is likely to continue to play an important role in international politics.
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The spread and importance of soft power does not mean a complete obsolescence of force and military power in international politics.

A few years after introducing the notion of soft power Nye introduced the concept of “smart power,” which he maintained is “the combination of the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of persuasion and attraction.”
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In simplest terms, smart power is the ability to combine soft and hard power resources into effective strategies.
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A smart power strategy provides answers to several key questions: What goals or outcomes are preferred? What resources are available and in which contexts? What are the positions and preferences of the targets of influence attempts? Which forms of power behavior are most likely to succeed? What is the probability of success?
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Small states, Nye maintains—especially Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, and Qatar—are often particularly adept at employing smart power strategies.
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One of most important elements in “the toolbox of smart power policies” is the effective employment of economic power in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent. Because it is based on tangible resources, economic power constitutes hard power “in its most direct manifestation” as it can be used to coerce or bribe nations into doing what they would not otherwise do.
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At the same time, economic power can also be used as soft power through foreign aid, charity, and investments that endear the donor to the recipients.
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More important, economic power can be used as leverage in what Nye calls “asymmetries of vulnerability.”
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In interdependent relationships, if one party is less dependent than the other one, it has power over the more dependent actor. “Manipulating the asymmetries of interdependence is an important dimension of economic power.” Economic power is produced through balance of asymmetries; it is highly contingent on the particular context of the market. States, therefore, try to capitalize on asymmetries of interdependence by manipulating economic interactions in areas where they are strong and avoiding those areas in which they are weak.
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Nye’s concept of smart power finds close parallels in what Giulio Gallarotti calls “cosmopolitan power.” According to Gallarotti, similar to smart power, cosmopolitan power involves the optimization of national influence through a combination of hard and soft power. Cosmopolitan power has three “signature processes”—soft empowerment (rising influence through increased use of soft power), hard disempowerment (avoiding the self-defeating pitfalls of overreliance on hard power), and combining soft and hard power. Anarchy continues to be a pervasive feature of the international system, Gallarotti writes, despite the fact that norms and cooperation can and do function as important instruments of national power. The optimization of both absolute and relative power is a legitimate exercise of statecraft, and nations do what they can to optimize their security. This power optimization and security can occur only through a combination of soft and hard power.
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Based on the survey just presented, several important threads about the study of power stand out. Given its polymorphous character, we need multiple conceptions of power and a conceptual framework that pays attention to power in its different forms.
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Whatever the type of power, the context for its use is quite important.
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What is becoming increasingly more important in the contemporary world is “contextual intelligence,” which may be defined as “the ability to understand an evolving environment that capitalizes on trends.”
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Due to changes in information technology and the entry of new, often nonconventional actors—such as Al Jazeera, Al Qaeda, and Wikileaks—international politics has become more complex, more volatile, and less contained within national boundaries.
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Power has become less coercive and also less tangible. Power resources are becoming less fungible, increasing the importance of context and the actual amount of power that can be derived from various power resources. A capacity for a timely response to new information is an important source of power, as is effective organization skills and flexibility.
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But do the different sources and manifestations of power so far analyzed adequately describe the conditions, position, and international profile of a country like Qatar? Any casual observer would be hard pressed to ascribe to the country the kinds of power that are described by realists as hard power, in terms of military prowess and population resources, or those alternatively described by more recent theorists as soft or smart power. Flush with inordinate wealth, it would be easy to think of Qatar as endowed with economic power, and that surely the country has. But there is more to Qatar’s international standing and its place and significance within the world community than simple economic power. Whatever economic power may be, Qatar’s global profile goes far beyond whatever wealth might accord it. At least insofar as Qatar is concerned—and perhaps for other comparable countries with similar sizes, resources, and global profiles, such as Switzerland and Singapore—a different conceptualization of power may be more apt. Along with a handful of other comparable countries, Qatar may be said to have acquired for itself subtle power.

Before examining the key components and the manifestations of subtle power, some of the overall features of power in general bear keeping in mind. First, following insights by Nye and others, power should not be viewed in terms of resources only. Although without resources the exercise of power would be difficult or altogether impossible, power should be seen in terms of the ability to affect outcomes and reach desired objectives. Resources are a necessary but in themselves insufficient component of power. Resources provide
the potential
, not
the manifestations
of power itself. What is important is how resources are marshaled and employed—in Nye’s terms “converted” or transformed
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—in a manner that facilitates reaching objectives.

Transforming resources into power involves more than institutional and structural dynamics; it also involves agency. State behavior is strongly conditioned and constrained by the international environment. As Keohane points out, the international behavior of states is the product of a confluence of several factors that are both internal and exogenous to the state. They include the international distribution of power, distribution of wealth, international regimes, and individual diplomatic initiatives.
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Equally important in the construction of state behavior, and in determining the nature and tenor of a state’s diplomatic initiatives, is the role of agency.
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Agency may manifest itself in a variety of ways, including self-esteem and notions of identity and self-perception.
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More specifically, Richard Ned Lebow points to reason, appetite, and what he calls “spirit” as the driving forces of state behavior, with honor and standing as important motivators.
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“With standing comes influence, which to some degree is fungible and can be used to enhance security or material well-being.”
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The international system, Lebow claims, is a site of contestation in which both state and nonstate actors claim standing on the basis of diverse criteria. “States invest considerable resources in publicizing and justifying their claims and in making efforts to impress others.”
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Another feature of power is that it may be as indirect and diffuse as it may be direct and targeted. Barnett and Duval distinguish between four different kinds of power—compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive—and argue that whereas compulsory and structural varieties of power often manifest themselves in the form of direct control, institutional and productive powers tend to be indirect and diffuse and are mediated through rules, procedures, and outcomes.
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The powers of agenda-setting, shaping preferences, and greatly influencing or altogether determining frameworks cannot be underemphasized.
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We should not think of power
over
others but rather power in terms of goals accomplished
with
others.
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The ability to get others to do what they would not do otherwise may come through compulsion and force, or bribes and sanctions. But it is just as likely to result from persuasion, commanding respect, manipulating circumstances, or pulling strings from behind the scenes.

Finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, it is worth remembering that different varieties of power often coexist side by side, and may, in fact, reinforce one another. The lines between compulsion and persuasion are often blurred by a multitude of complexities. A country’s vote on a particular issue at the United Nations, for example, may be a product of many complex calculations having to do with the vote’s repercussions for its diplomacy, military alliances, and investment potentials and portfolio.
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Countries are persuaded to bandwagon—enter into alliances with a potential adversary—because of the other party’s hard power and the potential threat it would pose if the alliance did not exist. Mixed appropriately, hard and soft power result in smart power. Power, in sum, is far from a one-dimensional phenomenon. It can manifest itself in multiple forms simultaneously or at different times.

Insofar as subtle power in specific is concerned, it may best be defined as the ability to exert influence from behind the scenes. It revolves around the ability to influence outcomes to one’s advantage through a combination of bringing resources to bear, enjoying international prestige derived from and commensurate with norm-entrepreneurship, and being positioned in such a way as to manipulate circumstances and the weaknesses of others to one’s advantage.
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There are four key components to subtle power (
table 2.1
). The first involves safety and security as guaranteed through physical and military protection. This first component does not necessarily involve force projection and the imposition of a country’s will on another through coercion or bribe. This sense of security may not even be internally generated and could come in the form of military and physical protection provided by a powerful patron—say, the United States. It simply arises from a country’s own sense of safety and security. As such, it frees up political leaders to expend available resources on other, potentially equally or more costly, endeavors aimed at building up international prestige and buying influence. Political leaders can never take the safety of their own position or of their country for granted. Waltz’s sobering claim that all too frequently the state “conducts its affairs in the brooding shadow of violence” may be an exaggeration of an international system that is, nonetheless, governed by self-help and anarchy.
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But only when a state can reasonably rest assured that its security is not under constant threat by domestic opponents or by international enemies and adversaries, can it then devote its attention to enhancing its external powers and influence. A state preoccupied with setting its domestic house in order, or paranoid about plots hatched by domestic and international conspirators bent on undermining it, has a significantly more difficult time trying to enhance its regional and global positions than a state with a certain level of comfort about its domestic stability. The two contrasting cases of Iran, whose intransigent regime is under the chronic threat of attack from Israel or the United States, and that of Qatar, which is confident of US military protection but aggressively pursues a policy of hedging, are quite telling.