The Blockade

This chapter examines in detail the events surrounding the blockade of Qatar from the Riyadh Summit in May 2017 to the visit by Kuwait’s Emir to the White House in September. It begins with the hacking of the Qatar News Agency that formed the trigger for the events that followed, and reviews the campaign of outreach and influence-building in Washington, D.C. that led Saudi and Emirati officials to believe that their move against Qatar, an integral U.S. partner, would receive White House support. This, notably, did not happen, and the chapter focuses on how the blockade unfolded to the surprise and consternation of (most) observers in the United States and other world capitals. The remainder of the chapter explores how and why the blockading states’ ‘gamble’ on the Trump White House backfired over the course of the summer of 2017, as by September, the Trump administration had committed itself to a diplomatic resolution of the blockade.