Together with the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, KAS and the Atlantic Council held a roundtable discussion on 4 December 2025 in Doha, Qatar to examine how the US and the EU, along with China, Russia, and other big actors, view great-power dynamics on the Arabian Peninsula and are recalibrating their positions on Gulf security and their engagement with other global geopolitical heavyweights. In addition, the dialogue offered an opportunity for Qatari representatives to explain the strategies Doha employs to project power beyond its borders, protect the Gulf emirate’s own sovereignty, and shape regional and global political dynamics.
The dialogue attracted 38 high-level officials and experts from Germany, EU countries, Brussels-based institutions, the United States, and Qatar. The discussion first focused on the current state of great-power competition in Qatar and the Gulf before turning to Doha’s regional role in the Middle East and Africa. The roundtable concluded with a session focusing on potentials for Europe and the United States to constructively cooperate with Qatar – including with respect to Qatar’s engagement with developing countries in its neighbourhood – to advance the three states’ shared objective of a safe, secure, and prosperous region.
Throughout the roundtable, the involvement of participants from the United States allowed for the discussion of dimensions of GCC countries’ international relations that tend not to be mentioned in bilateral Gulf-European formats. Given both the GCC’s and Europe’s traditional reliance on Washington as a security guarantor, the exchange in this trilateral format allowed for frank debates about the US’s evolving military posture in the Middle East and the opportunities for Gulf-European partnership that these changes present. All the while, discussing such sensitive matters in the Gulf-European-American constellation underlined that possible European and Gulf responses to Washington’s “Pivot to Asia” – or perhaps “Pivot to the Western Hemisphere” – ultimately served the purpose of advancing the common strategic interests of all three power blocs.
That being said, the constructive exchange was not without a few hard truths and points of criticism. Qatar, on the one hand, was cautioned not to take multi-alignment too far: Washington would interpret unrestricted openness from Doha to Chinese advanced technologies as a threat, particularly given the plethora of American defence assets stationed in Qatar. The Europeans, meanwhile, received criticism for the slow machinations of the Brussels bureaucracy, which prevent many aspects of the EU-GCC strategic partnership from getting off the ground. Nevertheless, participants also labelled Europe’s reliability as a rules-based power an attractive attribute, with deeper relations with Brussels representing a desirable insurance policy against the uptick in erratic and transactional policies on the part of other big actors on the international stage. To make full use of this proposition, however, Europe must bolster its own hard-power capabilities.
Especially in the aftermath of consecutive attacks on Qatari sovereign territory by Iran and Israel, the roundtable discussion made clear that as far as Doha’s security ties are concerned, transactional balancing is out and rules-based partnership is in. In light of these priorities, Germany and the EU’s stock can soar as an exceedingly rare commodity in international relations: a geopolitically relevant player with a strong preference for reliable alliances. To do so, Brussels must take steps to overcome its other reputation – being reliably slow. In this regard, the EU’s recent decision to initiate talks with Qatar on a bilateral partnership for regional stability to complement the bloc’s strategic ties with the GCC represents a positive step in the right direction.
