This time it looks more than a spat. With land borders with KSA closed, affecting imports and making Qataris rush to the stores to stock up, it seems to have the appurtenances of a siege, made worse with Iranian offer to rush in supplies.
But it is not the Trucial squabbles that interest us. For our purposes it is the UAE coup de grace that attracts attention - even as we feel for the other Sharif whose force, if he had one, got reduced by a thousand, virtually overnight. The Crown Prince found no need to consult him before ordering the Qatari troops out, coinciding with the severance of diplomatic relations.
Breaking diplomatic relations is as old as exchange of plenipotentiaries who came laden with gifts and credentials in a language which was as archaic then as it is today. What has changed is that Excellencies are not put to sword any longer; just told, at short notice, to pack their knickers and the credential photos and get out. It is the Emirates edict that has a sobering lesson for those with a dependency syndrome.
The UAE has ordered all Qataris to leave the UAE within 14 days. It is also not going to allow Qataris to transit through any UAE port.
Let's for a moment give rein to our imagination and replace Qatar with another country and ponder the consequences. Imagine thousands of workers returning home. Forget their misery. Think of what it will do to remittances and the effect on balance of payments. Forget remittances. Think of the elite, who go abroad - for business, pleasure, 'destination weddings', or new tax residences post-Panama - and have to transit through the UAE! Sorry, Doha may not be an option - Qatar Airways will not be allowed to use the UAE airspace.
Horrendous thought, but is it really so much beyond the pale of reasonable conjecture? Should one see our sending RS as the commander of a phantom army, or our queuing up in the kingdom to trumpet Trump, in that light - they know more than they let out? They have the foresight to forestall?
But how far are we seeing?
Has fate dealt us an unfair hand, or do we relish the dance of death? Are we unwittingly becoming a part of the evolving new Great Game, or actually enjoying the paroxysm of excitement that our 'geo-strategic' position promises? Or think we are trapped and the best we can do is wriggle and pussy foot? Perhaps flash our nuclear card; or lurch more towards 'higher than the Himalayas, sweeter than honey' cove?
Meanwhile, we can't help casting a glance or two at our neighbor to the East. Is the vortex less threatening to them? What is it that they have done right? They may have occasional irritants like Nepal, Bangladesh, and Srilankato contend with, and a Pakistani pain in the neck, but when it comes to the big league they seem to do alright. Their relationship with Iran, for instance, doesn't seem to raise an eye brow in the Kingdom. They seem to be equally welcome in the Red Square and the White House. They have their concerns with China - big ones - but it doesn't deter closer trade relations. And it can't be all because of their being the fourth largest economy; they are still one of the poorest countries around.
Of course, there is always the temptation to explain away Indian virtuosity in international affairs: India is India, and it has a neighbour called China. Doubt if there are many buyers for that argument.
Diplomacy is an expensive business that you can't nickel and dime. You keep putting money into it, sometimes thinking it is money down the drain, until the day of reckoning arrives; when you are cornered and it is time to cash-in all the IOUs. A two-part question here: are we getting cornered, and how full of IOUs is our piggy bank?
The second part of the question is easy to answer. The piggy bank is hollow, and it is others who think we owe them and not the other way around. We may have a certain nuisance value but despite all the noise we doubt if the world is losing any sleep over it. We are the naughty boy in the class that needs to be kept an eye on; not the kind the teacher works on for excellence and world recognition.
Cornered? It appears so; not so much because of our relations with the immediate neighbours - with good sense, on their part and ours, these can be repaired- but a much deeper dissonance of values that the world fears. Foreign Policy, at the end of the day, is the packaging on domestic policies. You don't really need a Bismarck, a Talleyrand, a Kissinger, or even a Bhutto, to chart the path to world respect. By and large, you have a good stock of Foreign Service officers, whose fault is not incompetence but redundancy. You don't even need a great economy to be counted. It is not essentially about security interests either. It is about shared values.
And it is about self-respect. For a nation whose folklore is founded upon virtues of honour and respect, its Foreign Policy is astoundingly short on them. Every time short-term gains, and not the values we believe in, or should believe in, has driven our foreign policy.
Is our folklore exactly that - mythology? In that case the government has its qibla right. It is right to ignore the parliament's directive to stay out of fights that are not ours. The government, with its finger on the nation's pulse, knows what the nation wants: live for today.
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Copyright Business Recorder, 2017