OPED By Shay Gal
From the Red Sea to the Aegean, from Brussels to Doha, power now pivots on two capitals that belong to the alliances they weaken. Turkey and Qatar have turned consensus into currency and membership into leverage, bending NATO and the GCC to ambitions neither alliance was built to contain. As Houthis strike trade and India, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Cyprus hold the line, Eurasia’s security will be defined not by its foes but by the courage to discipline its friends.
Alliances prove their strength not by the power they amass but by the discipline they uphold. NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council were built as engines of collective trust, designed to turn cooperation into resilience.
Yet two central members, Turkey within NATO and Qatar within the GCC, have perfected the art of collecting every benefit while bending every rule. Both observe the letter but defy the spirit of their charters, turning consensus into an instrument of pressure.
The flaw is structural: NATO’s consensus principle and the GCC’s unanimity rule invite transactional behavior that undermines collective credibility.
Turkey’s record inside NATO has become a case study. Its 2017 purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system, while it was still a core partner in the F-35 program, triggered U.S. CAATSA sanctions and Ankara’s formal removal from the F-35 consortium in 2020.
Washington’s decision to sanction Turkey’s defense procurement agency exposed a paradox: a member state aligning militarily with both NATO and Moscow.
Ankara then learned to monetize unanimity. It delayed Sweden’s accession until the United States approved a 23-billion-dollar F-16 deal, ratified within hours of Turkey’s signature. In 2019 and 2020, it blocked NATO’s Baltic defense plans until it secured language targeting the YPG, turning consensus itself into currency.
Since 2023, Turkey has blocked NATO-Israel cooperation and halted all trade with Israel, later closing its airspace and ports. At the same time, it pursued dual diplomacy, selling drones to Ukraine while avoiding sanctions on Russia, drilling in Cyprus’s exclusive economic zone, and testing Greece at sea.
UN reports confirm that Turkey transferred Syrian fighters to Libya – an extraordinary act for a NATO member. U.S. sanctions on Turkey-based firms aiding Russian sanctions evasion show that Ankara’s dual-use trade networks continue to test allied integrity. Trust has eroded faster than NATO’s mechanisms can respond.
NATO has used the tools at its disposal—export controls, sanctions, and program suspensions—but has not addressed its constitutional weakness.
The North Atlantic Treaty contains no suspension clause, and “consensus minus one” has never been formalized. The North Atlantic Council, built to symbolize equality, remains vulnerable to procedural hostage-taking. NATO still lacks defenses against internal manipulation.
The GCC faces the same structural problem. Its unanimity rule protects sovereignty but prevents accountability. Qatar hosts the Al-Udeid base, the forward headquarters of the U.S.
Central Command, while also hosting Hamas’s political bureau and mediating with actors the bloc condemns elsewhere. Doha’s humanitarian funding for Gaza, coordinated with Israel and the UN, blurred the line between relief and political leverage.
The 2017 Gulf crisis and its thirteen demands, from closing Al Jazeera to cutting ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, ended with the Al-Ula accord in 2021 without resolving Qatar’s dual identity as mediator and member. State-funded media like TRT World and Al Jazeera have since become instruments of foreign policy rather than journalism.
The partnership between Turkey and Qatar has expanded into a strategic triangle. Qatar provides capital, Turkish projection, and Pakistani manpower.
Ankara stationed troops in Doha and received a fifteen-billion-dollar currency-swap lifeline. At the same time, Pakistan provided security forces for Qatar’s World Cup and co-developed naval and defense systems with Turkey. This triangle functions as an ecosystem of ideological outsourcing—an informal bloc within two formal ones.
The GCC has taken some corrective steps. The U.S.–GCC Terrorist Financing Targeting Center has sanctioned Qatari-linked financiers, and Doha signed a 2017 memorandum of understanding to improve enforcement. Yet without enforcement mechanisms, discipline remains optional. Labor-rights abuses also persist despite Qatar’s modernization narrative.
Reports by the ILO and rights organizations still describe systemic exploitation, exposing the moral contradiction of a bloc that calls itself a guardian of stability. That vacuum is now most visibly manifesting in Yemen, where both alliances are being tested.
Turkey’s 2024 veto on NATO-Israel cooperation paralysed coordination at a critical moment. Qatar’s triple identity—host, broker, and patron—collapsed once rhetoric met reality.
While they undermined their own blocs, outsiders filled the gap. India strengthened its defense partnership with Washington through foundational agreements. Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco maintained consistent operational cooperation with both Western and Gulf partners. Cyprus, through the EastMed Forum, has become a reliable bridge between Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean.
In the Gulf, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco joined the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, providing fighter jets, naval patrols, and ground troops. Jordan targeted Houthi positions, Egypt secured Red Sea lanes, and Morocco contributed logistics and personnel.
Qatar remained outside that coalition. Israel, meanwhile, supplied intelligence both to NATO and to Gulf states, sharing signals intelligence on Red Sea threats, arms smuggling routes, and terror financing networks, including those connected to Turkey and Qatar.
Morocco’s transformation into a counterterrorism hub and a Mediterranean security anchor has drawn praise from NATO leadership.
Turkey and Qatar, on the other hand, have deepened their involvement with Iran-aligned Houthi forces. Through dual-use supply chains, covert coordination, and permissive financial channels, they facilitated the Houthis’ maritime campaign against commercial shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Since late 2023, Houthi attacks on European and Israeli-linked vessels have exposed how formal allies can wage informal wars through proxies. Yemen has become the crucible of alliance credibility. Reliability is not measured by declarations but by who shares the burden and upholds collective defense.
From Diagnosis To Discipline
What must be done is clear. NATO should maintain unanimity for Article 5 and treaty-level matters, adopt “consensus minus one” for all others, and introduce automatic penalties—loss of funding, senior roles, or participation in exercises—for behavior that undermines alliance integrity.
Flexible planning should allow willing members to move forward without obstruction. The European Union’s Article 7 offers precedent: suspension of rights without expulsion. NATO’s strength depends as much on inner discipline as on outward deterrence.
The GCC must also institutionalize accountability. Its dispute commission should issue binding rulings within fixed timelines, and member privileges such as customs access, investments, and joint drills should depend on compliance. Hosting or financing groups designated as terrorists by the bloc or its partners must trigger automatic suspension.
Labor-rights standards should be measured and verified, not promoted as public relations. Unanimity should protect consensus, not paralyze reform.
Reliability should be rewarded beyond formal membership. NATO should deepen cooperation with India, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Cyprus.
The GCC should formalize a “GCC-Plus” framework with Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco to integrate air defense, logistics, and special operations training. Alliances are magnetic fields: when core members pull against them, strength must be restored by tightening bonds with those who pull together.
This is a test of leadership, not law. The founders of NATO and the GCC never foresaw members exploiting the procedure for politics.
Clarity must replace ambiguity: define essential consensus, sanction abuse, and align prestige with performance.
Deterrence demands discipline; power without reliability is an illusion. When corruption—from Qatargate to Halkbank—erodes trust, governance itself becomes a battlefield.
- Shay Gal is a strategic analyst and advisor on international security, diplomatic strategy, and crisis management at the crossroads of defense and geopolitics. He advises senior government and defense leaders worldwide, focusing on power dynamics, geopolitical strategy, and public diplomacy, and contributes to policy shaping in complex international environments. Previously, he served as Vice President for External Relations at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
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