The death of Kuwait’s emir robs the Gulf of a real diplomat

HIS LAST role was as a monarch, but it was his longest, as a diplomat, that defined him. Before he ascended the throne in 2006, Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah (pictured) spent decades as Kuwait’s foreign minister. Rather than letting Kuwait slip into the undertow of Saudi Arabia, its larger neighbour, he helped turn a small country—with fewer than 5m people today, mostly migrant workers—into an influential player. On September 29th, after a long illness, Sheikh Sabah died at the age of 91.

He was born in a different Kuwait, one that relied on a pearl trade soon to collapse. Oil discovered nine years later transformed it into one of the world’s richest states. Sheikh Sabah became its foreign minister in 1963 and held the post for 40 years, a period that included the loss of his country when Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi despot, invaded in 1990. The occupation gave him an enduring appreciation for America, which led the coalition that liberated Kuwait. When he fell ill in July it was an American air-force plane that ferried him to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for treatment.