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Some observers have been perplexed by perceived adjustments within the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) international coverage on numerous fronts. The UAE’s rapprochement with Turkey, for example, has been described as a “sea change” and a “reset” after what was depicted as a “decade-long period of muscular coverage.”
These supposed adjustments, nevertheless, are extra constant than they could first seem and definitely don’t mirror the broader strategic course of the UAE. These coverage strikes will be higher understood by way of three “keys” that designate the UAE’s strategic map and its worldwide engagement.
Key 1: The networked world order
The primary key lies within the UAE’s understanding of the best way worldwide relations have developed within the twenty first century. The world order will not be uni-, bi-, and even multipolar, however slightly networked. The idea of the tip of the unipolar world and the Pax Americana was highlighted within the World Developments 2030 report produced by the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence within the U.S. in December 2012.
Anne-Marie Slaughter and Fadi Chehadé have argued {that a} networked world order doesn’t entail the diffusion of sovereignty in a digital world, however slightly a set of relations between states that aren’t primarily based merely on ideology or on binary programs of alliances. As a substitute, a networked world order implies that states can interact in a number of relationships primarily based on nationwide and regional pursuits slightly than affinity to 1 ideology or one other. This was, in spite of everything, the promise of globalization.
The primary manifestation of such an understanding is a reversal of the idea of polarity. Polar world programs presume a middle of political gravity that pulls states into the orbit of their sphere of affect. This isn’t the governing precept of worldwide relations in a networked world order although. As a substitute, facilities of gravity have been changed with nodes of connectivity.
The second manifestation is that the zero-sum calculus that underpinned the Chilly Warfare period is now not the primary technique of working. Accordingly, the UAE’s financial relations with China don’t devalue its relationship with the USA. Nor does diplomatic engagement with Russia over Syria represent a departure from its strategic relations with the U.S., in the identical manner that evolving ties with Saudi Arabia don’t counsel a withdrawal from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
The third manifestation of a networked world order is the alternative of the idea of grand competitors with a method for “grand complementarity.” The UAE’s rapprochement with Turkey is an instance of a profitable transition from political competitors to financial complementarity. The identical will be stated of the UAE’s method to Iran. This explains how the UAE can develop relations with opposing nations like Iran and Israel on the similar time — or India and Pakistan and Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Key 2: World connectivity agenda
The second key’s the UAE’s connectivity agenda. That is primarily based on its understanding of the networked world order and its purpose of extending connectivity corridors the world over.
The UAE’s connectivity agenda has its origins in its understanding of its geostrategic area. For the UAE, and the GCC nations, the Arabian Peninsula, with the 4 seas surrounding it, encourages an engagement technique centered round regional connectivity. Every physique of water is a gateway to a strategic space. The UAE already has direct geographic entry to the Arabian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. But it surely has additionally developed strategic entry to the Pink Sea by way of its port operators and the Mediterranean by way of the East Med Fuel Discussion board. Dubai Ports World’s (DPW) investments in services in West Africa, after growing ports within the Pink Sea and river terminals in Central Africa, illustrate how the UAE sees Africa as a gateway to South America. This enhances its diplomatic drive in South America, the place it has opened missions in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, and Peru, and plans to open one in Paraguay.
The UAE’s financial and diplomatic actions are primarily based on growing connectivity corridors that permit commerce between economies to stream seamlessly by way of the area.
These connectivity corridors are:
- Commerce routes to deal with flows of products and vitality: The investments in ports world wide and in vitality manufacturing and distribution, together with oil, fuel, and electrical energy, have been a significant space of growing connectivity. The UAE’s complete financial partnership agreements (CEPA) with India and Israel are the most recent in a collection of such offers, with agreements with Turkey and the U.Ok. to comply with.
- Cash and finance: The UAE’s funding in banking companies and its institution of worldwide monetary markets to bridge the hole between these in China and the U.Ok. have been a part of this. There at the moment are 28 worldwide banks working within the UAE with 115 branches, together with digital banks like Zand and Wio.
- Individuals: UAE funding in carriers, corresponding to Emirates and Etihad (ranked amongst greatest 20 on the earth), and airports (Dubai was the busiest airport for worldwide travels in February 2022) is an final result of its journey hub technique. This has additionally been complemented by insurance policies such because the introduction of multiple-entry visas, upon arrival transit visas, golden residency visas, and wider UAE passport choices, all of which contribute to creating the nation a significant route for transporting individuals.
- Information: Because the UAE invests within the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the significance of knowledge assortment, storage, and transmission turns into very important. UAE funding in 5G is a part of that connectivity agenda, together with funding in blockchain know-how, and types a part of its commerce, cash, and folks connectivity corridors.
To maintain these arteries of connectivity open, the UAE wanted three additional “enablers”:
- Tolerance: The UAE’s adherence to the precept of tolerance will not be merely an inner social engineering coverage, it additionally bolsters connectivity by way of de-escalation.
- Stability: The UAE’s emphasis on stability, slightly than on political reforms, is a method to allow cooperation with out conditioning a political value. Due to this fact, the main target is on functioning governance establishments slightly than political illustration. Stability turns into the primary enabler of funding and public-private partnerships as a method to offer improvement assist, together with political reform.
- Governance fashions slightly than political programs: Competent governance fashions permit for laws that helps higher connectivity both for enterprise, financial, or diplomatic ties. The UAE’s method to Syria is an instance of such a concentrate on growing governance that permits for cooperation that results in stabilization. The UAE’s effort to carry the suspension on Syria’s membership within the Arab League will not be an ethical place on the Syrian regime, however a sensible concentrate on sustaining Syrian governance buildings, together with financial ones, to forestall a meltdown of bureaucratic technique of cooperation with any authorities, and additional escalation of the humanitarian state of affairs that impacts Syria’s neighbors.
The Dubai Expo 2020 is probably one of the best embodiment of the UAE’s imaginative and prescient for its international connectivity agenda and the kind of cooperation it seeks with the remainder of the world.
Key 3: State vs. non-state actors
The third key to understanding the UAE’s strategic map is its differentiation between state and non-state actors.
The UAE believes that the state is the important constructing block for international governance as embodied by the U.N. This precept has guided, and continues to information, its engagement throughout the globe. Accordingly, the UAE’s place on the Houthis, Hezbollah, the Widespread Mobilization Forces, and the Muslim Brotherhood is not any completely different than that towards al-Qaeda or ISIS. They’re all transnational non-state actors that don’t have any respect for state sovereignty and see themselves as above the nation. They violate the sovereignty of the state and act outdoors established codes of worldwide order and follow. It is a main hindrance to state-to-state connectivity and subsequently represents a risk to the rules-based world order.
Conclusion
Making use of these keys to understanding the UAE’s engagement world wide could assist to clarify a number of the points that observers generally discover perplexing. The explanation the UAE participated within the coalition in opposition to the Houthis in Yemen, for instance, will not be attributable to its geographic proximity however slightly its understanding of the Arabian Peninsula as its strategic neighborhood and its dedication to assist states in opposition to non-state actors.
The identical will be stated about its involvement in Afghanistan, the place it beforehand labored with the U.S. in opposition to the Taliban however has since labored with the Taliban to encourage them to grow to be a accountable state actor by way of their governance of Afghanistan.
This additionally explains why the UAE sees the Abraham Accords with Israel and different Arab states as a part of a region-wide connectivity agenda slightly than merely a normalization settlement between two nations.
These three keys can present a greater understanding of the UAE’s place on conflicts starting from Yemen to Ukraine, in addition to numerous alternatives from China to South America. Nations like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, India, and South Korea all exhibit a shared understanding of the networked world order, the connectivity agenda, and the place towards non-state actors. The identical, surprisingly, can’t be stated in regards to the U.S., EU, and even the U.Ok. The present place on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although ethical and principled, can also be bringing again a bipolar world order and quickly eroding the globalized economic system that the U.S. has established for the reason that fall of the Soviet Union. The UAE and others which have totally endorsed and invested in a globalized economic system at the moment are having a troublesome time coming to phrases with how shortly the unipolar world order that heralded globalization is falling aside.
Mohammed Baharoon is the Director Common of the Dubai Public Coverage Analysis Middle (b’huth), established in 2002 in Dubai. The views expressed on this piece are his personal.
Photograph by GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
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