The keys to reading the UAE’s strategic map

Some observers have been perplexed by perceived adjustments within the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) overseas coverage on a lot of fronts. The UAE’s rapprochement with Turkey, as an 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, nonetheless, are extra constant than they might first seem and positively don’t mirror the broader strategic course of the UAE. These coverage strikes may be higher understood via three “keys” that specify 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 way in which worldwide relations have developed within the twenty first century. The world order shouldn’t be uni-, bi-, and even multipolar, however quite networked. The idea of the top 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 quite a set of relations between states that aren’t based mostly merely on ideology or on binary programs of alliances. As an alternative, a networked world order implies that states can interact in a number of relationships based mostly on nationwide and regional pursuits quite than affinity to at least one 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 an alternative, facilities of gravity have been changed with nodes of connectivity.

The second manifestation is that the zero-sum calculus that underpinned the Chilly Battle period is now not the primary technique of working. Accordingly, the UAE’s financial relations with China don’t devalue its relationship with the US. Nor does diplomatic engagement with Russia over Syria represent a departure from its strategic relations with the U.S., in the identical approach that evolving ties with Saudi Arabia don’t recommend a withdrawal from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The third manifestation of a networked world order is the substitute 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 may 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 identical time — or India and Pakistan and Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Key 2: World connectivity agenda

The second secret’s the UAE’s connectivity agenda. That is based mostly on its understanding of the networked world order and its goal of extending connectivity corridors the world over.

The UAE’s connectivity agenda has its origins in its understanding of its geostrategic house. 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. However it has additionally developed strategic entry to the Purple Sea via its port operators and the Mediterranean via the East Med Fuel Discussion board. Dubai Ports World’s (DPW) investments in amenities in West Africa, after growing ports within the Purple 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 based mostly on growing connectivity corridors that enable commerce between economies to stream seamlessly via the area.

These connectivity corridors are:

1. Commerce routes to deal with flows of products and power: The investments in ports around the globe and in power manufacturing and distribution, together with oil, fuel, and electrical energy, have been a serious space of growing connectivity. The UAE’s complete financial partnership agreements (CEPA) with India and Israel are the most recent in a sequence of such offers, with agreements with Turkey and the U.Ok. to observe.
2. 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 are actually 28 worldwide banks working within the UAE with 115 branches, together with digital banks like Zand and Wio.
3. Individuals: UAE funding in carriers, akin to Emirates and Etihad (ranked amongst greatest 20 on the planet), and airports (Dubai was the busiest airport for worldwide travels in February 2022) is an consequence 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 serious route for transporting individuals.
4. Information: Because the UAE invests within the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the significance of knowledge assortment, storage, and transmission turns into important. UAE funding in 5G is a part of that connectivity agenda, together with funding in blockchain expertise, and varieties a part of its commerce, cash, and other people connectivity corridors.

To maintain these arteries of connectivity open, the UAE wanted three additional “enablers”:

1. Tolerance: The UAE’s adherence to the precept of tolerance shouldn’t be merely an inside social engineering coverage, it additionally bolsters connectivity via de-escalation.
2. Stability: The UAE’s emphasis on stability, quite than on political reforms, is a way to allow cooperation with out conditioning a political worth. Subsequently, the main focus is on functioning governance establishments quite than political illustration. Stability turns into the primary enabler of funding and public-private partnerships as a way to supply improvement help, together with political reform.
3. Governance fashions quite than political programs: Competent governance fashions enable 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 deal with growing governance that permits for cooperation that results in stabilization. The UAE’s effort to elevate the suspension on Syria’s membership within the Arab League shouldn’t be an ethical place on the Syrian regime, however a sensible deal with sustaining Syrian governance constructions, together with financial ones, to stop a meltdown of bureaucratic technique of cooperation with any authorities, and additional escalation of the humanitarian scenario that impacts Syria’s neighbors.  

The Dubai Expo 2020 is probably the very best embodiment of the UAE’s imaginative and prescient for its world 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 world 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 Fashionable 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 exterior established codes of worldwide order and follow. This can be a main hindrance to state-to-state connectivity and due to this fact represents a menace to the rules-based world order.

Conclusion

Making use of these keys to understanding the UAE’s engagement around the globe might assist to elucidate a number of the points that observers generally discover perplexing. The explanation the UAE participated within the coalition towards the Houthis in Yemen, for instance, shouldn’t be resulting from its geographic proximity however quite its understanding of the Arabian Peninsula as its strategic neighborhood and its dedication to help states towards non-state actors.

The identical may be stated about its involvement in Afghanistan, the place it beforehand labored with the U.S. towards the Taliban however has since labored with the Taliban to encourage them to turn out to be a accountable state actor via 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 quite 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 varied alternatives from China to South America. International locations like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, India, and South Korea all show a shared understanding of the networked world order, the connectivity agenda, and the place towards non-state actors. The identical, unusually, can’t be stated concerning 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 because the fall of the Soviet Union. The UAE and others which have absolutely endorsed and invested in a globalized economic system are actually having a troublesome time coming to phrases with how rapidly the unipolar world order that heralded globalization is falling aside.

Mohammed Baharoon is the Director Basic of the Dubai Public Coverage Analysis Middle (b’huth), established in 2002 in Dubai. The views expressed on this piece are his personal.

Picture by GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP through Getty Pictures