In September, US President Joe Biden raised the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the rank of major defence partner of the United States, a status already granted India in its capacity as a member of an Indo-Pacific strategic alliance, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or QUAD, which includes Japan and Australia. This Emirati success was achieved during Mohamed bin Zayed’s visit to Washington a few weeks before the presidential election. This “promotion” enables the UAE to improve its position in its competition with its neighbour, Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Riyadh has similar ambitions, negotiating as it is a security treaty with Washington which includes a binding defence agreement, cooperation on peaceful nuclear energy and access to advanced arms technologies in exchange for another negotiation process aimed at normalising the country’s relations with Israel.
An end to misunderstandings
This visit also made it possible for Washington to dispel the ambiguities which had poisoned US-Emirati relationships ever since Abu Dhabi developed close cooperation with China, particularly in the hi-tech area with Huawai and the introduction of 5G. It was after it settled this dispute by disengaging its company G42, specialised in Artificial Intelligence (AI), from Chinese tech firms that the UAE was able to retain access to US know-how and in particular to Nvidia chips. Similarly, when Microsoft took a $1.5bn share in the UAE’s G42 in order to develop and deploy advanced digital and AI infrastructures in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, the USA was directly confronting the Chinese competition.
Seven years after his previous visit to Washington, MBZ managed to dispel the differences which had set him against Joe Biden in 2021 and 2022. Biden had barely settled into the White House when he angered his Emirati partners by revising the terms of the arms contract approved by Congress under the Trump administration for 50 F35 fighter planes plus 18 Reaper drones worht $23bn. Moreover, following the drone attacks launched by the Houthis at strategic targets in the heart of the Federation in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in January 2022, the US reaction was considered belated and timorous.
In his talks in Washington, MBZ clearly flagged up his ambition to secure his country’s place as the vanguard of Arab hi-tech. His meetings were not only with President Biden and his Vice-President, Kamala Harris, but also with Biden’s predecessor and current rival Donald Trump, as well as former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton (but not Barack Obama, with whom he remains on bad terms), as well as several senators from both parties, not to mention all the heads of the industrial groups dealing in AI (Microsoft, Black Rock and Nvidia).
By achieving a status similar to that enjoyed by Washington’s major allies whose industrial, economic and technological strength makes them significant powers (Australia, Japan and India), the UAE has managed to embed itself in the heart of American Middle East strategy. For despite its wish to withdraw from the region in order to concentrate on its strategic priority - countering Beijing’s influence in the world - the escalation of Israel’s conflicts in Gaza, in Lebanon and with Iran has kept the US tied down in the region.
Current developments also run counter to the US desire to conclude the currently-frozen negotiations between Riyadh and Tel Aviv aimed at normalising relations. However they do tend to consolidate Washington’s strategy of establishing a constellation of multiple partnerships in which the UAE plays an important role through the Abraham accords and the recently-launched India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).
The Shadow of China
Those accords, though portrayed as part of a peace process between Israel and the Arab countries, were actually designed to make Israel a key partner for the Gulf monarchies in the area of hi-tech and the transfer of technologies compatible with US interests, in direct competition with China, which has become very active in the region. The objective in particular is to dissuade Israel and the Gulf monarchies from continuing their triangular cooperation with China in the advanced technological areas of AI, big data and cyber security, as President Biden made clear during his visits to Israel and Saudi Arabia in mid-July 2022.
The ambitious IMEC project, still in its infancy and designed to connect up India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and on to Europe, is meant to compete directly with China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”. For the Emirates it is also the most effective way to maintain their networks and levers in Washington. US military presence in the Middle East remains primordial for them, in spite of their proactive diplomacy of diversification with an eye to concluding bilateral strategic partnerships with China, Russia or India and multilateral ones along the lines of the “1202 Partnership” launched on 21 September 2023 between Israel, India, the United States and the UAE, aimed at developing cooperation in the hi-tech and food security sectors.
His official visit has enabled MBZ to reap benefits making his country best placed to profit from the situation created by Israel’s wars in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, as well as its confrontation with Iran. He is capitalising on his normalisation with Israel since the Abraham accords, concluded on 15 September 2020, and on the fact of having preserved his country’s relations with Israel despite the terrible death toll in Gaza and its extension to Lebanon. As a signatory of the Abraham accords, the UAE validates the disengagement of a number of Arab leaders from the Palestinian cause, even if they have a hard time hiding the shame they feel from an Arab public opinion which is very hostile to this choice. The UAE was the only Arab State to condemn Hamas and Israel equally in the Gaza war, even blaming Hamas for launching the 7 October attacks which brought on the humanitarian catastrophe that followed.
Embarrassed by Netanyahu’s intransigence
Having justified their normalisation with Israel by arguing that it would enable them to use their good relations with Israeli Premier Benyamin Netanyahu to convince him to make some concessions1, the Emirati rulers have tried to conceal their failure by actively committing themselves to sending humanitarian aid to Gaza; the UAE now points to that same aid to justify maintaining its relations with Tel Aviv, including the establishment of a land bridge meant to provide medical aid, infrastructural material and services, all carefully staged for the media. This route seems in reality to have served to bypass the maritime route disrupted by Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, and to preserve the flow of trade with Israel. An option quite different from that of Turkey, which chose to apply sanctions on Israel, or Bahrain, which broke off all trade relations.
In spite of the bitterness the Emirati rulers feel towards Netanyahu and the outright hostility of a population prevented from expressing its rejection of the normalisation with Israel2, Abu Dhabi will not call into question its relations with Israel so long as these coincide with a strategic calculation directed by Washington. The security relationship between Abu Dhabi and Tel-Aviv remains very close, even more so since Israel was taken into the US military command arrangements for the Middle East (CENTCOM) in 2021. In addition, the weakening of Iran and its allies, through the decapitation of Hezbollah and the quasi-obliteration of Hamas’ military capacities as well as its political cadres, serves the interests of the Emirates even though, like their Saudi neighbours, they refrain from acknowledging this publicly.
Moreover, the Emirates is the only Arab country to accept the Israeli-US proposal to set up a multinational force in Gaza for “the day after”. The huge financial wealth of the Federation could enable it to play a major role in the reconstruction of the Palestinian enclave and of Lebanon. The mobilisation of these resources will make the UAE, in the short term, the most appropriate country to provide help.
However, since 7 October, the UAE’s reputation in the Arab world has considerably deteriorated, as was revealed in a poll taken by the Washington Arab Centre in January 2024 when 67 % of the people questioned in 16 Arab countries said they thought the Emirates’ position on the war in Gaza was “very bad”3. The anti-Emirati feeling in the region also ties in with criticism of the country’s rulers, accused in social media of providing information and helping Israel eradicate Hamas. An unpopularity which for the moment seems not to bother Abu Dhabi.
Translated by Noël Burch.
