UAE’s growing global influence sets up challenges for the west

Next month Keir Starmer will visit the United Arab Emirates to solicit investment in the UK as part of broader efforts to boost British growth.

So what? The UAE is both a vital western ally and a menace to world order.

On the plus side, as far as London and Washington are concerned, it is:

• a partner of Israel, having signed up to the Abraham Accords normalising relations with the Jewish state;
• a counterweight to Chinese influence in Africa, where it’s one of few states capable of competing with Beijing on big infrastructure projects and loans;
• a major investor through its sovereign wealth funds, which between them have directed more than $110 billion to US and UK ventures; and
• a global force in renewable energy.

At the same time, the UAE has rattled governments on both sides of the Atlantic by

• undermining Western sanctions against Russia, indirectly supporting the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine and giving Vladimir Putin diplomatic cover; and
• undertaking a policy of adventurism which, its critics say, has violated arms embargoes, spread instability, fuelled conflict and helped unleash humanitarian disaster in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Biden has struggled to rein in the UAE’s more reckless tendencies even with recent sanctions against emirati companies it accuses of helping Russia. Trump’s isolationist instincts may give the UAE an even freer rein. That could complicate Starmer’s bid for more investment.

Money Talks. With larger oil reserves than Russia, the UAE controls assets of $2 trillion through its sovereign wealth funds.

It has turned Dubai airport into the busiest in the world and controls a global network of ports from Southampton to Sydney. In principle it could be a partner in the Sizewell C nuclear power station and any number of green energy projects in the UK. In practice any investment would come with baggage.

Bear hug. From the moment Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the UAE became a haven for Russian exiles, among them sanctions-dodging oligarchs who moored their yachts and parked their private jets in Dubai, where they unleashed a real-estate boom.

• Close. There are few places in the world that Putin dares visit for fear of arrest, but he received a lavish welcome in Abu Dhabi when he visited last December.
• Closer. The UAE has meanwhile helped prop up Russia’s economy by buying its oil and gold at record levels, while some of its companies are allegedly re-exporting European-made aircraft parts and power-generating equipment that could be used in the Russian war machine.

Into Africa. The UAE only has an indirect role in Ukraine but is accused of directly unleashing misery elsewhere by arming warlords, supporting militias and fuelling corruption.

• In Yemen it intervened militarily alongside Saudi Arabia against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
• In Ethiopia it armed the government with drones against rebels in the Tigray region.
• In Libya it joined Russia in supporting the warlord Khalifa Haftar against the UN-backed government.
• In Sudan it’s accused of supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia that human rights groups say has butchered civilians and is helping unleash a famine that could kill millions.

The UAE denies it’s arming the RSF. United Nations experts suggest otherwise.

I eat, you watch. No country as small as the UAE has anything like as consequential a global impact. Analysts see its often destructive foreign policy as a result of

• a desire for geopolitical heft;
• the pursuit of business ties with its warlord allies, from arms sales to gold mining; and
• countering Islamism in Libya, Sudan and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, in hopes of preventing it threatening dynastic rule in the seven Emirates.

See no evil. Unwilling to alienate an ally likely to play a vital role in a post-war settlement in Gaza, the Biden administration did little to restrain the UAE. Not that this is likely to make much difference. The UAE is already doing what it wants.

“Whereas they would once always try to get the green light from the US, the difference now is that they act and then try to get the green light,” says Neil Quilliam of Chatham House. “Or they don’t bother.”

What’s more… Starmer inherited a diplomatic chill brought on by the Sunak government’s decision to block an Abu Dhabi-backed bid for the Daily Telegraph. It won’t be a straightforward trip.