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It started in Saudi Arabia. President Biden received a lukewarm greeting during his visit to Riyadh last July.Then Saudi Arabia chose China mediate their settlement with Iran. No one from Washington or Brussels was in the room for the two arch-rivals to shake hands.
Next up is the United Arab Emirates. Around the world and in the Gulf region, it is known for Dubai and Etihad Airways. The country, like Saudi Arabia, has taken inspiration from the United States in many ways in the past. Today, however, Abu Dhabi will act in the collective interest of the UAE, and if that means it has to disagree or break with the US on issues of geopolitical significance, so be it.
Last summer, Biden invited UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) to Washington. The fact that the visit has still not taken place is a sign of difficulties in relations between the UAE and the Biden administration.
Dr. Theodore Karasik, Senior Advisor at Gulf State Analytics, said: “It is highly unlikely that the President of the UAE will visit DC as political tensions between them, particularly with China and Russia, are growing and evolving and have long been simmering. In “Washington, DC,” the UAE has a particular Khaleeji view (meaning ‘from the Gulf’) that mimics their worldview and is closer in vision to Eastern countries than Western countries. The UAE sees policy issues differently , patience is the key, not instant gratification,” he said. “They will wait to see what happens because politics are changing (in the US and Europe). But the West is no longer the role model.”
U.S. influence put to the test
America’s leverage over its regional partners is being tested. Observers in the developing world need only consider the failure of the United States to enforce sanctions against Russia as a key indicator. The UAE provides another example of a general “disengagement” from Western leadership.
Over the past few months, high-level parades in the US, UK and EU official Has traveled to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, to fill one of the biggest loopholes in the sanctions regime against Russia. Last year, the UAE’s exports of electronic components to Russia increased sevenfold. Microchip exports from the UAE to Russia will increase 15-fold in 2022 compared to 2021, and the UAE sold 158 drones to Russia last year. Sanctions in Washington have restricted all of these projects.
Washington has made clear that enforcing the sanctions is a policy priority. “Those who seek to bolster Putin’s war machine by evading our export controls and sanctions will be held accountable,” Assistant Commerce Secretary Matthew Axelrod, who oversees export enforcement, said in a statement. Press release The date is March 2.
“Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the Department of Justice’s top priority has been robust enforcement of U.S. export and sanctions laws,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matt Olson said in a March 2 news release. , and crack down on circumvention. Those laws.”
Emirati officials are aware that they may be under potential pressure to comply with U.S. or other sanctions and “may seek to engage with the parties involved individually to ensure that there is no coordination on sanctions,” said Christian Coates-Ulrich Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is a Middle East Fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University.
“Washington, D.C., is frustrated with the UAE’s role in bringing Russian companies and capital home from the sanctions, despite acknowledgments that neither the UAE nor the Saudis will bow to pressure to take sides,” he said. “Everyone is adjusting to a new normal in which the relationship between the two countries is more nonaligned than ever.”
The UAE is not the only country helping Russia evade sanctions.America has complained turkeyChina and some Central Asians Since Russian tanks rolled into the Donbass last year, states have upped the ante on business and other ties. Saudi Arabia is buying Russian oil for domestic use and exporting more of its own oil to Europe, which has restrictions on Russian imports. India, as always, remains non-aligned. But the UAE is Washington’s favourite, with the Saudis lowering the general election for the second time under Biden’s ties. They are big buyers of U.S. defense products and are seen as key partners in the now-failed war in Afghanistan. It also turned Abu Dhabi toward Washington, many Capitol Hill insiders told me.
Sanctioning Abu Dhabi: There are friends like this…
Cold chats with former diplomats and administration officials on Capitol Hill and at the State Department have taught me that sanctioned countries, including the UAE, are a topic that needs to be discussed. But no one thought they would follow from Washington. If they did impose some form of restriction, the UAE would happily ignore it.
The Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Treasury Department has heads up ort “Poor sanctions compliance” in the UAE. In the past six months, the U.S. government has sanctioned at least three Emirati entities involved in illicit trade with Russia.which includes two emirates air transport (a logistics operator, not a commercial airliner) partnered with a sanctioned Iranian company to transport Iranian drones, personnel, and related equipment from Iran to Russia, and bank of russia – MTS Bank – operating in Abu Dhabi under license from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates.
“The UAE is aware and sensitive to the risk of sanctions evasion, as highlighted by its recent decision to revoke the license of MTS Bank,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the Reinhard Counterterrorism and Intelligence Program at the Near Neighbor Institute in Washington, DC. . MTS sanctioned by US and UK, joins FATF Greylist, which provided the impetus for the MTS sanctions in the UAE. Leavitt suspects that the UAE will violate sanctions against MTS Bank.
“That said, the UAE and other Gulf states are committed to adapting to what they see as the reality of a permanently multipolar world,” Leavitt said. “They view the United States as their preferred security partner, but want close ties with China and Russia, and refuse to view these relationships in binary terms.”
The UAE occupies an entirely different place on the list of U.S. allies’ priorities.
As the first Gulf Arab state to normalize relations with Israel, it has gained privileges among those who advocate a wider acceptance of Israel, which they achieved through the Abraham Accords. For the UAE, their strategy is that the three major Abrahamic religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all share a common core and should be treated like a family.
What’s more, the UAE is the 4th largest receiving country for the US, both commercially and politically arms transfer After Saudi Arabia, Australia and South Korea.
Since 2009, the UAE has been the number one Export market U.S. goods for use in the Middle East. The U.S. has the sixth-largest trade surplus with the UAE, an impressive figure considering the U.S. runs deficits with almost every country.
UAE capital accounted for about $45 billion in 2020 investment flow to the United States
There is a downside risk to wrecking this friendly and prosperous Apple cart. A retired diplomat, who did not want to be quoted on the record, told me: “If the U.S. really wants the Russian sanctions to work, then it cannot relax on the UAE.”
But can it serve as a role model for them?
If President Biden and his team are to be as tough on Russia as they say they are, they seem to have to be prepared for tough diplomacy with the UAE over its relationship with Russia. This is the hawkish view.
But the realist view suggests that any move to publicly punish the UAE must be justified by Abu Dhabi. Otherwise, America will be seen as a bully, not only in the eyes of Abu Dhabi, but also in the eyes of Qatar and Lagos, São Paulo and Mexico City. None of this should be discounted.
“As a place to live and study, the U.S. retains its soft-power appeal, and far more Emiratis travel to the U.S. for education than to China, although the gap is slowly narrowing,” said Uzbekistan of the Baker Institute. Rickson said. “UAE leaders see three successive U.S. presidents as different, like Trump from Obama and Biden from Trump. They made decisions that the Emiratis and the Saudis didn’t support. It made them wonder about the passage The future of a relationship that seemed stable until a decade ago.”
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