Seen from Washington, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is considered the model Arab ally. Immensely rich, of unfailing stability, endowed with a powerful army, follower of Western cultural and societal liberalism, the monarchy is a pillar of the American order in the Middle East. “We are not in the pro-American camp, we are the spur of the pro-American camp”, thus welcomed in September 2020 the Emirati Ambassador to Washington, Youssef Al-Otaïba.
But on closer inspection, the picture is much more complex. The unbridled interventionism demonstrated by Abu Dhabi for the past ten years, in particular to counter Arab popular revolt movements, has placed it in several foreign theaters, such as Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, in at odds with the interests of the United States. During President Barack Obama’s time, the UAE openly militated against its policy of rapprochement with Tehran and once the Iran nuclear deal was signed, it spared no effort to discredit this arrangement on the American political scene.
Donald Trump’s tenure saw the UAE’s interference in the affairs of its overseas protector take an even more offensive form, with a campaign of illicit donations during the 2016 presidential election and several spy scandals. Reuters, for example, revealed how the petromonarchy recruited former members of the National Security Agency, an American intelligence service, to monitor hundreds of journalists and human rights activists, including citizens of the United States. .
Normalization of relations with Israel
These practices, on which Donald Trump turned a blind eye, could have undermined the Emirati-American relationship after the arrival of Joe Biden at the White House. But it shouldn’t be. Abu Dhabi’s decision to normalize its relations with Israel has helped allay the grievances that certain advisers to the new president – often former members of the Obama team – may have harbored with regard to this ally, after all, not very respectful. But this element does not explain everything.
A report from the Noria research center, published on Wednesday March 31, entitled “Dollars and decadence, the fabric of the United States – United Arab Emirates relationship”, highlights two structuring factors but little known of the alliance between the two countries: the very high level of interweaving of Abu Dhabi in the American economy, and the increasing interference of the monarchy in the processes of development of US foreign policy.
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