The Ruthless Realpolitik of the United Arab Emirates

Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed has cozied up to Bashar al-Assad, and relations with the U.S. are at an all-time low.

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“We are grateful for and committed to the partnership we have with the UAE,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week after meeting with Mohamed bin Zayed (MbZ for short), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, in Morocco. The crown prince heard a very different message earlier this month after he became the first Arab leader to host Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Sen. Jim Risch, the even-tempered Republican from Idaho and ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted that he was “sickened to see the mass murderer Bashar al-Assad on a visit to #Dubai.” Rep. Gregory Meeks, the Florida Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also had sharp words for the Emiratis, saying they had welcomed a killer.

These expressions of anger seem unlikely to sway MbZ, who has gradually but persistently escalated his engagement with the Syrian regime over the past four years. In 2019, the crown prince’s younger brother Abdullah, the Emirati foreign minister, explained that disagreements with Syria regarding its domestic affairs had become less important in light of growing Iranian influence in Damascus amid the “absence of a strong Arab role.” In other words, all could be forgiven (or at least forgotten) if there were a chance to create some daylight between Assad and his Iranian patrons.

The pace of Emirati engagement accelerates when the White House appears less interested in Syria and in holding Assad accountable for war crimes. Abu Dhabi reopened its embassy in Damascus in December 2018, only days after former President Donald Trump announced a sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria (which he later rescinded). Assad’s visit last week follows the Biden administration’s tacit approval of Arab engagement with Damascus.

At first glance, the Emirati brand of realpolitik appears both savvy and ruthless. A closer examination shows that it is only ruthless. While MbZ may not respond to appeals to his conscience, he may want to reconsider whether drawing closer to Assad serves his interests. Arab governments have no real prospect of matching Tehran’s influence in Damascus; while the administration has signaled it will tolerate engagement with Syria, a congressional backlash could do lasting damage to Abu Dhabi’s relationship with Washington, as it did to Saudi ties with the United States. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ At first glance, the Emirati brand of realpolitik appears both savvy and ruthless. A closer examination shows that it is only ruthless.”

    At first glance, “realist” isolationists seem cold and savvy. A closer examination shows they are only cold.

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  2. Avatar photo
    James Spiller

    Given that Biden ran on empowering their chief existential threat (Iran) and on condemning them for fighting Iran’s second most prolific terror proxies in Yemen, I’m not sure it’s fair to call *them* fair weather allies.
    Likewise with US attitudes towards Syria, where we spent years saying that we’d meaningfully support the FSA, but decided not to, and then elected a succession of Russophile Presidents. The UAE is not a big country and they tried for years to support a pro-liberty, anti-Iran position in Syria only to have it clarified that the US was not going to put up with either of those things (with the very brief exception of Trump’s anti-Iran militancy).
    Whether it was Obama’s support at Biden’s urging for allowing ISIS to conquer much of Iraq as a ploy to get Maliki out of office (John Kerry talks about this at length in Every Day is Extra), forcing Iraq to beg for Iranian aid at any price, or the general efforts to avoid offending Iran in order to pass the JCPOA, life was challenging for supporters of liberty in the Middle East in Obama’s second term. And the Reset, in which the invasion of Georgia became the first war of conquest in Obama’s adult lifetime not to see the gains disgorged, clarified the general domination of realism over morality. But the UAE continued to work to support legitimate governments in Syria and Yemen. Putin took a while to persuade himself that the US reticence was real, but Aleppo was fully soaked in blood by the end of the second term.

    Under Trump even the rhetoric of freedom was mostly ended. There’s one assassination that made a positive difference, and various terrorists killed, but by and large the attitude towards the Saudi and Emirati efforts was exclusively negative. But they kept trying, albeit with ever less confidence.

    Things predictably got worse still under Biden. US bases in Afghanistan were surrendered, leaving Iran considerably safer and better able to control the bordering regions. The JCPOA was resurrected in even more groveling terms. The US was even more reluctant to take principled stances elsewhere (see, for instance, the unprecedented withdrawal of the US embassy from Kyiv, and then from Ukraine entirely, the exclusion of Russians from the European covid travel ban despite worse covid statistics, the trivial amounts of aid supplied to Ukraine (significantly smaller than Obama’s package, for instance, with less than 0.1% of the Iraq war budget going into Ukraine during the war), the withdrawal of the US Black Sea Fleet, the “limited incursion”, the “actually no, our red line is Poland”, the blocking of the migs, the offers to get Zelensky out of Ukraine, the approval of Nord Stream 2, the condemnation of Turkey for getting defeating Russian forces occupying Azerbaijan, etc. etc.).

    At what point is it reasonable for partners in a joint enterprise to decide that their senior partner is not interested in the project and that it is not going to be possible to take the hard, principled, line that they would prefer? At what point can they do so without it being claimed that they are being the flakey ones?

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  3. Avatar photo
    Jason Gibson

    Biden's "pivot to Asia" has resulted in a middle east foreign policy that is shameful at best

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    1. Avatar photo
      Narwhal

      How so? Can you give some examples of what you mean?

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      1. Avatar photo
        Jason Gibson

        1. desperation to re-enter the Iran deal at a time when the arab world has been drifting toward a unified stand against Iran (Abraham Accords)

        2. The departure from Afghanistan that has resulted increased suffering in that region.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Narwhal

          Thanks for answering my questions.

          1. The Abraham Accords are largely meaningless. Style not substance. Have you read the document for yourself? Also, the KSA isn’t a party to it yet and one of the participants had no choice but to agree to sign on given that we keep them in power, and they are not good friends for us to have over the long term imo.

          2. We lost our ability to reliably and promptly re-enforce and re-supply our troops there. Russia had closed the more secure Northern routes years ago and Pakistan has become realigned with the PRC more recently and has always been far too cozy with the Taliban, our supply convoys thru Pakistan were regularly ambushed by militants throughout the entire war.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Jason Gibson

            I’ll accept those statements and take your word for it gladly

            Begs the question though doesn’t it? Doesn’t explain why getting back into the Iran deal supports our interests…

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  4. Avatar photo
    Narwhal

    Now that Russia’s ill advised and largely botched invasion of Ukraine has exposed Russia’s ineffectual and occasionally mutinous conscripted troops as a major liability I wonder how this will influence future events and circumstances.

    As others have noted many times, the PRC is watching what is occurring in Ukraine and they must be wondering about their own conscripted troops, who don’t even have Russia’s recent battle experience outside of Ukraine.

    Then there are the Gulf kingdoms and that is a whole other ballgame. For example, Bahrain needs the US far, far more than the US needs Bahrain. We might not like the regime that directly follows in the wake of the current one tumbling but we aren’t the ones who would be tumbling.

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