Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: United Arab Emirates

  • Trump Deserves Praise for Ending the Palestinian Veto

    Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani Benjamin Netanyahu Donald Trump
    Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, join Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American president Donald Trump at the White House in Washington DC, September 15 (White House/Tia Dufour)

    I haven’t been Donald Trump’s greatest fan, but for once he deserves praise: for facilitating the normalization of ties between Israel and two of its Arab neighbors.

    In a treaty signed at the White House on Tuesday, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates entered into diplomatic relations with the Jewish state for the first time.

    Only Egypt and Jordan had so far. Other Arab states do not accept Israeli passports and do not exchange embassies with Tel Aviv.

    We don’t know how involved Trump was in the negotiations, and the agreements fall short of what he calls a “peace deal”. The countries weren’t at war.

    But it’s a significant step and a welcome departure from previous presidents, who allowed the Palestinians a veto over Arab-Israeli relations. (more…)

  • The Weird Worries of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed

    There he is again, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, stirring up all sorts of trouble on the global stage.

    Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, has been putting his fingers into too many pies lately. From mercenaries in Yemen to bombing runs in Libya to cozying up to Israelis, the UAE’s supreme commander defies just about every Middle Eastern geopolitical stereotype. He is no flag-burning theocrat, nor a chest-thumping Arab nationalist: he’ll kill jihadists, Muslim Brothers and Ba’athists equally, given the chance. (And torture Emirati liberals for good measure.)

    Now he’s been caught up in the middle of the Russia-Trump spy affair.

    According to The Washington Post:

    The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to US, European and Arab officials.

    So far, it’s not proven that the Trump transition team had any knowledge of this meeting: Erik Prince apparently did it on his own volition. (Prince is also the brother of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education.)

    Regardless, the fact that the UAE is even trying to set up back channels between the Russians and the White House goes to show the odd way the country is approaching the world.

    Unlike many states, all of this can be attributed to one man: Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Not to be confused with Mohammed bin Rashed, the ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Zayed has a very specific take on the UAE’s future.

    And he has a tale worth telling. (more…)

  • Dubai, Singapore and the Future of Neoliberalism

    Dubai United Arab Emirates
    Downtown Dubai seen from the Burj Khalifa (Unsplash/David Rodrigo)

    It is the little things, they say, that count. The small places can tell us big things.

    There are no smaller places than city states. Holdovers of bygone eras, they are quite nearly the oldest form of political organization our species has. Only tribalism is older and city states arose from settled tribes that over generations grew into legendary places like Ur, Jericho, Athens, the Yellow River city of Cai and the Indus Valley site of Harappa.

    We have no empires left; a few kingdoms, though they keep dropping off the map. Nobody much minds. Yet if we were to lose our city states or our microstates, it would represent a collapse of the international order as we know it. Despite their tiny size, city states are bellwethers of their time. (more…)

  • Arab Gulf States Will Have to Let in Syrian Refugees

    Dubai United Arab Emirates
    Dubai at night (Unsplash/Piotr Chrobot)

    As the European migrant crisis is giving way to unprecedented humanitarian efforts from first Germany and now the Vatican, more than a few analysts have noted that for all Europe’s generosity, only a few Arab states have opened their doors to the masses fleeing war in Iraq and Syria.

    That’s curious when one considers that the ultra-rich Gulf Cooperation Council states are far closer than Europe and the journey there involves no dangerous seafaring. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all have considerable oil and gas reserves and their citizens are much richer than those of other Arab states. Yet GCC governments have stayed mum even as the #ArabConscience has begun trending regionally. Why? (more…)