Is the UAE a Force For Stability in the Middle East?

During a White House visit earlier this week, President Biden and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan expressed their desire to intensify cooperation between their two nations on a variety of fronts. Most notably, President Biden designated the UAE as a Major Defense Partner, which the White House said “will allow for unprecedented cooperation through joint training, exercises, and military-to-military collaboration, between the military forces of the United States, the UAE, and India, as well as other common military partners, in furtherance of regional stability.” But the UAE’s recent track record raises serious doubts about its interest in promoting stability in the Middle East, and highlights its pursuit of its own narrow interests, often through military means. The new designation amounts to a virtual endorsement of the UAE’s aggressive, destabilizing history in the Middle East and North Africa.

With Israel escalating its Mideast war into Lebanon and the presidential campaign heating up, the news that the United States is strengthening its alliance with the United Arab Emirates is far off most people’s radar. But it shouldn’t be. The Biden administration’s decision to double down on its relationship with the UAE is yet another example of its misguided approach to the region, from enabling Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon to attempting to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Far from sowing the seeds of stability and peace, the administration’s maneuvers are bolstering three of the most disruptive, destabilizing states in the region – in essence rewarding them for their recent histories of aggression and human rights abuses.

While Saudi Arabia’s misdeeds – from the murder of U.S.-resident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to its devastating war in Yemen – are fairly well known, in many quarters the UAE is viewed as “the good Gulf state” – more sophisticated diplomatically, more diversified economically, and less egregious in its domestic and foreign policies. In addition, many U.S. military officials view the UAE as an asset in any future conflict based on their cooperation with U.S.-backed coalitions. The UAE has been nicknamed “Little Sparta” for its alleged fighting prowess.

The question is, what is the net effect of the UAE’s military activities on its region? It was an active partner in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, arming and training extremist militias. An investigation by CNN found that Saudi Arabia and the UAE provided the militias with U.S. supplied arms in violation of U.S. law, including everything from anti-tank weapons to armored vehicles. Even worse, the UAE and its Yemeni allies ran a series of secret prisons in southern Yemen where detainees were routinely tortured. It has never been held accountable for these abuses.

Yemen is just one of many recent conflicts where the UAE has played a negative role. As Declan Walsh and Christoph Koettl of the New York Times reported earlier this week, under the guise of providing humanitarian assistance to victims of the brutal civil war in Sudan, the UAE has been “funneling money, weapons and . . . powerful drones to fighters rampaging across the country.” The UAE’s weapons have gone to the Rapid Support Forces, the rebel group that is challenging Sudan’s military for control of the country. Both sides of the war have been accused of committing war crimes, from bombing hospitals to blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Sudan is only the latest example of the UAE’s intervention in an African civil war. The UAE backed the Ethiopian government in its vicious civil war in the Tigray region earlier in this decade, supplying arms and attacking Tigrayan forces with drones.

And last but not least, in Libya the UAE backed the opposition forces led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, supplying arms and even bombing a Libyan government military training compound. The UAE also helped finance the intervention in Libya by the brutal Russian-backed Wagner Group.

Is this the record of a nation that is likely to be a force for peace and stability in the region? The UAE has its own agenda – developing a security network and port access across the Persian Gulf and North Africa – that may or may not coincide with U.S. policy or long-term U.S. interests.

The next administration needs to take a careful look at U.S. security policy in the Middle East and recalibrate its relationships with governments engaged in aggression and human rights abuses, from Israel to Saudi Arabia to the UAE. Continuing down the current path is a recipe for continuing war and dangerous escalation.