The UAE Has No Goals
It's Just Chaos For The Sake of Chaos
In 2011 the Arab Spring gave the United Arab Emirates a goal. It had to crush Arab Democracy by any means necessary. The method they developed was chaos. In 2021, with the fall of Tunisian democracy, the UAE achieved its goal. Now all they have left is the method of chaos, and it isn’t serving anybody in the region, not even the UAE.
Today’s podcast covers the most horrific fruits of the UAE’s strategy of chaos. As we covered in last week’s post, a UAE client is now on the cusp of wiping out a second major Sudanese city. In the podcast we dive in on the UAE relationships and funding that are keeping us from even recognizing some of the greatest crimes of the 21st century. You can listen to that podcast here, or read on to hear more about how the UAE achieved its main goal of crusing democracy, but kept on destroying the region out of inertia.
Gulf Monarchy’s Victory Over the Arab Spring
The UAE used to have an ally in crushing Arab Democracy. Across the 2010s Saudi Arabia and the UAE marched in lockstep. Muhammad Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s main decision maker since 2015, came to power at barely 30 and was happy to take guidance from Mohamed Bin Zayed, the more experienced ruler of the UAE.
The Gulf paid to throw out Egypt’s only democratically elected ruler in 2013. They worked across the 2010s to back Khalifa Haftar in Libya against a succession of United Nations backed governments. In doing so they ensured that the only thing that followed the fall of Gaddafi was chaos, and not a democratic process. Their work crushing democracy in Tunisia was more subtle, but effective, bearing fruit in 2021. Their support for competing militias in Syria yielded horrific chaos, that they could claim to deplore, but effectively blocked any democratic development in Syria for a decade. US sanctions did eventually take out Assad, but not before the UAE revealed its preference for autocracy by trying to bring Assad back in from the cold.
When Sudan’s dictator fell in 2019, they worked to shore up the remnants of his regime, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), to crush Sudan’s democratic opening. This process was more or less achieved with a coup in 2021. In 2023 the SAF and the RSF went to war against each other, and the UAE decided to back the more genocidal group, the RSF.
The UAE used two strategies to sell this obscene move to their security guarantor, the United States. Though it didn’t really need much selling. After the staggering failure of the Iraq war, the United States was eager to back off and work through “local partners”. The most hyperactive and effective of these local partners was the UAE.
The UAE’s main ideological strategy in getting the US to accept its method of chaos was the demonization of the “Muslim Brotherhood” ideology. This was effective because Brotherhood ideology underpinned every democratic experiment in the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood is not one thing. Hamas is one malicious example, but political parties inspired by this century old ideology have demonstrated in country after country that they were eager to work with other parties to build democracy. This was the case in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen, and even in Israel itself. Though they were certainly careful to disclaim any affiliation, the United Arab List that participated in Israel’s brief anti Netanyahu coalition government in 2021 and 2022 had ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.
None of this nuance is ever recognized by the the dumb-dumbs in the US foreign policy establishment. The fact that most US foreign policy establishment think tanks are heavily funded by the UAE helps to explain this gap. “Muslim Brotherhood” are the scary magic words that justify the crushing of all Arab Democracy, and now genocide in Sudan.
Abraham Accords
The second strategy was cozying up to Israel. The UAE enshrined this closeness in a formal agreement in August 2020, but both the UAE and Saudi Arabia worked closely with Israel across the 2010s. Arab Democracy is just as threatening to Israel as it is to Arab Monarchs. The Abraham Accords “peace process”, built on cutting out all Palestinian interests, requires the perpetuation of monarchy and dictatorship across the Arab World. Despite decades of oppression, most Arabs still care about the Palestinians. This is harder to ignore when they have the vote.
Performative Gulf animosity towards Iran was always an important part of the UAE’s chaos methods. It dovetailed nicely with Israeli and US hatred of the Iranians, and deepened security and intelligence relationships with the world hegemon. It provided a ready excuse for the numerous human rights catastrophes and non-government the UAE fostered across the region. “Well at least Iran isn’t getting a foothold anywhere!”.
Across the 2010s, Tunisia stood out like a sore thumb, earning international accolades for its democratic experiment. Saudi and UAE lobbying made sure that no matter how admired it was, it got minimal international support. The perpetuation of chaos in Libya, through the support of Haftar, and the bankrolling of Sisi in Egypt ensured that Tunisia’s democratic experiment never spread. Then, finally, in 2021, under the pressure of Covid, and regional chaos that the Gulf monarchies perpetuated, Tunisia’s democracy finally fell.
Saudi Arabia Grows Up
A funny thing happened to Saudi Arabia across the 2020s. MBS grew up. In his early 30s, he was the most chaotic element in the region by far. His invasion of Yemen, kidnapping of Prime Ministers, and slaughter of journalists were a series of wild experiments that did not work. As he matured into his 40s, MBS began to realize that the strategy of chaos doesn’t actually work for Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is a real country, with a real geography and a real population. The UAE is a few cities nestled in the Persian Gulf, surrounded by US clients and US bases, well insulated from the chaos the UAE creates. MBS and the Saudi establishment belatedly realized that all the chaos the UAE was fostering created real problems on Saudi borders. This became most glaring in Yemen. The Saudis believed they were really fighting the Houthis and perceived Iranian influence in Yemen. They pursued it ineffectually, but the Saudis had a real non-chaos goal in Yemen. They were sabotaged at every turn by the UAE, who would go so far as to assassinate anti-Houthi Saudi clients.
And what’s the point of all this chaos from the Saudi perspective anyway? They pulled it off. Democracy has been crushed. Even in Sudan, most human rights advocates just want the killing to stop and would be content to let the Sudanese Armed Forces re-establish a dictatorship that kills fewer cities. Saudi Arabia has begun to start taking baby steps towards regional stability, attempting to build bridges with Iran, and trying to find solutions, even in places they did the most to screw up, like Yemen.
It took a while, but it seems like the Saudis have woken up to the fact that there is no way to bring about peace, stability and economic growth while continuing to work with the UAE. I’ve been chronicling the breakdown of this relationship in numerous posts over the past six months.
Saudi Arabia wants to move forward. The region desperately wants to move forward. But the UAE keeps doubling down. It’s seemingly more eager for war with Iran to continue than the United States is. The UAE seems to be cruising towards the murder of another major Sudanese city. What goal is being served here? Ports, Gold, Some sort of centuries late Venetian style maritime empire? When you think about it, none of the proposed explanations of UAE chaos-mongering make any sense.
The truth is that the UAE is trapped. Without any of the pressures of reality that MBS and the Saudis have to deal with, the UAE is trapped in the momentum of its own chaos. Its leaders are trapped in poisonous relationships with the US military industrial complex, and its nastiest manifestations in Silicon Valley and Israel.
The UAE isn’t serving any goal other than chaos. It doesn’t help anybody to pretend otherwise.
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, or watch it on YouTube below.
Tunisia democracy did not end because the UAE , things happened inside the country for example the endless strikes upset people a lot as well black immigrants,rise in crime,the economic slowdown and the like. And this is true for 90% of countries once you go into them specifically they actually have people with agency .