Why are the Emirates breaking away from Saudi Arabia?

МОСКВА, 06 сентября 2021, Институт РУССТРАТ. Relations between Arab countries rarely reach the level of top-level world news, although there has almost always been a struggle for leadership between them, despite the proximity of the geographical location of the states, the common historical development, language and culture. But, as a rule, Arab countries prefer to talk more publicly about "historical friendship between themselves". But it often happens that numerous inter-state contradictions between them come out because of the struggle for the distribution and use of hydrocarbon resources. And then the whole region begins to shake. That is why, when problems arose in relations between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the first easiest explanation was that there were problems in the OPEC+ format in the issue of oil production. The situation was not new and could well be resolved. But Riyadh made a number of non-standard decisions. It announced the transfer of the headquarters and representative offices of almost all large 26 foreign companies located in the UAE to their territory and sharply hit the UAE economy. The authorities of the kingdom also adopted amendments to the rules for imports from the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). According to the amendments, the kingdom excluded from the agreement a clause on exemption from customs duties between the GCC goods produced by companies that employ less than 25% of the local labor force. This decision also affected the UAE economy, since about 85% of production workers there are foreign citizens. In addition, free economic zones are one of the main components of the UAE’s economy. With this decision, Riyadh outlined two goals at once – firstly, to limit the export of the UAE, and secondly, the Emirati FEZs were losing their attractiveness for foreign investors. In addition, the Arab world began to say that it was because of Saudi Arabia that Abu Dhabi was involved in the conflict in Yemen with the Houthis, which for many years has not been resolved, but only hit the UAE economy hard. In fact, the conflict in Yemen concerned only Saudi Arabia, which borders the conflict zone, the UAE could have stayed away. Commenting on the situation, Bloomberg claimed that "common sense is disappearing" in the relations between Saudi Arabia (SA) and the UAE and the parties began to evolve into a phase of struggle for regional leadership, and that a black cat ran between the two crown princes of SA and the UAE — Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, respectively, who were once on very friendly terms. However, first of all, relations between the United States and the SA deteriorated, and then between the SA and the UAE. It all started with the fact that as soon as he came to power, Joe Biden announced that the United States was ending support for Saudi Arabia's policy in Yemen. The US and the EU suddenly began to widely criticise the barbarity of the Saudi military in Yemen. The intrigue is precisely that it is Washington that is behind the unleashing of a war against the Houthis. This conclusion was reached by a group of UN investigators, who in 2019, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, submitted a damning 274-page report in Geneva, which described in detail how the United States, along with Britain and France, were involved in military events in Yemen. But at the time of the invasion of this country in 2015, the SA, the UAE and a number of other Arab countries were allies, now the situation has become more complicated, since the UAE has started to play its own game. However, they, like the SA, cannot simply leave Yemen, leaving it to itself. Therefore, in Yemen, both monarchies rely on certain local military and political groups, hoping to bring them to power, which potentially leads to a clash between the Saudis and the Emiratis. In addition to this, the recently signed Emirati-Israeli peace agreement has resumed diplomatic, economic and even military cooperation between the states at the highest level. There were also reports that Israel and the UAE are going to create a military intelligence infrastructure on the Yemeni island of Socotra, which is a point where the interests of the SA and the UAE painfully intersect. Moreover, the UAE aims to annex the island because of its extremely successful strategic location, and the planned presence of Israel on the island confirms the correctness of forecasts that thanks to the Emirati-Israeli agreement, Tel Aviv will qualitatively increase the level of its capabilities to influence the situation in the Middle East region as a whole. So at this stage, the Emirates manage to gain the upper hand in diplomatic, military and economic rivalry with the Saudi Kingdom, which, in turn, changes the geopolitics of the entire Arab world. The leaked correspondence of the Emirati Ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, in 2017 makes it clear that the UAE decided to "move" the Saudis as leaders of the Arab and Islamic world, taking their place itself. In other words, the conflict, at first not too noticeable, is gaining momentum and disputes over oil quotas are only the tip of the iceberg, since deep and much larger disagreements have emerged between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. By all indications, the UAE leadership will establish partnership relations with the new American administration alone and does not intend to lobby its Saudi ally. The reason is that the democratic administration has accumulated many complaints about the UAE itself. These include: the Emirati proxy war in Yemen, the UAE's close economic cooperation with China, which strengthens China's position in the region, and the alliance with Russia in Libya. That is, the Emirates began to actively identify their claims to regional leadership (the Persian Gulf, in particular, and the Middle East in general), promote their agenda and put pressure on other players in order to realise their national interests. This turn was unexpected for Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the Emirates made good use of the moment to their advantage, when Riyadh was busy with skirmishes with Iran, got involved in the war in Yemen, from which it still cannot get out, and was mired in dynastic strife. As a result, the geopolitical games on the division of spheres of influence between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have acquired a wide scope — from the Middle East to Africa, where the "allies in words" have ceased to coordinate their positions. It is still unclear whether the complications in relations between the SA and the UAE will be a long-term trend or will end in some kind of compromise between the elites of the two states. However, it is already clear that the Saudi Crown Prince is not going to continue to be led in tandem with his Emirati counterpart. To date, the end of the conflict is not yet in sight. Thus, the existing old and emerging new contradictions in the Arab world have an extremely negative impact both on the development of interstate relations and on the problem of ensuring security, primarily in the Middle East region. The disunity of the Arab States, the continuing mutual political, economic, territorial and other claims, the struggle for leadership between the largest Arab countries hinder the development of integration processes and lead to instability of international relations at the regional and global levels. The existing military-political conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and other parts of the region are almost impossible to resolve by the forces of the Arab States themselves, due to the sometimes significant contradictions of their foreign policy interests. In this situation, in order to resolve inter-Arab contradictions and conflicts, it is advisable to more actively involve the world's leading centres of power in the process of peace negotiations and as intermediaries in these negotiations between Arab countries. But this is a problem for the future.