The Foreign Policy Of The United Arab Emirates

This book offers a concise and detailed analysis of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) foreign aid as a main instrument in its foreign policy. Exploring the cultural factors that have impacted on the foreign policy behaviour of the UAE and its foreign aid, the author argues that Arabism and Islamic traditions have shaped the country’s foreign policy in general and foreign aid in particular. Examining in depth the motives and purposes of this large aid program through the lens of International Relations theories (mainly Constructivism and Rationalism), the book details the UAE’s foreign policy and aid program since its inception. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of two major recipients of aid from the UAE – Palestine and Pakistan – the focus moves beyond the UAE to show how cultural factors have impacted on the behaviour of the authorities across the wider Arab Middle East. This critical assessment and analysis of the UAE’s foreign policy will be of particular interest to students, researchers and academics interested in Middle East studies, the Gulf States, Middle East politics, and foreign aid and foreign policy.

Foreign Policy has been crucial to the UAE, ever since its birth in 1971 following Britain's decision to withdraw from the Gulf. How is the federation's foreign policy formulated? What are the internal and external pressures which shape it? How can a small Gulf state survive in the modern world? Dr Hassan Hamdan al-Alkim, himself a UAE national, has not only studied the Emirates' policy-making process in depth. He has also interviewed some of those closely involved in it. His detailed and fully documented study outlines the origins of the UAE and describes the evolution of its policies towards its neighbours, the wider Arab world, and the big powers. Three illuminating case-studies examine relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the UAE's attitude towards the Palestine question.

This paper examines the foreign policy production of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through the ‘Dynamic Process Model’ (DPM), a conceptual framework combining elements of international relations (IR) theory and foreign policy analysis. With a focus on the process of identity construction, the motives and values that drive foreign policy production can be better contextualized. This paper utilizes many of these existing theoretical models in a novel form to create a framework that is more useful to studying the IR and foreign policy production of small states. This framework is presented as the DPM and will be used to analyze the identity construction of the UAE, a process central to understanding foreign policy production. There were three reasons to choose the UAE as a case-study: firstly, the desire to study a possible shift in the underlying dynamics behind the country’s ‘identity’ construction as a nation-state following the death of its founding father and first president, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. Secondly, the UAE is an interesting example of a re-examination of changing international relations dynamics; specifically, the growing self-awareness and assertiveness of small states, especially Arabian Gulf States (AGS), regarding their growing political and economic influence, both regionally and globally. Thirdly, there is a weakness when it comes to the integration between IR theory and foreign policy analysis. This gap is most apparent in the study of small state foreign policy like the UAE. This paper uses the DPM to inform a structural analysis of UAE foreign policy (FP) production that will reveal a shift in ‘identity’ construction and domestic socio-political structures from the Zayed (1971–2004) to the post-Zayed era. It asks how the ‘identity’ of the DMA is constructed dynamically as it interacts with external and internal structures, through the process of articulating ‘national identity’ as ‘national interest.’ As Richard Devetak notes, “it is important to recognize that political identities do not exist prior to the differentiation of self and other.” The DPM sees FP production as a form of identity construction by combining this functional understanding of sovereign nation-states, systems theory FP5 literature, and IR theory.

Middle East politics have been proverbial for their changeability. The 1970s ushered in petro-politics, for instance, but OPEC's international status declined markedly in the following decade. Similarly, the Arab world's ostracism of Egypt in the 1970s following its separate peace with Israel was turned around in the 1980s; the late 1980s also brought PLO acceptance of the State of Israel. Interstate relations were not the only arena to experience significant alterations; state-society relations also underwent dramatic changes, such as the acceleration of privatization in erstwhile socialist regimes. Then the 1990s opened with a political earthquake: the Gulf Crisis. The second edition of this highly acclaimed text offers a penetrating analysis of trends in Arab foreign policies since the book was originally published in 1984, including an early analysis of the effects of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent coalition victory over Iraq. In addition, the authors have included new chapters on Jordan—at the heart of the Arab world—and on the Sudan—the region's link to sub-Saharan Africa. Their inclusion allows a fuller understanding of the foreign policies of states that occupy crucial geopolitical positions but wield little tangible power. Moreover, in many of its chapters the book raises the crucial question of how the foreign policies of these countries can cope with the prevalence of political change.

Led by Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the UAE has become deeply embedded in the contemporary system of international power, politics, and policy-making. Only an independent state since 1971, the seven emirates that constitute the UAE represent not only the most successful Arab federal experiment but also the most durable. However, the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath underscored the continuing imbalance between Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the five northern emirates. Meanwhile, the post-2011 security crackdown revealed the acute sensitivity of officials in Abu Dhabi to social inequalities and economic disparities across the federation. The United Arab Emirates: Power, Politics, and Policymaking charts the various processes of state formation and political and economic development that have enabled the UAE to emerge as a significant regional power and major player in the post Arab Spring reordering of Middle East and North African Politics, as well as the closest partner of the US in military and security affairs in the region. It also explores the seamier underside of that growth in terms of the condition of migrant workers, recent interventions in Libya and Yemen, and, latterly, one of the highest rates of political prisoners per capita in the world. The book concludes with a discussion of the likely policy challenges that the UAE will face in coming years, especially as it moves towards its fiftieth anniversary in 2021. Providing a comprehensive and accessible assessment of the UAE, this book will be a vital resource for students and scholars of International Relations and Middle East Studies, as well as non-specialists with an interest in the United Arab Emirates and its global position.

The UAE¿s relatively open borders, economy, and society have won praise from advocates of expanded freedoms in the Middle East while producing financial excesses, social ills such as prostitution and human trafficking, and relatively lax controls on sensitive technologies acquired from the West. Contents of this report: (1) Governance, Human Rights, and Reform: Status of Political Reform; Human Rights-Related Issues; (2) Cooperation Against Terrorism and Proliferation; (3) Foreign Policy and Defense Cooperation With the U.S.: Regional Issues; Security Cooperation with the U.S.: Relations With Iran; Cooperation on Iraq; Cooperation on Afghanistan and Pakistan; U.S. and Other Arms Sales; UAE Provision of Foreign Aid; (4) Economic Issues.

This book studies how smaller Gulf states managed to increase their influence in the Middle East, oftentimes capitalising on their smallness as a foreign policy tool. By establishing a novel theoretical framework (the complex model of size), this study identifies specific ways in which material and perceptual smallness affect power, identity, regime stability, and leverage in international politics. The small states of the Gulf (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) managed to build up considerable influence in regional politics over the last decade, although their size is still considered an essential, irresolvable weakness, which makes them secondary actors to great powers such as Saudi Arabia or Iran. Breaking down explicit and implicit biases towards largeness, the book examines specific case studies related to foreign and security policy behaviour, including the Gulf wars, the Arab Uprisings, the Gulf rift, and the Abraham Accords. Analysing the often-neglected small Gulf states, the volume is an important contribution to international relations theory, making it a key resource for students and academics interested in Small State Studies, Gulf studies, and the political science of the Middle East.

Since the establishment of the UAE in 1971, the country's foreign and defense policies have largely been driven by UAE President HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. From the beginning, Sheikh Zayed identified four objectives, namely: the establishment of good relations with immediate neighbors, peaceful settlement of disputes, solidarity with the Arab and Islamic worlds, and fruitful cooperation with all nations. Despite major challenges to foreign policy, such as the two Gulf wars, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the dispute with Iran over the occupation of the three UAE islands in the Gulf, Sheikh Zayed has been able to adhere to the UAE's foreign policy objectives and steer its defense policy accordingly. This approach has ensured that the UAE, which in 1971 had been a weak fledgling state facing hostile neighbors and almost no friends, by 2001 had established strong alliances in the Gulf and the Arab world, strategic ties with the United States and the West, and a position of widespread respect and influence.