TOPSHOT – A skyline picture shows downtown Dubai and the Gulf emirate’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s … [+]
A few weeks ago, it would have been inconceivable to most foreign policy experts that Israeli aircraft could bomb Syria at will with their tanks apparently in shooting distance of Damascus, all the while a new Islamist regime installed itself there. This latest turn in the topsy turvy geopolitical world gives a glimpse of some of the regime shifts to come and the fragility of erstwhile brutal, long-lasting dictatorships.
I absorbed the implications of the event in Abu Dhabi, which in terms of its success and trajectory, underlines the view of some that there are ‘two middle easts’. At the same time, Abu Dhabi has risen to a point of influence that it will be the lodestar in building the economic structure of the region once a viable peace plan for Israel/Palestine has been found.
The surprise departure of Bashir al-Assad will likely accelerate the reordering of the region and give food for thought to other ‘strongmen’. It may eventually be that a gang of them ends up living out of the Ritz Carlton in Moscow.
Indeed, a couple of academics have tracked the flight of deposed dictators and state that ‘we find that dictators are more likely to go into exile in states that are close neighbors, have hosted other dictators in the past, are militarily powerful, and possess colonial links, formal alliances, and economic ties. By contrast, fleeing dictators tend to avoid democratic states and countries experiencing civil conflict’. More specifically, in Europe the top three destinations for dictators are Russia, the UK and France!
Despite Assad’s fall, Syria itself is not out of the woods – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham may be media sensitive, but they are also deadly, conservative Islamists. They have manifestly been given a firm helping hand by Turkey, which is re-establishing itself as a regional power.
Turkish foreign policy is an enigma, wrapped in a mystery. In the past I have written how, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, many countries in north Africa wanted to follow the ‘Turkish model’ of development. Since then, Recep Erdogan has enfeebled the country’s institutions and its economic backbone and has turned a foreign policy that used to be based on ‘no trouble with neigbours’ to one of ‘trouble with neighbours’.
However, Erodgan is a key player now – especially in terms of how he negotiates Russia’s military withdrawal. There remain many open questions, notably how the fall of Syria further weakens Iran and what implications this has for Iraq. Larger regional countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia will welcome the toppling of Assad and the further undermining of Iran, but now have to face up to the prospect of a regional peace deal where the strength of their support for Palestine will be tested.
If in 2025 a peace deal is struck that keeps in place the two-state formula, then the prospect of a regional economic recovery, led by the UAE (or Abu Dubai as some call it), may not be far off.
Visits to ministries, financial institutions (including Abu Dhabi Finance Week) and infrastructure players, with Prof. Afshin Molavi and several other economists and writers, gave a sense of the ambition of the region. In particular compared to previous visits to the region, two things stood out as ‘new developments’.
The first is a growing sense of independence on the part of the UAE to go its own way in terms of how it makes policy (as opposed to being a policy taker from the US and the EU). This is evident in finance, infrastructure, labour markets and trade. On trade specifically, the UAE has to be geopolitically ambidextrous in how it builds relationships with the US and China, though when it comes to technology, the sense is that it is very much plugged into America.
The second element worth commenting on is the idea of ‘The Fourth Pole’. I have written on this in the last year, and the idea is that in a multipolar world made up of three ‘poles’ (US, EU and China) there is room for a fourth pole made up of India, the Gulf States and other players across the ‘region’ (which we could define as those countries a five hours flight away from the UAE, which includes some 2.4 billion people across Asia, Africa, Southeast Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean).
The notion of the ‘Fourth Pole’ is gathering pace around the very close relationship between the UAE and India (the very popular Hindu Temple in Abu Dhabi is just one sign), and the web of trade, finance and infrastructure deals they are engaging in across the region. This relationship may not ultimately become as deep as that of the EU countries, but it is beginning to look like a modern version of the ‘Coal and Steel’ community. The risk however, is that they overbuild capacity in the face of a forthcoming economic shock or recession.
As a final word, the best indication that I had that the UAE is feeling both confident and more independent is that some well-connected government advisors have come up with an acronym for the west – W.E.N.A (Western Europe and North America)!
