Regional power United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi is no longer Saudi Arabia's junior partner

Guido Steinberg

No 10/2020, SWP Research Papers from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Abstract: Since the Arab Spring of 2011, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been pursuing an increasingly active foreign and security policy and have emerged as a leading regional power. The UAE sees the Muslim Brotherhood as a serious threat to regime stability at home, and is fighting the organisation and its affiliated groups throughout the Arab world. The UAE's preferred partners in regional policy are authoritarian rulers who take a critical view of political Islam and combat the Muslim Brotherhood. The new Emirati regional policy is also directed against Iranian expansion in the Middle East. Yet the anti-Iranian dimension of Emirati foreign policy is considerably less pronounced than its anti-Islamist dimension. The UAE wants to gain control of sea routes from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. Since the Yemen conflict began in 2015, it has established a small maritime empire there. The rise of the UAE to a regional power has made the country a more important and simultaneously a more problematic policy partner for Germany and Europe.

Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:swprps:102020

DOI: 10.18449/2020RP10

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