For some time now, a certain strategic vision has been gaining traction: the United States is becoming energy-independent, paving the way for its political retreat from the Middle East and justifying its strategic “pivot” toward Asia. This view seems intuitively correct, but is it? Energy-hungry America has long depended on the global market to meet […]
Default became a dirty word in the United Arab Emirates after 2009, when Dubai World requested a six-month delay on payments on US$26 billion in debt. So much so that when UAE energy company Dana Gas this month missed repayment on a US$920 million Islamic bond, local press hesitated to label it as a default. […]
Touring the luxurious campus of the American University of Sharjah last week, I was yet again struck by what money, especially petrodollars, can buy. Sharjah is an emirate of the United Arab Emirates, located adjacent to Abu Dhabi. Designed by the ruler of Sharjah, Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qassimi, one of the more enlightened of […]
Dubai’s chief of police, General Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is “a small group that has strayed from the true path.” He also says that the revolution in Egypt “would not have been possible without Iran’s support and is the prelude to a new Sykes-Picot agreement” (1). And that Mohammed Morsi’s election in […]
Amid a world of pitiless competition, David Cameron is serving the national interest by leading the drive to sell British-made weaponry to our allies in the Gulf. No less than 300,000 jobs depend on Britain’s defence industry, which serves as our biggest exporter of manufactured goods and keeps this country at the forefront of technological […]
With the latest public opinion polls showing the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney a dead heat, the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election in the United States is anyone’s guess. What is certain, however, is that main foreign policy challenges facing the next US administration are located within a brief flying time from Abu Dhabi and are of […]
The UAE is one of several Gulf nations using its oil wealth to find new ways to build a position of substantial influence in the world. For many years, the ambitions of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations were directed internally as they struggled with the mammoth task of building the infrastructure and social systems […]
Emirates foreign policy has gone through a dynamic change in recent years. The change is apparently broad and indeed fundamental. It encompasses the very content as well as the style in which the UAE deals with external opportunities and challenges. The relatively small but oil-rich UAE is noticeably more assertive and active regionally and globally […]
Debate – The staying power of Arab Monarchies Read Here – International Herald Tribune
looking beyond borders 