UAE’s Growing Geo-Economic Strategy In Asia

Andrew Korybko (South24) 

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is successfully positioning itself as a geo-economic lynchpin in Asia following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit and the virtual summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These two developments resulted in huge achievements for the UAE’s grand strategic goal of leveraging its advantageous geographic location, robustly diversified economy, and non-ideological foreign policy to bring together important stakeholders across the continent. It’s crucial to explain the significance of last week’s events in order for observers to better appreciate them.

To begin, one must first obtain a solid understanding of what exactly the UAE’s grand strategy is. Asia as a whole is already a global economic powerhouse, though its various regions contribute to this in different ways. The Gulf had previously been known for its energy wealth but little more, though Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) ambitiously revolutionized his country’s economy over the past decade by wisely diversifying away from its hitherto disproportionate dependence on such exports and towards becoming a global financial, logistics, investment, services, tech, and trade hub. 

Just as importantly, MBZ ensured that the UAE’s foreign policy remained strictly non-ideological and focused solely on the pragmatic pursuit of mutual benefits without advancing such at any third party’s expense. This explains why he agreed to the Abraham Accords of late 2020, which resulted in the UAE ending up as one of the few Muslim-majority countries to formalize relations with Israel. That was a diplomatically game-changing move that’s expected to bring plenty more investment to the UAE. It also solidified its international reputation as a very tolerant country. 

MBZ envisions turning the UAE into a key hub for connecting Afro-Eurasia, capitalizing upon its location near the center of this tri-continental space in the Eastern Hemisphere. To that end, his country must continue clinching trade deals and working with all interested partners, including those with whom it previously had certain sensitive disputes like Turkey. What’s most important is that everyone agrees to work together towards the shared goals of stability, prosperity, and security. Those who embrace this vision will see their efforts enthusiastically reciprocated by the UAE. 

This brings the analysis around to explaining the significance of President Erdogan’s recent trip to the Gulf country. Ties between the two deteriorated over the past few years due to the UAE’s and many others’ suspicions that Ankara was supporting terrorist-designated Muslim Brotherhood elements throughout the broader region. Turkey’s backing of Qatar during the latter’s several-years-long dispute with its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners also contributed to heightened suspicions of its intentions. These factors combined to regrettably cool Emirati-Turkish relations. 

This detrimental dynamic gradually began to change after the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence was decisively rolled back across the Gulf, Levant, and North Africa in recent years. Turkey also began to experience very serious economic and financial challenges that raised questions about the sustainability of its suspected grand strategic goal of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in the region against the wishes of its people and their governments. President Erdogan evidently realized that a recalibration of Turkish grand strategy was long overdue. 

His government subsequently began talking with the UAE and its close partners in Saudi Arabia, which helped restore trust between Turkey and the GCC. The outcome of these diplomatic interactions was President Erdogan’s visit to the UAE, during which time the two sides reached 13 agreements and memoranda of understanding (MOU) that covered cultural, defense, economic, logistics, tech, and trade ties, et al. They also importantly agreed to work towards clinching a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) sometime in the future. 

It's not an exaggeration to describe the Turkish leader’s visit as a milestone not only in bilateral relations, but also in terms of West Asia’s contemporary history as a whole. The frigid ties between the two brought about by Turkey’s suspected support of the Muslim Brotherhood threatened to hold the larger region’s development back and contributed to serious tensions. The rapid rapprochement between Turkey and the UAE and Turkey and the GCC more broadly will reverse those detrimental dynamics and contribute to everyone coming closer together in pursuit of shared interests. 

It's not an exaggeration to describe the Turkish leader’s visit as a milestone not only in bilateral relations, but also in terms of West Asia’s contemporary history as a whole. The frigid ties between the two brought about by Turkey’s suspected support of the Muslim Brotherhood threatened to hold the larger region’s development back and contributed to serious tensions. The rapid rapprochement between Turkey and the UAE and Turkey and the GCC more broadly will reverse those detrimental dynamics and contribute to everyone coming closer together in pursuit of shared interests. 

No less significant was the virtual summit between MBZ and Prime Minister Modi that occurred right afterwards. The UAE reached its first-ever CEPA with one of its largest trade partners, India, which has many expats in the Gulf country who work in its construction and other industries. Their joint statement was rightly titled “Advancing the India-UAE Comprehensive Strategic Partnership: New Frontiers, New Milestones”. Defense, emerging technologies, energy, food security, and international cooperation figured prominently in their joint statement, among other areas of close cooperation between them.

The Emirati-Indian CEPA is especially important for both because of the prospective Arab-Mediterranean Corridor (AMC) that they’re expected to jointly help establish in the coming years. Professor Michaël Tanchum, a senior fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, published a detailed report about this last August titled “India’s Arab-Mediterranean Corridor: A Paradigm Shift In Strategic Connectivity To Europe” that elaborated more on how that South Asian state can create this new trade route together with its GCC and Israeli partners. 

Speaking of Israel, it’s a close partner of both the UAE and India, which further increases the prospects of the AMC one day being established. All three also have very solid ties with Saudi Arabia, including Israel despite those two not having any formal relations as of yet even though they’re reported to be on close terms with one another behind the scenes. This was initially driven by their shared concerns about Iran, but they both recently also have a desire to more closely coordinate their regional policies due to their newfound concerns about the US’ gradual disengagement from the region. 

Having explained the driving forces behind the UAE’s geo-economic achievements with Turkey and India over the past week, it’s now time to analyze these developments a bit more broadly. The UAE’s global reputation as a geo-economic hub and a very tolerant state means that those which most closely associate with it can also be seen a bit better in the eyes of the international community. This is important for Turkey since it suggests that it’s truly sincere about distancing itself from the Muslim Brotherhood otherwise the UAE wouldn’t have engaged with it since it has zero tolerance for terrorism. 

India also benefits through its association with the tolerant UAE since there have been concerns in recent years about the treatment of its Muslim minority, which have also been echoed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Be that as it is, Abu Dhabi evidently doesn’t consider those concerns to be an impediment to the expansion of bilateral ties with New Delhi, particularly in the economic dimension, which testifies to the UAE’s strictly non-ideological foreign policy. That might upset its historical Pakistani partners, but there’s not much that Islamabad can do about that. 

The comprehensive strategic partnership between the UAE and India isn’t occurring at any third party’s expense, including Pakistan’s, and bilateral ties between Abu Dhabi and Islamabad haven’t suffered as a result. Nor, for that matter, can one describe the recent rapprochement between the UAE and Turkey as occurring at anyone else’s expense either, including Abu Dhabi’s newfound Greek partners who have historical disputes with Ankara. Third parties should accept the UAE’s strictly non-ideological and purely pragmatic grand strategy that’s driven by mutual geo-economic benefits even if they don’t always agree. 

The larger trend on display during last week’s two geo-economic developments is that Asia is slowly but surely coming closer together, with certain countries like the UAE playing key roles in bringing this about. Indian-Turkish ties remain tense over their different stances towards Kashmir but both Asian countries have a common interest in comprehensively expanding their relations with the UAE. This places Abu Dhabi in a strategically advantageous position that few other countries enjoy except perhaps Russia. The UAE’s active multi-alignment between various centers of influence helps stabilize Asia. 

It fully aligns with MBZ’s envisioned grand strategy of cooperating with all interested partners that share its goals of stability, prosperity, and security. Turkey and India are two of the most recent to publicly express such willingness and achieved tangible dividends as a result. Their international reputations are bolstered by their close association with the tolerant UAE, and trade ties between them and that country remain very promising. The example being set by the UAE is a very promising one which sets that country apart from many others as a global leader in geo-economic trends. 

Andrew Korybko 

Moscow-based American political analyst

Photo: Emirati Media

Opinions expressed in this analysis reflects its author