UAE’s ‘unshaken house’ looks East

The time has come to create mechanisms that will allow the UAE to expand into Asian markets.

The UAE’s foreign policy is unique in the region. As a small country without a large standing army (although there is plenty of steel to the UAE’s military, and further amplified through the GCC’s Peninsula Shield), the main focus of the country is to expand its soft power through trade and diplomatic relations. In that respect, the UAE has been pragmatic about its foreign policy, unconstrained by excessive ideology (something which, frankly, the Arab world has plenty of).

The “unshaken house” was how the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs put it this week as he outlined the outlook of the UAE’s foreign policy. “A success story in a region where goodness is hard to come by,” was how Dr Anwar Gargash put it.

This newspaper has previously defined the UAE’s power as “model power”, the ability to be trusted globally as a model of a modern, successful, Muslim nation. That is the reason why regional countries look to the UAE for inspiration, and it is the reason why, as Dr Gargash said on Wednesday, when foreign countries, especially from the West, seek partners in the region or perspective on it, they come first to the UAE.

What more can be done? As Dr Gargash pointed out, the UAE wants the Arab world to be stable and prosperous – “We cannot be stable,” he said, “with blazes all around us” – and yet the UAE cannot be constrained by regional problems. There is a global stage, and the UAE must tread further upon it. In particular, said Dr Gargash, the country must invest more in its relations with Asian countries, noting that five of the 16 most important UAE embassies are in Asian countries. In the past, the UAE has perhaps been reticent, lacking the long-standing relations with countries such as China, where it can be difficult to do business in. That is why UAE companies have often gone through western firms, especially UK and US firms, who may already have relationships with Asian countries.

But the time has come to break away from that. To create the mechanisms of language, people- and knowledge-exchanges, business networks, that will allow the UAE to expand into Asian markets, which are the largest markets in the world. This region has built its influence and wealth on trade, even before there was a UAE, and it is right that UAE looks back to the region that first gave it its fortune: the East.