The UAE has articulated some important basic principles on which it bases its foreign policy, putting respect for the sovereignty of nation states at the top, making an essential virtue of the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other nations.
This broad principle might apply to the Russian annexation of Ukraine, but also applies to the suggestions that Qatar has permitted too much interference in the affairs of its neighbours. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have accused Qatar of using its support for the Muslim Brotherhood to interfere in their internal affairs, and they withdrew their ambassadors from Doha.
The UAE has also spelt out five other principles, including supporting regional balance, moderate agenda, stable socio-economic conditions, international efforts to achieve energy security, and supporting multilateral organisations like the UN, GCC and Arab League. Working to such a clear agenda allows the UAE to focus on what is important as it sifts through the many urgent regional issues which can dominate the short-term agendas while not contributing to the long term stability of the region.
Such articulated priorities also give the UAE a clear target, which is not based on seeking regional hegemony or naked national interest, but in a broader desire to build a more stable region based on a tolerant and moderate welcoming of the UAE and Arab world’s place in the global society that is shaping the 21st Century.
The weakened state of the United Nations is a global problem that the UAE is right to seek to face. It may be hard to run the world by committee and consensus, but the alternative is to give the world’s few great powers unfettered access to interference, which can cause great harm.
The UAE is right to seek to rebuild confidence in the regional and global bodies that allow the major military and economic powers to meet and understand the concerns of the rest of mankind as we all work towards building a more stable and environmentally secure tenancy of the globe we inhabit.
