Opinion | Trump Has Brought Devastation To Dubai’s Efforts To Reimagine Its Future

The very security umbrella that enabled Dubai to reimagine its future now risks turning it into the frontline of someone else’s conflict

Henry Kissinger, the Machiavellian, malevolent and morally bent American geo-strategist and one-time U.S. Secretary of State, once famously said, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal."

The full import of those words is now being felt by America’s allies in the Gulf.

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Within hours of the decapitation strike that took out Iran’s “Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran has responded. Not by flattening the deck of the USS Gerald Ford that is bristling with bellicosity, not by pummelling the Israel-based headquarters of the Mossad, and not by challenging the U.S. Fifth Fleet anchored in Bahrain, the permanent symbol of American naval power in the Gulf. Instead, Iran has decided to send swarm upon swarm of its predatory drones to bomb its Arab neighbours in the UAE.

These tinsel specks of shimmery marinas and skyscrapers such as Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Dubai are bearing the brunt. The Emirates made the mistake of bartering their land, and by extension their sovereignty, with America in exchange for petrodollars and security guarantees. Under the banner of the Abraham Accords, the UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020, recasting itself as a modern, moderate bridge between the Arab world and the West. That strategic wager was designed to cement its position within the American security umbrella while accelerating economic diversification.

Over the last few decades, the Emirates have plunged their oil wealth into building monuments to human engineering and new-age services to pivot towards a future less dependent on fossil fuels. Dubai International Airport handles close to 90 million passengers annually, making it one of the busiest global transit hubs on Earth.

Jebel Ali Port is the largest man-made harbour in the world and the busiest in the Middle East, a logistics nerve centre linking Asia, Europe and Africa. Billions of dollars in trade, aviation, tourism and financial services flow through these arteries each year.

Today, those symbols of Dubai’s modernism and its attempt to emerge from the shadows of a monoculture are being blighted by Iranian wrath. Fires have been reported at Palm Jumeirah and Burj Al Arab, and an incident at Dubai International Airport has left staff injured. Thousands of Middle Eastern flights have been suspended, and smoke has been seen rising from Dubai’s major port, threatening its status as a global logistics hub.

Dubai’s rise was predicated on promising investors and expatriate human capital that it was an island of stability and moderation in an area of radicalism and extremism. Even as it hedged its bets in recent years by deepening commercial ties with China and maintaining channels with Russia, the bedrock of its security architecture remained American power projection in the Gulf.

That image is now being risked by a war that the Gulf States are in danger of being subsumed by. The very security umbrella that enabled Dubai to reimagine its future now risks turning it into the frontline of someone else’s conflict.

© News18