Among the major deals President Donald Trump forged during his barnstorming tour of Gulf states was a partnership with the United Arab Emirates to create a campus for advanced artificial intelligence, which sweetened a promise by the UAE to invest more than $1 trillion in the United States. A new open-access analysis in Middle East Policy helps explain why Washington is scrambling to bolster its relations with a middle power over which it held throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
The new article by Fred H. Lawson and Matteo Legrenzi is forthcoming in the Summer 2025 issue of Middle East Policy, which is now available in an Early View through Wiley.
Over the last decade, the Emiratis have flexed their muscles by pursuing a foreign policy independent of US interests in the Yemen civil war and, more important, by deepening relations with China and Russia. The article by Fred H. Lawson and Matteo Legrenzi, available to all readers without charge, argues that scholars have misinterpreted the reasons for the UAE’s distancing itself from Washington. This is not a hedging strategy but the logical outcome of a dyadic protectorate. In such arrangements, the authors contend, the weaker state has “the incentive and the capacity to assert its self-interests” once the alignment between protector and protected obsolesces.
Lawson and Legrenzi lay out an array of evidence to show how this dyadic protectorate has transformed. After the US victory in 1991’s Persian Gulf War, the two states concluded agreements that allowed Washington to use air and naval bases, and to pre-position arms and equipment. American and Emirati forces staged training missions, the United States supplied advanced weaponry, and Abu Dhabi followed US preferences in the war on terrorism and occupation of Iraq. The UAE restrained itself from acting independently against its protector’s interests.
However, the authors show, the Emiratis began to turn toward activism between 2008 and 2015, despite the partnership with Washington. They welcomed the ouster of Egypt’s elected leader, acted independently in Africa, and closely cooperated with the French military. The United States tolerated this, as the dyadic protectorate made it costly to rein in the Gulf state.
The erosion of the protectorate during this middle period gave way to what the authors term the “obsolescence” of the US-UAE arrangement over the last decade. Although Washington continued to pump advanced weapons into the Emirati arsenal, it lost sway as the UAE asserted itself in Yemen, Sudan, Syria, and Afghanistan, among other areas. More important, Abu Dhabi bought advanced weaponry from Russia, China, and Turkey. The China relationship was of most concern and went beyond the military. In addition to deals on manufacturing and nuclear energy, the authors remind us, Abu Dhabi in 2023 “for the first time accepted payment in nonconvertible Chinese currency for a consignment of liquified natural gas delivered to the state-run China National Offshore Oil Corporation.”
Lawson and Legrenzi assert that the trajectory of this relationship, and the UAE’s flexing of muscles, is explained by the nature of the dyadic protectorate. “The obsolescing bargain that lies at the heart of dyadic protectorates can therefore be seen to work against long-term stability in the contemporary Gulf, no matter how attractive such an arrangement might look to both parties at the outset,” the authors conclude. This is why Trump has had to shift into a different type of partnership by soliciting Emirati investment, a bid to the UAE away from its turn to the East.
The open-access article by Lawson and Legrenzi is part of an Early View of Middle East Policy’s Summer 2025 installment. The 164th issue in the journal’s history features three other open-access analyses: Thomas Juneau’s assessment of Iran’s “annus horribilis” in 2024, Iftah Burman and Yehuda Blanga’s examination of Hezbollah’s criminal enterprise from 1985 to 2005, and Chen Kertcher and Gadi Hitman’s explanation of how middle powers like Israel and Syria try to achieve their interests; and Fred H. Lawson and Matteo Legrenzi’s analysis of the shifting relationship of the United States and United Arab Emirates, a dyadic protectorate that has allowed the smaller state to slowly gain confidence in forging its own path.
The Summer 2025 issue of Middle East Policy will be available in late June.
Middle East Policy, Summer 2025—forthcoming in June!
THE LONG ARC OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau—open access!
Conjuring an Enemy: US Discourse and Policy on Iran, 1979–88
Annie Tracy Samuel
ISRAELI POLITICS, AT HOME AND ABROAD
Military Reservists and the Resistance to Netanyahu’s Legal Overhaul
Guy Ziv
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić, Marko Ćuže
The Gaza War and the Future of the Abraham Accords
Mahmood Monshipouri, Manochehr Dorraj, John Fields
WAR AND REBUILDING IN THE LEVANT
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: Voices of Syria’s New Leaders
Rasim Koç
Lessons from the Syria-Hezbollah Criminal Syndicate, 1985–2005
Iftah Burman, Yehuda Blanga—open access!
THE RESOLVE OF SMALL STATES
Middle Powers and Limited Balancing: Syria and the Post‐October 7 Wars
Chen Kertcher, Gadi Hitman—open access!
Antinomies of Alignment Redux: The United Arab Emirates and the United States
Fred H. Lawson, Matteo Legrenzi—open access!
The Making of a Ruler: Haitham bin Tariq on the Omani Throne
Joseph Albert Kéchichian
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