Eurasia Press & News
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought some clarity to regional realignments and strategic partnerships in the Middle East, with the changing relationship between the United States and the oil-producing members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in particular coming into sharp focus.
War has a tendency to cause states to pay closer attention to and accelerate policy decisions on issues that they might otherwise prefer to defer action on or to leave ambiguous or unresolved. But after more than a week of fighting in Ukraine, one thing has become clear: Washington’s partners in the Middle East are increasingly confident about taking an independent course, unmoored from—and arguably in defiance of—Washington and seemingly in coordination with each other.
The divergence has been most apparent in the refusal of the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Plus, or OPEC+, to rapidly increase their oil output amid rising fuel prices, notwithstanding a request to do so by the Biden administration to Saudi Arabia. But it was also on display in Israel’s refusal to send several batteries of the Iron Dome defense system to Ukraine, despite a U.S. request, over fears the transfer would damage relations with Russia. Finally, several states in the broader region abstained on the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion, much to Washington’s displeasure.
This apparent divergence does not exactly mark a rupture—Israel is trying to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, while Saudi Arabia voted in favor of the U.N. resolution to condemn the Russian invasion. But their newly found assertiveness underscores the fact that governments in the Middle East don’t see themselves as junior partners to the United States, and no longer feel an obligation—as they perhaps might have in the past—to follow Washington’s lead on a major international security crisis.
Israel’s independent foreign policy streak is nothing new. But while the GCC member states have always pursued their own interests when they have diverged from those of Washington, the choices some of them have made so far during the Ukraine war suggest a new level of confidence and autonomy from the U.S., even though Washington remains the region’s security guarantor.
The most visible departures from the U.S. line are evident in the choices Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel have made since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. All three countries have an interest in maintaining good diplomatic, economic and military ties to Russia. Given the lingering perceptions in the region that Washington is retreating from the Middle East, these and other regional governments feel they must diversify their portfolio of relations with outside powers. In practice, this doesn’t mean abandoning ties with Washington altogether, but rather balancing them with solid relations with other powers that exercise considerable influence over regional economic and security issues, such as Russia, but also China.
The perception of a U.S. retreat from the Middle East has also driven a realignment of ties within the region. In recent years, Israel has deepened its economic and security cooperation—including on sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems—with a cohort of Gulf Arab monarchies thanks to the Abraham Accords that normalized relations with the UAE and Bahrain. Though the Abraham Accords were often billed as a quid pro quo between the signatories and the Trump administration, they represent a genuine alignment of interests, and not merely just a favor to Washington.
It is against this backdrop of Middle Eastern governments being increasingly guided by their own interests, rather than those of Washington, that we should consider the decisions they are making during this early phase of the war in Ukraine. The practical choices they face on oil production and military assistance to Kyiv confront Washington’s richest and most powerful partners in the region with a difficult dilemma.
But the same is true of the symbolic choices they must make when it comes to declarative policy, most visibly in votes on U.S.-sponsored resolutions at the United Nations. The biggest surprise so far at the U.N. came from the UAE, which on Feb. 25 abstained, along with China and India, from a Security Council resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a permanent member of the Security Council, Russia was able to veto the resolution, but the UAE’s stance sent a clear signal to the U.S. that it would not let Washington take Emirati support for granted. In the subsequent vote on a similar General Assembly resolution, the UAE ending up voting against Russia, while Iraq—another U.S. partner—abstained.
For Washington, this fence-straddling response to date raises critical questions about how much overlap remains between U.S. interests and those of its regional partners. Reports that President Joe Biden was considering a visit to Riyadh fueled speculation that Saudi Arabia might ultimately increase production to bring down oil prices, in exchange perhaps for guarantees that the Biden administration would refrain from even the mild, symbolic reprimands of Riyadh’s human rights record it has made to date.
As for the UAE, it seems that some of the misalignment of the past week is the result of broader frictions in the partnership. The Emirati ambassador to the U.S. last week described the relationship as undergoing a “stress test.” According to people I spoke to who are familiar with the UAE’s thinking, Abu Dhabi is frustrated over the U.S. position on the war in Yemen and its refusal so far to redesignate the Houthis as a terrorist entity, as the UAE requested following the Houthi attacks on Abu Dhabi in mid-January. The war in Ukraine has simply raised the stakes of that dispute.
More broadly, however, the current crisis has brought into sharp contrast the most significant realignment of the Middle East’s regional order since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Through successive administrations beginning with former President Barack Obama, Washington has displayed a bipartisan interest in reducing its footprint in the Middle East and has made clear that it views its relationships with the GCC countries in transactional terms. Former President Donald Trump hardly responded when Iran attacked a major oil refinery in Saudi Arabia in 2019, and now, apparently, the Biden administration’s measured response to the Houthi attacks on Abu Dhabi have left the Emiratis feeling similarly exposed.
That Washington wants to scale back its involvement in regional conflicts has long been clear, as is the fact that the GCC countries and the United States share some—but by no means a comprehensive basket of—interests but fundamentally diverge on values. As the war in Ukraine continues to reverberate around the world, Washington’s partners in the Middle East will have to decide how much they value the U.S. security umbrella. And the U.S. will have to decide how much longer it is willing to extend that security umbrella should its Middle East partners not align themselves with Washington’s preferences on a matter of such importance for U.S. diplomacy and security.
In Other News
Israel raises its diplomatic profile. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been engaged in intensive discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom he claims a special connection as the world’s only two Jewish government leaders. And on Saturday, Bennett met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Israel has worked to maintain its cooperative relationship with Russia throughout the crisis, in part by avoiding any public criticism of the Russian invasion or even naming Russia at all in statements about the Ukraine war. That could have been a calculated move to allow it to play a mediator role in efforts to negotiate a cease-fire. Bennett’s shuttle diplomacy also included a visit to Germany as well as calls with several other world leaders. If he ends up serving a useful role as a diplomatic interlocutor, it could overcome internal criticism from Israelis who argue that Israel should be siding more closely with its primary ally, the United States, during this crisis.
