Rise of the UAE

I'd like to talk for a minute about, my old friends, The United Arab Emirates. Now anybody who knows my story knows that me and the Emiratis have been through a lot together. And it's fair to say that I have had mixed emotions about The UAE, but I have to give it to them. They are absolutely playing the economic, political, geostrategic game better than any of us thought they could, Better than any of us thought they were doing and they've been doing it for a long time. Discreetly, subtly, absolutely masterfully.

The combined sovereign wealth funds of The UAE are roughly equivalent to the assets controlled by the sovereign wealth fund of China, which is the largest in the world and it's just under $1,000,000,000,000. So this is a country that by GDP ranking is something around thirty second largest economy by GDP, The UAE. And they have under their control assets equal to the second largest economy in the world by GDP, which is China. That's The UAE being able to mobilize the same assets as a country roughly 140 times their size by population. And they have discovered that they can use that money to buy a tremendous amount of influence and control around the world.

And you can say it's oil money. Right? But Dubai, oil money is only roughly 30% of their GDP. So they have successfully diversified their economy remarkably well. If you take something like DP World, the multinational logistics company in The UAE, they manage something like 70 to 80 ports around the world in maybe like 40 countries, six continents.

So they have made The UAE a key actor in global supply chains as well as in maritime security in very strategic regions. They also have spent over the course of two years from the year 2020 and 2021. The UAE spent like $64,000,000 on lobbying in Washington. That's actually more money than China spends on lobbying. The UAE is outspending China on buying influence in Washington DC.

They've hired something like 25 different lobbying and PR firms to present their case to lawmakers, to politicians, and they spent over 1,000,001 half dollars on direct political contributions to politicians. About half 1,000,000 of that went to congress congress members. They've also used those same, PR firms and lobbying firms to push their narrative about The UAE in mainstream media outlets in The US like the New York Times, like Forbes, like the Wall Street Journal. They are controlling their image globally despite the fact that I mean, let's be honest, it's an autocratic dictatorship. There is severe, restrictions on rights and freedom in The UAE.

There is significant abuse, torture by police, by security forces. There is severe repression. It's not significantly or qualitatively different from China or North Korea. But does anyone think of The UAE like that? The UAE has become in most people's minds Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, Burj Al Arab, you know, Jumeirah, The Palm, Atlantis, you know, there's MMA fights, there's the UFC.

It has a very positive image. It's where people wanna go for holidays, where people wanna go for vacation and it's a huge center for investment and trade. Just in the in the in the first quarter or the first couple of quarters of this year, UAE trade, global trade went up like 19% from last year. A lot of Muslims think that The UAE capitulated in signing the Abraham Accords. No.

The UAE was pushing for it. The UAE wanted to do that because as a result of the Abraham Accords, one of the things that they were able to do through their lobbyists in pushing the terms of the agreement for the Abraham Accords, they were able to get The UAE approved for purchasing advanced weapons technology that had not been, allowed to be purchased by any Arab country because they had this idea of Israel has to always have a technological advantage over its neighbors. So there was advanced weapons technology that nobody was allowed to buy. The UAE bought it on the back of the Abraham Accords. By signing the Abraham Accords, The UAE could solidify itself as a so called ally of the West, an ally of The United States, a non hostile Arab regime.

So they can't be tarred with the extremist radical label. It's impossible to call the UAE that because they initiated a peace agreement with Israel and they brought others with them. Now, you see how they played with on the Ukraine situation. They hadn't they didn't wanna talk to Biden when the war jumped off. They don't wanna increase oil.

Putin comes to The UAE. They welcome him with full pomp and circumstance. But then right after that, they send millions and millions of dollars, if not billions, I can't remember the figure, but it's a huge amount of money that they sent to Ukraine. They're playing both sides, so you can't accuse them of being just pro Putin puppets. Now in terms of also putting their, narrative forward in the media, they used to have a newspaper called Al Rutia.

And the story goes that Al Rutia published an article about The UAE lifting fuel subsidies within the country causing the fuel prices to go very high for locals. And locals, didn't want to deal with the higher prices so some of them were driving over to Oman and filling their tanks there and coming back and this was covered by Aroiyah. Now the story goes that because of this story being published in Aroiyah, everybody got fired. And within weeks, the newspaper was dissolved. Now, first of all, there is no press freedom in The UAE.

Everybody knows that. There is self censorship because everybody knows that if they say the wrong thing, they're gonna get in trouble, they could go to jail or at the at the bare minimum be deported. But there's also official censorship and that everything has to pass through the approval of the Dubai media authorities. So this thing got published and everybody got fired and then the paper got dissolved. But the real reason that the paper got dissolved was because the, international media investment, group that owns Arroya had already made a deal with CNN to establish an Arabic language business news outlet.

So now the IMI, International Media Investment, which is a basically a propaganda wing for the UAE government, is going to be presenting The UAE narrative under the CNN brand. That's brilliant. What are the chances that there's gonna be any negative stories reported on CNN after this about The UAE? Now okay. If if it's coming from The UAE press, everybody in the world knows, everybody in the Arab world certainly knows, well, it's propaganda.

It's state state propaganda. It has no credibility. Now that same propaganda is gonna be presented under the banner of CNN, which has rightly or wrongly a greater degree of credibility in the eyes of the news consuming public. Again, rightly or wrongly, but it certainly has a better reputation than state run state controlled media in The United Arab Emirates. So now The UAE is going to be able to present their narrative to the world as objective truth under the banner of the largest media organization on earth.

This is absolutely brilliant. They're becoming an incredibly powerful country, far disproportionate to their actual size. Despite whatever my own background and personal experiences are with The UAE, some are good, some are dreadful, but I have to believe that this ultimately is good for Muslims because look, they are behaving and they are acting and they're conducting themselves with autonomy. They know what they're trying to do and they're doing it and they are taking every necessary careful, cunning, savvy measure to ensure that there can't be any blowback. To ensure that The United States is not going to be in a position or have a motive to punish them because they've got too many legislators on the payroll.

They've got too many congressmen on the payroll. It's too lucrative, the relationship that they've built with The UAE because The UAE has so much money and they're willing to spend it. They're willing to spend it to get their way and in order for them to get their way, they can also make you happy. You know, if you're a congressman, if you're a senator, if you're an editor at a major newspaper, The UAE will make you happy. Just, don't rock the boat.

Go along with what we say and you're gonna have a happy life. You know, Saddam Hussein didn't do that. Adafi didn't do that. Assad didn't do that. Mubarak didn't do that.

Saddai in Yemen didn't do that. He couldn't, anyway. But The UAE has the money, and they're splashing it around, and they're making sure that everybody who needs to be happy is happy. And in return for that, The UAE gets to do what they want. They get to build their power and their sphere of influence, and ultimately, have to believe that that's gonna be good for the Muslims.

Just from the perspective of political savvy, it's really brilliant. May Allah guide them. May Allah guide their rulers and make the success of The UAE a platform for the success of the Ummah globally.