President Trump’s announcement that an agreement has been reached for the “full normalization of relations” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is, at first glance, an impressive achievement for a president whose much-vaunted ‘Vision for Peace’ has struggled to gain traction. For Israel’s embattled Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the breakthrough is symbolically important as he faces the prospect of a potential fourth election in nineteen months this November.
The UAE likely will portray the agreement as consistent with its self-proclaimed emphasis on “moderation” and “tolerance,” especially in regard to interfaith dialogue and cooperation, which have formed key components of the UAE’s recent messaging and international outreach.
The statement released by President Trump declared that Israel would suspend its plans to annex areas of the West Bank in exchange for the establishment of diplomatic relations with the UAE, which would become only the third Arab state — after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 — and the first Gulf State to formalize ties.
Befitting Trump’s view of his own importance and, doubtless, a desire to take the credit, the statement cast him as front and center in the agreement and emphasized his “dedication to peace in the region and to the pragmatic and unique approach he has taken to achieve it.” And yet, the announcement falls far short of the comprehensive peace agreement that Trump has repeatedly claimed he could deliver, and it may not change very much in practice.
Whereas President Trump hailed his Twitter announcement, which followed a trilateral discussion with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto leader of the UAE, as a “HUGE breakthrough” and a “Historic Peace Agreement,” subsequent comments by Emirati and Israeli officials were somewhat more restrained.
In his own statement on Twitter, Mohammed bin Zayed referred not to Trump’s “full normalization” but rather to “cooperation and setting a roadmap towards establishing a bilateral relationship,” while his statement in Arabic was even more circumspect. Meanwhile, in a televised address just hours later, Netanyahu confirmed that he remained committed to annexation of parts of the West Bank and that his plans to do so had only been “temporarily suspended” to enable the agreement with the UAE to be reached.
Netanyahu’s statement that annexation was merely suspended contrasted with Mohammed bin Zayed’s contention that it had been stopped. The marked difference in the language used by Trump, Mohammed bin Zayed, and Netanyahu to put forward their versions of what had been agreed is striking and it reflects the different sets of domestic considerations that each must contend with. Both Trump and Netanyahu are fighting for their political survival and will hope a foreign policy “win” can offset at least some of their domestic challenges, while the Emirati leadership may see the deal as an opportunity to regain the initiative and make the political weather after a challenging few months and setbacks to the UAE’s regional ambitions in Yemen and Libya.
To be sure, there are avenues for sustained and increased cooperation between Israel and the UAE and the announcement outlined many of them, including cooperation on a vaccine for COVID-19 as a matter of priority. With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic hitting economies across the region hard, officials in Israel and the UAE may hope that normalization — or at least a path toward it — can bring an economic dividend, with sectors such as medical technology and renewable energy ones that could quickly benefit. In a post-pandemic world, the creation of travel and tourism links between the two countries could also provide a much-needed economic boost, but coordination in other areas, such as surveillance technologies has already happened tacitly and was likely to continue even without an agreement.
Among the three parties to the announcement, it is, perhaps, the UAE which faces the most delicate task moving forward. Any decision by Netanyahu to un-suspend his commitment to annexation would place the UAE and Mohammed bin Zayed in an extremely difficult position and vulnerable to charges that the UAE played its proverbial trump card (in more than one meaning) for little or no gain.
Should Israel head into another election in November then Netanyahu may feel the need to follow through on his oft-stated pledge to “restoring sovereignty” and in that case he likely will base a decision on his own political interest rather than that of the UAE. This leaves the UAE vulnerable to political considerations outside its capacity to control, and statements by senior Emirati figures in recent months which have delivered vocal and direct warnings against annexation, will be hard to back away from.
UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba’s message, in an article in Hebrew in an Israeli newspaper in June, was especially blunt in labeling any move to annexation “the illegal seizure of Palestinian land” that “will send shockwaves around the region.”
The risk for the Emirati leadership is that the agreement means that the UAE itself is now vulnerable to the regional shockwaves that would be caused by any decision by Netanyahu or a future Israeli government to move toward annexation, but that would otherwise have been felt most by Jordan and other neighboring states.
Moreover, while the trilateral statement raised the prospect of “additional diplomatic breakthroughs with other nations,” this may only happen, in practice, with Bahrain, and may strain the alliance that Mohammed bin Zayed has built with the Saudi leadership, at least while King Salman is still on the throne.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)
