Houthi rebels based in Yemen launched a major attack on the United Arab Emirates on Monday.
Using drones and various missiles, the Houthis struck an oil facility and the Abu Dhabi International Airport. Three people were killed. The stunning strike has punctured the UAE’s credibility as the centerpiece of economic and social modernity in the Islamic world.
Yet even as the UAE is the primary victim, U.S. credibility will join in its suffering. Offering only a mealymouthed statement of condemnation and a call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the United States has done little to bolster one of its erstwhile top allies. The U.S. should instead have redesignated the Houthis as a terrorist group (the Biden administration removed that designation in order to assist in humanitarian relief efforts in Yemen) and offered to launch highly limited but joint UAE-U.S. airstrikes against those responsible for these attacks.
Doing nothing, the U.S. now appears a weak and disinterested ally. This is an especially pertinent concern in the Middle East, where the perception of power is a highly significant driver of political calculations. The Biden administration’s lethargy will thus fuel a growing split between the U.S. and the UAE and its Sunni Arab partner, Saudi Arabia. China and Russia will be the beneficiaries.
Those nations are able to attract the UAE’s favor by their offers of investment, global influence, and disinterest in human rights or democracy. Beijing and Moscow are able to do so even as they simultaneously woo the UAE’s nemesis, Iran. And as the Biden administration tolerates Iran’s nuclear brinkmanship, the Saudi development of a Sunni nuclear umbrella will escalate. China is directly assisting in those efforts. This threatens a nuclear arms race between regional powers fueled by an abiding and theologically vested hatred for each other.
This is not to absolve the UAE of responsibility for the present malaise in U.S. relations. The UAE’s increasingly close relationship with China is incompatible with critical U.S. security concerns, especially in the area of high-tech military equipment (similar concerns apply to Israel). The UAE’s appeasement of China’s genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population is also deeply concerning and evincing of a broader rot in political Islam. And the UAE war in Yemen has been prosecuted disastrously, even as Iran has leveraged Yemen’s transition into a launchpad for attacks such as Monday’s.
The UAE is nevertheless an important U.S. ally. It is a key trade partner and provides for sensitive U.S. military and intelligence activity in the Middle East. The UAE’s establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel was also bold and constructive for Middle Eastern stability. And the UAE has served as an impressive example of the compatibility of Islam with modernity. It is very much in U.S. interests that this example continues to flourish, including in Saudi Arabia.
But that requires a U.S. willingness to show its allies that Washington, rather than Beijing or Moscow, is their best means of future security and prosperity.
President Joe Biden does not have to join the UAE’s military campaign in Yemen. But he must put some meat on the bones of this security alliance. As in Afghanistan and Ukraine, to U.S. allies in the Middle East, the U.S. increasingly appears to be an impotent power under Biden.
