"The Emiratis have entered themselves with no energy and bite more than they can chew," said Hassan Hassan, an article in the Foreign Policy magazine, saying the UAE has decided it will be a pioneer in shaping the Middle East and is now taking a dramatic turn.
The writer, director of the Non-State Actors Program in Fragile Environments at the Center for Global Policy, said that six years ago the UAE began to assert itself as a military and political actor in the Middle East, and that the successful coup against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in July 2013 gave it the opportunity to take the reins. A decisive initiative in shaping events throughout the region, which was a happy opportunity to exploit.
The writer adds that the strategy of the Emiratis collided last July with a separation wall when the state announced its withdrawal from the war on Yemen launched in cooperation with Saudi Arabia in 2015 to focus exclusively on what it called stability and the fight against terrorism.
UAE officials have also begun to make conciliatory tones towards Iran, and Abu Dhabi has clearly stopped accusing Tehran of being behind the attack on four tankers off the UAE coast, despite statements by the United States and Saudi Arabia that blame Tehran for the attacks.
The UAE and Iran also held rare high-level meetings to discuss the demarcation of maritime borders. All of this happened at a time when Washington was stepping up pressure on Tehran and gathering its allies to do the same.
These changes also contradict the priorities of Abu Dhabi's closest ally, Riyadh, which has been left alone fighting in a war it cannot win on its own, and the UAE has not given a clear explanation for this sudden geopolitical turn.
Most likely, it stems from an assessment of its strategy over the past six years, which he summarized in two things: First, the UAE's assertion of itself has had the effect of diminishing its political standing and reputation in the United States. Second, even on its own terms, the strategy was much harder to implement than the Emiratis imagined.
Policy failure
According to the writer, this shift in policy was caused by the US Senate vote to end involvement in the Yemen war this spring. This shift has been further enhanced in Abu Dhabi by several recent regional setbacks for the UAE.
The UAE is now trying to regain its reputation in Washington and other Western capitals by portraying itself as a small nation seeking stability and prosperity through soft power and economic participation, and thus opposes wars of all kinds in the Middle East. But this, he says, contradicts her actions over the past six years as she tried - and failed - to reverse the effects of the Arab Spring by any means possible.
In this sense, the transformation of the UAE policy is not only driven by an attempt to restore its reputation, but also fueled by the failure of policies that have hurt it. The Emiratis seem frustrated by their inability to repeat their successful support for the coup that toppled the democratically elected president of Egypt in 2013.
The UAE's new situation may not end its support for regional agents, but it could change the dynamics of its relationship with Saudi Arabia. Together they thought they could create a new regional order in their authoritarian form, but that dream seems to have evaporated.
He concluded by saying that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are still determined to remove their differences at the moment, but this may not be possible in Yemen as the latter's withdrawal could convince the former to adopt more aggressive policies contrary to the interests of the UAE, and that the Yemen war, which brought them closer than any other issue in the region Force them to separate.