United Arab Emirates: Reversing the Revolution

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At surface level, Libya’s relationship with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was unremarkable during the 42 years of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. In late December 2010, economic ties were strengthened after Tripoli and Abu Dhabi signed an 11 billion U.S. Dollars investment deal to overhaul Libya’s failing critical infrastructure. Below the surface, much of the Gaddafi family’s private wealth - subject of United Nations investigations - is believed to have been discretely stashed in banks across the world, with an estimated 50 billion U.S. Dollars of dark money in the UAE alone. These economic ties would become little more than a footnote with the onset of the Arab Spring in early 2011 as Libya became the platform of the UAE’s extraordinary transformation into one of the most assertive actors in the region. The UAE had sat back and watched the revolution unfold in Tunisia, but by the time protests had reached Egypt in January 2011, and were endorsed by the United States (U.S.), Abu Dhabi became alarmed at the unfolding events and their potential to reshape the wider regional order. According to former US President Barack Obama, the UAE’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Zayed (MBZ) warned him of supporting the Arab Spring, claiming that if Mubarak fell the Muslim Brotherhood would take over and “eight other Arab leaders would fall” (1). As a result, the Arab Spring’s third theatre in Libya rapidly grew in importance and developed into the frontline of Abu Dhabi’s new counterrevolutionary engagement. The infectious revolutions were perceived by elites in Abu Dhabi as an existential threat to regime security, and the UAE’s foreign policy towards Libya offered an opportunity to not only shape its outcome, but inoculate itself in the process.

(1) ‘A Promised Land’, Penguin Books, Obama, Barack, November 2020

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