Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Abu Dhabi in the UAE as part of a tour of the Arabic Gulf states where he also visited Saudi Arabia. The extraordinary celebratory welcome given to Putin during his visit to Abu Dhabi was, of course, a message aimed at the West that the UAE does not comply with or agree with the international rules-based order. Vladimir Putin has an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Ukraine, and neither the UAE nor Saudi Arabia recognises the ICC. Meanwhile, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia are in the process of rehabilitating the other war criminal Bashar al-Assad.
Upon Russia’s invasion, Europe was supposed to create a sanctions regime that would punish Russia for its illegal invasion and starve it of the currency and resources it needed to fund its illegal war. The sanctions regime did create a serious monetary and economic crisis in Russia but it wasn’t enough to starve its war machine of the resources it needs to continue its war. Russia has found alternative ways to import European technology and acquire Dollars and Euros, primarily through a range of Asian countries where trade with Russia continues to thrive openly and significantly. These countries include Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Central Asian republics, China, and, of course, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. India and China have also increased trade with Russia over energy and some of these Russian-purchased gas and oil supplies have been re-sold to Europe. Russia is even selling oil to Europe with a shadow fleet, mostly with previously owned Greek tankers.
While Russia has enhanced economic and trade alternatives in these nations, Europe has substantially increased its trade with them. This system is surely much more expensive for Russia but it is serving it well, enough to keep up its war effort. Europe has massively increased its gas and oil imports from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and other significant sources for gas imports include Azerbaijan and Qatar. As Europe increased trade with Azerbaijan, our new trading partner executed an expulsion of 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh. France and Germany have capitulated to Russia and the world has become an even more dangerous place. Europe replaced its trade with a warring dictator only to replace this trade with other dictators who trade with the warring dictator.
So, the Emirates is telling Europe that our sanctions regime is unenforceable and they are rubbing it in our faces. Supposedly, we can’t do anything about it but we actually can. Europe and the US can if they collaborate more thoroughly with each other address this situation in a multi-pronged manner. The US is doing its part by increasing domestic oil and gas production but Europe is still resisting a rational and opportunistic approach to energy. We look like clowns going to Dubai for COP28 to discuss green transition and whatnot when the host country is taking advantage of your green policies of goodwill. European leaders have lost all sense of strategy and global perception.
Fundamentally, and in principle, there is also a large elephant in the room to address before Europe can act in a bullish and confident manner when enforcing the international rules-based order. Europe should enforce international rules on the Israeli government with equal proportion and justice, so if current investigations by the ICC lead to the conclusion that the IDF has perpetrated war crimes in Gaza, Europe has to enforce arrest warrants on Israeli politicians and officials with equal measure. This would fundamentally bring a lot of legitimacy to the international rules-based order in the Near East because justice would appear to be done without fear or favour, and the oil-rich dictators of the Gulf would have no excuse whatsoever to claim that the international rules-based order is fickle or biased toward one side or the other
I am not pessimistic about the future of the international rules-based order watching the images of Putin being paraded by the oil-rich princes of the Gulf. We are barely one hundred years into its existence, and much has been built since then, but Europe has to do its part and so far it has been behaving like a sleepy giant.
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Historian and Publisher
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