Breaking news – UAE don’t want Iran to get the bomb 8, February 2008
Posted by thegulfblog.com in French IR, Iran, Middle East.Tags: France, international politics, international realtions, Iran, military base, Nuclear, UAE
add a comment
The Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashed Al Maktoum has revealed that the UAE are opposed to Iran having nuclear weapons. One might suppose that asking France to set up a military base in Abu Dhabi, facing the Straits of Hormuz and Iran, would be a hint, but still, in international politics, I suppose one can never be too clear.
Al-Siyassa, Kuwait (8.02.08)
Iran complain about France’s colonial outpost in the UAE 3, February 2008
Posted by thegulfblog.com in French IR, Iran, Western-Muslim Relations.Tags: base, colonialism, complain, cuban missile crisis, France, international relations, Iran, politics, UAE
3 comments
Iran has made a formal complaint to the French Ambassador in Tehran about France’s recent announcement that they will soon set up a military base in the UAE. Tehran accuse the French of adopting an ‘unfriendly position’ towards Iran by agreeing to station troops across the Persian Gulf, and – for once – Iran do seen to have a logical case. Indeed, it is somewhat difficult to see what the French are actually getting out of running this base in the UAE. There appear to be few – if any – tangible returns for them. France do have significant historical links with the Emirates so perhaps they are defending their influence there with the acquisition of the base. However, it seems somewhat unlikely that the French would go to the significant trouble of setting up and manning a base in the Persian Gulf just for ‘old time’s sake’. Thus, the French appear to have acquired this base solely as a badge of international prestige, promoting the (erroneous) notion that they are still a ‘world’ power who can influence actors in a contested and crucial corner of the world.
As far as Iran is concerned, having a new foreign and somewhat hostile power (with a significant and brutal colonial history) barely 250km from their mainland is a disturbing prospect. This can surely only reinforce Iran’s feelings of isolation vis-à-vis the Western world. Whilst the analogy of the Cuban Missile Crisis does not fit exactly* to this situation, it is nevertheless somewhat instructive in terms of explaining the reaction of a state to the stationing of an unfriendly military presence close to home soil. To put this another way – how happy would France be if Iran suddenly set up a military base a couple of hundred kilometres from Marseilles under some flimsy pretext, seemingly with the sole aim of pressurising French actions?
Iran’s angry reaction is not only understandable but just. Whilst France would not (I can only imagine) engage in reckless military activities in the Straits, their presence alone in the area is simply one more complicating and pressurising factor that an already potentially combustible region could really do without.
* Whilst France are a nuclear power, surely they will not base their missiles in the UAE base? Thus, one of the key dynamics of the Cuban Missile Crisis is not there, at least until (if) Iran acquire their own weapons. Additionally, the level hostility between France and Iran is significantly lower than it was between America and the USSR/Cuba at the time of the crisis.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/02/03/45105.html
A riposte to Gallic arrogance 17, January 2008
Posted by thegulfblog.com in French IR.Tags: arrogance, France, Sarkozy
add a comment
Mshari al Zaydi, the editorial editor for the Saudi daily ‘al Sharq al Awsat’ neatly summed up the hubris of Sarkozy’s intrepid international dealings in recent times. Indeed, this quote needn’t be restricted to this particular situation: simply replace country specific terms, in this case Syrian, with issues in Chad, the Emirates, Bulgaria, Libya, Colombia…
“If Sarkozy believes that he is more informed than the rest of the Arab countries that have repeatedly tried to have faith in the promises of Bashar Assad to no avail, then he is surely deluded. If he thought that he could tempt the Damascene regime to change then he is surely deluded.”
http://www.asharqalawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=11356
France’s exquisite use of soft power 16, January 2008
Posted by thegulfblog.com in French IR, Soft Power, The Emirates.Tags: Abu Dhabi, France, Soft Power
1 comment so far
Abu Dhabi has another French import to join its already impressive Gallic collection. Not satisfied with enticing both the most famous French University (the Sorbonne) and museum (the Louvre) to the city-state, it has now gone and seduced the ‘Armée Française’ into maintaining a permanent garrison of 400-500 troops in Abu Dhabi itself.
This development is due in no small part to the history of the French in the country. The ties between the French and the Emirates generally and Abu Dhabi specifically go back to at least 1971 with the signing of the original oil concessions. Since then, French companies have been heavily investing in various Abu Dhabi based companies, notably ADCO and ADMA. The French acquisition of a permanent military base in Abu Dhabi is, therefore, but the latest example of France’s exquisite use of soft power. Soft power is the ability to get others to do what you want without the use of any coercive means at all. France have made themselves such attractive international friends to those in the Emirates that they will pay somewhere from $800 million to $1 billion to borrow art work and to borrow a name for twenty years. Not forgetting, of course, asking a foreign non-Muslim power to station troops in the homeland.
What does Abu Dhabi feel that they are getting out of this? Stability? Military protection? Surely the last thing that the region needs is yet another military force conducting exercises in and around the perilously narrow Straits of Hormuz? Presumably, Abu Dhabi sees this as another kind of bulwark against any nefarious Iranian activities. However, let’s not forget how easily the Iranian Revolutionary Guard utterly humiliated the British Royal Navy only last year. Would they have thought twice if it had been a French boat? Of course not. Both countries are ex-colonial (although the French are getting less and less ex-colonial by the day) countries with deep seated beliefs about their place in the world which are not necessarily borne out by empirical evidence. As De Gaulle put it his particularly inimitable way, “France can not be France without greatness.”
