> How come dubai hasn’t experienced any sanctions yet?
The UAE has crafted itself as a new Switzerland. (Qatar is trying to copy, but clumsily.)
They buy American weapons and financial assets, making them influential. They’ve also established themselves as a logistics hub in an important logistics channel to the West and Asia. (They also pitch their balancing effect on Saudi Arabia skillfully.)
The comment merely said UAE has become strategically influential in finance, transport (cargo shipping (#5 in world), world's busiest international passenger airport), tourism. Nothing about being fond.
5% GDP growth in non-oil. More diversified than Saudi. #2 globally for being "easy to do business in and with". Top-10 in Global Soft Power Index since 2023 [0], rose from #18 in 2020. Dubai has become a global influencer capital.
Looks like the US is backing UAE as Saudi wanes, and as a regional counterweight.
If we're talking about Switzerland, yes it's a federal republic with semi-direct democracy, but it also happily supplied mercenaries to mainland Europe for several centuries.
In the long term, Venezuela has more proven reserves (but much less production capacity). Or nuclear + renewable will overtake fossil fuel. In either scenario, Saudi's share of total global energy production will likely decline by late 21st century.
And in non-oil GDP growth, UAE is currently outpacing Saudi.
As to "everyone there was still as rich as ever due to the oil money", depends on who "everyone" is: 77% of the total workforce in Saudi is migrant workers, many of whom earn < US$5000/yr. They're not citizens.
> whenever someone is talking fondly about UAE that's all you need to know about that person
I’ve heard that line about Qatar, Uruguay, Singapore, Malta, Cyprus, the Maldives, and countless other small states.
I grew up in Switzerland. Folks like to compare themselves to us, mostly due to complete ignorance of our actual history and culture.
It’s true in part and misses the point in others. Geopolitically, however, the observation is sound. Small states need a powerful protector far away or to balance their position between nearby large states. The latter only works in mountainous hellholes and on peninsulas (provided your larger neighbor(s) can’t blockade you; if they can, you need a foreign guarantor with a blue-water navy, of which historically there have only been one or two at a time).
(You know Switzerland is a weapons exporter, right? To the U.S. But also to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Hungary. One could almost say that folks who conclude intent from a place of ignorance communicate “all you need to know about” themselves.)
I think the connotation of 'being Switzerland' has less to do with the modern state of Switzerland and more to do with the ... Unsavory things Switzerland has historically been a part of.
Most of them are patently incorrect, and most of those don't even care to educate themselves since they keep repeating cheap stuff they heard from other bright people and that's it. How many heard about accepting refugees despite being literally surrounded by axis and facing starvation of their own people (how many nations would do that including yours), or not-so-secret massive collaboration with western allies while on surface acting as neutral ie Campione d'Italia, and so on and on).
They were neutral in WWII like ie Spain was, think a bit what does it actually means. Not participating in conflict in any way. So they accepted both jewish and nazi gold or art, and everybody's else. If you want to understand why some of that was kept around after the war maybe reading about numbered accounts would enlight you. If you actually care to understand history as it happened.
Hitler had plans to conquer Switzerland after dealing with Russia, he was aware that they were 'most free and most armed nation in the world', fiercely independent and taking them would cost him dearly not only due to terrain.
Literally nobody had come out of WWII with properly clean slate, you just need to dig (not even deep) to find abhorable stuff on everybody, to different volume of course. Swiss have no problem acknowledging their mistakes, much more than most other nations.
So why do they repeat the same mistakes by hosting Putins family, laundering his money, and denying Germany to deliver Swiss-made air defense ammunition to Ukraine?
Hamas was the de facto government in the Gaza strip, so it was in everyone's best interest to fund them enough to keep their civil branches running (pre-oct 7).
>Qatar does, the official allows, transfer $30 million each month to the Hamas administration in Gaza. But those payments are performed in consultation with Washington and Israel - and with their approval, he says.
>Each month, he says, construction materials worth tens of millions of dollars are also delivered from Egypt to Gaza via the Rafah border crossing. those supplies are then sold by Hamas. He says the organization uses the proceeds to pay its administrative staff. Israel, in turn, he explains, supplies $10 million worth of diesel fuel to the Gaza Strip each month, with Qatar providing another 10 million to needy families. They receive $100 each, "martyr families excluded," the government representative stresses.
Netanyahu having had people transfer cash was a big scandal in Israel.
Trying to murder the negotiating team in Doha was an effort to stop the US from pushing through 'a deal' as it's commonly been called. They've previously been successful at this and it likely annoyed the US that the israelis failed.
The thing is that "Hamas" is used as a synonym for words like "terrorist" and "palestinian" and "arab", and in some circles in the US and largely in Israel "Qatar" means the same thing. It's the un-chosen people that need to serve or die, basically. Hence the anger at Netanyahu, and an important reason why he clings to power, he doesn't want to step off until he's made history some other way that makes israelis forget his scandals.
The UAE is pretty good at playing both sides so they always come out ahead. They act as a key diplomatic intermediary and host a major US military base which is essential to projecting power in the region.
