For much of the past two decades, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) earned a reputation in Washington as a serious and capable partner in an unstable region.
It modernized rapidly, invested in real state capacity, and articulated legitimate concerns about political Islam and regional disorder.
That record explains why American policymakers have often given Abu Dhabi the benefit of the doubt.
But today a troubling pattern is difficult to ignore.
Across multiple theaters, the UAE appears to be betting on the wrong actors, employing the wrong methods, and drawing the wrong strategic lessons.
Such a course risks more than a damaged reputation; it creates a dangerous misalignment with core American interests and denies an obvious global security consensus.
From North Africa to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, Emirati policy has increasingly favored warlords, militias, and separatist forces over fragile but internationally recognized states.
In Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, Abu Dhabi has treated armed proxies as instruments of order. The record suggests the opposite outcome: a trail of death, destruction, and political dysfunction that has prolonged conflicts rather than resolved them.
At the core of this approach lies a deceptively simple idea: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. For the UAE, the overriding enemy is the Muslim Brotherhood.
Many responsible states share concerns about the Brotherhood’s ideology and political ambitions. But opposition to the group has hardened into fixation.
In that process, Abu Dhabi has made Faustian bargains with actors whose brutality and criminality eclipse anything they claim to oppose.
Figures such as Khalifa Haftar in Libya and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo in Sudan exemplify the problem. Mercenary networks associated with Wagner reinforce it.
These are not builders of states; they are accelerants of chaos. And empowering them does not eliminate Islamist influence, it simply collapses institutions that might otherwise contain it.
History offers little ambiguity here. Militias do not disarm voluntarily.
Any experienced soldier or statesman will tell you that once financed and legitimized, these private armies develop independent revenue streams, cultivate war economies, and entrench themselves as permanent veto players.
External sponsorship of parallel military structures transforms violence into political currency.
Geography masks these costs for the UAE.
Distance permits Abu Dhabi to avoid the consequences of state failure — refugees, weapons, criminal networks, maritime insecurity — and lets others absorb the fallout.
In Yemen, for example, Emirati support for southern separatists undermined the internationally recognized government and injected incoherence into already fragile negotiations.
Tactical maneuvering replaced strategic discipline — and peace paid the price.
More recently, an even more disturbing development has emerged. The UAE has begun aligning itself with neo-con right-wing movements in Europe under the banner of countering "Radical Islam."
These relationships are presented as pragmatic cooperation on security.
In practice, they rely on disinformation, sensationalism, and crude anti-Muslim narratives that corrode democratic societies from within and that can have serious electoral consequences.
Digital influence platforms associated with nationalist politics have reportedly coordinated messaging supportive of Emirati narratives, amplifying warnings about Western collapse and demographic "replacement."
Emirati-linked figures have been platformed to speak about "Muslimization" in Europe, despite a documented history of Emirati intelligence involvement in anti-Muslim disinformation campaigns.
The contradiction is striking: Europe's xenophobic nationalists on the right have become increasingly comfortable with foreign government coordination when it suits their aims.
This is not an isolated pattern. Much has been written about Abu Dhabi’s cultivation of unsavory relationships with the likes of Serbia and Chechnya.
These ties reveal a worldview that prioritizes short-term leverage over long-term order, and a central lesson of modern geopolitics — who you empower matters as much as who you oppose.
There is an alternative, and more sustainable, strategic logic. State failure, not imperfect governance, poses the greatest threat to stability in the Mideast.
Collapsed states become incubators for extremism, trafficking, and foreign interference. The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks did not originate from excessive state control; they emerged from Afghanistan’s collapse.
Terrorism flourishes where authority disappears, not where it merely functions imperfectly.
For the United States, Abu Dhabi remains a consequential actor with real capabilities. But partnership does not mean indulgence.
America's role as the world's leading requires predictable borders, functioning governments, secure energy markets, and stable maritime trade routes.
Fragmentation is not "manageable." Militias are not "partners."
Once violence is normalized, reversing it becomes exponentially harder.
The bottom line is clear.
The UAE is increasingly on the wrong side of history.
Its embrace of warlords abroad and extremists in Europe may feel expedient today, but it is laying the groundwork for instability that will eventually land on America's doorstep.
The United States must work with others to rein in these destructive impulses – before the costs become unavoidable.
Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the interim dean of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore where he is a professor of public and international affairs. The views expressed are the author’s own. Follow him on X @ProfSheehan. Read more Ivan Sascha Sheehan's Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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