The UAE's 'alternative GCC'

In a move that certain observers saw as an effort to undermine the Kuwaiti emir, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced a new partnership with Saudi Arabia. The announcement came only hours before the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait on Dec. 4, which fell apart after two hours and was only attended by two council members’ heads of state: the Kuwaiti and Qatari monarchs. The summit will be remembered as the worst GCC summit to date. In addition, the Kuwaiti efforts to mediate the six-month-old Qatar crisis have thus far proven futile.

This new UAE-Saudi partnership represents an alternative to the GCC while the Qatar crisis continues. Yet it is premature to conclude that it intends to be a substitute for the subregional organization founded by six Arabian Peninsula monarchies in 1981. Regardless, the UAE-Saudi partnership’s purpose is to achieve between these two nations essentially what the GCC was intended to accomplish among all six of the GCC members: enhance transnational cooperation in the areas of military, economics, culture and politics.