 Hello and welcome to this latest Lowey Institute Live event. This is part of what we are calling the Long Distance Lowey Institute, in which we communicate our content and analysis online, while we are unable to do so in person. A very warm welcome to everyone joining us from Australia and to those dialing in from overseas. And a warm welcome also to our Lowey Institute corporate members and supporters. My name is Dr Roger Shanahan. I'm a research fellow here at the West Asia Programme at the Lowey Institute. Now it's certainly an exciting time to be in Emirati these days as the country is quickly racking up an impressive list of technological firsts. Last month the UAE launched the Arab world's first interplanetary mission when a Mars orbiter called Amal or Hope took off from a launch site in Japan and it's expected to arrive at Mars in February next year. And this month the first nuclear power station in the Arab world went online in Abu Dhabi. But the country is also an increasingly active political actor in the region. Joining me today to discuss the UAE's view of and its role in the region is the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Anwar Gagash. Dr Gagash is a member of the Federal Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates and he has served as the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs since 2008. Between 2006 and 2016 Dr Gagash was the Minister of State for the Federal National Council Affairs. In addition to his ministerial portfolios Dr Gagash was Chairman of the National Elections Committee overseeing the UAE's first elections which took place in 2006 and the subsequent elections in 2011 and 2015. He was also a board member of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry from 1997 to 2006. But he has an even more impressive academic record having received his PhD from King's College Cambridge and he holds bachelor's and master's degrees in political science from George Washington University. Before I go to our guests some quick housekeeping. At the bottom of your screen you'll see a Q&A button where you can submit questions to the panellists. We'll put as many of your questions as possible to Dr Gagash later in the discussion so please include the name of your organisation or any affiliation when you send through your question. But first of course I have some indeed many questions for our panellists. So first of all I'd like to welcome you to the Lowe Institute online Dr Gagash and thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. Thank you very much. It's great to be here and to speak to this very esteemed think tank and to the to those who are watching us. Now firstly I'd like to have us look at Emirati-Australian relations and on the surface they appear to be very good. The UAE has long hosted our deployed air elements and deployed national headquarters of the Australian Defence Force assets in the Middle East and while they have trade relationship for a long time it's centered on vehicles, oil and food stuffs. With the end of vehicle manufacturing in Australia it's now become more diversified. There are three Australian universities who have campuses in the UAE. There are around 300 companies and around 20,000 Australian expatriates who are based there now. We also have a bilateral agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy which allows for the importation of Australian uranium at some stage in the future. But one of the limits to further expansion in our bilateral economic relationship is the inability of Australia to secure a free trade agreement with the GCC countries. Negotiations with the UAE began in 2005 but Australia was then advised that there would be a unified GCC free trade agreement and negotiations for that started in 2007 until 2009 but they stalled after the GCC announced a review and now given the disagreement with Qatar since 2017 there's little resolution in sight for an Australian GCC free trade agreement. Now Dr Gargash, first of all can I ask you firstly how the UAE views Australia as a country and its relations in the region and particularly with the UAE and whether you think our economic relations or our bilateral economic relations can ever reach their full potential without an FDA being signed? Well again I think to start with our relations with Australia are excellent, they are I think to a certain extent a model where the relationship transcends the distance, the distance and the time zone etc. I think we've managed to do that because of several things. We've got great links, airline links between the UAE and Australia and that certainly has helped sort of shrink the distance and make sure that this relationship is not somehow seen as a relationship with a very distant country, that's the way we view it. I think again we've got also several other aspects that are important here. I would suggest that you know the effort of many Australian companies also to be present in the Middle Eastern markets and use the UAE as a logistical hub has also played an important role in this. There are about 300 Australian companies that are located in the UAE. I would also say that over the years what has mostly been commercial transactional relationship is moved with I would say slower pace and I think this is where we need to work more to other aspects to you know to a better understanding on counterterrorism. I think Australia values highly you know our views on how you see the region because the UAE has been quite consistent in how it sees the region. You might agree with that, you might disagree with that but the UAE speaks one language and that will be in closed doors and it will be also in public forums. I think this is comforting when you build those relations. Having said that, I would say that this is a constant debate also that we have here which is we need to spend more time on various countries and Australia is always one of the top of the list. It's one of those countries where we need to put more effort, more time, more concentration. You have to realize that any country in our region can allow itself to be consumed by the problems of the region and I think the UAE while having to manage also the problem of its neighborhood is always conscious and cognizant of the necessity of investing more effort and time in what I would call win-win relationships such as Australia where you know you don't really have a fundamental political issue hindering the development of that relationship. Vis-a-vis the GCC angle, I mean I would agree with you. We took a decision a few years ago in the GCC context of doing FTAs as a group and we thought that the collective volume makes us in a better negotiating place when we signed these FTAs with economies that are larger than our single entity in the GCC. Unfortunately that has also led to delays and in signing many of these FTAs and as you know, I mean trying to get the consensus of six countries is different than a single decision by single country. So these are also some of the issues that I would say that your description of them are quite apt and I think that we in the UAE also feel frustrated because among the GCC countries I think we see ourselves as the one that is much more open to free trade and much more open towards embracing these FTAs. Thanks very much Dr Gagesh. Now I'd like to perhaps focus a little bit more specifically on the UAE and as I mentioned before you are becoming a much more active player not only in the region but internationally over the last 10 to 15 years and that includes the use of your military force and normally given the size constraints of the UAE it was normally part of a broader Western or international coalition. You sent forces to Kosovo to Somalia under the UN and to Afghanistan and the former Secretary of Defence General Jim Mattis described your country as a sparta in recognition of your ability to generate forces from a small country and very capable forces. Now more recently though the UAE has been part of a series of interventions that have not gone well. You supply significant air land and sea assets to Yemen as part of the Saudi-led operation Decisive Storm which was ostensibly launched and I quote, to defend the UN recognised government of Yemen and to save the Yemeni people from Houthi aggressors and when it was launched it promised a swift resolution to the issue. Yet five years later the UAE has now completed the withdrawal of its troops from Yemen with really little to show for those five years worth of efforts and in Libya the UAE along with France and Russia backed the forces of General Haftar against a UN recognised government of national accord and General Haftar's forces were decisively defeated in their attempts, their year-long attempts to capture the capital. Tripoli in June this year and now the Turkish-backed government appears to be in the ascendancy. Now do you think that the UAE is perhaps overreaching now in terms of its military deployments in terms of the last two significant sides that you backed in regional conflicts? Well I think to start with the UAE is in terms of you know rough size. The UAE is a medium-sized country in our region. There's a big political presence, there's a big population of around 10 million people but economically the UAE is the third largest economy in the Middle East. Turkey is the first, Saudi Arabia is the second, the UAE is the third. It has an economy larger than Iran and it has an economy larger than Israel. So from an economic term the UAE is an important player in the region. Now I think to understand our thinking here, our thinking really revolves around three things. Number one is we are living in a very changing international system and the idea that the UAE can actually go back to what people see as a typical Gulf State rentier model is something that the international system has changed, it's a different international system which means that you have to take some responsibility for the peace and security of the region. You know the whole sort of certainty of a two pole world or a US unipole or world etc. is no longer there. I mean these continue to be major players but we also see an international system that is changing. So an important part of why we are involved in some of these issues of peace and stability is because we feel the ground shaking under us and we feel that we have to take certain responsibilities to do with our own region security. I think that's number one. I think number two is that we also understand that our relationships with other parties that we expect to like-minded countries should be really a two-way street and from that perspective our forces were in Afghanistan for over 10 years because you can't expect others to help you if you're not willing really to help your friends, your larger friends and be valuable to them as you expect that they will be valuable to you if a national emergency arises. So our understanding also is that the passive model of a Gulf State is no longer acceptable as the sort of issues around peace and stability in the region change. You have to actually add value, you have to be seen as a burden sharing part. And I think from that perspective you've seen us in NATO in the Balkans, you've seen us in NATO in Libya. We have to remember that our current involvement in Libya is a legacy involvement because we were part of the NATO also operation and you know you can't just turn these things on and turn them off actually. I think the third important element here is the issue of working with like-minded friends. So this is the rule for us. We don't work alone. You know the idea of overextension that you spoke about I think we're trying to counter it by saying you know we don't really have what I would say the political and military gravitas to work alone. So everywhere really that you see us playing a role we're a member of the team, we're a constructive member, we're a member that brings you know some advantage and real contribution but we never work alone. And I think this addresses some of the issues that you hear about is the UAE overextending. And I would say you know the UAE is never alone in any of the theatres that you mentioned. I mean in Libya I would correct you but we're really working with the French and the Egyptians and it depends with some other European countries depending on a certain day whether they feel that this is the issue of counter-terrorism is major as we see it or the issue of counter-terrorism is secondary as they might see it on that day. Now I have also to take issue with Yemen. I would say that Yemen is a very complicated war and again the issue is was there a clear victory. I would argue that all recent wars really in the region have been very difficult and very also difficult to come and say that there was a clear victory there. I mean I mentioned Afghanistan as an example. I mentioned Iraq as an example. You don't really and here you have also the might of the United States behind the operations in Afghanistan with NATO and the might of the United States with a huge coalition in Iraq but you don't really end up with a clear victory as we sometimes you know mythically see wars. And I think vis-a-vis Yemen there are things that we achieved and that there are things we did not achieve. But I think what we achieved mostly in Yemen was we denied a major geostrategic shift in Iran's favor in Yemen. I mean again this was supposed to be a big big victory for Iran where suddenly you have a pro-Iranian militia controlling all of Yemen independent recognized by the world state that Iran can actually use as another pawn on the chessboard that has been denied. Now having said that this was a very complicated war and I think we did very well also because as you mentioned you know in the Arab world we have a very professional army. This is an army that actually retires officers that has people who are in the field you know sort of brigadiers and colonels and generals who are in their 40s who have seen operation and just to give you a number here in a small army such as the UAE's 20,000 of them have seen service in Afghanistan because of rotation and this is very unusual in the Arab world where you have an army that is actually very capable although it's an army of a small state but it's very capable. So did we achieve, did we succeed in Yemen? I think history will tell. Did we achieve some of our goals? Yes we did. Did we feel in some of our goals? Yes we did. But again I think this is the way that we look at it and again in Yemen I think the different thing in Yemen all the other instances you mentioned we always had a major superpower and Western presence there whether it was in Libya or in Afghanistan or in the Balkans. In Yemen this was really an Arab coalition and this was the first time that an Arab coalition had to respond to a geo-strategic threat where Iran was going to change perhaps the geo-strategic balance in the region. I know that people will take issue with some of my conclusions but these are the things I see and as I said we've never really seen the sort of clear victory in the region in the last 20 years. So I would say that this is more in line of what we have seen in the region rather than an aberration of what we are seeing in the region. I'd now like to shift again to current relations between the UAE and Turkey the region's largest economy as you pointed out and they say a week's a long time in politics but two years is an eternity in Middle Eastern politics I noted that at the Asian society in an interview you did with former Prime Minister Rudd from Australia you referred to Egypt and Turkey as two of the region's old states with whom you had no problems but in July this year you wrote in the French media that I quote, Erdogan has made it clear that it does not wish to be a bridge between Europe and the Arab world last week the Turkish Defence Minister described the UAE as a functional country that serves others politically or militarily and is used remotely and you in response or semi-response tweeted that relations are not managed by threats and there is no place for colonialist delusions in this day and age now those are quite undiplomatic words from a very senior diplomat what's gone wrong between the UAE and Turkey in the last two years? I think the main issue is we have an Arab regional system that is going through a very difficult time the Arab world is already polarised but the Arab world is in agreement over one thing which is non-interference in its own affairs so if you have issues and problems within the Arab world there is like a red line around what is considered Arab territorial sovereignty and I think this is a major agreement by all countries all the way from Morocco to Oman and I think this is an essential and fundamental part of the Arab world's regional system weak as it is over the last 20 years or so Iran has been known to encroach on the Arab world system of boasting that it is controlling four Arab capitals and Iran has always been seen as a very unruly and difficult neighbour because of its aggressive policy towards the Arab world now many of these important regional players see a soft belly to their south which is really the Arab world the Turks for a long time, and this is when you refer also to those remarks the Turks for a long time have acted more as a Westphalian state conscious of borders, conscious of non-interference in their affairs and you know the Ataturkist dictum really of Turkey was peace at home and peace in the world so clearly this was the sort of Turkish foreign policy for decades and decades I think with the AKP being bolder and realizing that there are several opportunities, your strategic opportunities that policy has changed so as a result Turkey was shut out of Europe and as a result Turkey started to encroach more on the Arab world and this is a policy that has developed slowly but has been speeded up for different reasons, I think there are several things happening here on the one hand it's very ideological because the AKP is very much an ideological party and the AKP is seeing that perhaps it might have a role in Turkey leading the Islamic world as Iran is leading the Shia world, Turkey can lead the Islamic world so this is in one instance very much ideologically I think number two from our view also is your strategic Turkey is also positioning itself to be a key in two or three of the issues of our times in the region and the Syrian issue is one particular issue and now Libya is emerging as another particular issue it will strengthen Turkey also geostrategically in the eastern Mediterranean where Turkey does not want to be left out of all these gas finds that are promising in the eastern Mediterranean number three is clearly there is an Islamist several groups, the most important is the Muslim brother now you've really had a rise of political Islam since 1979 and I think right now we're seeing political Islam on the wing because clearly for 30 years political Islam has not been able to give the region what I would call a progressive and successful platform to looking towards the future and people are realizing that but the AKP is part of that and parcel of that group and as a result is trying to lead it it is interesting that both Iran and Turkey in my opinion they can see that there are shifts in the international system and they can see that a large regional country can actually gain some extra space in the international system and Turkey and Iran both see themselves as important regional players and they are but clearly they cannot exert influence to the north where the old Soviet republics are there because this will be a conflict with Russia about political influence and so on and so forth so clearly the most attractive region with all its troubles all its problems is the southern belly and that is really their work and this is what we've really seen so really our counter argument to the Turks and Iranians is you are historical neighbors of the Arab world your current policy of aggressive expansionism is putting you in a confrontation with the Arab world you're better off propagating a Westphalian model where you respect borders, you respect non-interference and so on and I think it is very very interesting how the three countries and I speak here about Turkey, Iran and Russia in Libya have created a very unique model of confrontation and cooperation but the main thing is today they have a look on the Syrian issue because they are really the ones who decide what happens it's not the UN, it's not the rest of the Arab world and I think from that perspective the UAE's view is that we did make a huge mistake by kicking Syria out of the Arab League because we burnt all our bridges and currently our influence on one of really the seminal crisis of the Arab world of the 21st century, you know the Syrian tragedy our influence is zero and as a result I think the UAE and many other Arab countries are propagating the idea that Turkey, Iran, your are neighbors but you have to respect the Arab world's sovereignty you cannot see your political success at the expense of expanding your influence, expanding your ideology, expanding your economic interest in the Arab world because this will backfire and I think this is backfiring and I think this is also resulting really on weakening political Islam which has really dominated the region for the last 30 years Now looking from afar from Australia and looking at the region from here there seems to be little coherence in the Trump administration's policy towards the Middle East in fact in terms of a number of policies but the Middle East in particular you know we've seen the Palestinian peace deal that didn't appear to include any Palestinian voices with the announcement of a withdrawal of US forces from Syria and there was a non withdrawal and a partial withdrawal but a unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA to be replaced by a policy of maximum pressure that doesn't appear to have a really unachievable aim does the Trump administration's approach to the Middle East raise questions in your mind about its coherence and secondly is there a broader feeling that Washington has lost interest in the region or is a much weaker player these days than it ever has been in the past? Again I mean this is a discussion that precedes really the Trump administration it's a discussion about America's role in the world and America's role as you mentioned particularly in the Middle East and there are two schools of thought there's a school of thought that says that this is really cyclical within American policy towards various regions of the world so the idea that you will have an American age of engagement and then you have an American age of retrenchment so that is one view the other view really on this is that we're seeing something new the Middle East is less important here certainly the Middle East is more complicated but I can see from our perspective I don't see an American withdrawal I mean I see an American engagement but it is perhaps a much more careful engagement in the region and as I said this is not really a Trump era thing it's something that precedes the Trump era it's something that's post Afghanistan, post-Ara Again like somebody said if you try and run away from the Middle East the Middle East will run behind you and catch you and I think the single important thing unfortunately is that most of the or majority of the major crisis today, life crisis are in the Middle East unfortunately and as a result I think that many of these issues have an effect, a cascading effect on many countries and I think also understanding for example terrorism for example has very much in the Middle East in dimension because of Afghanistan and because of other developments that we have seen because of ISIS etc. so it's a cascading effect that will affect many Arab countries my view is we're not going to see and we're not seeing a withdrawal of interest but we're seeing I think a change of interest and I think from the Middle East perspective this is important because you know we look at America's involvement in the region as a positive involvement we look at America as our major strategic ally but I don't think it's also in our interest to get our major strategic ally embroiled in wars in the region but I think that the overall the 360 relationship that we have is the important part and I think the approach on Iran is essentially correct the approach on Iran is that Iran understood the JCPOA as a carte blanche recognizing its dominant role in the region and the JCPOA was not meant to do that but Iran definitely if you compare Iran's engagement in the region and aggressiveness in the region post-JCPOA it was much higher and I think we all of us you know here in the UAE we think we are beyond the JCPOA but we're beyond the JCPOA we can't really return back to the JCPOA but what we really need is what we call a JCPOA plus, plus plus quality and here what we're really talking about is addressing the three baskets of Iran's nefarious activity in the region nuclear, missile and region and I think we should in in our view this has to be done politically we need to de-escalate in the region we need Iran to be engaged and I think this is what's been offered right now and we need a process to make sure that Iran also benefits from this because Iran has to be also part of what we see at some point in the future as a region of stability and prosperity you got to give them the carrot also and I think this is important but definitely going back this is a changing world and this is a changing international system and our choices, difficult choices sometimes are made because we don't have the luxury of the past we don't have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for somebody to maintain the stability of the region and that is why you're seeing new players emerge in the region such as Turkey, old players trying to create more influence such as Iran because they realize also that there are vacuums and they realize that they can fill the vacuum and our counter-proposal is yes we want you to fill the vacuum but we want you to be part of the solution we want you to be part of the stability and prosperity of the region we don't want the region to be carved out as you are doing right now because this is not going to work and going to actually polarize further what we are seeing in the region Listen we probably will finish with this question before we take questions from the audience but you really can't talk about the US without talking about China in the same breath these days and certainly the rise of China has been one of the key debates in Australia over the last six to twelve months and one of the major issues is a feeling that perhaps Australia and other liberal democracies have focused on economic relations with China and it blinded us to the difference in values between those of liberal democracies and one party states and that the best way to ameliorate Chinese behavior is to take a unified and public stance when we believe that they've overstepped the line and human rights tends to be one of these issues Now there seems to be a disparity between the way that liberal democracies view this and perhaps some people in the Arab world and I use these two examples in 2019 Australia and the other western democracies criticised the actions by the Chinese government against the Muslim Uighurs in a letter to the UN Human Rights Council but the UAE and the other Gulf states signed a letter supporting the Chinese stance and in June this year Australia and western liberal democracies criticised Chinese, the China's new national security law for Hong Kong in the Council but the UAE and other Gulf states supported China's position. This is a two part question I suppose, first of all do you think there's a disparity in the way that the Gulf states view China and Chinese policies and the way that western liberal democracies view it particularly in terms of human rights and what do you believe that future holds for China and Chinese relations with countries in the region more broadly Well again China is emerging as a major player in our region China still is very much an economic and commercial player but again with China really becoming more of a technological powerhouse I think that relationship is shifting and I would also say that many many countries including us will have quite a rough period ahead of us because of US Chinese polarisation and here is because you have to really sort of navigate between your main strategic partner i.e. the United States and your main commercial partner i.e. China and I think we're not alone in that position so again I think managing that up to now has been fine overall but I think this will be a more difficult patch as we move forward now having said that I think yes I agree with you that foreign policy is very much reflective of what value system you put there and I think for us the issue of non-interference is very important the issue of resolving these issues privately not publicly is very important and I think that's reflected but then again this is not really a Gulf symptom I mean the OIC which is the main organisation with Muslim states, members etc. there's a feeling that naming and shaming China is not the way for but at the same time engaging with it over the Uyghur issue is more important and I think this is the approach that the OIC and others have to a certain extent taken with other less important countries such as Myanmar for example it hasn't always succeeded but I think it is reflective also that you can't clone countries and make them all act and react the same way vis-a-vis that I think what will be a very important element will be technology again China is emerging China ten years ago was purely commercial and transactional for many countries in the region but again as you see Chinese technology becoming more at the forefront of many things happening I think many of these countries including the UAE will have these difficult issues of managing the polarization that we are seeing and this is not only Trump polarization I think this is more within the American system maybe the nuance is different but this in my opinion is one of the issues that all countries will have to grapple but we are not really seeing also the very actively the political side of China that you are seeing in your region and as you know many of the China experts differ on what China seeks does China really want to be a major superpower along the lines of the United States or the Old Soviet Union which many argue it doesn't but it does want to be a major player within its own cultural context I think all these things are things that we are seeing I'm not a China expert but as I see it I see China that's becoming more and more important and powerful because also it is willing to give loans to many countries it's willing to embark on various infrastructure programs in many third world countries things that the Europeans for example don't do anymore and I think here you know the Chinese appetite will make also a difference as we see in many other areas as far as we are concerned you know we are you know they are our major commercial partner I think our trade with them is one of the largest in the Middle East and to be honest we are cognizant of you know the more and more polarized situation vis-à-vis US-China relations and we realise that this will create a lot of difficult navigating moving forward I'm very conscious of the time but I'll just take one of the questions we will receive from the audience if we were to go through them all we'd probably still be here tomorrow but one of the questions was whether you think the Sultanate of Oman will change it all now there's a new leader in the position and there are reports for instance that a multi-billion dollar development contract with an Emirati company Dumar has been cancelled recently but I just ask for your general observations about whether a new ruler of Oman who's obviously going to have to take time to put his feet under the table do you think we'll see the same kind of stable centrist policies in the region and internationally that Oman has been famous for up until now? Definitely yes, I mean it will be continuity and change Oman is an established country with a ruling family there since the early 18th century so it will be continuity and change of course is you will always have a new Sultan put a certain imprint after 40 years of rule by the legendary Sultan Qaboos we in the UAE, you know Oman is our most important partner along with Saudi Arabia and because we have what I call a live border with Oman we have basically villages that are half in Oman and half in the UAE we have families that are linked we have a live border there and I think for us we have a vested interest in a prosperous and stable Oman as they do in ours at the same time the Damak deal I think is a private deal I mean private deals work and don't work there are a multitude of UAE investments in Oman and Omani investments in the UAE many are prospering very well and doing very well and you will get also some that have overextended overreached or you know the economic climate was not right or whatever that I would say is normal and I wouldn't put any political emphasis there Listen Dr. Gagash we could be here for a lot longer than this but we promised you about 45 minutes out of your very busy schedule and you have been generous enough to give us that so we will also honour our agreement so thank you very much Dr. Gagash for what we have done today not only the time but your insights you have given us relations between the UAE and Australia are strong and they have grown strong over the last 15 years and I am sure that trend will continue into the future I would also like to thank everybody else for joining us at this latest Lowey Institute Live event our next live stream event will be announced on our website shortly so make sure that you keep an eye out for it but in the meantime I would just like to again express our thanks to you Dr. Gagash from myself personally and the Institute generally for joining us and I hope that you and your family stay safe and well in the future