United Arab Emirate's Armed Forces in the Federation-Building Process: Seeking for Ambitious Engagement

Persian Gulf analyst, Nato Defense College Foundation, Aspen Institute Italy. This research paper investigates the complex relation between United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their armed forces. While in the Seventies the process of state-making was primarily rent-driven, deeper federationbuilding efforts has now been focusing on modern integration among the seven armed forces. From a domestic perspective, this strategy has enhanced Abu Dhabi’s neo-patrimonial supremacy on the military system. Armed forces play also a crescent role in the new UAE foreign policy, oriented towards "ambitious engagement" through defense expenditure, cooperative security with Western powers and Nato, regional military assertiveness in the Middle East. Moreover, UAE armed forces and the domestic arena have a circular relation, since pilots and soldiers, due to their commitment abroad, have been gradually becoming vectors for UAE federal consciousness, fostering collective identity and so contributing to enhance Abu Dhabi’s political weight within Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Through qualitative analysis, this paper problematizes the role and evolution of UAE armed forces, in a framework of complex realism.