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ID:
183518
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Summary/Abstract |
The transition away from post-Cold War unipolarity has repercussions for regional orders that have been shaped and sustained by US preponderance. Small states like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), traditionally reliant upon extra-regional powers to balance against more powerful neighbours, are adopting an increasingly muscular foreign policy to hedge against a possible reduced US regional role. Consequently, there is an opening for non-traditional powers to adopt larger roles. Primarily using an outside-in approach, this paper explores the nature of China and Russia’s more active bilateral engagement with the UAE. It finds that in an environment where political instability within the larger Middle East combines with uncertainty about US intentions, regional leaders and leaders of extra-regional powers with interests in the Persian Gulf have to adjust accordingly, either to protect those interests or to take advantage of the opportunity to expand their presence in a strategically and economically important theatre.
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ID:
187521
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Summary/Abstract |
In the early 2000s, the Middle East was not high on the list of Singapore’s priorities. Of late, however, a more purposeful engagement with the Gulf is evident. This paper adopts an approach grounded in foreign policy analysis to analyze the extent to which Singapore’s engagement with the Gulf is shaped by security-related developments in the latter. It draws largely upon qualitative analysis, interviews, and quantitative data from sources in Singapore. Section one provides the relevant theoretical overview according to which domestic sources, in this case Singapore’s strategic culture of “vulnerability,” frames the conduct of foreign policy. Section two examines Singapore-Gulf relations along three security-related pathways – public order, economic prosperity, and domestic energy mix – and the extent to which they are filtered by the city-state’s “vulnerability.” Section three concludes with some thoughts about the outlook for maintaining the momentum in relations between interlocutors on the fringes of Asia.
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