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While waiting for the subway, I saw a poster for a high-end fitness chain. Place? “City of London. High Street Kensington. Dubai.” What a shame to choose an environment with such shabby, bad taste and incompetent foreigners. Nonetheless, the City and Dubai branches have to be top notch.
Soon after, I arrived in Doha, where Europe’s connection to the Gulf was once again inevitable. The emir of Qatar has just returned from a state visit to the UK, where his host is seeking a trade deal. Switzerland-based FIFA has just awarded Saudi Arabia the right to host the World Cup. Even in skyscraper-less Muscat, where alleyways might have been rationalized elsewhere in the Gulf, winding freely behind the Corniche, the three restaurants in my hotel were all outposts of the Mayfair brand.
It’s such a shame that the word “Eurabia” was adopted. And by weirdos like this. (This is a far-right term that refers to the alleged conspiracy to Islamize Europe.) Because we need a word to describe this relationship. The Arabian Peninsula has what Europe lacks: space, natural wealth and the resulting budget surplus for investment. In the case of Europe, the Gulf states must acquire, own or emulate the “soft” assets owned by Europe in order to play a post-oil role in the world. These are not the deepest external ties in the Gulf. This is not the case in the UAE where 38% of people are Indian and in Qatar where a quarter are Indian. But it’s probably the most symbiotic, if I understand the word correctly.
True, the United States has a defense presence in all six GCC countries. That includes a trail in Saudi Arabia that Osama bin Laden wasn’t super excited about. But what about everyday contact? It’s a 15-hour flight from the United States. Its soft assets are either harder to buy or less coveted. Its citizens have little financial incentive to live in tax havens, since Uncle Sam collects at least part of the difference from them.
In the 1970s, as OPEC profits poured into London, Anthony Burgess wrote of a dystopia in which luxury hotels became “al-Klaridges” and “al-Dorchester”. What a shock to even the most secular Europeans to see non-white people with more money than they are – we cannot afford to hesitate. Still, they may condescendingly view the Bay Area as uninhabitable. Half a century later, their grandchildren call it “copium.” In fact, their grandchildren probably do live there for the economic opportunities. (Al-Dorado?) As a banker friend explained, the time zone allows you to sleep late, trade the European markets, and then have dinner, so it’s the younger guys who work in the Gulf, not people like me The burnout of age.
But for how long? It’s this sheer impossibility of a tryst between a culture of universal rights and monarchical absolutism, between a largely secular continent and a peninsula home to an ancient faith, that makes it unlike anything I can think of . A relationship can be both necessary and untenable. It won’t take much time—some of the violence within the GCC, for example, appears to have occurred in 2017—for Europe to be as exposed to the Gulf as it was to Russia before. If Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City is found to have committed financial fraud, the history of the Premier League will be tarnished. Because it was “just” a movement, I feel like people were unprepared for the backlash.
It’s narrow-minded to think that the relationship will only break down at one end. The Gulf must make the most awkward of cultural adjustments. Because Europeans associate 1979 with Iran and perhaps Margaret Thatcher, they sometimes overlook the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by fanatics who believed the Saudi royal family was accustomed to the West has become weak. Governments in the region will certainly not forget.
How far a place can liberalize without tripping over cultural lines depends on the circumstances of each state or emirate (and the answer will be different from each state or emirate). In Duha’s restaurant, everyone was very nice to “Mr. Janan”. But people must pass through metal scanners every time they re-enter the building, a reminder of what’s at stake here. I wonder whether Europe and the Gulf are investing so much energy out of the slightest doubt that the relationship will last.
Send Janan an email to janan.ganesh@ft.com
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