In the Middle East today, imperfect states are not the problem. The problem is state collapse. A weak government can be pressured to reform, supported and ultimately held accountable. A failed state is a vacuum. And vacuums here do not stay empty: militias, traffickers, extremists and foreign patrons rush in, turning local breakdown into a regional disease.
Saudi Arabia’s strategic objective is therefore plain: protect the legitimacy of existing states and preserve recognized borders as the least-bad foundation for order. This is not sentimentality about current regimes. Many are flawed. But when state authority collapses, the result is rarely “self-determination” and almost never democracy. It is fragmentation, war economies and the normalization of violence as politics. The spillovers are predictable: refugees, weapons smuggling, terrorism and organized crime. They move faster than diplomats and they land first on the neighbors.
It is precisely because Riyadh takes stability so seriously that it watches some Emirati regional behavior with growing concern. The UAE is not a marginal actor. It is a major Arab success story with real capabilities, impressive governance at home and a legitimate desire to protect its interests and contribute to regional order. The Gulf is stronger when Saudi Arabia and the UAE are aligned and the region benefits when Abu Dhabi’s resources are deployed with strategic restraint.
In fragile societies, money and weapons can move the needle quickly, but usually in the wrong direction
Ali Shihabi
Emirati ambition, in other words, is not the issue. The method is. Influence is not measured by how many local strongmen answer your calls. It is measured by whether your actions leave countries more governable and societies less violent. Too often in Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, the Emirati model has leaned toward checkbook militarization: financing separatists, cultivating local militias and working around fragile national institutions rather than strengthening them. This is not sustainable state-building. It is outsourcing policy to armed factions.
This approach can produce short-term leverage, access and tactical gains. But it also buys long-term disorder. Once militias are empowered, they rarely return quietly to civilian life. They entrench, develop independent revenue streams, fight rivals and hollow out the state from within. What begins as “influence” becomes a permanent obstacle to governance and a permanent drag on the stability all Gulf states claim to want.
This is the central danger of proxy politics. In fragile societies, money and weapons can move the needle quickly, but usually in the wrong direction. When external patrons turn militias into parallel authorities, they do not create stability. They create a war economy with a flag pinned on it. They normalize the idea that legitimacy comes from guns and foreign funding, not from institutions. The cost is paid in years of chaos, not months of leverage. In time, even sponsors find themselves managing the very forces they once believed they could control.
None of this should obscure a basic point: Saudi Arabia does not begrudge the UAE a regional role. The Gulf needs responsible burden-sharing. When the UAE invests heavily in Egypt, it supports a pivotal Arab state whose economic distress could destabilize the whole region. That is influence deployed wisely: shoring up a state, reinforcing institutions and strengthening the foundations of order. That positive example is precisely why a different pattern elsewhere is so frustrating. There is a world of difference between helping a state stand and helping a state fracture.
Emirati officials and supporters often argue that interventions are driven by counterterrorism. Those are serious concerns. But the test is results. When a “counterterrorism” strategy repeatedly empowers unaccountable armed groups, it does not reliably reduce extremism. It can create the conditions in which extremism thrives. When separatists are encouraged and local strongmen are rewarded, the immediate casualty is often the one thing that can resist both Iranian influence and Islamist militancy: a functioning state.
Geography also makes these choices more consequential for Saudi Arabia than for the UAE. Saudi Arabia is the Gulf’s strategic depth: vastly larger in territory and population and directly adjacent to the region’s most combustible fault lines. Sudan lies across the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia hosts a large Sudanese community and would face immediate humanitarian and security consequences if Sudan collapsed further, including uncontrolled migration and the spread of illicit networks. Yemen is even closer: it shares a long border with the Kingdom and sits on Saudi Arabia’s southern flank at a time when the Houthi threat already demands constant vigilance.
None of these theaters border the UAE. Saudi Arabia is, in effect, the geographic buffer between instability and the Emirates. That is why Riyadh reacts so sharply when policies pursued in the name of “influence” ignite fires that Saudi Arabia must contain. This is not about controlling Emirati foreign policy, nor about diminishing a smaller neighbor. It is about a simple reality: those who help destabilize fragile states rarely pay the full price. Their neighbors do.
If the goal is regional stability, empowering armed factions outside national command structures is the opposite of stability
Ali Shihabi
For years, Saudi leaders absorbed these tensions with notable patience, raising concerns privately and seeking to manage disagreements behind closed doors. But Yemen became the breaking point because the stakes are direct and immediate. As Riyadh works to stabilize Yemen and rebuild a political process that can end the war, the expansionist moves of the Southern Transitional Council, widely viewed as aligned with Abu Dhabi, pushed the south toward renewed conflict and weakened the broader front against the Houthis.
At a moment when cohesion was essential, the push to seize territory and challenge the authority of the internationally recognized Yemeni government did not merely complicate Saudi security; it undercut the possibility of a negotiated settlement to the Yemen crisis.
If the goal is Gulf security, weakening the Yemeni state is counterproductive. If the goal is containing the Houthis, splintering the anti-Houthi camp is self-defeating. If the goal is regional stability, empowering armed factions outside national command structures is the opposite of stability. That is why Saudi Arabia acted in Yemen to reverse destabilizing STC gains on the ground and refocus attention on rebuilding the political track.
Here is the opportunity and it should be seized. The Saudi-UAE relationship is too important to be defined by proxy disputes and tactical quarrels. The UAE has the capacity to play a constructive role if it chooses strategic discipline over short-term leverage. Supporting a political process in Yemen, backing state institutions and ending sponsorship of armed factions outside a unified chain of command would not be a concession. It would be wisdom and it would serve Emirati interests as much as Saudi.
The region’s future will not be secured by misguided power projection. It will be secured by a shared doctrine: states over militias, legitimacy over fragmentation and stability over adventurism. The most “influential” Gulf actors will ultimately be those who help weak states stand, keep them whole and prove that power can be a force for order rather than fragmentation.
BY: Writer Ali Shihabi is an author and commentator on the politics and economics of Saudi Arabia.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect The Times Union‘ point of view
