Elham Fakhro, Harvard Kennedy School and Peter Salisbury, Columbia University
For over two decades, the United States enjoyed its place on top as the leading hegemon in a unipolar world.[1] The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 brought an end to the bipolar power struggle that sustained the Cold War, and ushered in a liberal global order led by the United States as the world’s sole superpower.[2] In the following years, Washington used its soft power, economic strength, and military might to expand this order, including through new multilateral institutions that it spearheaded including NATO and the World Trade Organization.[3]
Thirty-five years later, the foundations of this order are in disarray. While the United States maintains its military, economic and technological might, China’s growing economic dominance and Russia’s efforts to restore its superpower status, coupled with the rise of a range of assertive medium-sized powers, are creating the conditions for a return to the kind of multipolar distribution of power that was the norm until the mid-twentieth century.[4] Amidst this reshuffle, the United States finds itself further weakened because of a crisis of ideological legitimacy of its own making. Western policy makers, most of whom came of age during the unipolar era, are struggling to keep up.
A key feature of the transition to multipolarity is the rise of what we call multipolar entrepreneurs: states leveraging the changing global landscape to extract benefits from different sides and protect their own interests. Washington views these states in the same way as it did during the Cold War: as gateways for the expansion of rival ideological powers. Underlying this thinking is an enduring American confidence that the power distribution of the mid- and late twentieth century can eventually be restored, and that the right enticements can bring its partners back into alignment. Yet a closer look into the behaviour of these multipolar entrepreneurs suggests that their calculations have changed, and a return to the dynamics of the past century is unlikely.
In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the UAE embody the kind of manoeuvring characteristic of multipolar entrepreneurs. Once seen as beholden to the United States policy in the Middle East, these states are pursuing their own national interests with greater assertiveness. Both states are establishing closer ties with America’s great power rivals, China and Russia, and intervening in conflicts without U.S. backing or consent, all while seeking to extract expanded American security guarantees. To leaders in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, these moves are a logical response to the new menu of available options presented by the global power transition, and to a partner in Washington whose behaviour they see as having become unreliable over the past two decades.
As the rivalry between the United States and China grows, these middle powers are taking advantage of an increasingly competitive global landscape to leverage their interests. U.S. officials view their recalibrated policies as inconvenient, but there is no way back to the unipolar or even bipolar status quos of the past. Instead, Washington should understand their shifting stances as a consequence of a global transition to multipolarity and adapt its policies towards this emergent class of “multipolar entrepreneurs”.
The Turn to Multipolarity
The Gulf region is both the epicentre of multipolar entrepreneurship today and the place where the unipolar moment began unravelling. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and ousted President Saddam Hussein from power. The invasion took place despite the refusal of the United Nations Security Council to authorise the use of force, and came after multiple warnings from America’s Gulf partners that the invasion would have disastrous consequences for the region. Instead of laying the groundwork for a flourishing democracy, as American officials had hoped, the invasion unleashed a violent civil conflict and opened the doors for Iran to gain a new foothold in the weakened Iraqi state, all while undermining Western claims to promote the rule of law.
The invasion of Iraq upended regional perceptions of the United States and weakened its ideological appeal. America’s 1990 intervention to liberate Kuwait from Saddam, for all its unpopularity elsewhere in the Arab world, earned it an outpouring of genuine support among Gulf leaders and citizens alike. But the 2003 invasion yielded the opposite outcome, with irreparable damage done to Washington’s image from an outraged Arab citizenry that saw the intervention as an imperialist oil grab. Regional leaders viewed the invasion as a reckless miscalculation which demonstrated both the damage the United States was able to wreak abroad, and the limits of American power.
Other events would chip away at another pillar of U.S. power: its economic strength. The financial crisis of 2008-2009 changed global perceptions of the reliability of unfettered capitalism and a globalized, dollar-based economy. The foreclosure of one in fifty-two homes during the crisis further eroded the American middle class, a process that had begun with the enactment of NAFTA in the 1990’s and a slow shift of manufacturing jobs away from the United States. Beijing’s rise as a powerhouse for cheap manufacturing, enabled by its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 at the United States’ insistence, cemented the decline of American manufacturing, and turned China into the world’s largest producer of goods and buyer of raw commodities.
Diverging Interests
Amidst these shifts, the foundational interests of the United States and the Gulf states increasingly diverged. Since the 1940s, the basis of ties between the U.S. and its Gulf partners, especially the United States and Saudi Arabia, has been the “oil for security” pact, which promised an exchange of cheap oil from the Gulf, in return for American security. In 2011, this pact began fraying as the United States became a net exporter of oil for the first time in decades. While Washington remained dependent on Saudi Arabia to set an acceptable baseline price to American consumers at OPEC, U.S. dependence on Saudi oil was no longer an existential one. Much of the demand for Gulf’s oil no longer comes from the United States, but from China.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are also adopting more activist foreign policies, outside the framework of US coordination. This became evident most clearly during – and in the aftermath of – the Arab Spring, when both players intervened in states across the region to prevent the rise of political Islam and groups they deemed supportive of Tehran, which they feared might someday threaten their authority. Both had a hand in the 2013 coup that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected President and went on to intervene in subsequent civil conflicts in Libya, Syria, Sudan and Yemen. While they sometimes act at odds, they share a common aim. They want, according to a U.S. official, to “shape the region in their image”, by supporting the rise of authoritarian, highly securitized, anti-democratic currents.
Perhaps more frustratingly, from Washington’s perspective, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are at times reluctant to discuss what they are doing in the region with their American counterparts. For even seasoned American observers, this entrepreneurialism feels like a betrayal from states that have benefited enormously from U.S. patronage. But officials in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, reflecting on two decades of U.S. policy in their neighbourhood, see themselves as partly filling a vacuum generated by what they see as U.S. reluctance to take a more active role in the region, a perception heightened by repeated declarations from US presidents since Barack Obama of an intent to drawdown from the region and move US military assets to other parts of the globe. For all its talk of supporting the Gulf states, the Trump administration largely doubled down on this policy, fuelling a perception of vulnerability among Gulf leaders and fuelling their desire to take matters into their own hands.
The Ideological Challenge
As the United States reckons with its future in a transforming global landscape, it faces a deepening crisis of legitimacy that is further eroding another aspect of its power: its ideological authority. As Stacie Goddard notes in this volume, the United States justifies its hegemony “through the language of the international order” telling itself and the outside world that its power is not only legitimate but desirable, because it is deployed to expand the universal liberal values that all rational individuals desire. Washington openly disregards these values in practice, whether by cosying up to dictators where they further its interests, or by intervening in other states whose leaders do not. Washington’s failure to abide by the values that it champions as the basis for its authority – made especially glaring in 2024 through its refusal to condition military or political support for Israel as it carries out systemic war crimes in Gaza – increases charges of “whataboutism” by state leaders and undermines international support for its foreign policy.
This crisis of legitimacy weakens U.S. soft power and provides new inroads for its rivals. Chinese officials have come to see the United States as drunk on power and complacent in its spot at the top. They assail the United States for imposing its political model on others, and label American democracy, human rights and freedom of speech promotion as a form of colonialism. Instead of dictating to other global powers, China promises more even and transactional interactions, offering new opportunities for trade and cooperation that did not come with political conditions or possible threats of military intervention. When Saudi Arabia signed its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement with Beijing in 2022, a key commitment from the two sides was towards a principle of “non-interference” in the internal affairs of the other, long a source of complaint from Gulf officials towards the United States.[5] Russia has codified similar promises in its promotion of “sovereign democracy”, a model it sees as challenging the Western democracy-promotion agenda.[6]
Multilateralism is challenging American hegemony and dominance on the world stage. In 2009, the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) came together to form a new economic alliance, aimed at representing the concerns of the Global South in a multilateral system dominated by Western states. Together, the five powers worked to become what China and Russia posit is a new rival to the U.S.-led G-7, including by coordinating on trade policy. The BRICS states are already trading in their own currencies, weakening the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions. During its 2023 summit, the BRICS group announced plans to include six new members, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, setting the stage for expanded cooperation between an even bigger network of actors.
From an American perspective, Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s actions are an indicator that they are “going over” to the Chinese side. But Gulf officials see things differently. They believe that mounting geopolitical competition, and a more diffuse distribution of global power, are an opportunity to seek the most from all sides, and to expand their own influence. China, India, Russia, and other BRICS countries represent a growing share of global consumption, and income from oil sales. For this reason, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh no longer see themselves as beholden to the United States’ interests but as players at the heart of the global economy. Over time, they believe that the US will eventually shift its posture from demanding hegemon, to one of a begrudging equal. In the meantime, they are willing to leverage U.S. fears that they are falling into China or Russia’s orbits by seeking defence guarantees from Washington.
Saudi Arabia’s recent policies illustrate its balancing act. When President Biden travelled to Riyadh in July 2022 to urge Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to ramp up oil production in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Crown Prince rebuffed the President by joining hands with Moscow to slash oil production at OPEC. The move earned Saudi Arabia and other oil producers windfall profits. That year, Riyadh announced plans to establish a Chinese drone factory in the Kingdom, and signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement that included preliminary deals valued at $30 billion.[7] A GCC-China Free Trade Agreement is reportedly nearing completion. Saudi Arabia has also given China inroads into Middle East diplomacy, once the near-exclusive domain of the United States. When the Kingdom restored its relations with Tehran in early 2023 after a seven-year hiatus, it was Beijing that acted as public broker to the agreement.
Saudi Arabia’s perceived turn to Beijing triggered a renewed push by American officials to broker a mega-deal that offered Saudi Arabia a defence pact in exchange for halting its security cooperation with China and entering a normalisation agreement with Israel. In bilateral talks with Washington, Riyadh conditioned accession to the Abraham Accords – the normalization deals the U.S. brokered between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco – on long-term binding security guarantees akin to a NATO Article Five security pact, and access to advanced American anti-missile technology, which it sees as vital to its long-term security. Saudi Arabia has also asked for some concessions to the Palestinians in the form of a “pathway” towards statehood, a nod to its historic leadership on the issue.[8] The American sense of urgency, and its willingness to meet Saudi demands, increased as the conflict in Gaza escalated into a regional conflict over the past year. Amidst expanding turmoil, Washington still hopes that it can bring its Gulf Arab partners into closer alignment with Israel and deepen the foundations of a US-backed anti-Iran alliance.
The United Arab Emirates arguably set the template for Saudi Arabia’s strategy. In late 2021, reporting from the Wall Street Journal suggested that Abu Dhabi was preparing to host Chinese military facilities.[9] Outcry from American officials prompted the UAE to announce that it had halted construction on the site. But by early 2023, leaked intelligence documents appeared to suggest that plans for its development may have resumed. While the United States has urged its partners to help isolate Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, the UAE instead opened its doors to a flood of Russian money and quickly rose to become a key trading hub for Moscow.[10] By 2022, trade between the two states grew by nearly seventy percent from the previous year to a record $9 billion. The UAE’s refusal to choose sides has also enabled it to expand its diplomatic footprint by mediating prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine.
The UAE is also using its accession to the Abraham Accords as part of its bargaining strategy. In September 2024, even as U.S. officials bemoaned the UAE’s role in Sudan’s civil war and its facilitation of Russian oil exports, President Biden announced that he was making Abu Dhabi a major U.S. defense partner. Part of the reason for the move, according to U.S. officials, was the UAE’s willingness to coordinate a regional effort to develop a “day after” plan for governing Gaza, something Israel has thus far refused to seriously contemplate.
The two countries are exploiting a mismatch in expectations about the future. U.S. officials still believe that the Gulf states’ primary security concern is Iran. As a result, they think they can exploit Emirati and Saudi fears over its regional ambitions to persuade them to remain within the American sphere of influence and integrate them into a regional security framework built around cooperation with Israel. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh certainly see Iran as a critical security threat. But they believe the Iranian threat is best mitigated through a mix of defence pacts, diplomacy and economic inducements to Tehran facilitated by Moscow and Beijing. This perception stems largely from the fact that they see the United States as not having done enough to protect them from Iranian retaliation in the past.[11]
From a Saudi and Emirati perspective, this approach has paid off handsomely. Since Hamas’ October 7th attacks, and Israel’s reprisal, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have avoided becoming embroiled in an escalating regional conflict between Israel and Iran. They have also avoided being targeted by Iran-backed groups as happened during the maximum pressure era when these states faced the brunt of Iran’s reprisal for President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA. As it seeks a plan for regional stabilization, meanwhile, the U.S. has become more focused than ever on securing long-term alliances with the Gulf states, allowing them to increase the asking price for cooperation – and to avoid scrutiny for their own misdeeds.
A Global Shift
Whether U.S. officials like it or not, multipolar entrepreneurship is becoming evident among many of America’s established allies the world over. While a state like Pakistan is a vital security partner for the United States, it has placed itself at the heart of China’s economic plans. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor – a 3,000-kilometre Chinese infrastructure network project that establishes a sea and land-based corridor across the state – is the flagship of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, enabling China to reduce the cost and transit time for Chinese energy imports from the Middle East. Although Turkey is a member of NATO, its economic ties to Russia have grown in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And while the United States announced plans to invest $200 billion in Indian technology corporations and infrastructure in early 2023, New Delhi continues to acquire nearly half of its weapons from Russia.[12] For an array of states caught in the middle of great power competition, the choice is not about picking sides but rather playing these powers off each other to gain the most leverage, and choices. For the United States, dealing with these new realities is an unwelcome but inevitable part of preparing itself for a new global order in which it no longer exclusively dictates the rules of the game.
[1] For more on the changing role of the United States in the global order, see the papers by Gregory Gause and Daniel Nexon in this collection
[2] In 1992 Francis Fukuyama infamously argued that the ascendance of liberal democracy and dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the “end of history”, and the “universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” See: F. Fukuyama, ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).
[3] Critics of the United States’ foreign policy have long pointed to the gaps between the United States professed commitment to values of human rights and democracy, and its disregard for these values in practice. See, for example: N. Chomsky, ‘Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance’ (New York: Holt Publishers, 2004).
[4] S. Walt, ‘The US is too Scared of the Multipolar World’, Foreign Affairs, 07 March 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/07/america-is-too-scared-of-the-multipolar-world/
[5] “China, Saudi Arabia issue joint statement”, Xinhua News Agency, 10 December, 2022, https://english.www.gov.cn/news/internationalexchanges/202212/10/content_WS6394234bc6d0a757729e44ba.html#:~:text=The%20two%20sides%20reiterated%20that,basic%20norms%20governing%20international%20law
[6] Anirban Chatterjee, ‘Sovereign Democracy: Russian Response to Western Democracy Promotion in the Post-Soviet Space’, Jadavpur Journal of International Relations, 27, 2, 2023.
[7] Rawan Radwan, ‘Saudi Arabia, China emerge as comprehensive strategic partners as Chinese President Xi Jinping wraps up state visit’, Arab News, 10 December 2022, https://www.arabnews.com/node/2213756/saudi-arabia
[8] M. Crowley, V. Nereim, and P. Kingsley, ‘Saudi Arabia Offers its Price to Normalize Relations with Israel’, New York Times, 11 March 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/us/politics/saudi-arabia-israel-united-states.html. See also: E.Fakhro, ‘The Abraham Accords: the Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024).
[9] G. Lubold and W. Strobel, ‘Secret Chinese Port Project in Persian Gulf Rattles U.S. Relations with UAE’, Wall Street Journal, 19 November 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-china-uae-military-11637274224
[10] N. Smagin, ‘Is the Blossoming Relationship Between Russia and the UAE Doomed?’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 13 April 2023, https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2023/04/is-the-blossoming-relationship-between-russia-and-the-uae-doomed?lang=en¢er=global
[11] This way of thinking is in part the product of a wave of Iran-backed attacks on the two countries between 2018 and 2022 and what the Gulf states saw as American indifference to their plight. In 2019, for example, Iranian-backed Iraqi and Yemeni groups attacked Saudi oil and gas infrastructure and airports in the midst of the then-Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. Saudi officials were angered by what they saw as a lack of American response to the attack. In 2022, Yemen’s Houthis attacked the UAE with drones and missiles. Emirati officials were similarly frustrated by what they perceived as a lacklustre reaction from the Biden administration to “our 9/11”. Believing the U.S. to be a fair-weather friend regardless of the party in charge, each sought détente with Iran. Riyadh eventually turned to China for help.
[12] P. Sahu, ‘Yellen: India to be Key Beneficiary of $200-billion Fund’, Financial Express, 27 February 2023, https://www.financialexpress.com/policy/economy-yellen-india-to-be-key-beneficiary-of-us-200-bn-fund-2992865/