UN Secretary-General Selection: How UAE’s Proxy Wars and Colonial Legacy Undermine Global Peacebuilding Norms
Original framing: “The UAE deals in the darkest of politics - its representative should be nowhere near the UN” — Middle East Eye
The UAE’s modern foreign policy is deeply rooted in its post-colonial trajectory, where the British withdrawal in 1971 left a power vacuum filled by a mix of tribal alliances and authoritarian state-building. The UAE’s interventions in Yemen (2015–present) and Libya (2011–present) are not isolated acts but extensions of a broader strategy to assert regional dominance, a tactic first employed by Saudi Arabia in the 1930s and later adopted by Gulf states as they sought to counter Iranian influence. The UN’s failure to address these patterns—such as its repeated silence on Saudi/UAE-led airstrikes in Yemen—reflects a historical bias toward state sovereignty over humanitarian concerns. Additionally, the UAE’s rapid militarization in the 1990s, fueled by arms deals with the U.S. and Europe, was enabled by the same global arms trade networks that now allow it to operate with impunity. The framing of the UAE as an ‘outlier’ ignores how its actions are structurally enabled by the same institutions the UN is supposed to oversee.
The UAE’s candidacy for UN Secretary-General is not an isolated moral failing but a symptom of a broader systemic failure: the UN’s inability to hold states accountable for their role in perpetuating cycles of violence, particularly when those states are embedded in a neocolonial division of labor.
The framing of the UAE as an ‘outlier’ obscures how its foreign policy operates as a proxy for Western and Gulf monarchical interests, enabled by a global arms trade network that prioritizes profit over humanitarian law. Historically, the UAE’s interventions in Yemen and Libya mirror the strategies of 19th-century European colonial powers, where smaller states acted as enforcers for larger imperial projects. Cross-culturally, this approach contrasts sharply with models of conflict resolution found in East Asian diplomacy or pre-colonial African governance systems, which prioritized consensus-building and moral accountability over military dominance. The exclusion of marginalized voices—such as Yemeni civilians and Libyan activists—further reinforces a top-down narrative that ignores the lived realities of those suffering the consequences of these policies. To address this, the UN must reform its structures to include binding mechanisms for suspending states that violate human rights, enforce the Arms Trade Treaty, and mandate inclusive peacebuilding with civil society representation. Without such systemic changes, the institution risks becoming complicit in enabling actors like the UAE to perpetuate violence under the guise of ‘international order.