IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/fswixx/v33y2022i1-2p152-172.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The UAE’s ‘dogs of war’: boosting a small state’s regional power projection

Author

Listed:
  • Andreas Krieg

Abstract

This article suggests based on the case study of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that mercenaries as commercial surrogates can become an integral part of an overall effort of military transformation helping regimes in the Middle East to increase military capacity and capability on the battlefield. As the most assertive Arab state post-Arab Spring, the UAE arguably shows the greatest discrepancy between ambitiousness of its strategic objectives and available in-house capacity and capability among states in the region. Consequently, despite its ongoing military transformation, the Emirates more than any other Arab state had to inevitably draw on external surrogates to maintain their military presence in Somalia, Yemen, and Libya. Thereby, the case study of the UAE is quite exceptional in the region, as it has set a new trend for the commercialization of military services at the higher end of the military spectrum when translating capital into military capability and capacity. This in turn confronts Abu Dhabi’s western partners with difficult choices as they rely increasingly on the UAE to bear the burden of conflict in the region.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Krieg, 2022. "The UAE’s ‘dogs of war’: boosting a small state’s regional power projection," Small Wars and Insurgencies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1-2), pages 152-172, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:33:y:2022:i:1-2:p:152-172
    DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2021.1951432
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2021.1951432
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09592318.2021.1951432?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:33:y:2022:i:1-2:p:152-172. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/fswi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.