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Waiting for the Tube, I see a poster for a luxury gym chain. Locations? “The City of London. High Street Kensington. Dubai.” What a shame to choose an environment that is so disfigured with bad taste and clueless immigrants. However, the City and Dubai branches should be first class.
Soon after, I’m in Doha, and again the Euro-Gulf connection is inevitable. Qatar’s emir has returned from a state visit to Britain, where the hosts were seeking a trade deal. The Swiss-based FIFA has just awarded the rights to host the World Cup to Saudi Arabia. Even in skyscraper-free Muscat, where alleys that might have been rationalized elsewhere on the Bay roll loosely behind the Corniche, three restaurants in my hotel are outposts of Mayfair brands.
What a shame the word “Eurabia” has become. And from such obsessions. (It’s a far-right term for an alleged plot to Islamize Europe.) Because we’re going to need a word for this relationship. The Arabian Peninsula has what Europe lacks: space, natural wealth and the resulting budget surpluses to invest in things. For its part, Europe has “soft” assets that the Gulf states must acquire, cut or emulate to create a post-oil role in the world. This is not the deepest external connection of the Gulf. Not while 38 percent of people in the United Arab Emirates and a quarter in Qatar are Indians. But it can be more symbiosis, if I understand this word correctly.
True, the US has a defense presence in all six Gulf Cooperation Council states. This includes the Saudi Arabian footprint that Osama bin Laden was not too keen on. But daily contact? America is 15 hours away by flight. Its soft assets are either harder to acquire or less coveted. Its citizens have little fiscal incentive to live in tax havens, since Uncle Sam charges them at least part of the difference.
In the 1970s, when OPEC profits exploded across London, Anthony Burgess wrote a dystopia in which grand hotels became “al-Claridges” and “al-Dorchesters”. What a mental shock it was to see even the most worldly Europeans – we must not confuse this – non-white people with more money than them. Still, they could accept the Gulf as having no place to live. Half a century later, their grandchildren would call it a replica. In fact, their grandchildren may literally live there for economic opportunity. (Al-Dorado?) As a banker friend explains, time zones allow you to sleep late, trade the European markets, then dine late, so it’s the young who do a Gulf period, not the burnt out who are my age .
For how long, though? It is the impossibility of this endeavour, between a universal culture of rights and monarchical absolutism, between a largely secular continent and the peninsula of an ancient faith, that sets it apart from anything I can think of. A relationship can be necessary and unstable. It wouldn’t take much – say some violence within the GCC, which seemed imminent in 2017 – for Europe’s exposure to the Gulf to age as badly as its previous openness to Russia. If Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City are found to have committed financial fraud, a piece of Premier League history will be tarnished. Because it’s “just” sport, I think people are unprepared for the reaction.
And it is strange to assume that the relationship can only be broken in one end. It is the Gulf side that must make the most difficult cultural adjustments. Because Europeans associate 1979 with Iran and perhaps Margaret Thatcher, they sometimes gloss over the occupation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by zealots who felt the House of Saud had gone soft on Western customs. Governments in the region certainly do not forget.
How far a country can liberalize without stopping, a cultural thread takes (and responds differently in) each state, or emirate. Everyone is very nice to “Mr. Janan” at his hotel in Doha. But the metal scanners they have to go through on every re-entry to the building stand as a reminder of the stakes here. I wonder if Europe and the Gulf throw so much into their interconnection out of the slightest doubt that it can last.
Email Janan at janan.ganesh@ft.com
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