Is US belief that UAE may ‘host PLA base’ an overestimation of China’s Middle East influence?
- Top-secret documents show US detected allegedly suspicious construction activity at a container terminal in an Abu Dhabi port that is part-owned by China
- Some analysts say data reflects US tendency to misjudge China’s ties with region, reveals differences of perspective between UAE and US about their security ties
According to top-secret documents seen by The Washington Post, the United States in December detected allegedly suspicious construction activity at a container terminal in the UAE’s Khalifa Port, which has been jointly operated since late 2018 by two state-owned enterprises, Abu Dhabi Ports Group and China’s COSCO Shipping Ports.
The reported work was believed by the US to include “a walled perimeter for a PLA logistics storage site” which may recently have been connected to municipal water and power supplies, the intelligence reports were cited as saying in an article in the newspaper on Thursday.
The UAE – a federation of seven states, including Dubai – froze work at the site in late 2021, after the US complained that the Chinese military was building a facility there, but Emirati officials later said they found no evidence to support Washington’s allegations.
The US intelligence reports claim the resumed construction activity at Port Khalifa is part of PLA plans to build a network of at least five overseas military bases and 10 logistical support facilities by 2030 under an initiative called “Project 141”.
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China’s PLA currently operates its sole overseas base at Doraleh port in the east African state of Djibouti, located near the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait which links the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
Djibouti is also home to military facilities operated by seven other countries, including the US’ largest permanent force in Africa.
Some observers have said the US data may be an overestimation of China’s influence in the Middle East.
The Americans are overreacting since photos of the leaked document do not show “anything substantively different or new in the Middle East”, said Guy Burton, a professor of international relations at the Brussels School of Governance.
Most of the ports the US suspects could be used for military purposes by the PLA are commercial, rather than dedicated naval bases, he added.
The concerns cited in the leaked intelligence reports “make more sense” if seen as catering to US military planning for worst-case scenarios, Burton said.
The documents said the renewed construction work at Khalifa Port led some American officials to conclude that the UAE was not playing “straight” with the US, The Washington Post reported.
Abu Dhabi-based analyst Khalifa al-Suwaidi said this showed there was “a mismatch of expectations” between the US and UAE. “The US does expect the UAE to reveal such sensitive information, but the Emiratis want to keep their cards close to their chest,” he said.
While the UAE “views the US favourably, the overwhelming sentiment is still that the US cannot be fully trusted following its perceived withdrawal” from the Middle East, said al-Suwaidi, a research fellow at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, a UAE think tank.
He said the UAE had “felt hurt” by the US foreign policy decision to “pivot to East Asia” at the beginning of former president Barack Obama’s second term in 2012.
This is when the Emiratis began planning for life after Pax Americana, al-Suwaidi said, referring to the relative peace and stability seen during American influence since 1945.
UAE concerns escalated after the US did not quickly deploy additional air defence assets to support it after it was hit by armed drones and ballistic missiles launched by Iranian-backed militias in Yemen and Iraq in January 2022.
Al-Suwaidi said it was “a matter of time before they sought out new allies” like China.
Analysts say US officials’ complaints about the UAE do not take into consideration the transactional nature of Washington’s decades-old ‘security guarantees for oil’ relationship with the Gulf monarchies.
While the two countries share common goals on countering terrorist threats, regional stability and Iran, “it’s not a codified mutual defence commitment with explicit obligations”, said Burton, the author of several books about the region, including China and Middle East Conflicts.
“It’s a partnership, not an alliance, which gives the two sides a degree of latitude, even freedom,” he said.
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Aside from establishing its Djibouti base, China’s military activity in the region has incrementally increased since it launched an independent naval task force to protect commercial shipping traffic from Somali pirate attacks in 2008, according to a study published in February by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The PLA’s navy presence has risen from an average of 2.6 deployments per year between 2008 and 2017 to 3.6 thereafter, it said.
But current Chinese basing capacity and force commitment in the region “seem insufficient to support the level of economic and diplomatic engagement that appears to be Beijing’s new normal”, the study said, adding that Washington should therefore “prepare for further expansion”.
One potential sticking point in expanding Gulf-China relations, analysts have often noted, is that Beijing has never seemed interested in assuming the “security guarantor” responsibilities that are the stated purpose of America’s bases in the Gulf.
“Yet the speculative Chinese base in the UAE may provide insight into how the PLA navy hopes to build its presence: in secret,” the study said.
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It pointed out, however, that opening a PLA facility in the UAE would undermine China’s policy of balancing relations between strategic partners in the Gulf.
But Brussels-based academic Burton questioned such apprehensions that China wanted to replace the US as the leading geopolitical actor in the Middle East, something Beijing has repeatedly denied.
“Given the state of the region and the difficulties that the conflicts and rivalries there present, why would they [China] want to entangle themselves within it? Moreover, why do that when they can see the US tied up already?” he asked. “It sometimes seems to me that some of these China confrontationists in Washington lack imagination and assume that everyone is like themselves.”
