Far too often, the stories that dominate our discussions are not the ones that will matter most over the arc of time. The drama of “if it bleeds, it leads” remains the most dominant driver of news and social media, which means that larger forces remain under-examined. Bad news often happens quickly; positive news often evolves slowly.
Take the events of last week. The president of the United States went for a brief trip to the Middle East, and much of the talk was about the proposed gift by the Qatari government of a $400 million Boeing jet that could be repurposed as Air Force One and that Trump might be able to keep once he leaves office, according to some reports. There was also much focus on the many and lavish commitments of investments in the United States announced by the governments not just of Qatar but also the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
All of that was also accompanied by a chorus of criticisms in the United States, including from some MAGA supporters who found the idea of the plane gift problematic and “smacking of graft”. Ben Shapiro called the gift “skeezy,” and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said it would be best if the new presidential plane was built in the United States. Others described the entire trip as an exercise in influence-peddling and self-dealing, with the royals of the Middle East doing what they do best: playing to the vanity and greed of the Trump family by offering shiny baubles in exchange for American military hardware and access to American markets.
Yet the larger story here—the one that will shape the Middle East, the United States, and the world over the coming decades—is not whether Donald Trump gets a plane. It’s the sharp emergence of the Gulf region as a locus of change in the world, and in most respects, a locus of positive change. Not an unalloyed positive, of course. These are flawed states, evolving governments, divided families, and complicated people; unalloyed positives are a fantasy.
Three countries are leading that change: the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. To a lesser but not insignificant degree, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman are also part of the mix, all of which are graced with vast oil and natural gas resources. What makes Qatar so extraordinary is that it has some of the largest natural gas resources in the world (almost 15% of the global total reserves), owned by the Qatari royal family and shared by fewer than 350,000 Qatari citizens, along with another 2.5 million residents. It also has close to $2 trillion in oil reserves. The UAE has a million citizens and another nearly 9 million residents, with massive oil deposits in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah and a city in Dubai that has become a global financial and commercial hub. Saudi Arabia has the world’s second largest oil reserves behind Venezuela, but its oil is “lighter” and less expensive to refine, meaning that its oil is more profitable, and supported by nearly 20 million Saudi citizens and an immigrant population of more than 15 million people.
The Saudis have been rich since oil began flowing in the 1940s and 1950s, as have the Kuwaitis. Oman, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi joined that petroleum party a bit later. Yet only in the past decade plus has the region transformed from a set of rentier states selling oil that benefitted primarily a small circle of royal families into a new global locus of commerce directly and indirectly benefitting tens of millions of people regionally and hundreds of millions globally.
When you visit these countries, the pulsating energy of change is palpable. It’s the same feeling as the United States and Western Europe in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s the same feeling as China after 2001 when it joined the WTO and foreign investment flooded in. It’s the same feeling as India in the 2010s and to some degree now. In the Gulf region today, it’s a youth-infused burst of affirmation that now is our time, bolstered by trillions of dollars of capital being extracted from the soil. That fusion of cultural efflorescence married to money is potent.
And yes, for now, we are talking largely about economic change. We are talking about material progress, not political opening or spiritual salvation or community. The change in Saudia Arabia is almost entirely a function of the radical break that Muhammad Bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, engineered after 2018.
After decades during which the Saudi ruling family had tethered its political legitimacy to the Wahhabi religious establishment, MBS ended that marriage and instated sweeping social reforms that brought women into the workforce and out of segregation. He denounced the backwardness of the Wahhabis and their religious myopia that had fomented civil wars and terrorism throughout the world. The humbling of the zealots was not accompanied by any meaningful political reform; the Saud family still rules as royal autocracy and dissent is brutally punished. And in his attempts to wipe out the Iranian-backed groups in Yemen, MBS was willing to see hundreds of thousands die. But MBS articulated a vision of Saudi Arabia as a global force in the 21st century—most evident in its heavy investments in sports and next-generation technologies—not as an innovator, but as a provider of capital.
In a similar fashion, the Emiratis and Qataris have followed parallel paths. Qatar has invested heavily in soft-power resources such as media and diplomacy—hence why Doha is where various global adversaries have met on neutral ground: Hamas and the Israelis most notably, and before that, the Taliban and the Americans. They have filled a role similar to what Switzerland played for much of the 20th century. The UAE, and Dubai above all, has become a global trade and finance entrepôt—in part a haven for assets from countries such as Russia, Iran, and China that have been limited by American sanctions regimes, but also a neutral melting pot and nexus for Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East.
And the influence then extends out. These countries have provided tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid annually, second only to the EU and the United States, to countries ranging from Pakistan, Egypt, and Sudan, and others throughout Africa, often providing the vital capital keeping those countries from economic implosion. They have also started their own finance arms backed by trillions of dollars of sovereign wealth funds.
It’s easy enough to present the counter-thesis: that these are still oil monarchies that rule, are anti-democratic, and do not believe in the rights of liberal societies. Yet, compared to a plethora of countries around the world—let alone neighboring states such as Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Libya—they are beacons of enlightenment, meaningfully invested in their collective futures in the form of education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure, and civil society. And you can literally feel that heat of positive change in Jeddah, Riyadh, Doha, and Dubai.
We live in an imperfect world populated by humans. Few states are enlightened; few governments are without deep flaws. It’s a relative question. For now, these Gulf states are taking advantage of the natural resources with which they’ve been graced and building a future rather than just kleptocratically milking the asset the way Nigeria or Venezuela do—or the way these Gulf states used to. They are looking to a future where neither religion nor carbon resources are the primary drivers of their societies. They are infusing their people with the hope of a better world materially, culturally, and in time, politically—and that is wonderful to behold. That is the story that will matter over the coming decades, far more than whether a Qatari plane has a cameo role in the second season of the Trump Show.
Maybe where you say 'people' and 'families' and 'residents,' you should consider using the word 'men' instead
Another interesting piece here, with much to ponder.