PDF - Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

Rhetoric and the scale of undertakings reflect a desire to ‘brand’ the Gulf monarchies as
global leaders in new technology sectors and, more broadly, as responsible members of
the international community. This would be difficult to deduce from energy-related
policies alone, but there are ambitious projects in other policy fields – cultural
endowments and museums, universities, internationally oriented charities and so on –
which have recently been promoted in a very similar fashion. The motley ensemble of
initiatives has one clear common denominator: the ambition to be taken seriously on the
international stage. This is corroborated by the fact that many of the projects have only a
very limited domestic audience, a mould into which the outward-oriented promotion of
sustainability policies also fits. The branding component is also underlined by the
speculative nature of at least some of the projects.
Gulf leaders clearly want themselves and their states to be seen as more than pure
rentiers, quite similarly to newly rich families who after a couple of years of becoming
wealthy or after the second generation takes the reins, start to invest in the arts and in
charitable activities with a view to gaining more social respectability. There is a strong
desire among Gulf elites to be taken seriously on the international stage, and not just as a
source of energy and overseas capital. Qatar and Abu Dhabi in particular – two late
developers even by Gulf standards – are trying to brand themselves as technological and
cultural leaders in the international arena. Abu Dhabi campaigned vigorously to attract
the headquarters of the newly established International Renewable Energy Agency
(IRENA) to Masdar City, and saw its bid accepted in June 2009 – a first sign that its
international ambitions are taken seriously.
The increasing pressure from the international climate change debate has
contributed to the change of mind: GCC states would have found it hard to reinvent
themselves as mature and responsible members of the international community if they
had stuck to the unreconstructed obstructionism that at least some of them had pursued in
the context of international climate negotiations. Their appropriation of the sustainability
discourse as well as their integration into international regimes will bring them closer to
Western powers, and nuclear cooperation in particular also provides an element of
insurance, in that it increases the West’s stake in protecting local partner regimes. It is
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