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Waiting for the Tube, I see a poster for a gym link advertising. Places? “The city of London. Kensington High Street. in Dubai.” What a shame to choose a setting so disturbed by bad taste and ignorant expats. Currently, the City and Dubai branches should be in the first stage.
Soon after, I am in Doha, and again the Euro-Gulf connection is inevitable. The emir of Qatar has returned from a visit to Britain, where the hosts were eyeing a trade deal. The Swiss-based FIFA recently awarded Saudi Arabia the rights to host the World Cup. Even in Muscat without the buildings, where the streets can be arranged elsewhere in the Gulf twist freely behind the corniche, the three restaurants in my hotel are outside the Mayfair symbols.
It's a shame how much the name “Eurabia” is taken. And with such comments. (It is a far-right name for a conspiracy that is supposed to Islamise Europe.) Because we will need a name for this relationship. The Arabian Peninsula has what Europe lacks: space, natural resources and budget surpluses for investment in infrastructure. For its part, Europe has a “soft” asset that the Gulf States must acquire, hold or imitate to create a post-oil role in the world. This is not the deep foreign connection of the Gulf. Not while 38 percent of the population in the UAE and a quarter in Qatar are Indians. But it may be the most symbiotic, if I understand that term correctly.
In fact, the US has a defense presence in all six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. This includes the Saudi foot Osama bin Laden was not too worried about. But everyday communication? America is a 15 hour flight. Its soft goods may be difficult to buy or less desirable. Its residents have little financial incentive to live in tax havens, as Uncle Sam charges them at least some of the difference.
In the 1970s, when Opec profits entered London, Anthony Burgess wrote a dystopia where the big hotels became “al-Klaridges” and “al-Dorchester”. What a mental shift even the most Europeans saw – we don't need to bother them now – non-whites with more money than them. Still, they could submit to the Gulf as uninhabitable. Half a century later, their grandchildren will call that copy. In fact, their grandchildren may literally live there to find economic opportunities. (Al-Dorado?) As a friend of the bank explains, time zones allow you to sleep late, sell the European markets, then eat late, so are the young people who do the Gulf stint, not the burning of my age. .
However, for how long? It is a very impossible tryst, between the culture of world rights and monarchical absolutism, between the indifferent continent and the home peninsula of the old religion, which is different from anything I can think of. Relationships can be necessary and irreparable. It won't take much – intra-GCC violence, say, that seems imminent in 2017 – for Europe's exposure to the Gulf to become as old as its previous exposure 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 is a “good” game, I can see that people are not ready for the back.
And it's parochial to think that a relationship will ever fall apart in one direction. It is the Gulf side that has to make the most unpleasant cultural adjustments. Because Europeans associate 1979 with Iran and perhaps with Margaret Thatcher, they sometimes pass over the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by rebels who thought the House of Saud had grown up in western habits. Governments in the region are certainly not forgetting.
How far the area can be freed without tripping over the cultural fence remains (and is answered differently) in each province, or emirate. Everyone is very nice to “Mr. Janan” at his hotel in Doha. But the metal scanners that must be passed at each re-entry point to the building stand as a reminder of the stakes here. I wonder if Europe and the Gulf are throwing too much into their relationship without doubt that it can last.
Email Janan janan.ganesh@ft.com
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